April 14^th- more on elitism:

In perhaps the most ridiculous part of the show, Joy shares her frustrations:

Joy: You know what really bothers me now- they are calling Obama the elitist. First of all, I looked up the term “elitist” for us and it’s a group, or class of persons, or a member of such a group or class enjoying superior intellectual, social or economic status.  Now, first of all he was raised by a single mother

No, he was not raised by a single mother- his parents were married until his father abandoned them to go to Harvard to pursue graduate work. Then his grandparents and mother took care of him until his mother remarried when he was about 6 years old. Why do liberals continue to try to use stereotypical images to paint Obama as a person he isn't. Oh, silly me- it's because what he isn't is more politically attractive than what he actually is...  

Joy continues: the guy just finished paying off his student loans

This does not mean he couldn’t have afforded to pay them back more quickly, it simply means that he chose to spread his payments out over 15 or 20 years, which is what all smart people do. These loans are usually federally subsidized at an interest rate of less than 5% which means that people can actually be better off not paying off this particular type of loan quickly. 

By the way, he and his wife never have said what their student loan payments were.  I would guess that their payments were less than $1000 per month and that they could have paid them off a long time ago if they had wanted to. 

There is no rule that says wealthy people have to pay these loans back faster.

By the way, since the Obamas like to use the fact that they only recently paid off their loans as evidence of them being like regular folks- it would be interesting for someone to ask just how much their payments had been…

Joy continues: Hillary Clinton and John McCain are both worth over $100 million dollars

First, none of these people are currently in the poor house- who is she kidding.  It is true that McCain has made some good money but it is his wife who inherited the mass fortune. Hillary Clinton also is no pauper but I remember not too long ago when the whole country was asked to support her husband’s legal defense fund because they weren’t multi millionaires. Since Bill Clinton left office, the Clintons have accumulated an unbelievable amount of money- giving speeches is very lucrative for some people.

Joy goes on: so how is he the elitist exactly?

Did she read or listen to the definition she just read to us? The first descriptive used to describe an elitist was….INTELLECTUAL. Obama is an intellectual elitist who thinks many of us, particularly we conservatives, are just too close-minded or stupid to understand the real solutions for our society- limit or take away the rights granted by our Constitution, promote a large federal government and raise taxes to redistribute the wealth accumulated by the working people.

I know there was a big time span from the beginning of the quote to the end but really…

April 14^th goes on:

EH: I think people took it they seemed as though- and this is not me speaking- there are things he has said that I find more disconcerting to be perfectly honest than this - but I think that what people grabbed onto was that generalization and saying that “these people” -they-separating himself from them- Hillary Clinton’s camp is now saying he is separating himself from middle America and capitalizing on it

It is very sad that EH either does not see - or is unwilling to honestly state that she sees- what really happened and why Obama made the statements he did:  Obama was talking to a supportive crowd in one of the most liberal, far-left cities in the country. He thought he could speak candidly.  He was explaining why he was having trouble in Pennsylvania because he needs to ensure that people don’t start to worry about his poor polling numbers in PA. He wants to ensure that those at the fundraiser left motivated to tell their friends why HE should be the nominee and why Clinton needed to drop out.

He wasn’t being supportive or understanding of poor people in Middle America, he was trying to explain that it doesn’t matter that he has trouble with them- they are ignorant and unimportant and he can win without them.

April 9, 2008

Following up on the April 8th show the women, sans Barbara, jump back into Petreus on the Iraq War on the Hill:

Joy- I could hardly make heads or tails.. I don’t know who to believe. I never believe the Bush administration then these guys work for him so all of a sudden ipso facto I don’t believe anything they are saying

Nothing like having an open mind...

EH tries to offer an explanation of how believable Petreus seems to be

Joy responds: But first he said we can’t get out because there is too much violence now the violence has allegedly subsided and we still can’t get out. When are we going to get out- when it’s perfect there? When we have a Jeffersonian Democracy operating there? When are we leaving?

Yesterday Joy and Barbara were all about how the surge hasn't worked and there is still too much violence. Today she acknowledges the violence has allegedly subsided. Out! She demands! Out!

I was impressed she threw out "Jeffersonian Democracy! I am all for this criterion...

EH: When they see its safe- when it won’t create more

Joy, interrupting: You know what it’s like? He kept saying, I think it was Levin or one of the Senators- he kept saying to Petreus “well when, in 3 months?” “I can’t say” In 4 months?” “I don’t know” It’s like pornography- I’ll know it when I see it.

EH: Joy, honestly- you can’t say, you can’t say in any sort of combat mission “This is the day we’re gonna leave” Do you want to give your enemy that indication?

Good job, Elisabeth! No withdrawal date! Imagine if Jefferson and Washington and all of our Founding Fathers would have said "You know what- if this declaring independence thing hasn't worked by, let's say October 1st, 1781 Cornwallis wouldn't have surrendered his army and the chips would have fallen in a completly different way. Oh well- that would've been too bad.

We should be thankful Joy is not a military strategist...

Joy- It’s been years and years and years. They need to come up with a plan. And this guy Michael Ware on CNN, who has been in Iraq for the past 6 years- he’s the only one I actually do believe because he’s really been there, and he tells you the truth and he says that none of them address the real issue of how we’re going to keep Iran out of Iraq.   

In the words of my daughter- OMG!!!! She finally seems to have identified the actual reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place!!! IRAN!!!! Does she understand that Iran is the real problem in the Middle East? And that the hope is that if we can create a foothold for freedom in the Middle East through stabilizing Iraq, the good people of Iran- who live under the threat of persecution by lunatic Fundamentalist Muslim Imams- will rise up and overthrow their terror supporting government?

