National Review Believes MLK Jr. Would Not Vote For Barack Obama
By Nicole Belle Friday Aug 22, 2008 9:30pm
By all measures, Martin Luther King Jr. was a true leader. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is just another politician - one who has demonstrated far more regard for the interests of teacher unions than for the children they are paid to serve, far more regard for the pro-abortion lobby than for the future of the black community, and far less good sense than the average person has when it comes to picking a spiritual mentor.
The positions and values of Senator Obama stand mightily against those espoused, and what's more, practiced, by Martin Luther King Jr. Based on all these considerations, I think it is quite probable that King, were he alive today, would not vote for Barack Obama.
Oy. As Matt Yglesias says, perhaps the National Review should leave the divining of political leanings of slain civil rights leaders to conservative rags that weren't around in the 50s and 60s. You know, the kind that didn't write such racist tripe as Will Herberg's commentary on King's Nobel Peace Prize "'Civil Rights' and Violence: Who Are the Guilty Ones?" . I'm just sayin'...
On a related note, PFAW offers a look back at the way the GOP has tried to continually paint themselves as the non-racists by looking at their origins during the Civil War and ignoring their actions from the 60s forward.
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You know dam well King wouldn't vote for McCame!
While they disagree on other issues to my knowledge not one of King Children let alone his wife ever said he was for letting women die rather than let them have an abortion.
"the GOP has tried to continually paint themselves as the non-racists by looking at their origins during the Civil War "
Yeah, they have to back to Lincoln to find a Republican who gave a rat's ass about African Americans.
I was stunned when Chris Matthews called out CNN and FOX for their constant calls for Hillary Clinton to be the VP
His words “the Republicans and I must say the Fox Television and CNN Crocodile Tears about Hillary Clinton are not to be believed that they are simply playing the Republican game here of trying to open up this rift.”
Know one was fooled by CNN's Obsession with Hillary Clinton
Bu,Bu, But.......it's the National Review.
as if they had any credibility. right wing toe raggs
http://www.kyleanneshiver.com/about/
W T F?
That's all I'm sayin'
Right, Kyle-Anne Shiver is a right winger, who would vote for McSame. What a big surprise. Hee, what about pissing of and GTFO?
*off*
One House, One Spouse, Obama/Biden 08: http://www.cafepress.com/politics2go
Leave it to the soul-less, vision impaired and professionally cynical National Review to prognosticate about a slain civil right leader's voting preference.
What a rag.
Obama is a product of what MLK wanted to create. An environment where people are chosen for their character - not the color of their skin.
As far as character, it is not something republicans have been known for recently, I must say.
MLK would vote for Obama in an Atlanta minute.
As far as MLK, a job well done.
I think that was a typo in the National Review.
It's supposed to read:
By all measures,
Martin Luther King Jr.Jefferson Davis was a true leader.This is a very common error in the right-wing press.
yeah, mlk would rather vote for mccain.
mlk did not have to deal with specifics of running a country.
These are the people that know what GOD thinks. What kind of mindless person could believe they understand the inside of one of the greatest minds of American history enough to think they know how this man would vote today? This is the babbling of a lunatic!
Now we have the team to go.
F**k 'National Retard', 'Faux' and the other brain damaged reich wing GOP morons.
They can go jump in a dumpster and look for their lost morals.
The right wing press prints what Stupid people will believe, so what the rest of us think is sort of irrelevant. When we enlightened people read the right wing rantings, we think to ourselves how stupid would a person have to be to believe this crap. The answer would be as stupid as an impoverished person that votes republican.
McCain will win, for a Diebold by any other name, still loses Democrat votes.
What's up with the big "drill more oil" ad at the bottom of this post?
Is it just me or does anyone else find it crazy that the GOP is claiming MLK would be against abortion just because he was a Minister?
They act as though all Ministers are against abortion under all circimstances.
Jason @ 17:
I have a T mobile ad.
whatever........a nontopic this great has past. that was a
different time....MLK would adapt and make his choice.
i have a feeling it wouldn't be mccain
"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, receiving their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred & most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander.
After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, & to hallow their names to a certain extent for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes & with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of it's substance, blunting its revolutionary edge & vulgarizing it."
This has been done to Martin Luther King Jr. to as great an extent if not more than it had been done to Marx when Lenin wrote those words.
This is an excerpt from a speech on Vietnam delivered by Dr. King exactly one year to the day before he was shot and killed. Subsititute "Iraq" for Vietnam" and "Iran" for "China" and tell me that King would vote for McCain today. For those who have the time, read the entire speech. It brings me to tears:
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:
"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
E.L. @ 14:
MLK and the other African American civil rights activists fighting for equality in a democratic republic,
which had national ground rules for equality, but still had local racist laws and racist thugs willing to put people in the grave.
