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Monday, December 16, 2002 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Let's look at the party of 'FAMILY VALUES'! Trent Lott is the Republican Party's Monica Lewinsky - except worse. Jesse, Jr., what do you mean? Worse! Let me explain. Monica Lewinsky reflected Bill Clinton's PRIVATE moral failure. Trent Lott reflects the Republican Party's POLITICAL moral failure. Both Monica Lewinsky and the issue now confronting Trent Lott and the Republican Party are moral issues. One involves personal morality and the other involves public morality."
- - Jesse Jackson, Jr.
RHINO HERE:
Busy weekend in politics. On Friday, Henry Kissinger resigned his chairmanship of shrub & company's 9/11 investigation writing to his president, "It is clear that, although specific potential conflicts can be resolved in this manner, the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own... I have, therefore, concluded that I cannot accept the responsibility you proposed."
Doesn't this beg questions about what "controversy" (secrets) might be revealed by public attention being brought to the dealings of Kissinger & Associates that could interfere with the investigation of the diabolically coordinated terrorist attack? It's known his company works with the likes of Unocal, Halliburton & The Carlyle Group. Rhino thinks surely the old boys would have taken these things into consideration before nominating ol' Henry. Methinks his stepping down has more to to with the huge outcry voiced round the world (including here on Rhinos Blog) concerning his reputation as a liar and a criminal. Did they think the world would have forgotten?
Below are 2 lame articles from the Washington Post & The NY Times that don't even mention the wave of moral outrage. And below that is a link to a site calling itself, "WANTED - HENRY KISSINGER".
WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51600-2002Dec13.html
NYTIMES ARTICLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/politics/14INQU.html
WANTED - HENRY KISSINGER
http://www.zpub.com/un/wanted-hkiss.html
Saturday, Al Gore was the guest host on Saturday Night live, spoofing himself in many directions, and then Sunday, he appeared on 60 minutes telling Lesley Stahl, "I've decided that I will not be a candidate for president in 2004. I personally have the energy and drive and ambition to make another campaign, but I don't think that it's the right thing for me to do. I want to contribute to ending the current administration. I think the current policies have to be changed. I think that my best way of contributing to that result may not be as a candidate this time around."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/15/politics/main533080.shtml
And then there's the continuing public trial and tribulations of Trent Lott who, forced to apologize to the nation for his recent racist remarks, then (Rhino guesses) had to find a way to apologize to his clan buddies for having made the first apology. A tough week indeed for the Majority leader elect.
Below the line is an excerpt from an impassioned speech given Saturday by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. chronicling the life and times of Trent Lott and comparing him to Monica Lewinsky.
7:37:21 AM 
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By Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., RainbowPUSH Coalition, Saturday, 12/14/02
"...The organization FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) reports that:
Lott's long history of support for racist and neo-Confederate causes is generally missing from coverage of the Thurmond controversy. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978, Lott was behind a successful effort to re-instate the citizenship of Confederate President Jefferson Davis (Associated Press, 6/2/78).
In 1981, the year he became house minority whip, Lott prodded the Reagan administration into taking the side of Bob Jones University and other segregated private schools that were suing the Internal Revenue Service to restore tax exemptions withdrawn a decade earlier because of the schools' discriminatory racial policies (Washington Post, 1/18/82).
In 1982 and 1990, Lott voted against extending the Voting Rights Act, the law passed to insure that minorities - especially Southern blacks - had access to the voting booth.
In 1983 Lott voted against a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and in 1994 he voted to de-fund the MLK Jr. Holiday Commission.
Lott's appointment to chair the 1984 Republican Platform committee occasioned a soft New York Times article (8/14/84) describing Lott as "a legislator who displays political shrewdness while avoiding making waves." That was the same year Lott boasted in a speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, 'The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform' (Southern Partisan, 4th quarter, 1984).
A few months later, in an interview with the neo-Confederate magazine Southern Partisan (4th quarter, 1984), Lott - himself a member and promoter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans - repeated Jefferson Davis' posthumous endorsement of the GOP platform, throwing in a reference to the Civil War as "the War of Northern Aggression." No one asked Lott then if the original 'party of Lincoln' was becoming the party of Lincoln's chief nemesis.
In 1990, he voted against continuation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the crown jewel of civil-rights legislation that desegregated education and public accommodations.
It wasn't until 1998 that national press scrutiny focused on one neo-Confederate group - the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The CCC is the successor to the notorious White Citizens' Councils, whose history dates back half a century to the 1950s when the groups were referred to as the "uptown Klan." Today's CCC rails against "race-mixing" and immigrants, and proudly associates with extreme rightists, from white supremacist David Duke to French racist and anti-Semite Jean-Marie LePen.
In December 1998, Lott denied any personal knowledge of the CCC, falsely claiming through a spokesperson that his links to the group amounted to a single speech made over a decade before he'd entered the Senate.
In 1992, Sen. Lott praised the CCC as keynote speaker at its national convention; in 1997, he met with top CCC leaders in his Senate office; his column appeared throughout the 1990s in the group's newsletter, which once published a cheerful photo of Lott and CCC members who were also his close relatives. Lott was also the guest of honor at a 1982 banquet hosted by a Mississippi chapter of the old White Citizens' Councils (Extra!, 3-4/99)...."
THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IS POSTED AT:
http://jessejacksonjr.org/issues/i1214026434.html
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ).
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7:25:27 AM
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