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| Obama: Race 'not behind health protests' |
| 2009-09-19 |
| President Barack Obama has said that some Americans may oppose him because of race, but that this has not been the main factor behind healthcare protests. He suggests, in TV interviews to be broadcast on Sunday, anti-government sentiment was the key reason for angry protests against healthcare reform. Former President Jimmy Carter said this week that much of the vitriol against reform plans was "based on racism". Many felt "that an African-American should not be president", he said. Mr Carter made the point after Republican lawmaker Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" while Mr Obama was delivering an address on healthcare to Congress last week. Recent protests against Mr Obama's healthcare reform plans have included angry town hall meetings and a taxpayers' demonstration in Washington last weekend. Some have accused Mr Obama of tyranny and promised to "reclaim America". In comments to ABC, Mr Obama said race was a "volatile issue" and "it becomes hard for people to separate out race being a sort of part of the backdrop of American society versus race being a predominant factor in any given debate". "Are there some people who don't like me because of my race?" he said. "I'm sure there are. "Are there some people who voted for me only because of my race? There are probably some of those too. But he added that he thought some were "more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right. And I think that that's probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol." In a separate interview with CNN, Mr Obama said he did not think race was the "the overriding issue here". He also said he was not the first president to come up against angry protests. "The things that were said about FDR [Franklin Roosevelt] were pretty similar to the things that were said about me - that he was a communist, he was a socialist," Mr Obama said. "Things that were said about Ronald Reagan when he was trying to reverse some of the New Deal programs were pretty vicious as well." |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #8 Carter calls me a racist again I'm gonna plant my foot so far up his wrinkled ass his dentures are gonna be kicked out of his mouth. In fact, that applies to any liberal. Sounds like a 'public option' I could actually support. |
| Posted by: Woozle Uneter9007 2009-09-19 21:00 |
| #7 I guess this is how you transcend race -- your stooges call anyone who disagrees w/you a racist and you say "it's not me." "Transcending race" is a much more elegant phrase than "school-yard race baiting." |
| Posted by: regular joe 2009-09-19 18:44 |
| #6 consider the source, DV. To be called names by a walking human failure like Jimmy the C is a badge of honor |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-09-19 09:47 |
| #5 Carter calls me a racist again I'm gonna plant my foot so far up his wrinkled ass his dentures are gonna be kicked out of his mouth. In fact, that applies to any liberal. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2009-09-19 09:28 |
| #4 The unfortunate thing is that there still are some incidents of racism and other bigotry that still occur. There are far, far fewer than before, but they still happen. This constant "crying wolf" whenever the O-man doesn't get his way is only makes it worse for true victims of that kind of behavior. (Yeah, I know, like a bunch of narcissists are gonna care about someone else's problems.) |
| Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie 2009-09-19 08:49 |
| #3 Hence this damage control type of speech by Obama. It's only damage control when they exert efforts to keep the ship afloat and functioning. Here, they're trying to push the torpedo out of the hull, forgetting about the "leak" then staying topside to keep the ship pointed left. Damage control means Carter should have been told to STFU. Instead he was probably called to shoot his mouth off about "racism." We have three top democratic leaders, Pelosi, Carter and the woman from ACORN accusing an opposition group of racism, knowingly fanning the flames of racial passions, and not so much as a peep from the president that maybe those accusations were inappropriate to the current debate. We accuse republicans of using a "circular firing squad" but the democrats have one as well as they shoot outwards towards their constituencies. This all reinforces my belief that you can't be worried about personal liberties and not be worried about the federal budget. It takes a lot of your tax dollars to separate you from your personal liberties. Democrats need money and lots of it to pay for cops, judges, district attorneys, professorships, seminars, printed materials, radio and TV ads, the alpha and omega of every journalism product any tyrant needs to retain power and so on to convince the justice system that "teabaggers" are the real threat to America. And they don't like it when they are called on it. |
| Posted by: badanov 2009-09-19 08:10 |
| #2 "Mr Obama said he did not think race was the "the overriding issue here"." As predicted by me and many, many, others, the best sign that Obama and his agenda was in trouble was that his minions would push a meme that implied or outright said that ANYONE who opposed ANY part of his agenda for ANY reason was a proven racist. The script for this was written the day Obama was elected. The minute was chosen exactly when Carter uttered his surly hatespeech this week. This is a sign of desperation, and, as I also predicted, this response will not help Obama but will hasten his demise. He and his crowd obviously did not know that when they sent out Carter and others, they thought that would help and it didn't. Hence this damage control type of speech by Obama. This is boilerplate for the left, particularly the academic left, where the notion that all white people except for a few enlightend, chosen elite are born and inherent racists. There's an old joke from the early nineties that was fairly common around universities, that you could tell when a leftist was losing an arguement on facts when they were accusing their debate opponent of racism. Avoidance of generic prejudice and bigotry are no longer taught in our education industry, only specific condemnations of white racism, sexism, and homophobia. Black bigotry against whites, women's bigotry against men, gays referring to heterosexuals as "breeders", and, most importantly, the virulent bigotry against Christians that is pandemic in the education industry, are not mentioned or corrected or chided when present. This is all part of postmodern leftism, and those latter prejudices are either ignored or in some cases encouraged because after all, don't the people who possess them have very right to do so, given the great evil of whites and straights and capitalists and Christians? Sad and dysfunctional. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2009-09-19 06:02 |
| #1 So, Now it's Official, Criticise Obama and you're a RACIST. Moron. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-09-19 03:07 |