Howdy Mr. Negro, can I have your vote?

[ABSTRUSE]

Bush Urges Blacks Not to Back Democrats




By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

DETROIT - President Bush (news - web sites) tried on Friday to sow doubts about Democrats' commitment to black Americans and told black voters "there is an alternative this year" — him

At the same time, Bush acknowledged, "Listen, the Republican Party has got a lot of work to do. I understand that."


Bush's speech to the Urban League, his third since becoming president, came as a new poll showed overwhelming support for John Kerry (news - web sites) among black voters. The poll also showed black voters have yet to entirely warm up to the presumptive Democratic nominee.


The president suggested perhaps the Democratic Party had started taking black voters for granted.


"I know plenty of politicians assume they have your vote," he said. "But did they earn it, and do they deserve it?"


Bush drew applause each time he ticked off one of his questions to the group: "Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party?"


"Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American people?"


"There is an alternative this year," Bush said. "Take a look at my agenda."


The speech, coupled with the announcement of an unusual partnership with a special-interest group to nurture minority businesses, was as an election-year bid to use government resources to reach out to black voters. It also served as a slap at the NAACP, a group Bush snubbed last week because he believes it has been hostile to him.


Friday's was Bush's 16th trip as president to Michigan, a state he lost in 2000, and his second in 10 days. He scheduled another for July 30, the day after the end of the Democratic convention.


Bush said his administration was stronger for the presence of black officials including Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites).


He did not mention his opposition to affirmative action in a case that touched off opposition in Michigan and nationwide.


In January 2003, Bush asserted that a program of racial preferences for minority applicants at the University of Michigan was "divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution." He took a position against the program in a Supreme Court case and did it on the birthday of civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr.


Under the new initiative announced Friday, the administration will seek to expand business ownership among minorities by creating one-stop centers for business training, counseling, financing and contracting.


Bush's Commerce Department (news - web sites), Small Business Administration and other government entities will pool resources to help the Urban League's local offices help minority entrepreneurs.


Blacks supported Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) over Bush by a 9-1 margin in the 2000 election, and the poll released this week by BET/CBS News showed their backing for Kerry is almost as strong.


Nine out of 10 black adults surveyed believed the Iraq (news - web sites) war was not worth the cost in lives or money, and the same proportion believed the country is headed in the wrong direction.





Blacks constituted 10 percent of the electorate in 2000. Bush has sporadically sought to shore up his standing with the group through public appearances. On July 1, he staged an elaborate ceremony in the East Room to mark former President Johnson's signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The BET/CBS poll showed Bush's image still suffers among black voters for the 2000 election recount in Florida. More than four in five blacks believe Bush did not legitimately win the election, and two-thirds think deliberate attempts were made to prevent black voters' ballots from being counted, the survey found.

A Republican state lawmaker in Michigan stoked those resentments this month when he said the GOP would fare poorly in this year's elections if it failed to "suppress the Detroit vote."

State Rep. John Pappageorge, of Troy, Mich., said this week he had used "a bad choice of words" but said his remark shouldn't be construed as racist. He apologized "if I have given offense in any way to my colleagues in Detroit or anywhere."

Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, addressed the Urban League on Thursday. His spokesman said Bush has a "failing record on African-American opportunity."

"Simply giving a speech will not erase the fact that George Bush has pursued policies that have failed to provide economic opportunity to all Americans and have negatively impacted African-Americans," Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer said.

 

[Just-Legal]

Now, by saying that, the Democrats are going to go out and go, "Well, actually, we did this, and this, and this."

Silly shrub!

 

[Tanuki]

Bush doesn't discriminate. He looks down on all races equally.

 

[shereads]

Colin Powell is black? Are you sure?

I believe it was Chris Rock who said, "Colin Powell is so white, he makes Harry Belafonte look like Wesley Snipes."

 

[CharleyH]

Re: Re: Howdy Mr. Negro, can I have your vote?

Colin Powell is black? Are you sure?

I believe it was Chris Rock who said, "Colin Powell is so white, he makes Harry Belafonte look like Wesley Snipes."

The Dark Side. LOL, I recall that skit. Could be because I have it on VHS

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Re: Re: Re: Howdy Mr. Negro, can I have your vote?

The Dark Side. LOL, I recall that skit. Could be because I have it on VHS

What's VHS???

 

[amicus]

So...the Propaganda politics begin afresh...



I did not think it possible, in the 2000 election for a Republican to ever gain the White House again.

90 percent of African Americans vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the candidate(and he is). Why?

Religious and Tribal life requires a strong father figure, Big Brother Democrats promise to take care of the brothers.

