Cynical Nation

And I thought I was the only Republican who didn't get the whole 'President George Allen' bit. Same goes for Romney. Some of these boomlets are truly inexplicable.

George Allen is a racist and, hopefully, he will not be re-elected in the senate. What I dont get is why he is still leading in the polls in the VA senate race. How could anyone vote for an obvious racist like him?

I believe Allen knew that "macaca" is a racist term. It doesn't surprise me that he denies it, since he denies everything negative rather than simply own up and be a man about who he is. I've used words that I regret, and if that fact came up in a campaign or at any other time I would admit it and apologize and tell the truth. I know better now and that's just something I have to live with. I hope I am smarter now than I used to be. As for Allen, I don't think he is any smarter than he used to be.

From today's WashPost:

Webb's comments to the Times-Dispatch prompted Allen campaign officials to direct a reporter to Dan Cragg, a former acquaintance of Webb's, who said Webb used the word while describing his own behavior during his freshman year at the University of Southern California in the early 1960s. Webb later transferred to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Cragg, 67, who lives in Fairfax County, said on Wednesday that Webb described taking drives through the black neighborhood of Watts, where he and members of his ROTC unit used racial epithets and pointed fake guns at blacks to scare them.

"They would hop into their cars, and would go down to Watts with these buddies of his," Cragg said Webb told him. "They would take the rifles down there. They would call them [epithets], point the rifles at them, pull the triggers and then drive off laughing. One night, some guys caught them and beat . . . them. And that was the end of that."

Cragg said Webb told him the Watts story during a 1983 interview for a Vietnam veterans magazine.

MBC
So BW, does this mean that they BOTH are racists and nobody should get a vote?

Or, as I suspect, do you pick and choose who 'really meant it'?

Spare me the crocodile tears.

Being an average racist never hurt anybody, so long as you are only racist against blacks. If you are anti-semetic, you are dead, because so many people like Barry want to curry favor with them because they wield so much power in the media and academia.

Anyway, if you keep it under the David Duke level, nobody cares. In fact, I think it is probably a positive, since in all honestly most white Americans are at least a little bit racist. I certainly am.

Plenty of the old Dixie-crats practically ran on racism, and only when they finally retired or turned Republican did the Democratic party lose power in the South.

Allen won't be hurt for saying the N-word. Nobody cares. Maybe if he said it yesterday, but not 30 or 40 years ago.

Allen is more likely to lose for admitting he is a Jew.

not too impressed so far with Allen, but Barry, did you already not like him before?

my point is that it may be a little unfair to just write the guy off because he claims to have never said the n-word, however believable you or I think that may be.

Yes, I was negatively predisposed before. This just gave me an excuse. ;-)

I don't mind if he keeps his Senate seat (although I do sort of like Webb) but I just think he'd be disastrously uninspiring as a presidential candidate.

I don't mind if he keeps his Senate seat

You should mind. The guy is a racist. In fact he is a verious obvious racist. Racists should have no place in the senate.

> Racists should have no place in the senate.

Blue, read mal's comment above. The Virginia Senate race currently seems to be a contest between two racists, by your definition.

Now, about Senator Byrd....

Well the only one that I have seen with my own eyes calling a dark skinned American "Macacca" is Senator Allen. If you have seen yourself, or have a video of Webb doing something similar let me know. But, even if we assume that Webb was racist in his past (as Byrd was decades ago)there is still a big difference. Allen is the ONLY one in the race that is CURRENTLY a racist. Want more? Did you see the video where Allen got upset because the journalist told him that his mother had jewish ancestors? He was upset and looked embarassed, instead of being proud of his jewish heritage (as he should). Sorry, but Allen is a real racist and a bigot, and his presence in the senate is offensive.

Neocons are offensive, because they are traitors who hate America, like Bush & Co.

Allen is just a bigot and a racist, which is normal for Republicans and most Americans. Why do you think Republicans win?

"Sorry, but Allen is a real racist and a bigot..." (BW)
"instead of being proud of his jewish heritage (as he should)..." - ANYONE who takes pride in something they have no control over, their race, their eye color, their ethnicity, etc, is a bigot, plain and simple.

So you and Allen...and me, turn out to be "birds of a feather."

How about that?!

Every rational person "prefers" and is "more comfortable" with people like them...people racially like them, religiously like them and economically like them.

There's nothing innately wrong nor nefarious about that. You may well say, "It's sad that such is the state of the human condition," BUT you can't say "it's wrong, for it simply is what it is.