MLK &co had a just cause and the appeal to attract people of all hues to go stand beside them, march with them and die along side them.
A dream of one nation, one people equal before the law and justice.
2008 is that year.
Jason @ 17:
I don't see it on my screen, but I'll bet that it's ad-space that Amato has rented to Google Ads. Google Ads software reads a story then throws in ads that are related to keywords on the page.
So if C&L is making $$ off of an advertiser who ain't gonna get any positive attention from the readers, more power to C&L. ;D
sorry, I screwed up the link on that last post. here it is: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
why do you guys post this shit? I mean really, we have only two candidates here...fresh fruit and rotten fruit. Can you at least help us in the right direction? Both may fail but at least one has potential.
Who better to devine who MLK would vote for then a 57 year old white woman from Georgia.
http://www.kyleanneshiver.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/kyle_anne2.jpg
BTW what kind of name is kyle-anne ?
Why doesn't somebody call them out on this each time they bring up the whole Lincoln was a Republican BS? Lincoln was a "Republican," which in those days was the more liberal party, while "Democrat" meant one was more conservative. As with Mr. Jesus F. Christ, Honest Abe would most definitely be a Democrat if alive today.
just gonna make a wild claim that even Old Honest Abe Lincoln wouldnt be proud of the mudslinging, rabidly religious, reactionary, and intolerant entity that the GOP is today. im 'sure' he wouldnt even vote for John McCain today. he would be ashamed of the current party. and rightly so.
What the hell does "Teh" mean??!!!
Why can't bloggers use English. It's actually been around for quite a while!
stevo @ 22:
and this is the reason the establishment murdered MLK.
to question MIC profit is considered treason by the shareholders.
Republicans and their immoral stockholding voting block are true mafiosi
Canuknotusa @ 30:
its a subtle protest thing, you had to have been there to understand it...
I wonder if they spoke to any of his living relatives or associates before writing that balderdash?
Canuknotusa @ 30:
Geez, nitpicking aren't we?
As if anything NR says has relevance.
Alerta alerta @ 19:
just do what i do: use firefox with the adblocker plus add-on.
A lot of ad space on most web-sites are controlled by a google-analytics based hosting system such that you end up seeing a lot of seemingly randomly generated ads that the folks running the web-sites don't have an individual approval decision over.
Just like the whole McSame, Repub, conservative operation. Nothing to brag about or even talk up, so throw out wild speculation without any basis, to try to bug the opposition, and give the sheeple a talking point, but mostly, fill up space in a shallow no topic publication.
Alerta alerta @ 34:
OK lets go into detail.
In the north country (England), theres a habit of dropping the end of the word THE, so it becomes t'
similar to the dropped 'H's at the beginning of words in other parts of England.
as in "going down the t'pit" phononetically it becomes 'teh'
1337 speak aka leet speak uses 'teh' as an irony thing.
It's sad when you live history compared to those who read history. Dr. King wasn't involved in politics at lease he wasn't when he spoke. As for what he would have thought of Senator Obama today. Who knows but he would be proud this country has come a lone way since Congresswoman Chisholm ran for President. Yes pride in one's race doesn't mean a vote. Dr. King never spoke of judging a man by the content of his character not the color of his skin. Like so many Americans who don't read the story changes as time goes by until it has no longer the meaning. Each year on Dr. King's birthday the Media runs the life and speeches of Dr. King but Americans don't bother to watch as American Idol is on.
Canuknotusa @ 30:
Ah but the power of English is in it's ever changing nature. The alternative spelling of "the" tells you right off that the person using it believes the subject matter to which it refers is moronic. It may be a passing fad or it may endure but surely it can't be that hard to understand.
The writer you are giving attention to also wrote in Feb, 2007
"I hope that the younger generations X, Y and whatever, have learned from our generation - the one that kept the dirty bath water and threw out the baby instead - that the old American way of sturdy individualism, moral integrity, and respect for God and country really is worth saving. Because there’s a big war on and if these generations continue down the path we have blazed, then their children will be bowing to Allah 5 times a day with their little GPS’s pointed to Mecca."
http://www.kyleanneshiver.com/2007/02/18/playground-politics/
Here are a couple of vintage quotes from National Review and William Buckley:
and
Buckley wrote this right after King's assassination:
For a racist, pro-Nazi, pro-fascist publication like National Review to pretend to speak for Martin Luther King is like Fred Phelps' web site pretending to represent Matthew Shepherd, or a neo-Nazi site pretending to speak on behalf of Anne Frank.
euthyfro @ 36:
I don't mind the ads, i just ignore them and never click on them (sorry c&l) I'm running firefox already. (and opera)
Right wing lying criminals will say any damn thing to gain power.
