Olbermann: Hillary Clinton and Racism

Anyway It seems Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy is to complain that Obama is popular because he is black or because he is male and has little to do with Obama's policies or his style or whatever her strategist can come up with. She seems also to be reaching out to Democrats who are not comfortable voting for a black man. There is something not quite right about all this as Olbermann points out.

Keith Olbermann- Hillary and Racism

" But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican.

As Shakespeare wrote, Senator, that way madness lies."




and check out article at New York Times:

Democrats Face Racial Issue Again
By Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny/ The New York Times

Thursday 13 March 2008

After the Democratic primary in South Carolina turned racially divisive in January, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama essentially declared a truce and put a stop to fighting between their camps. But this week, race has once again begun casting a pall over the battle between the two.

On Wednesday a close ally of Mrs. Clinton, Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984 who was on the Clinton finance committee, resigned from the campaign after being criticized by Mr. Obama's advisers, among others, for her recent comments that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position" as a leading presidential contender.

Ms. Ferraro did not disavow that remark. Mrs. Clinton, while calling it regrettable, did not break with her.

Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said he did not believe that there was "a directive in the Clinton campaign saying, 'Let's heighten the racial elements in the campaign.' I certainly wouldn't want to think that."

He said he was puzzled at how, after more than a year of campaigning, race and sex are at the forefront as never before.

"I don't want to deny the role of race and gender in our society," he said. "They're there, and they're powerful. But I don't think it's productive."

... the Rev. Al Sharpton, the black political leader in New York and a former presidential candidate, who questioned whether Mrs. Clinton's campaign was keeping the issue alive as a way to win white votes in Pennsylvania.

In addition to Ms. Ferraro's remark, Mr. Sharpton cited Mrs. Clinton's decision not to fire her top ally in Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell, for saying in February that some white voters there were "probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate."

"When you hear the lack of total denunciation of Ferraro, when you hear Rendell saying there are whites who will never vote for a black, one has to wonder if the Clinton campaign has a Pennsylvania strategy to appeal to voters on race," Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. "I would hope Mrs. Clinton would make it clear that she is not doing that."

And Senator McCain seems to be playing the Islamophobic card so McCain and Hillary appear to be appealing to the worst in America rather than the best. I guess they feel sympathy for all those disenfranchised racists and bigots . Is that over-stating the case let's take a look:

McCain's Spiritual Guide/Destroy Islam

Televangelist Rod Parsley, a key McCain ally in Ohio, has called for eradicating the "false religion." Will the GOP presidential candidate renounce him?

By David Corn
13/03/08 "Mother Jones" -- -- Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

Parsley is not shy about his desire to obliterate Islam. In Silent No More, he notes—approvingly—that Christopher Columbus shared the same goal: "It was to defeat Islam, among other dreams, that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492…Columbus dreamed of defeating the armies of Islam with the armies of Europe made mighty by the wealth of the New World. It was this dream that, in part, began America." He urges his readers to realize that a confrontation between Christianity and Islam is unavoidable: "We find now we have no choice. The time has come." And he has bad news: "We may already be losing the battle. As I scan the world, I find that Islam is responsible for more pain, more bloodshed, and more devastation than nearly any other force on earth at this moment."

Parsley claims that Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" predicated on "deception." The Muslim prophet Muhammad, he writes, "received revelations from demons and not from the true God." And he emphasizes this point: "Allah was a demon spirit." Parsley does not differentiate between violent Islamic extremists and other followers of the religion:



There are some, of course, who will say that the violence I cite is the exception and not the rule. I beg to differ. I will counter, respectfully, that what some call "extremists" are instead mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam.



The spirit of Islam, he maintains, is one of hostility. He asserts that the religion "inspired" the 9/11 attacks. He bemoans the fact that in the years after 9/11, 34,000 Americans "have become Muslim" and that there are "some 1,209 mosques" in America. Islam, he declares, is a "faith that fully intends to conquer the world" through violence. The United States, he insists, "has historically understood herself as a bastion against Islam," but "history is crashing in upon us."

At the end of his chapter on Islam, Parsley asks, "Are we a Christian nation? I say yes." Without specifying what actions should be taken to eradicate the religion, he essentially calls for a new crusade.

Parsley, who refers to himself as a "Christocrat," is no stranger to controversy. In 2007, the grassroots organization he founded, the Center for Moral Clarity, called for prosecuting people who commit adultery. In January, he compared Planned Parenthood to Nazis. In the past Parsley's church has been accused of engaging in pro-Republican partisan activities in violation of its tax-exempt status.

and : US Racial Discrimination Must Be Remedied, UN Says
Louisiana Weekly/ Monday 10 March 2008

Post-Katrina housing rights violations also cited.

On Friday, March 7, in Geneva, Switzerland, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued its Concluding Observations charging the U.S. to do more to remedy the effects of racial discrimination in housing and other areas.

The Observations came after the formal review of the U.S.'s report to the Committee under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. This is a required procedure for all signatories to the treaty, which the U.S. ratified in 1994.

During the oral review, Committee member Dilip Lahiri of India recalled, "When I was in Chicago, a journalist who visited then-apartheid South Africa came back and said, 'You don't need the South African laws to achieve the [same] segregation, the discrimination in the United States.' Residential segregation ... is a persistent factor and while programs have been undertaken, it is obvious that there is a problem and some sort of a vigorous proactive action needs to be taken to show some progress on the ground."

and so it goes,
GORD.