Part 1) Jesse Helms died on July 4th. The editorials on Helms life &death ranged from "he was the hero of freedom" to "that bigot should've died earlier"
The best commentary on Jesse Helms life anddeath was written by Juan Williams. Williams is an African-American centrist who has been accused of being a "conservative" for not going along with the Jesse Jackson/ Jeremiah Wright agenda!
However, Williams is criticizing Helms for being a phony "freedom fighter", and a bigot!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121581690915747421.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
In death, Sen. Jesse Helms is being honored as a conservative hero. My question is why?
Yes, the six-term senator defined right-wing political stands against communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and the former Soviet Union. Yes, he blocked international treaties that limited U.S. sovereignty. And, yes, he was masterful in his use of direct mail to stir contributions to conservative causes. But "Senator No" also created an angry, scolding, close-minded face for the modern GOP, exactly opposite to the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan.
Helms did not invite people into the party; to the contrary, he seemed to delight in excluding people and played on the anxieties of rural, older Southern whites. But if the modern Republican Party is to thrive it has to get out the welcome mat for young people, specifically the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population: Hispanics and Asians, as well as younger blacks who are more likely than their elders to be politically independent.
Today's GOP needs white men with college degrees and suburban white women with education, careers and children. Helms was never comfortable with this crowd; his worldview grew out of the experiences of a Depression-era young, white man from North Carolina. And he was too comfortable with the ordered world of racial segregation he knew as a child.
To be sure, for Helms the essence of North Carolina values was keeping taxes low, and fighting against big government. That is a great message. It won him a base of support.
But that base was rural working-class voters and white suburban male voters. He rallied this base by letting everyone know he disliked Chapel Hill intellectuals -- the kind of people who protested for equal rights for blacks and challenged U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He showed no compassion for gays coming out of the closet and women who wanted abortion rights; instead choosing to make them demons threatening family values. And he made blunt use of racial politics.
[skipped paragraphs]
Helms also had an answer to charges that he played racial politics. Helms told me that he had never spoken before the NAACP in North Carolina simply because the group always endorsed Democrats so there was no political benefit to addressing their convention. But he added he regularly met with black constituents who needed individual help from their home-state senator. His opposition to affirmative action, he explained, was a matter of his belief that the best qualified people should always get the job. He did not have much to say about his opposition to the King holiday, except that he was suspicious of people who stirred up racial protests. [pablo's note: those racial protests happened because of punks like Jesse Helms]Even though I am disturbed by the Radical Left (and the Democrats who pander to them), the reason why I never joined the Republican Party was because of people like Jesse Helms. Helms is a morality fascist and panders to racists & gay-bashers!
This was all done with a sly wink. Helms was smart enough to know he was dancing around with rationalizations, simply for political expediency. He was holding on to the past, even as his state and the nation was changing. Today, North Carolina is a state where a black man can win the Democratic primary for president.
Republican leaders in the Tar Heel State and nationally would be wise to tip their hats to Jesse Helms as a man of the distant past who lived long beyond his political era. But the greatest wisdom will be to resist any temptation to make a hero out of him. The demographic shifts sweeping America mean that the key to building a successful 21st-century GOP will be a decisive turn away from Helms's use of the politics of exclusion.
Even many Republicans are repulsed by Jesse Helms! There's a reason why John McCain isn't following the Jesse Helms strategy! Neither did George W. Bush! (and neither Republican governors like California's Arnold Schwarzenegger or Hawaii's Linda Lingle)
But I suspect Helms last few victories had MORE to do with his ability to bring pork barrel projects to North Carolina, and LESS to do with his ultra-conservative ideology!
Part 2) Now for the other Jesse--- Jesse Jackson.
While waiting for an interview to start, Jackson was whispering to the guy sitting next to him about Barack Obama. Jackson claimed Obama was "talking down to black people" and then said he wanted to "cut [Obama's] nuts off"
Cut his nuts off?
Here's Mitch Albom's commentary on that!
http://jewishworldreview.com/0708/albom071408.php3
And if you don't think Jackson is worried about Obama eroding his power base, why was he moved to say, "I want to cut his n—-s off." You don't say that when you disagree with someone's philosophy.