Canuknotusa @ 30:
It's an intertubes thing.
A long time a ago, when blogs(a word which is so old these days that its origin has been buried by the sands of time) first started up, some one in Greater Wingnuttia was trying to express outrage over....Liberals? France? Gays?
In their outrage, they hastily posted without running a spellcheck, so the subject of ire became "teh gays" (or, again, whatever).
Then the prog-o-sphere picked up on it. So now when prog-bloggers deign it necessary to mock Wingnuts who are tossing out strawmen, a "Oh Noes! Teh Gays[again, whatever]!" is a necessity in the mocking post.
ferrofluid (Obama + Biden = 2008) @ 38:
N0 s|-|1t, That's rad! What's next? Explaining how bbs works?
;)
So...ummm...suffice it to say the National Review author has never actually read MLK's rhetoric? It was fiery. It was quite a bit more like Rev Wright's rhetoric than whatever foolish, romantic notion she obviously has from the brief MLK soundbytes she's heard over the years, and the occasional isolated MLK quotes she's read.
Its obscene for the National Review to even think of invoking the values and dream of Dr. King. It is an integral component of the republican mentality that invokes racism as one of their strategies to insure the status quo, and that includes the tokens that affiliate themselves with it.
I'll believe the National Enquirer about the UFOs over Texas before I'll believe anything out of that crap of a rag the national review. Oh wait... George Bush is from Texas.... that explains alot.
Do the "writers" at the National Review really not know that most of Americas Christians are pro-choice in one sense or another?
I have a dream!
Of owning seven houses and a private jet.
1964- Passage of the Civil Rights Act.
1965 The racists that dominate the Southern wing of the Democratic party start renouncing the party and join the Republican party, which they now say better personifies the currenet Southern morals.
1980- Regan begins his campaign in Mississippi, and let's the South know that he is their "Man". Code speak becomes popular when talking about "civility", and continues today when King George keeps inserting stupid biblical statenments in his BS orations.
The South use to hate the Repug party because of Lincoln and the Civil War. Becoming the party of racists wipes all this old animosity away, and makes for "ol homecoming weekend" every weekend ! The tail( the South) is wagging the dog( the Repugs with fleas courtesy of Turdblossom. As long as the tial wags the country, the country is DOOMED!!
The National Review? The National Review, that racist, neo-Nazi rag claims to know what Martin Luther King would vote against Obama? Laughable. Laughable, I say. Nicole Belle is an idiot and a liar. Chinge su madre==
Peter G @ 40:
“The stoopid, it hurts”???
Sorry - still makes no sense.
selenafan @ 53:
errrr Belle is an editor/mod here on crooks and liars.
She just posted the article.
You may want to apoligize.
I know we should keep our ears open to what the neocon Republicans are saying. But I'm getting to the point now that I'm almost trying to avoid anything these neocons have to say.
Canuknotusa @ 54:
It's net-speak. It's not uncommon within the blogosphere. It's meant to convey how idiotic I think the story is.
teh stoopid
I'm pretty sure if you thought real hard, you'd have figured it out.
selenafan @ 53:
Um, huh? Why the vitriol against me? I didn't write the NRO article. I just pointed out how ahistoric and moronic it is.
selenafan @ 53:
Wow, project much? How would you like it if called you those names. I don't know you, and now, I don't want too.
So, Mr. Limbaugh, what do you think MLK would say about Obama's VP pick, even after his "clean" comment? You're clearly an authority on this matter, so your word is final.
Absolutely pathetic LYING white bigots revising history by using one of the most influential people who ever lived(FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE) to support their bullshit. Next these fuckers will claim MLK was a Klansman. Nasty soulless whores will say and do anything to maintain power.
cg @ 59:
I'd be curious to know when the last time Limbaugh went to Church.
someguy @ 61:
Pfft... Limbaugh has no sins to confess. ;)
does the national review also figure that mlk jr. was also a closet john bircher? it would have followed of course.
// exiting sarcasm mode
Hee, isn't MLK dead? I'm sure that he gives a two finger salute about today political candidates. Hello, McSame, up yours. Maybe he's playing backgammon just right now.
Or risk, whatever the hell is popular in heaven.
The old NR article sounds like an entry from Michelle Malkin, except without the childish cheerleading/mocking words
cg @ 62:
I find it hard to imagine him worshiping anything other than himself.
Anyone remember 'Bananas' where Woody Allen is looking at a display of porn magazines and right in the middle is National Review? Some things never change.
