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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
If you think this country needs fixing, please don’t think you have to buy a gun.
I’m afraid people will be passing them out for free.
Shoot, I wonder what it would be like to live the life of a “Fixer.” When Sonny didn’t get off his stool on February 25, 1964, many felt the fight was fixed. That’s what a fixer does. Eschews fairness and honesty and produces corrupt outcomes. What must that feel like? Does the Fixer get a great high winning big bets? Or do they just do it cause’ Saul Alinsky told them to?
When I first heard about the journalist fixers who went to work to elect Obama, I said, yes, Rachel, this is the way to run an airline. No strike that. A country. This is what constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press is all about.
Or not.
Honestly, friends, honestly, Fran, I go out to work or work out or play golf, and half the time I don’t know what to think. Is this Republic of ours on life support? Is Obama’s belief system killing my country? If Obama truly is the poison, is there an antidote. And, if so, I pray it’s not located at the business end of a Colt 44. Kooky, crazed people scare the living daylights out of me. (as the old theme song from 77 Sunset Strip goes thought my head)
FROM: The Daily Caller via Laura Ingraham
“It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long - nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public - to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares - and call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks-in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.” Maybe we have to shove a Republican mouthpiece through a plate glass window and really get their attention.
BACK TO RACHEL
Well, there you have it. What many of us suspected actually happened. Is happening?
Of course, this bit of news is floating around all the other news: the N2ACP charging tea partiers are racists. Voter Intimidators that the Obama administration apparently went to bat for. The oil spill that Obama apparently was slow to clean up on purpose to stay on the good side of his labor union goons. Obama suing the people of Arizona for trying to secure borders obama refuses to secure. Yes, Obama is not doing his job. Yes, Obama lied when he took the oath of office to defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. (A funny thought goes though my head; a mental picture of Obama arresting himself).
Let’s face it, the Obama administration, executive order by executive order, legislation by piece of unconstitutional legislation is trying to kill American freedom. Free enterprise is dead already. Small businesses are closing by the country-full.
Rewind to 1941.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, sailors trapped in air pockets deep in the hulls of submerged American ships were heard banging with hammers for weeks for help. I could never know what it was like, hoping beyond hope. Waiting to suffocate. To die.
Yet, tapping my keyboard, in my own way, I’m crying out to you, America; to every news person, every legislator in the Senate and the House, to every American I’ll never get a chance to meet and shake hands with. And tell a joke to.
Does anybody hear me banging this damn, cold, hard hull with my hammer? Please rescue me. Please save this country before it sinks to the bottom of the trash heap of history. Please don’t let it die.
Comments
Take heart.
America is being rebuilt from the grassroots up, and without “community organizers” driving the train. It will take time, years in some parts, and undoubtedly those at “the top” may well do more damage before the econo-political perch they rest on is eroded away from underneath them (and they will certainly oppose both the work of the grassroots reclamation, and the grassroots workers themselves), but Americans have quietly started taking matter into their own cooperative, joined-together-by-choice hands.
There is economic recovery on Main Street, as the grassroots have found places where state and local tax, law, and regulation are least onerous, and Federal instances of same can be worked around without triggering federal attention. Of necessity, this is neither reflected on nor dependent on Wall Street (which goes its own manipulated way), and so The Economy does not reflect these events either, nor will it until far down the road. Likewise, it is not ubiquitous in geographic distribution; jurisdictions that have followed (or preceded) the Federal model of high taxes and high regulations will be the last to experience the full effects.
Of even longer work is the political reclamation; it will require the displacement of most of the Boomer generation (and the co-opting of the rest) in order to get actual adults into political offices, of both the elected and appointed types.
Having seen the very real evidence of the beginnings of the above; not just the initiation, but the early progress thereof, I have real hope, more than I have had since at least November 2008.
Yet none of this is in any way inevitable. There is much work to be done, and an entire generation firmly entrenched in the institutions of their youth who will oppose the work and the workers. But the work is underway, and it is already bearing fruit that those in opposition have not been able to spoil.
Take heart!
Posted by on 07/21/2010 at 05:11 PMThere are those things that unfold according to our expectations, and there are those things that unfold exceeding our expectations. The first is readily apparent because it is that which we are looking for, the second is an undertow that belies the tide. The wise man watches the boats, not the water. RandyB says much of what is happening. There is more. Don’t volunteer to be buried alive just yet.
Posted by ol' Remus on 07/21/2010 at 06:02 PMAmericans are too ornery to give up without a fight.
God willing, we’ll win.
Posted by Russell on 07/21/2010 at 06:48 PMPeople are living their lives, are watching the signs, and are going about their business.
Like you I keep banging the drum, sounding the alarm. Some will listen, others will ignore, still others will take what is being offered under advisement, and take whatever steps they deem prudent in their own time and fashion.
Be aware of something, told to me years ago, which I found out to be true some time later, just by talking with former classmates. You effect and affect far more people than you may realize. Easily ten within your circle of immediate friends and casual acquaintances. And an number more, with in the wider circle of people you come into indirect/infrequent contact with.
As an example. My enlisting in the Navy, back in the early 70’s, was at least one of the reasons why at least two other members of my graduating class also joined the service. And back during that timeframe, the service was NOT a popular choice. Especially for those who had other options available.
Take heart, you are being heard, and listened to.
Posted by Guy S on 07/21/2010 at 06:56 PMHi Rachel (and y’all) a sidebar: I’m intrigued by your reference to Sonny Liston.
There’s a stunning bio of Liston by Nick Tosches titled “Night Train”, which puts Liston right into the context of his times, plus some excursions into African history. Fascinating, especially in its portrayal of Liston as something of a weathervane for the times and milieu he lived in.
There’s also another by Tosches, “The Devil and Sonny Liston”, which, without having read it yet, I think is probably an updated version. Cheers.
Posted by on 07/21/2010 at 07:13 PMWAKE UP,
Hi,
I haven’t read “Night Train”, but I’ll try to get it at the local library.
Actually, after re-reading my second paragraph Liston reference, I think the real fix allegation was made in the second Clay fight because of the phantom punch that put Sonny down for the count.
As I remember back then talking to Bob Dunphy, a childhood friend from Manhasset, LI, and the son of the famed ring announcer, “Don Dunphy”, the word seemed to be that Liston took a dive in the second fight. Not the first. I misremembered it when I wrote this piece, and if I wrote it over again, I would have questioned the fixing of the second fight. And not the first. Clay (Ali) actually had given Sonny a nasty going over by the fifth round which I remember to be the one Sonny couldn’t (wouldn’t) get off his stool.
At the same time, when Roberto quit (no mas, no mas) in the Ray Leonard fight, it was because of a bad upset stomach as I remember. So to be fair to the Liston family, I’m inclined to give Sonny the benefit of the doubt, and say I don’t think he threw any fight. Maybe the books you suggest shed light on it. Best Regards, Rach
Posted by on 07/21/2010 at 08:30 PMCheers Rachel. Not to divert from the basic purpose of your piece too much more, but can I just add here that it’s time someone did a bio of Joe Frazier who, in my view, win lose or draw, was always a much better MAN than Ali.
---------------------As for your piece (or your peace, for that matter
) I think that little by little, the sleeping giant is stirring. November will be the first litmus test, and if that fails (or if the process is corrupted) then we’ll really see some action, methinks.
Posted by on 07/21/2010 at 10:57 PMWAKE UP
About Joe, I totally agree. Rachel
Posted by on 07/22/2010 at 09:06 AM
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