90 percent of Hispanics vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the candidate (and he is) Why?

Same reason, Religion, this time Catholic and a history of oppression in Mexico. Please big Democrat daddy, take care of us.

90 percent of Union members vote Democratic even if the Donkey is the Candidate (and he is). Why?

Democrats support the right of Unions to close shops to non union labor, they want a monopoly on labor. in addition, 'Labor' is what it says, non professional, joe six-pack doesnt watch the news, he votes as the union bosses say, as his daddy did, real high class guys and gals these...democrats all...

90 percent of all teachers vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the Candidate (and he is). Why?

This is a little harder as 'educators' are at least 'formally' educated, they got their paper. But easier to understand if you consider that they are 'government workers' employed by and paid by taxes collected from the unwashed. Thus, educators put their principles on hold and vote to support the hand that feeds them. See how easy that was?

The majority of women vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the Candidate (and he is) Why?

Who can understand anything women do?

Only WASPM's White Anglo Saxon Protestant Males vote Republican, even if the candidate is an elephant (and he is) Why?

Go figure.


As I said at the outset...it surprised me in 2000 that a Republican could win the White House. It will surprise me again in 2004.


amicus

PS Oh, I forgot Catholics and Jews...do your own search...

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Why does Bush bother with expensive election campaigns? He can just steal the job, like he did last time?

 

[amicus]

I guess thats the best a blonde can do...oh well

 

[doormouse]

ABS, seeing you're the one most likely not to get offended ( I hope )...

What's with all the political/news/reports threads lately?

I don't even read them... just look for a more interesting thread.

Maybe because it's US news... no idea sowwy

doormouse scampers back to her hole

 

[rgraham666]

I would like to point out to Shrub II that 'agenda' and 'results' are two different things.

 

[destinie21]

At least he didn't mistakenly call us colored again

lol

 

[shereads]

At least he didn't mistakenly call us colored again

lol

Did he say "colored?" I remember "the dark peoples of the world" and his dad's famous reference to Jeb and Colomba's children as "the little brown ones," but I hadn't heard "colored."

 

[shereads]

I would like to point out to Shrub II that 'agenda' and 'results' are two different things.

Good luck explaining the distinction.

 

[shereads]

Why does Bush bother with expensive election campaigns? He can just steal the job, like he did last time?

It's embarrassing to his brother Jeb, for one thing. If he can win fairly,* he can leave Jeb with a shred of credibility.


*I'm using "fairly" in the broadest sense here, as in "not stealing." I still steam every time I see the Bush campaign commercial that accuses Kerry of "voting against the Lacy Petersen act, which protects pregnant women from violence."

The Lacy Petersen act, for those who don't know, is named for a pregnant woman who whose husband is currently on trial for her murder. The bill defines a murdered woman's fetus as a murder victim. Whether or not you agree with this latest effort by the right-to-life movement to define the death of a fetus as murder, the way it's used in this commercial is a blatant lie. Unless Shrub really believes that Lacy Petersen would not have been murdered if her killer had realized, "If the baby she's carrying dies too, I could be in serious trouble!"

 

[Wildcard Ky]

Why does Bush bother with expensive election campaigns? He can just steal the job, like he did last time?

I still have to laugh at that. 3 recounts, 2 court rulings all say that Bush won Florida by about 500 votes. After everything was said and done, and Bush was in office, the Miami Herald paid for a recount out of their own pocket. Their conclusion: Bush won by about 500 votes.

Now comes the part where Bush tried to get certain ballots thrown out. To that I say Al Gore tried to have thousands of absentee ballots from military personnel thrown out. Why? Military personnel historically vote Republican in National Elections.

Those of you that are hung up on Bush "stealing" the election in 2000 need to get over it. It was a VERY close race that Al Gore lost by about 500 votes. I realize that losing the Presidency by 500 votes is a difficult pill to swallow, but it happened.

The real solution to this whole quagmire would be to revamp the electoral college. I don't think one candidate should get every vote from a state, no matter who the candidate is.

Bush shouldn't have gotten all votes from Florida, just as Gore shouldn't have gotten all votes from Cali.

Here's how I think it should work. Each state is divided into districts for congressional seats. Why not use those same districts for the electoral college. Which ever candidate gets the most votes in a particular district, gets the one electoral vote from that district.

Such a plan would avoid the mess like we had in Florida in 2000. It would allow each district in the nation to have an equal say in the presidency, and prevent one candidate from getting 25 electoral votes over a mere 500 vote difference across a whole state.

Makes sense, doesn't it? That's why it will never happen.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

So...the Propaganda politics begin afresh...