Not long after William F. Buckley kicked the bucket, and the press (conservative and otherwise) was filled with tributes to his eloquence, civility, blahblahblah, I found an article with extended quotes of Buckley's NR editorials on the subject of the beatings and murders of southern blacks and white voting rights activists. This would have been in 1962-64.
Buckley's position: it was perfectly reasonable for white southerners to harass, beat, brutalize and imprison black and white civil rights activists, because the activists were after all challenging the whites' way of life, and disturbing a social order of long standing. What right did the activists have to presume they should be treated differently?
It was truly nauseating to read - especially when TV news broadcasts at the time were filled with stark images of the worst kind of racist violence all across the south.
I don't have a link, unfortunately. Buckley and his magazine were apologists and rationalizers for Jim Crow.
I don't have a link, unfortunately.
someguy @ 50:
The current editor of National Review Online is Katheryn Jean Lopez, a hard-right Catholic. The moderate views of most religious Americans don't even register for people of her persuasion. They are theocrats, not democrats.
someguy @ 55:
Thank you for pointing that out. I think the poster got a little over zealous in reacting quite naturally to the Republican Rag that is the National Review. That's OK. We forgive. Unless your a mindless repub minion, which clearly the poster is not. The National Review is a self-described think-tank as if that is to connote some level of intelligence. It is actually an oxymoron in those terms.
Annoyed Canuck @ 69:
She is what is referred to as a coconut, a tio taco. All for herself. Extremely irrelevant as a human being. A piece of shit to be blunt.
chicano2nd @ 70:
Correction, commenter on the posters post.
I've been a Hillary supporter from day one, but one thing I've always loved about the Obama campaign is that the only things the wingnuts have been able to hit him with are hypothetical situations and fairy-land rhetoric. This is the kind of crap they are throwing at him.
The crappy part is how many people actually buy into this retarded garbage.
The NR on Civil Rights, eh? What's next, Passover tips from Goebbels ghost?
living_abomination @ 73:
Hillary will be a more powerful Supreme Court Justice. I would be most excellent if we can somehow figure out how she can become the Chief Justice and then push for it.
Breaking News!!!!
National Review Believes George W Bush has been the best President ever. National Review Believes McCain will be more of the same.
If Martin Luther King were alive today, he wouldn't be voting for anyone... he'd be scratching at the roof of his coffin...
Is it still too soon?
National Review believes a lot of strange things.
That's a damn lie. MLK would vote for Obama because MLK Jr. supported gay marriages, so did Coretta. Some shit from a fucked up article.
Barack is not only a politician, but a leader as well. Barack is a leader for the black community because he knows what goes on in Compton, Bed-Stuy Brookly, Southside Chicago. If Malcolm X was still here, I'm pretty sure he would NOT vote for McCain.
National Review: A cult rag for the wingnut sect.
MLK wouldn't vote for Obama, he would vote for McCain, right after he voted for Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. Makes sense to me.
Paul @ 79:
Not all of the Rev. King's kids are ok with gay marriage.
And Malcolm X was a devote Muslim.
Annoyed Canuck @ 69:
They seem to think it's ok they demand a miricle of God whenever a woman has a medical situation that requires an abortion if she's to live.
It's as though they never read the part of the New Testement that clearly states "thou shalt not tempt God".
Personally I chalk it all up to the republicant's hoping to fool black folk into voting republican. It's doomed to failure of course but they keep on trying. This is a party that believes that the more you tell the same lie over and over again, the more it gets believed. So far it has not worked in the black community, but they keep trying anyway. It's all about chipping away at the Democratic base and consolodating all power in the hands of neoCon republicant's. Expect to hear more of this crap in comming years especially with surveys claiming that whites will become the minority within the next 30 or so years.
Well, thank you, Mistah Charlie!
Hasn't there been some talk of applying RICO laws on the GOP? They certainly have acted like the mob.
Yes, if Lincoln was alive he wouldn't vote for McCain. How is that National Review.
More goodies on the National Review here. William F Buckley was essentially a racist.
Wow. Delayed posting. Sorry.
Well, she's probably right that King would not support Obama, though not for the reasons she gives. Obama has done nothing to stop the carnage in Iraq, he wants to escalate the war against the Afghans, and his first act as Democratic presidential nominee was to promise undying fealty (not to mention billions in military assistance) to a foreign nation with a nuclear arsenal, a longstanding policy of violence and occupation towards its neighbors, and a racist and apartheid regime. And now he's just selected a VP who is a self-declared Zionist and was a leading supporter and enabler of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. In contrast, King spoke out passionately against the violence and racism of America’s foreign policy, famously calling the American government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” --views for which he was vilified at the time in much the same way as Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has been for his.
With Kucinich out of the race, I suspect that King, were he still alive, would endorse and campaign for Cynthia McKinney over Barack Obama.
