"Why are we talking about why one black man is smarter than another black man?"
As this clip begins, I'm saying I'm impressed by the way Rick Warren framed questions at the Saddleback Civil Forum:
IN THE COMMENTS: Amba makes a prime witticism: "Obama threw Clarence Thomas under the back of the bus."
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I loved the way he refused to address the issue, in light of Obama's dis of Thomas, that many people deem Obama unprepared for the presidency. Didn't he essentially call you a racist for bringing it up? Way to go Bob. When someone examines your candidates position you play the racist card. It isn't about race, it's about preparedness.
I'm not crazy about dividing these clips up. I'm cutting and pasting from my pre-submitted comments on the first BHs post.
Sorry for the confusion, but I thought it would be more jumbled talking about different topics under the same heading.
Ann, new questions for Obama:
"Documents now reveal you have a political alliance with Bill Ayers. Why didn't you tell us about that? And what is the nature of that relationship now?"
As I have argued elsewhere on this blog, I do not think that the link made here between the LSC’s and “democracy” is, in fact, accurate. I think that such “councils” look eerily similar to efforts by regimes like those in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Venezuela under Chavez to impose control over teachers and their independent unions by an authoritarian regime. Thus, it is not a surprise to me that Bill Ayers has traveled several times in recent years to Venezuela where he has spoken in front of Hugo Chavez and has enthusiastically applauded that regime’s efforts to link education policy to the Chavez “revolution.”
As Ayers stated in a speech there in November 2006 “La educacion es Revolucion!” He applauded “the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez” and he said he “share[d] the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution.”
/via instapundit
Now I know why I found Obama's "big brother" portraits so creepy.
Obama is a fricken Marxist.
Okay, just in case this is happening to you, for some reason the videos do not play on Firefox very well.
Another commenter revealed that to us in another thread. But the workaround is not using IE, but clicking on the post to get to the comments.
Then click on the video, and it plays. Weird.
Marxists are slavers that should be oppossed at every turn.
I viewed the video:
It's interesting to see Ann make her points. Wright seems to be caught off-guard by the implication that a black man just slagged off another black man intellectually. He recovers, and flips the coin to white people. He can't deal with the question at all.
BTW, it was really bad of Obama to bring up intelligence. Remember that Obama is half-white. If he's more intelligent than Thomas, who is quite black, there will always be a thought in the back of racists' minds -- he's smarter mostly because of his white side.
I wonder what he thinks of Jesse Jackson's intelligence.
Cheers,
Victoria
This clip bothered me as I listened to it. It was no one's finest hour.
The bit about whether Thomas was "smart enough" was particularly bad. It got worse when the riff became whether Thomas was as smart as other justices. We might as well ask whether Wright is "smarter than" Ann, or Dworkin is "smarter than" Tribe or Ackerman. It's the question that is offensive here, a point Wright tried to defuse by pretending that anyone objecting to the question is "really saying" that it's OK to question the abilities of others so long as they're not black. Please. The fact is that no one ever asks whether Souter or Kennedy or Stevens is "smart enough," just as no one asked such questions about their predecessors. That treatment is pretty much reserved for Thomas.
Nor is there any objective basis for questioning Thomas' abilities. The only scale on which to measure such things is the quality of Thomas' work product, and on that score I have never seen anyone attempt to show that his opinion writing on the Court, or his other writings or speechmaking off the Court, are not more than equal to what other Supreme Court justices have produced. (At one point Ann says that Thomas's opinion writing is excellent, but then things trailed off a bit.) Other than the quality of what he's produced, there is no accepted measure of "smartness" one can invoke, no way to tell (and nothing really being said) in asking if Thomas is "smart enough" or "as smart as" some other judge. It's just put out there as a baseless smear.
The "qualifications" stuff was more of the same. His background at the time of appointment -- Circuit judge, former high Executive branch official, etc. -- was absolutely typical of S Ct nominees.
The whole discourse was gross because it turns on the stereotype that black = dumb and unqualified. What is shocking about the whole thing is that those who should know better -- O is certainly one, and frankly so is Wright -- feel no compunction about using those stereotypes when the target is Thomas. It is just inconceivable that Thomas would be on the receiving end of this scurrilous attack if he were white, or if he shared the views of, say, Justice Marshall. (And, by the way, Justice Marshall was known for not writing his own opinions. My impression of Thomas is that he is the principal author of his.)
R. Dolan,
Yours was a long, tedious, boring and dumb post. I learned nothing from it, sorry to say. Most of it isn't true either. I'm not impressed with your work product in the least bit. Join Sir Clarence in the same category of insipidly bad illogicality. Although I think Sir Clarence is probably dumber than you are - not sure by how much.
Trumpit- his post was on topic, logical and well thought out. Yours, once again, is clueless.