I did not think it possible, in the 2000 election for a Republican to ever gain the White House again.

90 percent of African Americans vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the candidate(and he is). Why?

Religious and Tribal life requires a strong father figure, Big Brother Democrats promise to take care of the brothers.

90 percent of Hispanics vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the candidate (and he is) Why?

Same reason, Religion, this time Catholic and a history of oppression in Mexico. Please big Democrat daddy, take care of us.

90 percent of Union members vote Democratic even if the Donkey is the Candidate (and he is). Why?

Democrats support the right of Unions to close shops to non union labor, they want a monopoly on labor. in addition, 'Labor' is what it says, non professional, joe six-pack doesnt watch the news, he votes as the union bosses say, as his daddy did, real high class guys and gals these...democrats all...

90 percent of all teachers vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the Candidate (and he is). Why?

This is a little harder as 'educators' are at least 'formally' educated, they got their paper. But easier to understand if you consider that they are 'government workers' employed by and paid by taxes collected from the unwashed. Thus, educators put their principles on hold and vote to support the hand that feeds them. See how easy that was?

The majority of women vote Democrat even if the Donkey is the Candidate (and he is) Why?

Who can understand anything women do?

Only WASPM's White Anglo Saxon Protestant Males vote Republican, even if the candidate is an elephant (and he is) Why?

Go figure.


As I said at the outset...it surprised me in 2000 that a Republican could win the White House. It will surprise me again in 2004.


amicus

PS Oh, I forgot Catholics and Jews...do your own search...

Blacks vote democrat for reasons that have nothing to do with tribalism. They vote democrat overwhelmingly because the democrats brought them civil rights and of the two parties Democrats cater to them as a voting block. It is a symbiotic relationship that has been in place since at least JFK/LBJ and if you want to split hairs goes back even to Truman. Blacks deliver a solid voting block to the Democratic party and the party crafts its platform & policy to keep that voting block happy. For someone who clings to Rands objectivism, it surprises me you would try to obscure such a simple & pragmatic relationship in the trapings of religion & racism.

Hispanics, by and large, suffer still from overt & covert racisim. They are a minority and benefit most from the same democratic party policies that aide blacks, gays, women & other minorities. Again, the explanation is wholly pragmatic and the relationship is symbiotic. Hispanics, for the most part, see the democrats as willing to level the playing field & give them a fair shot at the american dream, the democrats see hispanics as a rising force in us politics, gaining not only in voting power, but in material wealth and status. It behooves the party to craft legislation that satisfies this voting block.

Union members, as Gephardt found out in Iowa, are less and less important as voting blocks because they are less and less likely to be slavishly devoted to the union's idea of who should be in power. They still vote democrat, but the reason has much more to do with thier status as working class and less to do with what union card they carry.

Women tend to vote democrat because the Democratic party envisions a role for us in society other than barefoot and pregnant.

These are of course gross over simplifications and generalizations. Yet they do underscore pragmatic reasons for a general trend in voting patterns that don't rely on emotional appeals. One has to wonder why you chose here to use the nflamatory rhetoric of the demogogue rather than the reasoned approach of an objective observer.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Hispanics in Florida rarely vote as a bloc, nor do they see themselves as "hispanics," as they are drawn from backgrounds as diverse as any anglo-saxon's. First-generation Cuban-Americans in South Florida have tended to vote Republican since the Bay of Pigs, and it's significant that lately the Cuban American National Foundation has been vocally critical of the Bush administration.

Second- and third-generation Cuban Americans are no more likely to share their parents' and grandparents' political loyalties than any of the rest of us. As for the rest of the hispanic American community, they are Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, Chileans, Colombians, and the American-born children of undocumented migrant farm workers from Mexico, and elsewhere in Central America and the Caribbean. They don't share one political agenda. Statistically, Florida's non-Cuban hispanic population is slightly more Republican than Democratic.

 

[shereads]

I still have to laugh at that. 3 recounts, 2 court rulings all say that Bush won Florida by about 500 votes. After everything was said and done, and Bush was in office, the Miami Herald paid for a recount out of their own pocket. Their conclusion: Bush won by about 500 votes.

Not true, Wild. The debunking of the "stolen-election myth" was eventually debunked, and by the Miami Herald - the source most often cited as having determined that Bush won fair-and-square.

FYI:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/2072092.htm?1c

 

[Wildcard Ky]

That article admits to being based on a lot of assumption.

It's a hypothetical result derived from something that clearly doesn't exist in Florida or anywhere else in the nation -- an election where every ballot is fully filled out and every one of those ballots gets counted, an elusive ideal going these days by the buzzword ''the will of the people.''

