Smart vs. Tough — Oy!
“Shift happens,” we’ve said, longingly — and now it has; the rallying cry used again and again by those who encourage others to activism and engagement is, “… if not now, when?” The question is answered — it’s now, today and tomorrow, and the day after that … and if not these political players, then the next to step up. You can feel the energy dancing on your skin — and if you enter the blogosphere, you see ONLY the new dialogue and the sure intent to pursue it. We’ve moved on — the nation has a new ‘center’ and it’s not the stilted, tight box we suffered in the early part of the century. The question now is … who’s coming with us?
The GOP is wounded, perhaps mortally, and — because they’re not quite sure why their ‘brand’ is so tarnished — bleeding out. They’re trying to repackage Bushy talking points with a ‘maverick’ logo, but very few are buying it; just those who can’t live without it anyhow. The meaner they get, the more void their argument becomes — like Hil’s big win in West Virginia, appealing to ignorance and racism, disappeared off the news page within minutes. When Dub was handed his presidency, he vowed to be a Uniter, not a Divider … and immediately divided the country and the world into separate camps; it’s become personal to just about everyone, now, and we are desperate for not only integrity and competence, but civility. ‘Business as usual’ just went in the dumpster. We’ve moved on.
George Bush went to Israel last week to help them celebrate their 60th anniversary with a message of divisiveness, partisanship and pettiness. He might have offered hope for the Peace Plan, or proposed a plan to shore up Lebanon’s tentative democracy … but nooooo. The Dumbbell-in-Chief went to Israel and likened ’some’ [i.e., Obama and the Dems] to Chamberlain’s placating Hitler and going soft. Let me say that again — George W. Bush … anathema in his own country and who, when welcomed warmly by an admiring Israeli leader choked up and wept … stood before the Knesset and invoked HITLER!
Here’s the dynamite, please pass the matches. American Jews, are you listening?? The Dem’s are endangering the Homeland!
This excited some of their Right-Wing, who declared that “Bush seems to be more Zionist than Olmert.” Good, maybe they can find a spot for him THERE — we’re done with him HERE.
So, the Dubster [feeling the love] effectively swift boated a presumptive candidate [although the Bushies said he didn't before they said he did] on foreign soil — but unlike Gore and Kerry, Obama smacked back immediately, saying, “I’m a strong believer in civility and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days;” you’ll find more of his comments below. That’s more than one trick pony, kids … an ‘empty suit’ talking endlessly about hope … that’s a smackdown with the President of the United States, linking him in the minds of the public to his minion, Johnny Mac [who is desperately trying to back peddle away from him.]
This squabble will play with the hard-Right, here at home, but Dubby’s speech writer should have used a shorter word than ‘appeasement’ … that’s what we call a 50 cent word, here in Missouri; it’s more like a $5 word in West Virginia. The notion that America is a reflection of West Virginia [and Kentucky, that votes on Tuesday] isn’t getting purchase either … Kentucky, with its 51 delegates looks good for Hillary — they don’t have a white man to vote for. It’s reported that she got off a plane at one scheduled stop, smiling and waving, and nobody was there to meet her; meanwhile, 75,000 people showed up to hear Obama’s stump speech in Portland … Oregon has 52 delegates and is enthusiastically anti-war.
Pragmatism is pushing us forward, even as we speak — Obama is the nominee, and even Hillary must acknowledge that in her private moments. Her big wins are now forever tarnished by the “working class white” me-me … she’d have done better speaking of them as “lunch-bucket Democrats.” Edwards called it when he intimated that it was all but done [Elizabeth is not endorsing;] and because the conversation is now strongly engaged between the two parties and drawing in the international theatre, it’s difficult to find an honest justification to continue this race. I have sympathy for Mrs. Clinton — if she whines that the press is leaving her behind, she would be justified: we’ve moved on. Obama will likely win enough votes tomorrow to declare, but he won’t … he’s not a divisive man. He thinks such a move would not be good for the country. Amazing, isn’t it … somebody who cares about the good of the country?
The smart vs. tough question is at hand — will we get swept emotionally into the GOP shredder again … I don’t think so. And the ‘elite’ bs can only go so far, with the candidate of the three who has the least amount of personal income; the ‘liberal’ bs doesn’t pack the punch it used to, either, much as gay marriage doesn’t — we’ve moved on.
Yeah, Obama’s smart … will we forgive him his intellect or even embrace it? We’ve lived without that for 7 long years and look what it’s got us. But he’s not just smart, he’s tough, as well. He certainly minced no words with the Tennessee GOP about messing with his wife. He called out the President of the United States and the GOP nominee in no uncertain terms. You’ll find a read on his taking on the FCC below. And he seems to have a way of deflecting what comes at him back onto the one who launched it.
We’re in a very different political space now, we can almost breathe — of course, I still read a lot of cynical stuff about how we can’t get past our West Virginia’s, how we can’t rely on people to vote in their own interest … but the numbers keep coming, the dialogue keeps shifting … and I can’t help but wonder how the world would look if intelligence was back in style.
