2/26/2005
I think this past week was the official “Paranoid Left” week. It’s a new holiday from what I understand, and many on the left are religiously devoted to observing it.
To kick off this new week, many on the left seem to have chosen an old favorite, Karl Rove, as their topic. To hear them talk about this guy, he might well rule the whole world, instead of just the American government as they previously surmised.
Yes, Rove is SO scary good, he has expanded his sphere of control from this greatest nation on Earth to nations abroad. What’s next… Disneyworld?! Heaven help us!!!
One of the first shots fired was by no less than Rep. Maurice Hinchey of upstate New York who, spoke recently to constituents at a community forum in Ithica, New York (a beautiful area, by the way). The interesting thing is that a reader of one of the Internet’s most popular (and best) blogs, Little Green Footballs was present, and he tape-recorded the event and passed the information back to LGF. Here is what he recorded, including a Q&A with the very same person recording Hinchey:
Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): Well, you know, they are manipulating the media, they did it in the very beginning through intimidation. They would intimidate the people in the, uh, in the press conference. And … they would ask — they would allow questions to be asked only of people that they knew were going to ask the right kind of questions, from their point of view. And, you know, that has its effect, had, had its effect on people. People have been — people in the media have been intimidated. The media has changed in the last four years. People have changed in the last four years. They’ve had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it’s handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.
Audience Member: Do you have any evidence for that?
Congressman Hinchey: Yes I do. Once they did that —
Audience: [Murmuring]
Congressman Hinchey: …once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush’s draft dodging. Once they were able to say, ‘This is false! These papers are not accurate, they’re, they’re, they’re false, they’ve been falsified.’ That had the effect of taking the whole issue away.
Audience Member: So you have evidence that the papers came from the Bush administration?
Congressman Hinchey: No. I — that’s my belief.
Audience Member: OK.
Congressman Hinchey: And I said that. In the very beginning. I said, ‘It’s my belief that those papers, and that setup, originated with Karl Rove and the White House.’
Audience Member: Don’t you think it’s irresponsible to make charges like that?
Congressman Hinchey: No I don’t. I think it’s very important to make charges like that. I think it’s very important to combat this kind of activity in every way that you can. And I’m willing — and most people are not — to step forward in situations like this and take risks.
Audience: [Clapping and cheering.]
Congressman Hinchey: I consider that to be part of my job, and I’m gonna continue to do it.
It’s part of Congressman Hinchey’s job to forward conspiracy theories? Ummm… I think I want to run for congress. This job suddenly sounds like it’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be.
Next, James Taranto comes to the rescue with two days worth of Rove Conspiracy reports in his column, Best of The Web Today:
Rove Manipulates Australian Government’s Abortion Debate…
It seems Karl Rove has been busy Down Under, too. So we learn from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer (”intelligent as a post!”) op-ed by Australian writer Greg Barnes:It’s been 25 years since Australia tore itself apart debating the rights and wrongs of abortion. But the issue has resurfaced courtesy of the preparedness of Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his advisers to take a leaf out of Karl Rove’s tactics textbook and the successful export of U.S. fundamentalist churches to Australia over the past five years.
Over the past month a group of right-wing Australian members of Parliament, sanctioned by the conservative Howard, have begun a campaign to outlaw “late-term abortions.” This group is allying itself with churches and anti-abortion groups that are borrowing heavily from their U.S. colleagues when it comes to campaign tactics.
Howard is an unashamed admirer of Rove, President Bush’s political tactics mastermind. When Howard introduced his own political strategist, Lynton Crosby, to Bush in 2001, he called him the “Karl Rove of Australian politics.”
For crying out loud, isn’t Rove’s plate full enough, what with manipulating the media and destroying the AARP and the New Deal and all?
Rove Engineers Secret Attack on AARP…
Blogger Steve Soto offers the AARP some advice:First, if he hasn’t done so already, AARP Chief Executive Officer Bill Novelli needs to call Karl Rove and demand that the White House condemn the ad and the tactics of the USAN. Of course Rove will not do this, and Novelli should tell Rove that failure to do this will be interpreted by the AARP as a sign that the White House supports and was a partner in this smear and in future smears.