JFK would have been a brain dead neo-con...
MLK would have voted against his own dream...
The Republiscum are becoming Orwellian - left is right, up is down, in is out - what next?
Conservative pundits are also very good at telling Democrats how to run a campaign. One moron says he high-fived every in sight because Biden would be so easy. Did anyone really expect him to say, we are very nervous because Biden isn't afraid of Karl Rove.
What's interesting isn't that these people got an obvious point totally wrong (if he were alive, MLK would not only vote for Obama, he'd probably campaign for him) but that they're so utterly, unflappably confident in their wrongness. It's like the alternatives never even cross their mind.
I feel quite certain that if MLK had a choice between Obama and McCain (or any other Republican), he'd vote for Obama. But my, how arrogant of them to think to make such an outrageous assertion. And obviously, not one can prove them wrong with any certainty since the man is dead. How convenient. It's amusing how these conservatives will say anything, facts or logic be damned. They just pull that stuff right out of their butts, and are wrong 99.9% of the time. This is just another conservative ploy to sway voters.
But as long as we're placing our bets on who former dead leaders would vote for.....It's hard to imagine that Lincoln would be vote for anyone in the Republican Party, given what a hideous beast they've turned into.
Molly, why do you think someone with the passion and convictions of MLK would campaign for a politician of Obama's persuasion? Are you at all familiar with King's life, work, activism, writings, and speeches on war, poverty, racism, corporate capitalism, militarism, human rights, etc? Have you read/listened to Obama's positions on such issues? Where do you see any points of intersection? I'm truly curious. If King were alive today I believe he'd receive roughly the same treatment from the Obama camp as Jeremiah Wright. Wright and King have a lot in common, King and Obama very little. Even assuming King would offer any support to Obama (which is dubious), Obama's reaction would be to hastily distance himself from such a scary black radical.
King would be agitating for justice and fairness in the black community, standing with NOLA refugees in demanding decent living conditions, decrying the vastly disproportionate imprisonment of African Americans and the racial disparities in access to health care in America. Obama chose to give them patronizing lectures on responsible fatherhood. (What's next, stories about Cadillac-driving welfare queens?) King would oppose the vicious American wars abroad and military/economic support to undemocratic regimes, and lead massive organized protests and acts of civil disobedience to try to bring an end to such policies. Obama serves to continue them.
Support the guy (Obama) if you feel you must, but it really irks me when uninformed Americans try to draw parallels between King and Obama. Obama has nowhere near the moral stature, courage, greatness and leadership qualities of King; in terms of their political and economic views,they're not even in the same book, let alone on the same page.
I suppose this Obama-as-the-second-coming-of-MLK claptrap is only going to increase and reach a fevered pitch on August 28, but I for one refuse to buy it.
Recommended reading:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
Nicole Belle @ 57:
Here's an idea.
Say what you mean, and use proper English and grammar instead of insulting readers who just ask questions.
Just a suggestion...
MLK wouldn't vote for Obama, for a starters he'd disagree with his position on waging war on the Afghani's.
Just another KKK member spouting off. Go help McLame find out which house to go home to tonight.
Well, I'll just bet all the black folks that subscribe to National Review are livid. Or could it be that this rag is writing for its core audience.....the ultra right? These are the same people that believe that the United States is ALWAYS right, ALWAYS acts from pure motives in all its international undertakings, NEVER would screw its citizens out of their constitutional rights. What else would you expect from one of the major publications of the right, except a further re-write of history?
Oh sure, MLK would be voting for John McCain today!
Frank Lee Speekin @ 1:
My sentiments exactly. John McCain would not vote for John McSame.
Canuknotusa @ 94:
Here is a suggestion.
Lighten up, dude.
I guess some people are just humor impaired.
andy @ 95:
There is no "waging war" against the Afghani's. Do you remember when the Taliban were destroying the ancient Buddha statutes and terrorizing the Afghanistan people. Now they are complicit in hiding out and aiding Al-Qaeda. Probably not. You seem to be the kind of person that would conveniently forget those facts. If you want justice for the innocent victims of Bush ignorance (as in ignore the threats of an impending attack) and Bin Laden hate toward U.S. occupiers of the middle east, then get your facts together first or just shut up.
Jean @ 89:
Who is "she" Jean. It appears that you have difficulty in reading. Do you need to start over again. I'll send you a care package of "Dick and Jane" books to get you on track if necessary.
chicano2nd @ 102:
??? "She" is Kyle-Anne Shiver, the author of the NRO article linked to, who suggests that MLK might not support Obama. Am I wrong in assuming the author is female? What is your beef? And what's with the gratuitous sneers and insults you like to throw around to other commenters?