Here’s a collection of really interesting reads that I find very encouraging, most indicating disapproval of Bush from all quarters, including links to the editorial boards of the New York Times and Boston Globe; a good rant from Attywood, and even a piece by Tom Friedman. At the bottom, reads on the Jewish issues and Obama, and an interview with him on the topic. Last piece, Moyer’s talks to the hard-Left.
Jude
Prepared Text of Bush’s Knesset Speech
Wall Street Journal
JFK Responds to Bush’s Appeasement Speech
Baldwin Park Democrat
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Probably one of the best responses to President Bush’s outrageous “appeasement” speech in the Israeli Knesset, and John McCain and Joe Lieberman’s support of that speech, was made on a cold snowy day in 1961. And it was made by another young American who inspired the nation then much the same as Barack Obama is doing today. It is as timely today as it was when it was first spoken to the American people, and to our enemies.
From President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s first Inaugural speech given on Friday, January 20, 1961.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request — that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course — both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.
So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
President Bush, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman should each listen to that remarkable speech and stop equating Barack Obama’s willingness to talk with our enemies as appeasement. It is not. It is statesmanship and diplomacy. And that’s what the world needs today. ++
Obama Unleashed
Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic
16 May 2008
The president pissed him off:
Well I want to be perfectly clear with George Bush and John McCain – if they want a debate about protecting the United States of America, that’s a debate I’m ready to win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.
“…in the Bush-McCain worldview, everyone who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an appeaser. And back during his “No Surrender” tour, John McCain said anyone who wants to end the war in Iraq responsibly wants to surrender; he even said later on that he would be ok keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years, but yesterday he said our troops could be home by 2013. He offered the promise that America will win a victory, with no understanding that Iraq is fighting a civil war. Just like George Bush, his plan isn’t about winning, it’s about staying, and that’s why there will be a clear choice in November: fighting a war without end, or ending this war. Because we don’t need John McCain’s prediction about when the war will end – we need a plan to end it.
As I said, Bush just gave Obama a gift that will keep on giving. The more that McCain and Bush engage in this dated anything - but - us - is - unacceptable - appeasement nonsense, Obama will win. Do Bush and McCain think we’ve been asleep for the past seven years? How dumb do they think we are? ++
Biden: Bush’s comments were ‘bullshit’
Politico
May 15, 2008
Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today:
“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”
“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line. ++
Obama and the Jews
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NYT
May 18, 2008
Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama once said there has to be “an end” to the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank “that began in 1967.” Yikes!
Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama said that not only must Israel be secure, but that any peace agreement “must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people.” Yikes!
Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama once said “the establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it.” Yikes! Yikes! Yikes!
Those are the kind of rumors one can hear circulating among American Jews these days about whether Barack Obama harbors secret pro-Palestinian leanings. I confess: All of the above phrases are accurate. I did not make them up.
There’s just one thing: None of them were uttered by Barack Obama. They are all direct quotes from President George W. Bush in the last two years. Mr. Bush, long hailed as a true friend of Israel, said all those things.
What does that tell you? It tells me several things. The first is that America today has — rightly — a bipartisan approach to Arab-Israeli peace that is not going to change no matter who becomes our next president. America, whether under a Republican or Democratic administration, is now committed to a two-state solution in which the Palestinians get back the West Bank, Gaza and Arab parts of East Jerusalem, and Israel gives back most of the settlements in the West Bank, offsetting those it does not evacuate with land from Israel.
The notion that a President Barack Obama would have a desire or ability to walk away from this consensus American position is ludicrous. But given the simmering controversy over whether Mr. Obama is “good for Israel,” it’s worth exploring this question: What really makes a pro-Israel president?
Personally, as an American Jew, I don’t vote for president on the basis of who will be the strongest supporter of Israel. I vote for who will make America strongest. It’s not only because this is my country, first and always, but because the single greatest source of support and protection for Israel is an America that is financially and militarily strong, and globally respected. Nothing would imperil Israel more than an enfeebled, isolated America.
I don’t doubt for a second President Bush’s gut support for Israel, and I think it comes from his gut. He views Israel as a country that shares America’s core democratic and free-market values. That is not unimportant.
But what matters a lot more is that under Mr. Bush, America today is neither feared nor respected nor liked in the Middle East, and that his lack of an energy policy for seven years has left Israel’s enemies and America’s enemies — the petro-dictators and the terrorists they support — stronger than ever. The rise of Iran as a threat to Israel today is directly related to Mr. Bush’s failure to succeed in Iraq and to develop alternatives to oil.
Does that mean Mr. Obama would automatically do better? I don’t know. To me, U.S. presidents succeed or fail when it comes to Arab-Israeli diplomacy depending on two criteria that have little to do with what’s in their hearts.
The first, and most important, is the situation on the ground and the readiness of the parties themselves to take the lead, irrespective of what America is doing. Anwar Sadat’s heroic overture to Israel, and Menachem Begin’s response, made the Jimmy Carter-engineered Camp David peace treaty possible. The painful, post-1973 war stalemate between Israel and Egypt and Syria made Henry Kissinger’s disengagement agreements possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union and America’s defeat of Iraq in the first gulf war made possible James Baker’s success in putting the Madrid peace process together.
