J's Cafe Nette

Archive for May 23rd, 2007

According to this article in The Hill 26 of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus have written the Democratic Presidential candidates, with the main targets being Senators Clinton, Obama (a member of the CBC) and former Senator John Edwards to ask them to reconsider having a debate on Fox News.

Black Caucus leaders sent the letter to the entire field of Democratic presidential candidates, but the primary targets were Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

The caucus has 43 members from 22 states, who together represent about 40 million Americans, an official with the group said. Seventeen members of the Black Caucus represent districts that are less than 50 percent African-American, said caucus Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), who argued that the issues at the debate will also be of interest to other minority constituencies, such as Hispanics.

“It’s not just a black thing,” Kilpatrick said.

Thompson said presidential debates often ignore issues that are important to minority voters.

“Nobody is talking about the disproportionate statistics that we have in this country as it relates to minority population,” Thompson said. “You can look at healthcare, you can look at education, you can look at employment, you can look at housing, you can look at lending. All those [statistics] show a very bad picture for many constituents we represent.

“So we think Democratic and Republican candidates alike should have an opportunity to say what they plan to [do to] level the playing field,” he added.

By framing their decision to skip the debate as a missed opportunity to communicate to an important Democratic constituency, caucus leaders are ratcheting up the political pressure on the Democratic front-runners.

When the CBC was looking for a network to work with them on a debate Fox News was the only one to respond.

I think after seeing how Fox News performed last week in the Republican debate as opposed to how NBC performed for the Democratic debate and the first Republican debate should calm the fears of the candidates as far as being fair. They will do follow-up questions and demand answers to their questions if someone strays away from the topic, based on last week’s performance, but they won’t be asking silly questions of the candidates.

Let’s see how this plays out, especially with Barack Obama. If he says yes then Senator Clinton and former Senator Edwards will have to join in and since they’re going to get some tough questions down the road (we hope) they might as well start now and state their positions.

Here’s one more interesting quote from the piece:

Left-leaning columnist E.J. Dionne wrote last month that Democrats were well within their rights.

“Tell me again: Why do Democrats have an obligation to participate in debates on Fox?” Dionne wrote. “I am an avid reader of conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. But if these two publications teamed up to sponsor a Democratic debate, would anyone accuse Edwards, Obama and Clinton of ‘blacklisting’ if the candidates said, ‘no thanks’?”

I think last week’s performance by the Fox News crew of Brit Hume, Wendell Goler and Chris Wallace did an outstanding job of being prepared and of handling the debate.

If you’re going to play baseball you can’t have softballs lobbed at you all the time.

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Here’s a pretty sobering article about a poll taken of Muslims in our own country.

The first nationwide survey of Muslim Americans revealed that more than a quarter of those younger than 30 say suicide bombings to defend Islam are justified, a fact that drowned out the poll’s kinder, gentler findings suggesting that the community is mainstream and middle class.

“There are trouble spots,” noted Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey of 1,050 adult Muslim Americans — two-thirds of whom were foreign-born — January to April. The results were released yesterday.

“We should be disturbed that 26 percent of these young people support an ideology in which the ends justify the means,” said Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

“But the survey also found that only 40 percent of the overall American Muslim population would even admit that Arabs were behind 9/11. They’re in denial, refusing to take moral responsibility, and the radicals will feed on this,” Dr. Jasser said.

Farid Senzai of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding said he had “concern” about evidence of youthful radicalism.

The revelation that some young American Muslims condone violent bombings led coverage from CBS News, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Detroit Free Press, the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations.

“I’m not surprised that the press picked up on the bad news, because that’s what sells. I’d like to see another ethnic group get asked the same question,” said Laila Al-Qatami of the District-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

OK then, let’s ask Jews, Catholics, Protestants of all branches, Hindus, Buddhists and any other religious group I’ve left out and see what their answers would be.

In addition we’ll ask all Italians, Irishmen, Japanese, Chinese, Latinos, American Indians, Indians from India and every other ethnic group that isn’t Arab or Muslim and compare notes. Bet you lose.

The point is, Laila Al-Aqtami, two wrongs don’t make a right and it was people of your faith who were asked and who answered the question.

Perhaps you’d better get to work teaching the peace in your “religion of peace” or we’ll likely see car bombs by your “peaceful” co-religionists here in America and it will be all our faults.

This is getting tiresome.

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newton has been a good blogging friend of mine since she and I were the only bloggers on Oh How I Love Jesus. She moved with me and my partners to HRP but continued to write on OHILJ until I shut it down earlier this year.

She has written an email to me that breaks my heart.

There is a lady from her church who has 3 children, the youngest I believe is seven years old. Her husband left her after the third child was born and she became a nurse to support her family.

Monday night she suffered a severe stroke and there is absolutely zero brain activity on the monitor. She is technically dead, but her eldest daughter, who is married and a mother of two, has full power of attorney and I assume full medical power of attorney, and cannot give up her hope that her mother will live, so she will not allow her mother to be taken off the machines that are keeping her alive.

I fully understand how this girl feels as I was in the same situation seven years ago, and I held out hope my mother would come out of it.

I finally realized she was between two worlds and had to go to one or the other and since she wasn’t strong enough to come back to us I told her to go with the Lord.

Making a decision to pull life-sustaining equipment from your parent or anyone you love is the hardest thing I’ve ever been involved in.

I know the heartbreak this daughter and the other children are feeling. Thankfully, a sister of the mother has arrived from New York and will hopefully will give them good advice and, along with Jesus, will be their rock.

I have known of people who have died even while on life-support and I ask if she is to die that we will all pray this is the case for her so her daughter will not have to carry the guilt and she will not be forced against her will to do it by the doctor as we were.

Sweet, kind-hearted newton sent this amendment to her original email and asked me to ask you folks to pray for her friend:

Her name is Karen. Karen V. Originally from Brooklyn, NY.

She is not famous, nor rich. But right now, in the Lord’s presence, she’s a superstar.

(Daniel 12:3)

Please pray for Karen and her family during this difficult time.

Update from newton

I was at church about two hours ago. The secretary there told me that, as of last night, the machines were turned off: her kidneys and liver were taken off her for transplant purposes.

No one, not even the pastor, has any idea as to what kind of funeral arrangements are to be done. Her ex-husband said he was going to do all of that. As of this morning, so far, he has done nothing.

May she rest in peace. It is not unusual to not have funeral arrangements made the morning after a death.

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Both of the photos below are taken by AP. I noticed the one of Harry Reid and wondered how in the world the photographer was situated in order to get this kind of shot.

Either he’s very short or Harry Reid is very tall in order for him to have gotten this particular shot naturally. Instead, I believe he was on the floor and looking up, but why publish a picture that doesn’t look in the right perspective?

Why would anyone publish this shot of anyone, let alone a former First Lady and presidential candidate? They make her look like a rabbit.

For the record I googled unflattering photos of GWB but all I found were articles and no photos. If you have any and are a blogger here please add them to this post, but only one because that’s all I’m showing of the other two.

Look for other prominent people in unflattering poses and let’s see what we come up with.

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Speech including airfare and travel: $55,000

Haircut: $400

Hypocricy: Priceless to other Democratic candidates

Story here.

I seriously doubt Edwards will be the Democratic nominee for president or the running mate this time as he didn’t do such a good job of being a running mate last time.

If he stays in the top three and things tighten up you can expect someone to bring up this episode.

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