My literacy's pretty good, thanks. I started reading early, was raised in a household full of books and book-lovers, did well in school, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, know several languages, and now work as a teacher of English and translator/editor. (Your own comments would benefit from some copy-editing, by the way.) Still happy to take you up on the care package of early readers, just please send Dr. Seuss, not Dick and Jane. They're much more effective for teaching reading.
Wait National Review can tell a person who sadly isn't with us would and wouldn't vote for? WOW just fucking wow. I guess they have been paid by republicans to play with the minds of the sheep so they can convince people to vote for that extremely childish McCain that is already planning to show up at the democratic convention. I hope all this shit really blow up on McCain and he gets his entire political party mad at him.
Canuknotusa @ 54:
I believe "Teh stupid" is a bit of sarcasm towards right wingers that came about as a result of right wing hate posts and emails that frequently accuse liberals and Democrats of being stupid. These hate screeds calling others stupid are normally full of spelling and grammar errors. The point being that if you are an American who hasn't mastered 6th grade English you probably aren't really smarter than everybody else.
Canuknotusa @ 94:
Because these are the internets, and when we've had to deal with freepers and Bushism, it' best you learn the snarkiness content in order to understand.
Next time why don't you just use the Urban Dictionary and figure it out first instead of walking into a landmine in blogs.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teh
Only the repubics have dead men voting.
"Oh my god, the dead are rising from their graves, and voting republican!!!"
Count me among the "teh haters", and I've been using the Urban Dictionary.
Dear gawd these repugs are shameless...and clueless...they make me want to say bad words...and smash things.
someguy @ 66:
Agreed.
Oh... except maybe Reagan.
Deliberate misspelling beyond the occasional spicing of the language e.g.: dunno, 'twere, or druther etc., and the occasional typo, is tantamount to making light of the illiteracy rate in this country, and is every bit as annoying as those goobers who want to first on every thread so they can say "Frist!"
That got old real fast.
I'm going to extrapolate to make a projection as to how many times "teh stoopid" has appeared on the series of t00bs:
1 smorgasbord used on C + L * umpteen liberal blogs + 2.3 million-hundred and eleventy-six users:
take the derivative, invert the matrix, solve for the eigenvalue...
Wow, it is estimated that there are 1689 millibevies of the phrase, "teh stoopid", all across the internets!
QED
ysbaddaden @ 110:
Ayup....good thing I started with the whole "Foist" thing eh?
Well National Review, I doubt if Barry Goldwater, Abraham Lincoln, or Dwight Eisenhower would vote for the candidate of your bastardized and mutated Neocon Republican party either.
For the future, spare us your worthless what if projections and self important opinions, please.
liberalNmoderation @ 112:
I dunno Y, u shure bout dat?
Maybe he should've talked to Kings kids... (BTW, Obama's speech will be on the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech.
"It's significant for our nation and our world certainly if he's elected president it can begin the process of fulfilling the dream our father envisioned," said Martin Luther King, III.
In the same article:
"It's almost as if he (MLK) spoke something and Senator Obama becomes the response 40 years later and I think that's what makes it so ironically significant that it would occur on that actual day. It's the fulfillment and the beginning of something that began 40 years ago," said Martin Luther King, III.
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=7260485&ve...
This is one time when in the eyes of this Marxist, conservatives are closer to reality than liberals think.
This is what I wrote on my website on January 15, 2007 (after quoting King's "...I knew that I could never raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today--my own government"):
"If King were alive today, he would oppose Washington's criminal occupation of Iraq, just as he broke with the US political establishment when he opposed the equally criminal Vietnam war. This is because King wasn't merely an outstanding civil rights leader, he was anti-imperialist, he was an internationalist, and he was a working class leader.
"The best way to honor King's memory today is to demand an unconditional withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq."
And this is what I wrote in an email to a reader that contrasted Obama to King:
"Just look at his eyes and listen to his voice [King's speech the night before his death]. And then think of Barack Obama. King was no slick bourgeois politician. King came from a mass movement, a genuine struggle of the oppressed Black nationality to end Jim Crow. Obama comes packaged from the Democratic Party, the 2008 version of 1976's Carter and 1992's Clinton, much-needed safety valves for the US rulers after eight years of Republican rule, when they need their shell game's other instrument of capitalist rule to defuse popular anger and blur the intensifying class divisions and economic polarization unparalleled in US history.
"As a boy who read King's letters from a Birmingham jail, I knew Martin Luther King Jr. And Barack, you're no Martin."
Indeed, MLK may not have voted for Obama, but not for the reasons contained in Kyle-Anne Shiver's National Review article. Shiver argued that King would have opposed Obama from the right. A Marxist believes that King would have opposed Obama from the left.