"Most of it isn't true either."
Pick a part that wasn't true. Examples.
"Although I think Sir Clarence is probably dumber than you are"
Based one what, exactly. You refused to back up previous comments on Thomas. More than likely because you cant.
”Yours was a long, tedious, boring and dumb post. I learned nothing from it, sorry to say.”
Probably because you have a severe learning disability; BDD, brain deficit disorder.
This Story was in the Chicago Sun Times this morning.
NAIROBI, KENYA Obama's half-brother calls a shack home and lives on less than $1 a month.
Obama’s Half Brother
Obama is not black. He is multiracial. He is less than 20% black. Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side, 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side. Seems he had a West African grandmother or greatgrandmother.
Not Black.
Not that it matters in terms of his suitability for office, but it matters in terms of using accurate data.
Trey
Does Wright have any opinions that aren't left-wing boilerplate? You can easily guess what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth.
There are several funny things here. First, Thomas was much better qualified to go on the Supreme Court than Obama to be President. Both are "Black", possibly affirmative action admittees, Ivy League law grads. But Thomas had a moderately long string of accomplishments, and Obama has essentially none. Indeed, we know how Thomas writes because he has written enough for that, and had done so before ascending to the High Court. But we don't know how Obama writes legally, since we have absolutely no legal writing from hims (with the possible exception of an unnamed note to his law review) - all despite being a law school prof.
Secondly, Thomas really is black, really black, while as someone above pointed out, Obama is at best a token black. If you were to put them side by side, the differences would be obvious.
And, I suspect that Obama, being apparently somewhat intellectually dishonest, probably has read few, if any, of Thomas' opinions. So, he is likely basing his judgment of Thomas' skill and ability on the word of others (who are likely mostly White).
I frankly like the way that Justice Thomas writes. He is often the clearest of any of the Justices, lacking all the nuance loved by the left. But it is this lack of nuance that often makes Thomas' opinions so strong.
I never would've in any way ceded to him his sought-after affirmation that Obama is smarter than Thomas. The "Clarence Thomas is dumb" meme is a contrived partisan hit rooted in hating and punishing black conservatives solely for being black conservatives. Me, I would have confronted him with that.
"Secondly, Thomas really is black, really black, while as someone above pointed out, Obama is at best a token black. If you were to put them side by side, the differences would be obvious."
That's a worthless, racist comment if ever there was one. You are really, really dumb put side by side with lots of losers around here. I think you'd like Sir Clarence better if he were a shade or two lighter. The problem with that is that he'd have to use more sunscreen, which adds an addition cost to factor in. That comment of yours, Bruce Hayden, will live on in infamy until you disintegrate into nothingness. NOTHINGNESS, you hear me, you slimeball.
I have to admit I was shocked when Bob went into his weird "Thomas sure is stupid - does he even write his own opinions"? There was no basis for the charge. I guess being liberal means you never have to apologize for being racist.
Wright's hard to pin down. Sometimes he comes across as a very reasonable, moderate TNR type. Other times, he's a know-nothing left-wing partisan hack like Greenwald.
And I lost some respect for Obama when he went after Thomas. What a lost opportunity. What if Barry O had answered Warren's question this way:
"Reverend. I wouldn't have nominated either Ginsberg or Alito. I think America is tired of legal ideologues - on both sides -on the court. We need moderate justices with experience of real life. We need justices who will relate the constitution, as written by the founding fathers, to the present day needs of the American people and not legislate from the bench"
Uh... yeah...
Trumpit, when you're done doing your Righteous Froth, please point out specifically whats racist about that comment.
If I claimed to be Cherokee, and Bruce pointed out that I was actually less than 20% Cherokee, would that be "racist"?
You just enjoy doing the Righteous Froth. Why the need?
TMink said...Obama is not black. He is multiracial. He is less than 20% black. Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side, 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side. Seems he had a West African grandmother or greatgrandmother.
Come on guy, stop it. Obama has a White American mother and his sperm donator father was 100% black African, 0% Arabic.
Obama is phenotypically overwhelmingly East African "nilotic" black. He's just lighter skinned than his extremely black skinned father.
Not Black. Not that it matters in terms of his suitability for office, but it matters in terms of using accurate data.
Obama is black racially and politically. Culturally he's a monocultural White yuppie, leftie with pretensions to multicultural radical chicness.
One of the side issues is the relative smartness of Obama and Thomas. I think Ann conceded to Obama a bit too quickly.
Obama tends to be gaffe-prone in open field running; his reputation for speechmaking comes from set-piece talks, not extemporaneous speaking. And the set piece speeches are often a lot of gassy cliches on close examination.
On what basis are people proclaiming him to be brilliant? To me he seems serviceable, but nothing spectacular.
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