What all three of these U.S. statesmen had in common, though — and this is the second criterion — was that when history gave them an opening, they seized it, by being tough, cunning and fair with both sides.
I don’t want a president who is just going to lean on Israel and not get in the Arabs’ face too, or one who, as the former Mideast negotiator Aaron D. Miller puts it, “loves Israel to death” — by not drawing red lines when Israel does reckless things that are also not in America’s interest, like building settlements all over the West Bank.
It’s a tricky business. But if Israel is your voting priority, then at least ask the right questions about Mr. Obama. Knock off the churlish whispering campaign about what’s in his heart on Israel (what was in Richard Nixon’s heart?) and focus first on what kind of America you think he’d build and second on whether you believe that as president he’d have the smarts, steel and cunning to seize a historic opportunity if it arises. ++
Obama, JFK, and Reagan vs. Bush, McCain
Carpetbagger Report
May 18th, 2008
I can’t help but enjoy the fact that Barack Obama is successfully taking attacks from George W. Bush and John McCain, and turning them into a positive. He’s effectively taking GOP talking points, and throwing them back in their face.
Sen. Barack Obama went one step further today in his pushback against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and President Bush on appeasement, suggesting that both Republicans have a problem with presidents past who have engaged in direct diplomacy.
“If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy, led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy because that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev, or Ronald Reagan, ’cause that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, or Richard Nixon ’cause that’s what they did with [Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung],” Obama said in Roseburg, Ore. “That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe.”
Obama called the dust-up “appealing,” after Bush said in Israel at the Knesset that it was a mistake to talk about diplomacy with “terrorists and radicals.”
I haven’t seen any polling on this, and I have no idea whether voters in general find the notion of diplomacy with unsavory international rivals appealing or not. But I think Obama has framed it exactly the right way — we’ve confronted dangerous enemies before, and open dialog has produced more results for our interests than closed minds.
I didn’t hear all of Obama’s remarks, but in case he didn’t mention it, I’d just add that we’ve already seen the results of the Bush/McCain approach. Did conditions improve with North Korea and Iran once we decided to stop talking to them?
In provides a context for the debate — Obama, Reagan, JFK, and success on one side; Bush, McCain, and failure on the other.
The McCain campaign responded:
“Offering the current Iranian regime an unconditional summit and the status of a super power akin to the Soviets, as Barack Obama has suggested, shows incredibly weak judgment and a dangerous lack of experience,” McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said.
My goodness, this sure is dumb. First, if McCain is troubled by the notion of equating Iran with the USSR, why hasn’t he said anything while prominent far-right Republicans have equated Iran with Nazi Germany for the last few years? Doesn’t that show “incredibly weak judgment”?
Second, Obama has not offered Iran an “unconditional summit.” That’s utterly absurd, patently dishonest, and the McCain campaign knows it. Obama has said for months that before any direct engagement with a country like Iran, there would have to be extensive diplomatic legwork completed first. Does any serious person think Obama, shortly after he’s inaugurated, is going to jump on a plane to Tehran or Pyongyang — without any advance work — just to see what happens? Does the McCain campaign really believe we’re foolish enough to buy such nonsense?
Obama is betting that voters, who may or may not be familiar with the details of five decades of diplomacy, will have an implicit understanding of the dynamics here — the United States is not afraid to sit at the table with rival nations. Kennedy wasn’t; Reagan wasn’t; Obama isn’t. Bush and McCain, meanwhile, harbor the notion that not talking to adversarial countries is punishment to them, and will somehow advance our interests.
I like our chances in this debate. ++
US rivals get nasty on foreign policy
Senator John McCain: On the attack
Paul Reynolds, BBC News
Foreign policy has already entered the arena in the US presidential election - and it is getting nasty.
It is the shape of things to come.
The McCain camp is trying to portray the likely Democratic candidate Barack Obama as soft on terrorism, as “Hamas’s favourite” and as a man who would not defend America’s security.
The Hamas tag followed a comment by a Hamas spokesman Ahmed Yousef who told WABC Radio: “We like Mr Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle.”
The McCain campaign circulated this comment: “We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas, surrenders in Iraq and will hold unconditional talks with Iranian President Ahmadinejad.”
In one sentence, John McCain linked three American foreign policy fears - Hamas, Iraq and Iran - and tried to isolate Mr Obama as unreliable on all three.
President Ahmadinejad of Iran is likely to play a prominent role in the McCain rhetoric.
It is a potent attack and Senator Obama has to see it off if he is to survive.
McCain approach
In contrast, John McCain is projected by his own side as the strong, independent figure who would stand up to terrorists. He is even promising victory in Iraq by 2013. That date marks the end of the next presidential term.
“By January 2013… the Iraq war has been won,” Senator McCain declared recently in a speech outlining his presidential ambitions.
Promising victory in Iraq has a strong appeal to the voters. Promising withdrawal might be seen as offering them defeat.
It undermines one of Barack Obama’s most heavily-stressed points - his opposition to the war. This has lost much of its resonance with the success so far, even if in relative terms, of the reinforcement of US troops in Iraq
John McCain came out in favour of the surge early on, at a time when others were calling for a withdrawal timetable. Now he is reaping the rewards of that approach.