As Bob Dylan wrote, we just saw it from a different point of view.
Finally, many comments from C&L readers make the mistake of assuming that because King might not vote for Obama, ipso facto he'd vote for McCain. Given King's deepening leftward evolution from 1967-68, it's a good bet that 40 years later, the internationalism and anti-imperialism we saw in his last year would place him well to the left of McCain and Obama. It is undeniable, however, that King's civil rights movement paved the way for Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.
I really don't care who MLK Jr. would vote for today. MLK Jr. was a religious leader first and foremost, and he helped shape the Civil Rights movement as a Christian movement. Of all the things that MLK rallied against, he never once took aim at the huge role that his own religious belief system had in oppressing minorities such as himself. In my eyes, that makes him a bygone leader for a bygone era and it makes him irrelevant to the needs of today's world. What we need today are more secular leaders from all communities, especially from the black community.
I'm really glad that Obama finally had to make some hard decisions and distance himself from the likes of Jeremiah Wright. Wright is a huge, divisive moron who is helping his own community oppress itself. He is a self-interested, arrogant man who saw the controversy he created as an opportunity to push his personal agenda even further, with no concern for the damage he was causing. But that's what religious leaders do. If they and their religion aren't front and center in someone else's movement, then it's perfectly okay to try to destroy that movement. When it comes to MLK vs Obama, Obama is the future in the sense that his own background is much more secular, his family much more diverse, and his inclination more towards modern science than philosophy or religion. And that's what we need today.
Why even report on what the National review says ? They have no credibility what so ever , just a bunch of right wing A holes , another Republican Pravda publication .
bbk @ 117:
Gotta disagree with the tone of your comment.
Admittedly, King was a Christian, and he definitely sermonized. But he wasn't proselytizing any more than Ghandi was. Both led interfaith movements that accepted the agnostics and atheists inside of the movements they led. Hell, read the parable of the Good Samaritan and tell me that Jesus Christ (or whoever wrote that story) wasn't saying, "You don't have to follow me to be a good man-there are many different paths to righteousness."
I wouldn't describe myself as a Christian (more of an agnostic leaning- wobbling, really- toward animism and atheism), but I can read the Gospels and accept the philosophy of pacifism detailed within without believeing in the concept of a literal heaven.
"proselytising"
So much nonsense. I believe MLK would vote for the best person for the job. Clearly, McCain cannot keep his stories straight from one moment to the next and his sycophant association with Bush would have definitely eliminated him. Also, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law the great sucking sound was all the southern(bigots) democrats fleeing the party to join the republicans. And it has remained that way and will continue that way as long as the GOP is the haven for bigots, liars, fascists, and intolerance.
Fail.
LMAO !!! My God . . . that is funny. The National Review has also reported somewhere that if MLK were alive today, he would think Barack dresses funny, and not only that, he [Barack] also has stinkie feets.
On a side note, The National Review also reports that various aides have once again informed McCain, that he [McCain] is still a clueless doddering old fool . . . but to keep up the charade . . . because most Americans aren't that smart.
I have little doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. would be hard pressed to vote for Obama, but for vastly different reasons than anything conservatives could come up with. I mean, really, conservatives calling King a "true leader"? This coming from the same people who thought he was a communist plant bent on destroying white people and "their values" With all due respect, fuck the fucking conservatives.
Andy K Jong Il @ 119:
Andy, when the parable of the Good Samaritan was written, it had a completely different meaning and purpose than it does to most modern readers. The message wasn't about the being tolerant to foreigners or neighbors. The message was intended for a group of people who believed that they were God's chosen lot, who would be "saved" merely on a racial and religious basis, regardless of the good works they carried out. And the Samaritans were a racially hated enemy of the Jews and Christians. When this parable was read to them, it was clearly understood that this Samaritan was someone who was going to burn in hell no matter what good works he had done. What it advised to the listener was to be careful about keeping up appearances, to not let these lowlife heathen scumbags show off that they could be more civilized than the great, wonderful Christians. This message was, of course, watered down over time. It even got interpreted as the "Good Neighbor" parable. But that's just a revisionist lie. If this parable was written in the 1960's, rest assured that it would be a Nigger and not a Samaritan. It's a poor, poor choice to use when claiming that the Civil Rights movement could be founded on religion. It wasn't.
Secular Planet:
I could add tons of names to this list just off the top of my head. So was Ghandi the only influence that MLK Jr. had? It's as if there wasn't a long-standing secular tradition of fighting for freedom and equality. There is nothing inherent in religion that inspires people to say to themselves "aha! we should all be equal!" That's just common sense. Nothing in religion gives us any additional insight, especially not the Old or New Testaments which are full of terrible racism and hatred.