Second, the AARP should do a press conference after the call to Rove for two reasons: first, they should show the despicable ad to the media and point out to what lengths Bush’s supporters will go to smear the AARP; secondly Novelli should reveal at the press conference that he has demanded the White House repudiate the ad and the USAN smear campaign, and has received no such repudiation from the White House. As a result, Novelli should tell the media that the AARP will assume the White House supports this smear.
AARP is doing nothing of the sort; the Sun reports its spokeswoman “said the group is ‘not reacting’ to the attack ads.” But at least one Democrat, Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, has called on President Bush to repudiate them.
Why in the world should the White House even dignify this ad by commenting on it? Here we come to the paranoia of the Angry Left, which is firmly convinced, as during the Swift Boat episode, that the evil genius Karl Rove is pulling all the strings. As Soto writes:
Making the USAN a pariah and calling them out for what they really are and exposing who is really behind them, while pointing out what the White House and its cronies on the Hill and at the RNC are willing to do to destroy the AARP will kill off not only the USAN but Bush’s remaining privatization effort as well.
Rove Manipulating Professional Sports?
Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle spots yet another thread in the world-wide web of conspiracy in whose center sits the omnipotent Karl Rove:I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that [Barry] Bonds has started sounding like a Karl Rove client. His talking points had a familiar ring.
Can’t find any weapons of mass destruction? Change the subject to democracy in Iraq.
Don’t want to answer questions about what you said to the BALCO grand jury? Pretend that it’s a pending legal issue, even though you have immunity and the federal prosecutor in the case has already said that all the athletes can repeat their testimony in public.
President Bush, of course, used to be in the baseball business, and in his 2004 State of the Union address he actually mentioned the subject of steroids. We’re not sure what Rove is up to here, but we look forward to having it explained by the left-wing blogs.
You know, if Rove is as good as Democrats and Liberals say he is, then you might as well give up hope now. Anyone this good is destined to become the first official “Ruler of The World.” Or maybe he is already and we just don’t know it! 
Finally, there is some definite irony to the level of obsession over Rove. I know that I was obsessive with my anti-Clinton rhetoric at times during his two terms. I look at all this stuff and I realize how silly I looked at times. Not that Clinton didn’t do some ridiculous things, but those of us on the right over-obsessed for sure at times.
Well, the left has taken our playbook and added its pages too it seems. With that said, at least those of us on the right understood that it was President Clinton in charge, not someone else. Liberals can’t even get that part right.
What is the ultimate lessons-learned here? That, when Hillary announces that she’ll be running in 2008, we’ll need to moderate our tone. I know that many on the right have strong feelings regarding Senator Clinton. However, behaving like our counterparts above will surely help the Senator, both in the Democratic Primaries and in the election itself, should she win the primaries.
Just a bit of food for thought.
David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com
4 Comments
Black Leadership Take Aim (Rove)…
Atlanta was the hot spot. Tavis Smiley hosted his annual symposium “The State of the Black Union.” The forum was held at Rev. Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. The program focused on defining the African American Agenda. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition took opportunity to explain to those gathered that the Black Congressional Caucus has in place a ten (10) point plan of action. But regardless of the question of whether or not the agenda set forth by the Caucus is the substance of this group’s covenant the forum did establish that the process will include a community unity.
Today, black leaders voiced a need to advance the community. Freedom was the agenda until 1864. Civil rights, voting rights and access to public accomodations followed from 1864 to 1964. Leveraging the black community’s collective capital appears to be the new covenant.
They voiced a concern that Democrats have taken the black community for granted and the republican party “just takes, using blacks who really have no power to lead.”
The highmark of the event was when the Honorable Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam, explained to the group that “regardless of where we have been, we want to advance our people.” He said, ” black children can’t eat at the table of illusion and hypocrisy.” He added, “we can’t focus on the house that denied us access for 400 years.” He closed, “the hell with democrats and republicans.”
These African American leaders, carrying the history and weight of the black experience want group unity. They appear to have found meaning in their individuality and heritage. It’s more than a common skin pigmentation. It has now become a community based on a social phenomenon of systematic and comprehensive forces that only those challenged by a longstanding history of discrimination and violence may understand.