It is ironic that the Iraq war, once such a weak spot for Republicans, should have turned out to be such a strong card for John McCain.
Bush intervention
Another flanking attack has come from President Bush himself. In a speech in Jerusalem, he used the “a” word - appeasement - in criticising those who wanted to “negotiate with the terrorists and radicals”.
“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement,” President Bush said.
Senator Barack Obama: Counter-attacking
Later, the White House stated that Mr Bush’s target was former President Jimmy Carter, who had met Hamas leaders.
But Barack Obama took it as a comment on himself.
“If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place,” he stated.
Obama counter-attack
And he has found a weak link in the McCain chain.
The former State Department spokesman under President Clinton, James Rubin, who hosted an interview programme on Sky TV when he lived in London, revealed what John McCain had said about Hamas after it won the Palestinian elections in 2006:
“They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another… it’s a new reality in the Middle East,” said the senator.
John McCain responded by saying that he was quoted out of context and that he would not talk to Hamas before it recognised the state of Israel, one of the international conditions for its diplomatic acceptance.
To this Mr Obama added: “He was actually guilty of the exact same thing that he is accusing me of, and in fact was saying maybe we need to deal with Hamas. That’s the kind of hypocrisy we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy.”
Senator Obama has also said that engagement with Hamas can come only when it accepts the international conditions for its recognition.
Linking McCain
Mr Obama’s wider counter-attack is to link John McCain with the policies of the Bush administration, implying that McCain would represent a third Bush term.
He accused the White House of making “bombastic exaggerations” and of encouraging “fear-mongering”.
‘Smart’ versus ‘tough’ in foreign policy is going to be a theme of the campaign
“The American people are going to look at the evidence. We don’t get a sense that this has been a wise foreign policy or a smart foreign policy or a tough foreign policy,” he said.
Senator Obama has suggested that he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran to get it to behave “responsibly” and would organise a conference with Muslim countries “to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West”.
“Smart” versus “tough” in foreign policy is going to be a theme of the campaign. ++
Bush’s appeasement malarkey
The Boston Globe
May 17, 2008
President Bush committed political treason today
Attywood, Philadelphia Daily News
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Swift Boating Comes to Jerusalem
Amb. Marc Ginsberg, HuffPo
May 15, 2008
Outrage overload continues
Last Chance Democracy Cafe, BuzzFlash
Fri, 05/16/2008
The President Goes Negative
New York Times Editorial Board
May 17, 2008
Bush An “Appeaser,” Says Egyptian Press
Critics Raise Questions About Credibility Of U.S. Role In Middle East
CBS/AP
May 17, 2008
Are the Jews good for Barack Obama?
With Jewish voters critical in such swing states as Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans hope to exploit a supposed softness in Obama’s support for Israel. So far, it’s not working.
May 19, 2008
Mike Madden, Salon
WASHINGTON — Some political attacks come in subtle forms, with a hidden, “dog whistle” message audible only to the voters who are supposed to hear it. And then there was President Bush’s speech Thursday — yes, the speech to Israel’s parliament on the nation’s 60th birthday in which he indirectly compared Barack Obama to both infamous appeaser-of-Hitler Neville Chamberlain and to a famous Nazi sympathizer.
By this point in his administration, it’s clear that Bush is comfortable with unsubtle fear-mongering. But even by his standards, the point of that line — and of the fury ginned up by House Republicans over an interview Obama gave to the Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg — was pretty clear. The GOP is already pushing, and pushing hard, the idea that Obama has a problem with the Jewish vote, because of his proposals to sit down to negotiate with Iranian leaders who have threatened Israel, because of his former pastor’s ties to Louis Farrakhan and (though most Republicans don’t bring this up) because of false fears that Obama is secretly Muslim. Attacking Obama’s Middle East policy while in Israel, and playing the Holocaust card in the process, plainly fits into that pattern, even if the White House spent most of Friday being shocked — shocked! — that anyone would think Bush meant to refer to Obama.
If Jews do flock to John McCain this fall, Obama would be in some trouble (assuming, of course, that Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the nomination through a miracle more impressive than the one commemorated every year at Hanukkah); a strong majority of Jewish voters has gone Democratic in presidential elections since 1924. Jews have favored the Democrat in 21 straight presidential elections, and by an average margin of 3-to-1. In battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada, the Jewish population is a large enough slice of the electorate that Obama can’t afford for them to abandon him.
In Florida, Jews make up around 5 percent of the voting population — more than enough to swing a close race. (If all the South Florida Jewish voters who intended to support Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000 had actually cast their votes properly, Gore would have won.) Florida may be tipping from truly purple toward red; Bush won it easily in 2004 and the Republican governor, Charlie Crist, will work hard for McCain. But if the state is competitive again this fall, Obama can’t afford to let McCain take a big share of Florida’s Jewish voters, who turn out in disproportionately large numbers compared to their share of the state’s residents. With an older population than the national average, Florida already poses demographic problems for Obama without losing a traditional part of the Democratic coalition.