I don't begrudge MLK Jr. The population he was working with was ill educated, highly illiterate, and had very little if no social structure outside of their community churches. It's by mere probability that a religious man would come to the forefront of any movement composed of such people, while a secular man would flounder. But if we look at that moment in time in history and take as the message away from it that religion can really guide us to a better future for ourselves, then MLK Jr has done us a great disservice.
James Madison:
If MLK was alive the republicans would had trouble from day 1, stealing the elections , followed by the republican deleting the Black votes , especially the ones serving our country in a war.
MLK would have had weekly demonstrations against the corruption and destruction of our freedoms and rights.
If MLK were alive?!? What bullshit! McCain was against the confederate flag before he was for it. Now, he's ashamed he shilled!!! McSame's shilling is beyond the pale. What wouldn't this man think or do to gain support as long as you vote for him!?! Principles.. McSame has no principles. He's a phony, old piece 'o corruptable shit. He lacks character, back bones, and would forsake his own mother for a shot at being called, Mr. President. John, you disgust me!
Paul @ 79:
Obama doesn't support gay marriage, so your comment on that makes no sense.
Coretta would've voted for Clinton in the primaries (she was a huge Clinton supporter), and possibly MLK would've too. (Remember he wanted judgment not by skin color but by content of character.) So it would've been moot about Obama since you know the world would've supported whoever the Kings chose.
cg @ 109:
It's becoming clear to me that the memory of Reagan serves as little more than a puppet that jerks like Limbaugh feel they can speak through.
I remember NR (I believe it was WFB himself) defending the whole Jim Crow system of segregation/oppression as "the folkways of the South"(!!)
Like a bunch of conservatives white arseholes have an inkling as to MLK Jr's thoughts and feelings.
Douchebags.
The rightwingers are just slime!!!!!
Shorter Jean @ # 93
"MLK wouldn't have supported the first Black nominee for President by a major party if that nominee didn't agree with him in every way; he would have chosen to wait around for a few more decades. Also, there's no difference between thinking a Black politician is okay and thinking he's the 'second-coming-of-MLK.' "
Molly, the disagreements are pretty fundamental. You're trivializing the differences and (deliberately, I think) misstating my argument. It's really not worth debating further since it's hypothetical--King is dead, no one can say what he would or wouldn't do if her were alive--but personally I can't see King supporting a candidate of any color who promises to continue US militarism abroad, and I think comparing Obama to King is a disservice to both, but especially to the latter (I'm sure Obama doesn't mind the political mileage he can out of such a comparison, baseless as it is.) About the only thing they have in common is their skin color; King might be gladdened to see that a person of darker complexion such as Obama became a nominee, and that some individual blacks are faring better and rising higher in American society than in his time (despite a lot of institutionalized racism even today) but he would not have agreed with Obama's policies.
Of course there's a difference between thinking a black politician is okay and thinking he's the second coming of MLK, but it's a difference that's going to be blurred by the media hype (and that of the Obama campaign itself)--do you think it's a coincidence that Obama is giving his acceptance speech on August 28? Obama is appropriating the King "brand" and parasitizing/manipulating it for his own marketing purposes, and that bothers me. Like the man so famously said, a person should be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. Obama fails the character test in my book, and I think he would in King's as well. He's simply yet another unprincipled politician doing what he think he needs to in order to gain power. This is not change, it's business as usual in American politics.
Jean @ 134:
I believe that MLK Jr. has never said that he has a dream that one day, all of his children and everyone else's children will all agree with MLK and carry on his legacy by completely agreeing with him on all matters. His dream really was for racial equality, and Obama running for President is, symbolically at least, a great accomplishment that we should be proud of as Americans and that we can safely say MLK is resting easier in his grave because of it. Kids in 3rd grade 200 years from now will be learning about Obama as the first black presidential candidate, no matter what the outcome of this election is. It is change, and we should celebrate it as a historic moment. I believe that the August 28th date can be seen as much as a celebration of MLK's legacy as it is about "branding" Obama's character.
I completely agree that the twomen vary greatly. But that doesn't mean that the one shouldn't celebrate the accomplishments of the other. And it doesn't mean that MLK is a better fit for who we need as a presidential candidate today. And going back to King's overall message, in our current political climate, that is change. It certainly highlights the differences between Obama and the man who was completely against recognizing MLK Day throughout his political career.
This is somewhat amusing, and expected - after all, it is imbecilic.
On the other hand, Barry Goldwater (he popularized this 'markets are superior to democracy' meme that has build the modern GOP) would not vote for Bush, would he? Nor would Dwight Eisenhower, nor Abe Lincoln.
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