What does a Missouri Car Dealer and precedented presidential visit to Africa have in common?
Time for a little CNN smackdown.
Don Lemon seems to want to perpetuate the worldwide Obama euphoria and media-generated image-making. However…
Watch CNN’s Lemon get his Obama tire deflated:
Transcript:
DON LEMON, ANCHOR CNN NEWSROOM: Nkepile, I was watching you yesterday on the “Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer when President Obama was arriving, and they were doing the dancing, and all of the people who were running up to him. For a western leader, I know when presidents come over there, they are usually warmly received. But for a western leader, have you ever seen anything like this? Is this unprecedented?
NKEPILE MABUSE, CORRESPONDENT: It’s not unprecedented. When President Bush was here, you will remember, in February, there were people who were drumming, there were dances, and President Bush joined some of them. So, it’s not unprecedented. This is a truly African welcome that is given to anybody whether they are from Africa or anywhere else in the world, Don.
LEMON: So, they welcome everyone. It doesn’t matter. That’s just part of how the people do it, right?
MABUSE: Indeed, Don.
Here’s Wizbang:
As President Obama makes his way to Africa with some forceful policy goals Reuters is asking if Obama is Africa’s savior. Umm, no. That would be George W. Bush.
I posted on George Bush’s contribution to the continent of Africa.
Have gun, will travel….or is it the other way around? (Hat tip: Ed Rasimus)
Missouri car dealer offers free AK-47’s with the purchase of a new truck:
Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors in Butler, says he knows people will be bothered by the promotion.
But not to worry, Muller is not handing out free guns. Instead, he will give buyers a voucher to use at a gun store after they obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon.
The AK-47 is an upgrade on a previous promotion in which Muller gave away vouchers for the price of a Caltec pistol.
The retail value of an AK-47 is $450, but Muller says customers can spend their voucher on the gun of their choice.
Check out the major pwnage:
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
Small slaveholders around this time (and before) had freed thousands of slaves.
The freeing was still a gradual process, and to Carter’s credit. But it took him another decade to act upon his “conscience”, even though the House of Delegates in Viriginia passed the Act to Authorize the Manumission of Slaves in 1782.
Carter did not have the responsibilities of president and I still say you’re judging the leaders of this country too harshly. He did not face Washington nor Lincoln’s challenges (I am in the middle of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation by Professor Allen C. Guelzo). Both the abolitionists and the anti-slavery proponents (who opposed the abolitionist movement) deserve credit for moving this nation in the direction of emancipation and the realization of our country’s ideals for all. It was an evolutionary process. States with significant slave populations eventually followed, figuring out ways to finance emancipation on a large, public scale. Sorry if we did not move fast enough for you.
Yes, and……? How does this make Jefferson a hypocrite when he had legitimate concerns regarding whether simply freeing slaves would not just as well amount to “abandonment”? The concerns Jefferson had were real concerns.
How did Carter’s 450-485 freed slaves fare?
Not all slaves fared as badly; however, the concerns men like Washington and Jefferson had were real concerns in how to proceed responsibly in bringing about an end to an institution that had strong inroads in human cultures throughout the world.
I say they dealt with complexities you are trying to ignore, in criticizing them for not supposedly “following through their rhetoric with action”.
I say they dealt with complexities you are trying to ignore, in criticizing them for not supposedly “following through their rhetoric with action”.
No wonder you’re called “Wordsmith” ..well said………..you could take ALL that all of you have said here in this thread and that’s exactly the right summation, Sparky.
@Wordsmith
The quote I used from Jefferson isn’t to do with the concern over the slaves but concern for themselves as the enslavers if they released their slaves. No doubt in terms of not just financial but also fear of retribution.
“but none chose to return to slavery.”
See there’s the real heart of the issue. Whatever concerns those enslavers have for their slaves welfare, genuine or not, it is truimphed by the slaves own will for freedom. No one should enslave another human being. You can talk about 40,000 years of history of slavery if you like but that was not a constant situation where slavery was happening throughout year on year, to that degree and at every part of the globe. In England – although there was a limited amount of slavery in Roman, Viking & Saxon times etc – it had pretty much died out within the country by the 17th century for many centuries. But by all means compare the US to the Empire Rome or the Arabs – if that’s the appropriate standards you think 18th Century US can only achieve. However Romans and Arabs didn’t declared the following…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It would have been more honest if Jefferson had inserted white between all and men. So in the same way that Michelle Malkin can hold up Obama for his admin’s corruption judging him by his own standards – it is fair game to judge the founding fathers by their own standards. This doesn’t take any credit away from them in regards to their progressive steps BUT neither should we pretend there isn’t a significant gap between their rhetoric and actions.
The litmus test for a slave’s welfare is simply to ask them whether they want to stay or go. It’s for them to choose. Now of course that doesn’t mean a mass release of all slaves overnight – so it could happen gradually over a decade or so. The thing is to put your feet in their shoes – if you were enslaved – would you like the opportunity to leave – even if it could mean even more hardship – or would you want to be patronised by those who believe it is in your best interest to stay put? Americans are rightly independent – wanting to live free or die. It is shame those sentiments weren’t given over to those with black faces at the time.
Consider the below…
“During the War of 1812, British Royal Navy commanders of the blockading fleet, based at the Bermuda dockyard, were given instructions to encourage the defection of American slaves by offering freedom, as they did during the Revolutionary War. Thousands of black slaves went over to the Crown with their families, and were recruited into the (3rd Colonial Battalion) Royal Marines on occupied Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake. A further company of colonial marines was raised at the Bermuda dockyard, where many freed slaves, men women and children, had been given refuge and employment. It was kept as a defensive force in case of an attack.
These former slaves fought for Britain throughout the Atlantic campaign, including the attack on Washington D.C.and the Louisiana Campaign, and most were later re-enlisted into British West India regiments, or settled in Trinidad in August, 1816, where seven hundred of these ex-marines were granted land (they reportedly organised themselves in villages along the lines of military companies). Many other freed American slaves were recruited directly into existing West Indian regiments, or newly created British Army units. A few thousand freed slaves were later settled at Nova Scotia by the British.
Slaveholders primarily in the South experienced considerable “loss of property” as tens of thousands of slaves escaped to British lines or ships for freedom, despite the difficulties. The planters’ complacency about slave “contentment” was shocked by seeing slaves would risk so much to be free.[63] Afterward, when some freed slaves had been settled at Bermuda, slaveholders such as Major Pierce Butler of South Carolina tried to persuade them to return to the United States, to no avail.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#cite_note-62
Clearly given a choice – slaves were willing to risk everything for freedom. Again the US was built on freedom – it shouldn’t of taken over 80 years after the Declaration of Independence to get to the point where slavery was stopped. That time period wasn’t primarily due to the concerns of the enslavers for their slaves – but because the unwillingness by many to stop the misery and exploitation of slavery.
WORDSMITH,,this is a post that has to be preserve thank you bye 🙄