Nationally, the problem for Bush, Boehner and, above all, McCain, is that right now there isn’t much evidence of a lasting breach between Jewish voters and the presumptive Democratic nominee. By November, as the old saying goes, the Jews will most likely be good for Barack Obama.
For Republicans hoping to drive a wedge between Obama and Jewish voters, Israel is only the first stop. But it’s a big one. The standard GOP line against Obama on Middle East policy is this: He wants to sit down with Iran and Syria, both sworn enemies of Israel; he didn’t speak up loudly enough when former President Jimmy Carter, apparently a crypto-Obama supporter, met with Hamas leaders recently; he has listened to advice on foreign policy from people like Gen. Tony McPeak and Robert Malley, who some Jews believe don’t support Israel strongly enough; and he was “endorsed” by a Hamas spokesman, who said his organization would prefer that Obama wins the election. Obama was also friendly with Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi when Khalidi taught at the University of Chicago. The Arab-American Khalidi’s criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinians has made him extremely controversial among hawkish Jews. “[Obama] has not taken appropriate leadership on any of these issues,” said Suzanne Kurtz, a spokeswoman for the Republican Jewish Coalition. “If these are issues that are important to you, you really just find this alarming.” The coalition, founded in 1985, has 30,000 members now, and is running ads in Jewish newspapers featuring Jewish Republicans who used to vote Democratic but switched over security concerns.
Of course, the most prominent person matching that demographic is Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has become one of McCain’s most hawkish surrogates on foreign policy. “The fact that the spokesperson for Hamas would say they would welcome the election of Senator Obama really does raise the question why, and it suggests a difference between these two candidates,” Lieberman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last week. McCain himself picked up the same general theme after Bush’s speech Thursday, telling a conference call with bloggers, “If Senator Obama wants to sit down across the table from the leader of a country that calls Israel a stinking corpse, and comes to New York and says they’re gonna, quote, ‘wipe Israel off the map,’ what is it that he wants to talk about? What is it that [Obama] wants to talk about with him?”
Add to all that the months of controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church once reprinted a column by a Hamas leader in its newsletter, and a series of e-mails that made the rounds of the Jewish community earlier this year alleging Obama is a Muslim, and you’d think McCain might actually have a chance at running away with lots of Jewish support this fall. “If people don’t mind, I’d like to be honest — a lot of the concern has been generated because of scurrilous e-mails that have been sent, generated based on speculation [regarding] the fact that my middle name is Hussein,” Obama told Philadelphia-area rabbis at a meeting at a Center City synagogue before the Pennsylvania primary.
But a Gallup poll last month — in the midst of the Wright drama — found Obama beating McCain 61-32 among Jewish voters, a far wider margin than among the population as a whole. While that’s lower than John Kerry’s 76 percent margin among Jews (and 5 points lower than the 66 percent Hillary Clinton got in the same poll), Obama’s campaign isn’t worried about making up the difference by November. “If we’re beating McCain 2-1 after ‘Obama is a Muslim’ scares and a month of Rev. Wright, then we’re doing pretty well,” one aide said.
Yes, Clinton has been beating Obama among Jewish voters in some primaries, but once the Democratic nomination fight finally ends, most observers of the Jewish community’s political behavior expect him to consolidate support. In Chicago, prominent Jewish politicos like fundraiser Penny Pritzker, operative Abner Mikva and Rep. Jan Schakowsky signed on with Obama early in his campaign. Still, Obama’s campaign appears to be taking the issue seriously, even though most Jewish voters live in safe blue states like New York, New Jersey, California and Maryland. Obama has been known to jokingly introduce himself to Jewish audiences as “Baruch Obama,” using the Hebrew version of his Arabic first name.
On a national level, Obama doesn’t have the long track record on Israel that McCain or Clinton has, but that’s mostly because he doesn’t have a long track record on foreign policy, period. “Senator Obama is not someone who has been familiar to the American Jewish community for decades,” said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., an Obama supporter and one of Israel’s most vehement defenders in Congress. “There are legitimate questions that should be asked and need to be answered … (but) the more Senator Obama expresses himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, the more support he gains in the Jewish community.” The largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the country, AIPAC, says McCain, Obama and Clinton all meet their approval. “All three candidates,” said spokesman Josh Block, “have strong congressional voting records on issues important to the pro-Israel community and have demonstrated their commitment to the special relationship between the United States and Israel.” AIPAC is nonpartisan, and won’t endorse either McCain or Obama. But if the group felt that Obama wasn’t sufficiently pro-Israel, you’d have heard about it.
That may be all Obama really needs to do about as well as most past Democratic candidates have done among Jewish voters. Observers of the Jewish vote say most Jews aren’t really classic single-issue voters; if candidates can get past the basic question of whether they’re pro-Israel or not, that’s usually enough for voters to move on to other topics. “There are definitely some voters for whom Israel is an issue, but it’s [one] issue among many,” said an advisor to Obama’s campaign on the Middle East and outreach to Jewish voters. Wexler, the campaign’s chief surrogate for appearances in the Jewish community, agreed. An Orthodox Jew, he represents a South Florida district that he claims has more Jewish constituents than any other. “If the Republican Jewish Coalition believes that large numbers of Jewish people are uni-dimensional, they apparently do not interact very much with Jewish people.” ++
Obama on Zionism and Hamas
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
12 May 2008
The Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef did Barack Obama no favor recently when he said: “We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.” John McCain jumped on this statement, calling it a “legitimate point of discussion,” and tied it to Obama’s putative softness on Iran, whose ever-charming president last week called Israel a “stinking corpse” and predicted its “annihilation.”