The Need:
The level playing field remains more illusion than reality… Since the start of George W. Bush presidency in January 2000 a general concern in the African American community was voiced that on issues that are of the greatest importance to millions of Americans, the President’s policies are misplaced priorities. The uncertainty continued into 2004 election.
But there’s one truth above all others in second term elections. They are referendums on the incumbent. So as hard as it is to accept, there are other Americans outside the African American community that like the job that George W. Bush is doing. And, with re-election he’s not an asterisk anymore alone among American presidents. That is, riding the votes of 59 million (other)Americans, he’s the president regardless of the fact that majority of African Americans who voted would rather have had the other guy.
So… it’s time to move on. African Americans must put their differences aside. American identity is not a function of birthright but a way of life. The African American community must keep moving toward the America identity it believes is possible. Isn’t democracy great?
Some argue “African American leaders judges America from the utopian standard, never comparing America to anything other but the Garden of Eden (immigrants, for example, are said to compare America to their old country).” But, it has been only forty years since separate water fountains of Jim Crow prohibitions and many Americans would now like to proceed as if the slate is clean and the scale is balanced.
The upward strides of many African Americans into the middle class have given the illusion that race cannot be the barrier that some make it out to be. However, one in four African Americans continue to live below the official poverty line (versus approximately one in nine whites). The optimistic assumption of the 1970s and 1980s was that upwardly mobile African Americans were quietly integrating formerly all-white occupations, businesses, neighborhoods, and social clubs. Black middle- and working-class families were moving out of all-black urban neighborhoods and into the suburbs. But, the one black doctor who lives in an exclusive white suburb and the few African American lawyers who work at a large firm are not representative of the today’s black community. And although most white Americans are also not doctors or lawyers, the lopsided distribution of occupations for whites does favor such professional and managerial jobs, whereas blacks are clustered in the sales and clerical fields.
In short, the inequalities run even deeper than just income. One must compound and exponentiate the current differences over a history of slavery and Jim Crow, and the nearly fourteenfold wealth advantage that whites enjoy over African Americans—regardless of income, education, or occupation—needs little explanation, and add the failure of the education system where African Americans children are the clear victims.
The explanations for economic inequality perceives the American political economy as being fundamentally fair with virtually everyone guaranteed an equal opportunity to compete, work hard, and excel in American schools, labor markets, housing markets, and other American social institutions. However, using wealth as a measure of economic inequality, the same top twenty percent of American households controlled over sixty-eight percent of the net worth of the United States, leaving virtually no wealth in the hands of the bottom twenty percent.
Economic inequality that characterized the United States at its inception continues to influence contemporary institutional practices and American social institutions routinely discriminate against African Americans denying them the means of acquiring human capital (innate individual capacities such as talent and motivation combined with achieved qualities such as educational qualifications and employment experiences). Limited to segregated neighborhoods, educated in inferior schools, and lacking access to the good jobs that are increasingly located in inaccessible suburban neighborhoods, African Americans bear an unfair share of the costs and economic inequality in the United States constitutes economic injustice.
Recurring discrimination in workplaces and elsewhere wastes human capital and seriously restricts and marginalizes its victims. The negative impact of racial animosity and discrimination includes a sense of threat at work or elsewhere, lowered self-esteem, rage at mistreatment, depression, the development of defensive tactics, a reduction in desire for normal interaction, and other psychological problems. The costs of racial animosity and discrimination extends well beyond the individual to families and communities. While many African Americans may have managed to overcome discrimination, their struggle will take a toll in their personal health or on the ability to maximize contributions to the larger society.
Discussion:
Are some blacks becoming a “black bourgeoisie?”
Are some blacks controlling the wealth and power within the black community and turning its back on its own people?
Are many members of black America adopting the values, standards and ideals of the white middle class, and are trying to distance themselves from the black poor?
In the 1960s, federal entitlement programs, civil rights legislation, equal opportunity statutes and affirmative action programs broke the open barriers of legal segregation. The path to universities and corporations for some blacks was now wide open. More blacks than ever did what their parents only dreamed of – they fled blighted inner-city areas in droves. The new frontier, business where the dollar is made and where significant wealth and resources are at stake.