''What you're providing evidence for, however speculative, is that more people showed up on election day for Al Gore,'' he said. ''But I'd also state that in our system, woulda, shoulda, coulda doesn't matter. Only legal votes matter.''

That's the whole thing in a nutshell. Only the legal votes matter. Both sides tried to have votes thrown out, both sides tried to have other votes included. At the end of the day the courts ruled which votes could and couldn't be counted. When those votes were repeatedly counted, the same person won by the slimmest of margins.

That's why I'm a proponent of the electoral college system that I previously posted. There were something like 5 disputed counties in Florida. Those 5 or so counties wound up picking the president. In the system I advocate, those 5 or so counties would have no more or less vote than any other district in the country.

Bush didn't deserve all 25 votes in Florida, yet he got them. The electoral college in it's current form needs to go. It needs to be made into something where every district in America has an equal voice in electing the President.

 

[shereads]

That article admits to being based on a lot of assumption.

True, but they are the assumptions of paid statisticians and analysts who were asked to determine who would have won the state if there had not been an unusually high number of rejected ballots in 2000. With all of their assumptions in place, Gore wins the state by 23,000. With most of the assumptions taken out of the picture, Gore still wins Florida's 25 electoral votes and the Presidency by a margin of 1200. Under Florida law, a margin that narrow automatically requires a statewide recount. The Florida Supreme Court determined that Sec. of State Kathryn Harris, who also happened to be Bush's state campaign manager, failed to uphold state law. It's irrelevent that the Gore campaign asked for a partial recount; the law Harris was sworn to uphold required a statewide recount, Bush's official 500-vote margin of victory being substantially less than the mandatory margin. The U.S. Supreme Court, by temporarily overturning Florida state law, appointed George W. Bush to the presidency.

Now back to our regularly scheduled thread, dedicated to Dubya's sudden courtship of the dark peoples of the world.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

That article admits to being based on a lot of assumption.

It's a hypothetical result derived from something that clearly doesn't exist in Florida or anywhere else in the nation -- an election where every ballot is fully filled out and every one of those ballots gets counted, an elusive ideal going these days by the buzzword ''the will of the people.''

''What you're providing evidence for, however speculative, is that more people showed up on election day for Al Gore,'' he said. ''But I'd also state that in our system, woulda, shoulda, coulda doesn't matter. Only legal votes matter.''

That's the whole thing in a nutshell. Only the legal votes matter. Both sides tried to have votes thrown out, both sides tried to have other votes included. At the end of the day the courts ruled which votes could and couldn't be counted. When those votes were repeatedly counted, the same person won by the slimmest of margins.

That's why I'm a proponent of the electoral college system that I previously posted. There were something like 5 disputed counties in Florida. Those 5 or so counties wound up picking the president. In the system I advocate, those 5 or so counties would have no more or less vote than any other district in the country.

Bush didn't deserve all 25 votes in Florida, yet he got them. The electoral college in it's current form needs to go. It needs to be made into something where every district in America has an equal voice in electing the President.

The electoral college functions as it does to give every STATE a fair shot in the election of president. One must remember that when this country was founded the average person's allegience was first to this home state and then to the crown. When crafting a political system the interests of large & populous states had to be balanced ina way that would convince smaller states to give up autonomy and accept inclusion in a federal authority.

Thus we have a bicameral legislature, where the house is dominated by large & populous states, and the senate provides representation evenly. In today's world it hardly matters, as mst issues are no longer ones of state authroity. The honorable senator from Virginia is far morelikely to vote the party line of his party than he is to place the best interests of Old Dominion first.

Similarly, the election process of the chief executive atempts to maintain a balance. it is perhaps outdated, but it beats any alternative I have heard of.

As to a stolen election, I am wholly with you. Bush won by 500 votes. The courts have traditionally eschewed the role of king maker and since the election of R. B. Hayes they have striven to remain above it. I thought the supreme court did a very good job of staying out of it and it bothers me to see them castigated for perhaps the most courageous non-decision they ever issued.

-Colly

 

[rgraham666]

Well, OK.

But if the Dems steal the next election, I don't want to hear any whining.

 

[shereads]

Well, OK.

But if the Dems steal the next election, I don't want to hear any whining.

Not to worry, RG. With the new Diebold voting machines, a recount-or-no-recount debate is out of the question. The new system leaves no paper trail.

 

[shereads]

...Under Florida law, a margin that narrow automatically requires a statewide recount.

Speaking of Deibold and the lack of paper ballots, I guess we won't need this unused state law anymore.