The Hamas episode won’t help Obama’s attempts to win over Jewish voters, particularly those in such places as –- to pull an example from the air –- Palm Beach County, Florida, whose Jewish residents tend to appreciate robust American support for Israel, and worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts.
Obama and I spoke over the weekend about Hamas, about Jimmy Carter, and about the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. He seemed eager to talk about his ties to the Jewish community, and about the influence Jews have had on his life. Among other things, he told me that he learned the art of moral anguish from Jews. We spoke as well about my Atlantic cover story on Israel’s future. He mentioned his interest in the opinions of the writer David Grossman, who is featured in the article. “I remember reading The Yellow Wind when it came out, and reading about Grossman now is powerful, painful stuff.” And, speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of Exodus.
Here are excerpts from our conversation:
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I’m curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?
BARACK OBAMA: You know, when I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man — as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel, and during the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home.
There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted. That was part of my upbringing, to be traveling and always having a sense of values and culture but wanting a place. So that is my first memory of thinking about Israel.
And then that mixed with a great affinity for the idea of social justice that was embodied in the early Zionist movement and the kibbutz, and the notion that not only do you find a place but you also have this opportunity to start over and to repair the breaches of the past. I found this very appealing.
JG: You’ve talked about the role of Jews in the development of your thinking
BO: I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris. So when I became more politically conscious, my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves. And obviously it’s something that has great resonance with the African-American experience.
One of the things that is frustrating about the recent conversations on Israel is the loss of what I think is the natural affinity between the African-American community and the Jewish community, one that was deeply understood by Jewish and black leaders in the early civil-rights movement but has been estranged for a whole host of reasons that you and I don’t need to elaborate.
JG: Do you think that justice is still on Israel’s side?
BO: I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience. I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea.
That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it’s a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds. But the fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world.
JG: Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.
BO: I find that really interesting. I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.
Sometimes I’m attacked in the press for maybe being too deliberative. My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives. The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency.
When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I’ve got it in my gut. During the Wright episode, they didn’t flinch for a minute, because they know me and trust me, and they’ve seen me operate in difficult political situations.
The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.
JG: Why do you think Ahmed Yousef of Hamas said what he said about you?
BO: My position on Hamas is indistinguishable from the position of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I said they are a terrorist organization and I’ve repeatedly condemned them. I’ve repeatedly said, and I mean what I say: since they are a terrorist organization, we should not be dealing with them until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements.
JG: Were you flummoxed by it?
BO: I wasn’t flummoxed. I think what is going on there is the same reason why there are some suspicions of me in the Jewish community. Look, we don’t do nuance well in politics and especially don’t do it well on Middle East policy. We look at things as black and white, and not gray. It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about.
I think that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.
When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.
When Israel invaded Lebanon two summers ago, I was in South Africa, a place where, obviously, when you get outside the United States, you can hear much more critical commentary about Israel’s actions, and I was asked about this in a press conference, and that time, and for the entire summer, I was very adamant about Israel’s right to defend itself. I said that there’s not a nation-state on Earth that would tolerate having two of its soldiers kidnapped and just let it go. So I welcome the Muslim world’s accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel’s security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm. You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel’s security.
JG: What do you make of Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that Israel resembles an apartheid state?
BO: I strongly reject the characterization. Israel is a vibrant democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and there’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal. It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.
JG: If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?
BO: What I will say is what I’ve said previously. Settlements at this juncture are not helpful. Look, my interest is in solving this problem not only for Israel but for the United States.
JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?
BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.
I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now, and that won’t lift that existential dread that David Grossman described in your article.
The notion that a vibrant, successful society with incredible economic growth and incredible cultural vitality is still plagued by this notion that this could all end at any moment — you know, I don’t know what that feels like, but I can use my imagination to understand it. I would not want to raise my children in those circumstances. I want to make sure that the people of Israel, when they kiss their kids and put them on that bus, feel at least no more existential dread than any parent does whenever their kids leave their sight. So that then becomes the question: is settlement policy conducive to relieving that over the long term, or is it just making the situation worse? That’s the question that has to be asked. ++
Obama Stands Up to Bush, the FCC, and Big Media
Sen. Obama locks horns with the FCC and speaks up for diversity in media.
Matt Stoller, Open Left
May 16, 2008
John Eggerton at Broadcasting and Cable has the story.
The fight over the Federal Communications Commission’s Dec. 18 media-ownership vote set up a potential battle between the current president and a senator who wants to be the next one.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) Thursday urged the House to follow the Senate’s lead and pass a resolution of disapproval, an unusual legislative maneuver that would invalidate the FCC’s decision to allow TV and radio stations and newspapers to be co-owned in the top 20 markets, subject to some conditions.