But, is there a widening rift between the black haves and the black have-nots that has been blurred by racism, ignored by blacks and hidden from white society?
Is black wealth, like white wealth, now concentrated in fewer hands?
A study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, shows progress toward school desegregation peaked in late 1980s. That is a half-century after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The report said that a massive migration of black families toward the suburbs is producing “hundreds of new segregated and unequal schools and frustrating the dream of middle-class minority families.” According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test report, by the 12th grade, on average, black students (in the United States) are four years behind those who are white or Asain.
The “NAEP” test report not only average scores for each racial or ethnic group; they also place each individual test-taker in one of four different “achievement levels.” The bottom is labeled below basic, which is reserved for students unable to display even “partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills.” In five of the seven subjects tested, a majority of black twelfth graders perform Below Basic. In math, the figure is almost seven out of ten, in science more than three out of four.
While this gap may not be hidden from public, black republicans have been inhibited from describing the problem in its full dimensions. But closing the skills gap is the answer to real racial equality in American society.
What, in fact, are black republicans doing with what they aggregate?
Access to positions of power and prestige – and to well-paying jobs in general – are limited because blacks typically leave high school with an eighth-grade education. The status of blacks today is different than it was a half century ago, when almost 90 percent of blacks lived in poverty. By now more than 40 percent of blacks describe themselves as middle class, and a third live in suburbs. College attendance rates are as high although a high percentage drop out before getting a four-year degree. African-Americans are CEOs and occupy lofty positions in the federal government. But all is not well.
The most discouraging news of all is that which has been barely discussed by black leaders: the appalling racial gap in academic achievement in the K-12 years. Without an education, black children are slaves to the world they live in. Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision struck down legalized school segregation to give equal educational access to African Americans and other minorities. But, today’s major American educational issue still involves race.
Blacks have no choice but to prepare its young. At least three black men ascended in the aftermath of civil rights movement to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and an additional 275 or more senior black executives are now no less than three steps away from the CEO. They’ve attended the nation’s most prestigious schools, learned how to navigate the highest reaches of the systems, and they have thrived.
But, for all their great wealth and enormous resources, it appears most sucessful blacks remain absent from the struggle of educating our young. Recently, Kmart Holding Corp. chose Aylwin Lewis to improve the giant retailer’s image and operation. Lewis joins Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, Richard Parsons of Time Warner, Ken Chenault of American Express and Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae as the only African American chief executives heading top publicly trading companies in the U.S.
Corporations today say they do look to a talent pool largely comprising minorities and women for their senior and middle managers. But the level of education and the caliber of schools blacks attended are not equal, and the competition for market share is so ferocious that companies must recruit the best talent.
George W. Bush appealed to Americans’ best instincts when he declared that no child should be left behind.
But?
All agree that every child in America should have the same opportunity to reach his or her full potential regardless of the color of skin, gender or the income level of the child’s parents. The president’s plan has set up millions of vulnerable kids for failure, leaving black youth with another dose of mostly symbolic politics. The education reform accountability system based on annual testing in grades three through eight that financially sanctions schools that do not show quick improvement, will do a great deal of additional damage to the children in America’s most-troubled public schools. It is wrong to expect schools to succeed virtually overnight when so little is done to attack inequalities in education.
How can he expect the poorest children, who face every disadvantage, to do as well as those who have every advantage?
Given Bush’s spending priorities there is little left to finance his efforts to leave no child behind. Further, by the time students enter the third grade, when the Bush testing plan would kick in, much already has been determined about whether individual children will succeed or struggle academically.
America’s schools must be accountable to the children being educated in them and to their parents. But making high-stakes annual tests the sole determinant for students and their schools, and imposing major costs on those who fail, is counterproductive.
In closing, assessment should measure, not drive, education reform. Why force schools to spend thousands on consultants to teach test-taking strategies instead of substantive learning? The magic that can happen between a creative teacher and engaged students is too often lost in schools driven by test preparation.
Comment by kstreetfriend — 3/2/2005 @ 5:46 pm