You say that when you perceive a threat.
Jackson feels envy toward's Obama for being the new unofficial leader of the African-American community!
And what is this "Obama was talking down to black people"?
Obama was speaking out against fathers ditching their family, fathers not paying child support, fathers not being there for their kids.
While Obama was addressing the pervasiveness of absent fathers in the African-American community, it is a problem that affects other cultural groups of all races!
This reminds me of Reverend Jesse Jackson having an affair with his employee, getting her pregnant, and getting sued for child support payment! That was in 2001!
That was the begginning of the end for Jesse Jackson. Just the year before (2000), Jesse Jackson had a very high status, being the main guy drumming up support for then- Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore!
However, after the news of Jackson's impregnating a woman through an extra-marital affair, many church-going African-Americans were offended! While no man is perfect, they expected better from a reverend.
It got so bad, that even the gangsta rap pioneer Ice Cube was giving Jesse Jackson a moral lecture on Westside Connection's "Lights Out"
http://www.kovideo.net/lyrics/w/Westside-Connection/Lights-Out.html
So you can tell Samuel L. I'ma keep ac'in
You can even tell that xxxxxxxxxxxx Jesse Jackson
Pay your child suport, keep your payments up
Put a rubber on and don't xxxx wit us
Part 3)
The Obama speech on absent fathers remind me of Bill Cosby!
It was a few years ago that legendary African-American comedian Bill Cosby was speaking out against irresponsible parents. His speech-making tour was criticized as a "Blame the Poor Tour"!
As a person of Mexican-American ancestry, I say the Mexican-American also needs it's own version of Bill Cosby, and it also need it's own version of the so-called "Blame the Poor Tour"
Someone in the Latino community needs to speak up about the problems within the Latino community, including
1)the high school drop-out rate (highest of all racial groups in the US). Some blame the language barrier. Remember, many Asian immigrants also face the language barrier, but they don't drop-out at the same level of Latinos in the US! Even US born Latinos (who speak mostly English) drop out at high rates!
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22692
http://www.centrohispano.org/_pdf/Latinos%20in%20highschool.pdf
2) the high level of Latino youth joining gangs. Too many of us are wasting their potential in violent crime instead of studying and trying to successful in legit ventures! And it's mostly the ones born in the US who are involved in violent crime
3) the hate crimes commited by Latinos against African-Americans and other groups!
It is known that the Mexican Mafia has declared war against African-Americans!
It was only last year when Latino gang members in the Harbor Gateway community in Los Angeles were targeting anyone of African-American ancestry for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They even shot an innocent 14-year-old girl. Maybe those murderers were too cowardly to fight the Bloods or Crips, so they targeted unarmed citizens
http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2007/march30-07/gangs.htm
http://www.infowars.com/articles/immigration/mexican_gangs_ethnic_cleansing_blacks_in_la.htm
If there's anyone who needs to be castrated, it's those racist killers associated with the Mexican Mafia!
4) the high rate of alcoholism within the Latino community! Too many of us are involved in drunkeness, and the Latino community has the highest rate of drunk driving!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-10-hispanic-dui_N.htm
According to the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center, 7.04% of Hispanic drivers involved in crashes in the state in 2005 were suspected of driving while intoxicated. That compares with 2.82% of whites in crashes and 2.29% of African-Americans, according to Eric Rodgman, a researcher at the center. Most of the Hispanics involved in crashes are young men, he says.
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We need someone in the Latino community to be blunt on those issues the same way Bill Cosby is blunt with his fellow African-Americans!
We can't blame it all on the "white man", "Anglos", or "gringos"!
Yes, we must continue to stand up to divisive bigots like Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Michelle Malkin or Rod Tam !
But too many disfunctions within ghetto Latino communities (commonly called "barrios") have nothing to do with the anti-immigration fascists!
It isn't "blame the victim", "blame the poor" or "making the white racist smile"! It's being blunt about what's going on and ringing the alarm!
Too many Latinos lives are wasting in dropping out, gang violence, committing hate crimes and drunkeness! Someone needs to say something!