After the Senate approved the measure, Obama, a co-sponsor of the bill, released a statement saying, “I urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to expeditiously pass the legislation.”
He framed the vote, as he has before, as standing up to “Washington special interests,” a campaign theme. “Our nation’s media market must reflect the diverse voices of our population, and it is essential that the FCC promotes the public interest and diversity in ownership,” he said.
The FCC decision to consolidate yet more media was opposed by 99% of public comments. As Paul Rosenberg noted in this comments, this might be the single least popular decision by the Bush administration ever. But Obama, as he did with his media and tech plan, took this further, and called for diversity and representation for the public interest in media ownership.
With ownership levels for minorities and women in media in the low single digits, Obama is really saying that it’s time to reshape our media system. In discussing Reagan, one of the great conservative media reformers, remember he made the following comment.
“I didn’t’ say I liked Ronald Reagan’s policies,” Obama explained. “What I said was that was the kind of working majority we need to form in order to move a progressive agenda forward.”
With the Pentagon Pundit scandal coming on the wave of a number of serious breakdowns of the public legitimacy of the press, the public desire for a new media system is strong.
The technological capacity to create such a system exists, in fact, media has been dramatically reshaped already through the internet.
Broadcast media, though, is still somewhat untouched, but this kind of serious structural argument about the media from the likely President is something that cable and broadcast executives, as well as progressives, should take very seriously.
I’ve heard quite frequently from political operatives that this race is not Obama versus McCain, but Obama versus the media. And it’s clear that without breaking down the structure of the media conglomerates, public discourse will remain as polluted and dishonest as it is now. And so President Obama is telegraphing his intentions to be a media reformer. Now it’s up to us to help him get there. ++
7 Days: Moyers and Democracy:
He’d Rather Write Than Be President, w/ Huffington, vanden Heuvel & Green
Mark Green, HuffPo
May 18, 2008
There was lots of hard news this week — West Virginia, John Edwards, appeasement, McCain’s 2013 Space Odyssey — but it was Bill Moyers who uttered some hard truths on 7 Days in America on Air America…
Moyers is, simply, a national treasure, a reminder that we redeem the promise of America more through the morality, humanity and insights of unelected visionaries than insider politicians. By his books, TV programs and essays — this month stitched together into a new volume, Moyers on Democracy (Doubleday) — he’s a Sisyphus pushing his beloved country to higher ground.
In our interview, Moyers explains how he never was distracted by entreaties to run for president or any other office. No, his dream and achievement was to be a political journalist in general and a drum major for democracy in particular.
His book therefore explains how America needs less a laundry list of reforms after the Bush-Cheney junta leaves town but rather a new story to rebut Reagan’s version about “the freedom of the rich to get richer.” And the new story is — Democracy.
He goes on to note both that “Democrats talk about a new direction without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass” and that “the dilemma of democratic politics is how to translate Big Ideas into practical politics.”
Ok, I ask him — and our panel of Huffington and vanden Heuvel discuss — what would he urge the 44th president to do if he had his/her ear next November? His answer was clear and quick: Cut the Gordian knot of money that’s strangling our politics and policies. “There are no victimless crimes,” he concludes, meaning that there are huge public costs when polluters, defense contractors and the Business Roundtable control environmental policies, armament policies and tax policies by their lush campaign contributions. In other words, nearly all other reforms depend on this primary reform, even if it’s not part of the 2008 presidential campaign conversation. Why talk about democracy when you can be distracted by flag pins, Rev. Wright and appeasement?
As seen from the excerpt below and the audio, Moyers is not optimistic in the short term about accomplishing this fundamental change, comparing it to the anti-slavery struggle in the 1830s. His sober analysis has an historical basis. Recall how in 1993 there was a pro-reform Democratic president, Speaker and Majority Leader yet no campaign finance reform was enacted when congressional leaders convinced a young, new president to hold off.
So if the political stars are again in alignment in 2009 — and there are again Democratic majorities for change in Washington — what will be different? Now there’s a public disgusted by the corruptions and crimes of the Republican crowd of the past eight years, as turnouts and polls indicate. And there are also real successes to build on, like the clean money election law in Arizona and the matching public funding system of New York City. Hence the Durbin bill in the Senate that seeks to implement the best approaches to ending the golden rule of politics — he who has the gold, rules.
When politicians become more afraid of voters than donors — and when a new Democratic president and Congress show the backbone and solidarity toward changing the money game that Bush-Hastert-Lott did in changing the tax code — we’ll be closer to the Story of Democracy that Bill Moyers has spent his life explaining and pursuing.
EXCERPTS:
Listen to the show for free here.
MOYERS: Q: In the first chapter of your book, you write that while progressives need to propose a lot of reforms, what America really needs most in the 21st Century is a new story — and the story is Democracy. What did you mean by that?
“Well the story that’s been told for the last 25 years — the story that Ronald Reagan and the right have told — is that free markets are the answer to all of our problems, that America has the muscle of an empire and should flex it, and that everybody’s getting rich in America because the system is working. And of course that’s not true, That’s the story told from the top down. But the true answer to organized money is organized people, how people have to stand up and fight for their own rights as guaranteed by The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.”
