Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Fake & a Fraud, Shill & a Sham QUOTE OF THE DAY "Bush's language is attempted tip-toe. He is a fake and a fraud, a shill and a sham for these white Southern rural religions. It comes down to a president telling the Supreme Court that he doesn't like affirmative action. And you can bet the house that suddenly they don't like it, either. The president picks the next head of the court." - - Jimmy Breslin (from today's BOTTOM LINE ARTICLE) RHINO HERE: Does it surprise anyone that the media ignored the blatant symbolism of the 2 moves shrub made last week. First he declares a "Sanctity of Life Day" on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Then he comes out opposing affirmative action on Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday. His deliberate thumbing his nose to anyone who's paying attention is sickening when combined with his phoney tones of fake "compassionate conservatism". U of M President Responds University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman responded to shrub's lies about U of M having quotas for entrance into their law school. She said... "It is unfortunate that [Bush] misunderstands how our admissions process works at the U. of Michigan. It is a complex process that takes many factors into account and considers the entire background of each student applicant, just as [Bush] urged. We do not have, and have never had, quotas..." http://www.umich.edu/coleman.html So are the facts too complex for shrub & his puppet handler Rove to understand, or are they just lying? I'd say Rove lies and shrub says what he's told so he can get to lunch. How stupid do they think the American people are? After the forthright yet brain dead comments by Trent Lott, after they continue to sponsor judges like Charles Pickering (who tried to reduce the sentence of a cross burner in '94), when they don't have a single African-American in the Senate, after they regularly make campaign stops at Bob Jones University and fight for the right of states to fly the Confederate flag, they still want us to believe that quashing affirmative action on Doctor King's birthday is about fairness? I guess the real question comes at election time. How really stupid are the American people? Is There Any Doubt shrub's As Much a Racist As Lott? Time Magazine reports, "Last Memorial Day, for the second year in a row, Bush's White House sent a floral wreath to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. Six days later, as the United Daughters of the Confederacy celebrated Jefferson Davis' birthday there, Washington chapter president Vicki Heilig offered a 'word of gratitude to George W. Bush' for 'honoring' the Old South's dead. Bush has quietly reinstated a tradition dating back to Woodrow Wilson that his father had halted in 1990... One of the organizations connected to the ceremony is the Sons of Confederate Veterans, whose 'Chief Aide-de-Camp' is Richard T. Hines, a politically active lobbyist from South Carolina. In that state's brutal 2000 Republican primary, Hines reportedly helped finance tens of thousands of letters blasting Bush rival John McCain for failing to support the flying of the Confederate flag over the state capitol. Hines declined to comment." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030127-409510,00.html Bush's Admission to Yale is the Ultimate Case of Affirmative Action At salon.com, Joe Conason writes, "Why was the Andover dean so concerned about Bush's prospects [for getting into] Yale? Perhaps he glanced at Bush's SAT score of 1206, above average but nowhere near the level needed for acceptance at an Ivy League school. (Bush's score was almost 200 points lower than the average for Yale freshmen circa 1970.) Bush's middling SAT score, incidentally, is roughly the same as that for most of the black students admitted to selective schools in a major Mellon Foundation study that began in 1976. Perhaps that Andover dean also looked at Bush's 'solid' grades, which may or may not have exceeded the C average he later earned at Yale... 'Affirmative action' for the sons and daughters of alumni was a major factor in admissions at Yale and other selective colleges - and continues to be an important factor today. The children of alumni are about twice as likely to be accepted by Yale as other applicants." http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/01/16/bush/index.html THE BOTTOM LINE today is by veteran journalist Jimmy Breslin on his hopes in and disappointments with Colin Powell regarding affirmative action which helped Powell get to where he is now. 8:19:11 AM    comment

Powell: Act or Resign by Jimmy Breslin, NEWSDAY , January 19, 2003 Herewith part of an extraordinary speech given by then-retired general and now Secretary of State Colin Powell, of 952 Kelly St., the Bronx South, at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000. The subject was affirmative action, of which Powell was a recipient in his time. Here is a guy who got out of City College, where Frankfurter went, where Salk went, and public taxes paid for his education and gave him a chance to get where he is now. It is what the country should be about. And to his audience, which was 94 percent white, affirmative action was as dangerous as wired dynamite. Powell said: "We must understand the cynicism that exists in the black community, the kind of cynicism that is created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education. But hardly a whimper is heard over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests." Right after that, Powell told interviewers, "You need to be a little careful when you see nothing wrong with that kind of preference or affirmative action, and say it's fine, whether it's sugar growers in Florida or somewhere else in the tax code, but suddenly a preference system, as you call it, an affirmative action program, as I prefer to call it, that allows a few thousand kids to get an education somehow is so damaging to our constitutional process that it has to become a major factor for our party and a major center for the party to attack." I was thrilled. I thought it was one of the few great American speeches, one that could actually change some people who could win the election and run the country. I was so stupid that I believed that George W. Bush knew what Powell was going to say and how he would say it and what it would mean. I was sure that they put him on to announce to the nation that these Republicans were new on race. Now this week, Bush filed a brief with the Supreme Court against the University of Michigan's admissions policy for people of color. Bush said that it was unconstitutional... SEE THE ENTIRE ARTLE AT: http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-bres0119,0,3722886.column "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. COMMENT ON TODAY'S BLOG / SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 7:59:08 AM    comment

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