Moreover, George Allen Jr's "maccaca" remark doesn't really count as a "racial slur" in my book, since it's not used here.

It would be like a white guy calling a black a "caffer," a South African racial slur meaning "cow" or "beast of burden."

America's Founders fought hard for the principle that evey American citizen has the right to wallow in petty hatreds and enmities.

George Allen's mother had long ago converted from Judaism and Allen himself wasn't raised Jewish.

I admire the fact that unlike that drecht, Madelleine Albright, George Allen Jr didn't attempt to milk his suddenly found Jewish roots for political gain.

JMK wrote:

We're all somewhat bigoted and "racist"

Well, dont talk for others. Not everyone is "somewhat" bigoted and "racist". You are wrong on that. And, by the way, being proud of your heritage does not make you a racist. Your statement above was ridiculous. Cheers.

> And, by the way, being proud of your heritage does not make you a racist.

Okay, I'm proud to be white. That's okay, right?

Stop making excuses BW!

It doesn't become you.

The root cause of racial/ethnic bigorty is "taking pride in one's own race or ethnic group," an inane thing to take pride in because none of us "earns that."

Your lauding "pride in one's ethnicity" is a tacit endorsement of bigotry and racialism and as I said, that is a normal, albeit perhaps a regretable part of human nature.

Freedom is very often a very ugly thing. Freedom implies, of course, the freedom to believe and espouse that which we believe, no matter how offensive others may find it.

David Duke and Tom Metzger are free to spew their views, just as Louis Farrakhan and the Black Israelites are free to spew theirs.

That is freedom...at least, true freedom of speech.

America's Founders believed that real hatred would never appeal to a majority, though they hadn't seen what Hitler did.

Of course, ALL of them believed that blacks were inferior to whites and that whites and other races should remain separate.

The views of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, even of Lincoln (who sent an American General named Walker down to Nicaragua in consideration of moving America's newly freed black slaves there) would be considered "vilely racist" today.

Okay, I'm proud to be white. That's okay, right?

And I am proud to be have a lot of hair. Whats wrong with that?

Your lauding "pride in one's ethnicity" is a tacit endorsement of bigotry and racialism and as I said, that is a normal, albeit perhaps a regretable part of human nature.

I said there is nothing wrong of being "proud" or in other words "happy" with your heritage. That means that you should discount anyone that downgrades your heritage. What I am saying is the basis of "anti-racism". Again, if you believe that you have racist tendencies, its your problem. But dont talk for others. By the way, I dont think you have racist tendencies. You are just trying (unsuccessfully) to make a complicated point.

Racism is natural and normal. It is practiced in every culture, without exception. This is the scientific fact of the matter.

Nothing could be more deeply ingrained in our DNA. The DNA that survives and is reproduced is the future, and other priority other than the reproduction of DNA quickly loses out.

That is why we will all be speaking Spanish in 20 years.

"I said there is nothing wrong of being "proud" or in other words "happy" with your heritage. That means that you should discount anyone that downgrades your heritage. What I am saying is the basis of "anti-racism"." (BW)
Racial/ethnic pride is the basis of bigotry/xenophobia/racialism...NOT the basis of anti-racism.

In fact the current dogma that goes by the name of "anti-racism" in the West is a most perverse form of bigotry/racism.

Western "anti-racism" has endorsed race/gender-based preferences which violate the principles of "equality before the law" and "equal access to opportunity," while deriding racial pride among whites as "hate," while encouraging that same racial pride among blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

Understanding that, I'm sure you can see how utterly perverse that dogma really is.

The plain fact is, that all "racial/ethnic pride" has, within it, the basis for bigotry and xenophobia, which is both natural and endemic to all of mankind.

"Racism is natural and normal. It is practiced in every culture, without exception. This is the scientific fact of the matter." (BH)
(BH)


I don't know which illicit drugs you were ingesting when you posted this, but you're dangerously close to making sense.

I advise you to stop that immediately....unless someone else typed the above post in BH's name.

Hey! What'd you do with the real Bailey?

I'm not a liberal, JMK. I just hate Bush. I hate Bush because Bush, like all neocons, hates America and working Americans. He wants to reform America into an ugly, fascist, corporate dictatorship.

Too many in my family died defending the real America, the one Bush hates, for me to go along with his plan.

You don't (or at least shouldn't) hate Bush - you hate globalism, or "Free Trade."

That fight's been fought...and LOST by those opposed to globalism.

Pat Buchanan and Ravi Batra were the foremost and most elequent opponents of globalism - they got their "fair hearing"...and lost.