MOYERS: Q: Can you give us a democracy report card on the Bush / Cheney administration?
“We are spoiling our nest, the Earth that sustains us. And the administration has placed the government in the hands of the industries that it is supposed to monitor. The gap between people at the top and people at the bottom grows larger everyday. As Vice President Cheney said in an interview many years ago after they passed the big tax cut for the wealthy, ‘we deserve it’.”
MOYERS: Q: You’ve been a big proponent over the years for public financing for public elections. What’s the chance that can happen in ‘09?
“Mark, I became interested in campaign finance reform because I read the book you wrote 30 years ago, Who Runs Congress? That book opened my mind even though I had been in Washington for seven years… You would think at the measure of any democratic system of politics would be its ability to address the problems that it has created for itself. And we cannot do that because money has a monopoly over the decisions of those in power. I’m pessimistic at the moment but I am not fatalistic, because I think we are in the drive for public funding where the abolitionists were in the 1830s or the women’s suffragettes were shortly after The Civil War. This is a long march toward a fundamental reform of a system that has gone terribly awry. It will take long-term commitments, the pursuit of a moral idea, that representation requires controlling the amount that can be raised and spent. It will require a couple of generations, I think Mark, before we get it. But we have to get it or, like slavery and inequality, it will be the issue that brings us down.”
MOYERS: Q: In 1988 we saw how exploitation of Willy Horton and the flag helped defeat a Democratic Greek nominee named Mike Dukakis; in ‘08 we see how Reverend Wright and the flag again is being used against a potential black nominee in Obama. What is your level of optimism that should Obama be the nominee, America in 2008 won’t be as gullible or easily distracted as in 1988?
“During the West Virginia Primary of this week, I heard a BBC report with some very frank responses from voters down there who said, in that West Virginia accent, ‘down here we don’t think much of black people, we’re not likely to vote for them.’ I mean there is latent as well as overt racism still prevalent in America. But it’s not what it was in 1988, when the Bush people ran the Willy Horton ad. There is a greater appreciation of our diversity.”
MOYERS: Q: Bill did you ever seriously think of running for president or any office?
“My seven years in government and politics were a detour. I set out at the age of 16 to be a journalist. That’s really all I wanted to do. And convergence and coincidence brought me into politics in 1960. I wanted to be a political journalist, that’s how I got to Washington in the first place. But as a young man I got caught up in that campaign and in organizing The Peace Corps, and then by the tragedy of John F. Kennedy’s assassination thrust into The White House with my mentor Lyndon Johnson. But as soon as I had the opportunity, January of 1967, only three and a half years after I’d been in The White House, I left because I had the opportunity to get back to journalism, to come to New York and be the publisher of Newsday. I’ve never looked back.”
VANDEN HEUVEL: Q: Katrina, we just heard Moyers’s closing comments on how he never ran for office because, in effect, he would rather “write than be president.” Tell us your view about Bill’s career as a journalist in the past now and going forward.
“I think of Bill Moyers as a kind of secular prophet of our time. He’s our media conscience. He’s someone who’s been close and in the belly of the beast, he has seen power as Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary. And he talks openly how after that experience it took a while to get his footing in journalism. But he has used that perch to talk about a morality in our politics, not hucksterism, but a morality about money and power. And what he does so well is explain that our deeper mission as journalist is to uncover the news that powerful people, whether in government or corporate life, would prefer to keep hidden.”
HUFFINGTON: “And he’s probably one of the very few people in America who can use emotional language, who can not just use dry words but somehow capture the imagination with what he says.”
HUFFINGTON: Q: If Democrats go from a 30 seat to a 50 seat majority in the House — which might happen given the recent Democratic wins in Republican districts in special, off-year elections — and from a one seat majority in the Senate to 56-57 Democratic votes in the Senate, which is nearly filibuster proof, doesn’t that create a realigning moment and opportunity for a new America?
“There is something pretty fundamental that’s going on, which is a new center in American politics and I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention to it. A lot of the positions that used to be considered left-wing — bring the troops home, universal health care, some form of corporate responsibility, doing something about global warming — are now solidly mainstream. That’s really the reality that John McCain is dealing with.”
VANDEN HEUVEL: Q: What do you think of what Bush said in Israel about Obama types engaging in appeasement with terrorists, which was then seconded by McCain?
“You have a president who has done more to setback U.S. security in the Middle East than anyone in our memory, and he has become the smearer-in-chief. I thought of John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, who wrote for Kennedy in that great American University speech in 1963, ‘Never negotiate out of fear and never fear to negotiate.’ And I thought that Obama’s push back suggests he is ready to fight and fight hard for leadership that this country so desperately needs”
HUFFINGTON: Q: Is there a chance that a referendum will overturn the California Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage — and will this decision have an impact on the 2008 presidential race?
“First of all, yes, there is definitely a chance that a referendum would overturn it. The right is already making noises. But in terms of whether it will impact the election, I don’t really think so. We’re in a different reality. People know that these are really terrible times for millions of Americans, that we are trapped in a war that we cannot win. So I don’t really know if the right can have as much success riling up people over same-sex marriage as they’ve done in the past.” ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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