Bush Sr was a globalist, Free trader.

Bill Clinton was a globalist, Free Trader.

G W Bush is a globalist, Free Trader.

France recently fought off the incursions of globalism that make their current welfare state unmanagable within such a cut-throat world economy.

They may have won a pyrhic victory, as the forces of globalism move on all around them, making them even more uncompetitive.

I don't object to your opposition to globalism, just your overall ignorance of the fact that it's been building for over twenty years.

You're like that fat, dumb and happy guy who's all smiles so long as things are going well for himself, suddenly the global economy impacted YOU and now you blame the current guy in office, when it was the machinations of the two previous guys that got us to where we are today.

Bush Sr, Clinton and Bush Jr DIDN'T foist globalism on the American people...we foisted it on ourselves!

Hell, a Democratic party expanded GATT in 1991 and not a peep!

A Democrtatic Congress and a Democrat President passed NAFTA in 1/94 and again, not a peep from the folks.

We foisted this global economy on ourselves...for better and for worse.

For the record, I was against all of those agreements. I was against Clinton's H1B visa expansion. I was always for limited immigration and enforcing the law on employers who used illegal labor.

If Perot hadn't succumed to the Politics of Personal Destruction I would have voted for him. He stood up and told the country exactly what would happen -- and it did.

Chimp goes far beyond Globalism and Free Trade, however. Boy Bush has waged war on the middle class like none before him, the very opposite of Reagan. Chimp has focused, or been focused, on nothing besides enriching the rich and setting up a Corporatist Plutocracy.

His endless attacks on civil liberties have nothing to do with fighting terrorism, and everything to do with expanding government power, and therefore Coporate power, and therefore establishing a Plutocracy.

When people begin to fight back against this takeover of America, they will be labelled as "terrorists" and disappear.

Imagine what McCarthy could have done with this legislation behind him.

Reagan was a JFK Democrat, back in the day!

JFK's brother Bobby was, along with Roy Cohen, one of Joe McCarthy's two right-hand men.

JFK, Reagan and those like him knew that "Tail-Gunner Joe" had it right about "the Communist Menace." They'd have all gladly given Joe McCarthy the powers the feds now have to fight terrorists.

Of course that was before McCarthy's alcoholism destroyed him.

Nixon was the first American President to introduce some of the measures of modern Free Trade to America - allowing the Japanese to expand their competition in the U.S. auto industry.

Carter continued along this path, while stubbornly trying to cling to a Keynesian economic model that was incompatible with Free Trade/globalism.

BOTH Parties fully support globalism today.

As I said, a Democratic Congress expanded GATT in 1991 and a Democratic Congress passed and a Democratic President signed NAFTA into law in January of 1994.

Unemployment is down (near record low 4.7%), inflation is low (2.8% and falling), interest rates are low, GDP growth is high, personal income is up and the Dow is approaching 12,000...nobody cares about globalization...nobody cares about your Tech Bubble job of yesterday.

Hell! I'm glad, REALLY GLAD, the Tech Bubble busted. I cashed out of all stocks even moved my 457 holdings to currencies when I saw every TV set in the nation tuned to CNBC back in 1999. It was one of the best things I ever did.

When people who have no idea what the difference between investing and speculating is, start watching CNBC like it's some new game show, it's time to get out of the market fast.

It didn't take much to figure that out.

Sorry you (supposedly) lost your Tech Job in that Tech Bubble Bust, but those days were very good to me. They would've been even better if instead of just cashing out, I shorted the NASDAQ, instead I dumped holdings and bought real estate before it took off in 2003.

No hard feelings old boy. I feel your pain...not literally, just figuratively.

It's nice that you did so well with whatever fortune you amassed as a fireman or whatever you claim to be today. I'm glad you are such a financial genius that you saw more than the professionals who lost so many billions.

I'm surprised that a rich man like you wastes your time posting to this little board, but at least I do now understand why you would support Bush. He is the champion of the wealthy.

Reagan would have whole-heartedly supported McCarthy and given him the power to send Americans to secret prisons forever without representation and torture them. Got it.

Not rich, just smart enough to know when to get out of the pool.

And most "professionals" didn't lose big.

The biggest losers were those millions of working shrubs (those CNBC watchers) who jumped into the market at its peak and rode it down.

I cashed out in 1999 and bought some real estate, prices soared after 2003.

I do feel bad about those who lost positions in the Tech Bubble Bust, but that bubble never should've existed in the first place...it was an artificial construct, created by some rules changes at the SEC and brought about by the restoring those rules to their default positions.