Joy goes on:   That’s the real issue. That requires a lot of diplomacy and a lot of talks at high levels.  The Bush Administration is not capable of dealing with Iran. We have to wait for the next President.

Elisabeth trying to interject: Obama was saying bring Iran into the equation

Whoopi corrects Elisabeth: I don’t think that’s what he said. I think he said he would speak to Iran.

Sometimes, I think Whoopi isn't paying attention because she ignores so many ridiculous things that are said. But then her politics come through as she quickly jumps in to sure she corrects what she thinks are incorrect statements about Obama.

Click here to read how Obama plans to get tough on Iran.

If Obama and his supporters are so naive as to believe that a little economic pressure on Iran is going to scare its government into changing its ways, well then he obviously didn't learn much from his extensive foreign affairs experience during his three week visit to Pakistan in 1981. (click here to read about  his in depth knowledge)

I cannot believe these women...

On Monday, the women continued their “Hot Topics” by delving into whether or not progress has been made for people of color in the United States. I apologize for their lack of clarity but really, I have no control over it...

Whoopi asked whether or not, 40 years after Martin Luther King’s death, there are still little things that people need to talk about?

BW: Obama has talked about race the most- Barack Obama, when he was talking about Rev. Wright and where he said he really disagreed with him is that there has been so much progress all over the country…there was a statement that MLK said in 1967 “I’m sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist either consciously or unconsciously.”  Do you think that is still true?

Joy thinks we’ve made progress.

EH puts on her deep thinking face and says that people just hide it better now and wonders if maybe that’s worse…

If all that has been published about the Jena situation is accurate, all in America should be outraged. A quick note to SS: there is a least a decent possibility that some if not much of what she has heard about the Jena, LA events were distorted by activists whose goal is to promote racial conflict.  Perhaps she should read the article at http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1024/p09s01-coop.html to learn there may be more to the Jena story than she knows…

Whoopi acknowledges that progress has been made but then expresses concern about the ongoing economic challenges in the black community and “There is still a lot of problems that we need to deal with to balance it out.”

How exactly would she propose we balance out the economic problems in the Black community? Are these issues Whoopi alludes to really connected to race or are they socio-economic realities faced by people of all races? There are far too many young people of all races moving towards adulthood whose parents failed them.  Perhaps their parents were too young, or uneducated, or connected to or influenced by a drug culture. Perhaps their parents demonstrated a limited desire to lead a “better” life. There is a growing segment of our society that accepts living conditions that most of us wouldn’t dream of tolerating. There are even those people who acknowledge their choices are counterproductive to living a healthy, stable life but decide to accept the consequences of those decisions. Many of these people face the ongoning challenges related to a fractured familial support system.

What can we do to stop young people of all races from making choices that almost guarantee they will live a life of poverty?  What can we do to ensure that young children of every race start school fed, ready to learn and well-rested? What can we do to ensure that parents living in poverty do all they can to offer their children support at home and access to the tools, often available through schools, social service agencies and non-profit groups, to become successful adults? What can we do to ensure that all of our daughters grow up to believe they deserve to be loved and respected? To ensure they will have the strength to recognize and turn away from all who would do them any harm? How can we ensure that our sons grow up to believe in their ability to contribute to society and their families? To believe that they are important? That they must respect their neighbors, their girlfriends, their wives, their children?

The truth is we cannot force people to make good decisions and society in general has made the decision to not hold parents accountable for the educational, environmental and developmental neglect of their children. As long as individuals are allowed, in fact encouraged by a patronizing government system, to behave in ways that harm children there will be no solution to these problems.

Whoopi seems to suggest that the government needs to make amends. Neither governments nor communities build strong families.  Strong people create strong families. Strong families work to build strong communities. We have turned our system upside down and we need to begin to right it again.

Whoopi then says: And I think the idea that people are finally able to say, without getting jumped, “yes this is how I feel about x, y and z” that’s a huge leap to me and for that I am grateful to Barack Obama.

Sherri chimes in with: Martin Luther King, they called him a rabble rouser too.

She then quotes him, , saying “And you know what: a nation that put as many Japanese in a concentration camp as they did in the 40s will put Black people in a concentration camp and I am not interested in any concentration camp. I’ve been on a reservation too long now.”

Although I haven’t found this quote anywhere but in a LA Times story and a couple of blogs, it seems that, if he spoke these lines, they were spoken towards the end of his life, in a sermon. My guess is that one of her assistants forwarded her the LATimes article http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dyson4apr04,0,1840793.story  or one of the 2 blog posts that quoted it.  She, in an effort to be a good talking head, copied it onto her little card and read it dutifully… It seems that putting forth this line, compared to the endless quotes http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.   (click here for some examples) about nonviolence and the rejection of anger and hate, to justify the years of hate spewed by Wright is very disrespectful of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In short, Obama has found success for a simple reason: The Democratic Party decided in 2004 to push Obama as a national candidate. While a relative unknown, he was given an incredible opportunity to speak at the national convention, setting him up for his Senate run in 2006.  His speech opened the floodgates for donations and media attention. Obama had not earned that speaking slot- he was selected because those in power thought he would appeal to the Democratic audience.  That’s politics.

Hillary Clinton would have never been elected to the Senate if she were not the wife of Bill Clinton. That is reality.

If you added the accomplishments of Clinton and Obama together and then doubled them, they still wouldn’t equal those of Condoleezza Rice before she became the Secretary of State.  Rice did not rise to power because of her race- she built a career that did not culminate in being a law professor- she was Stanford University’s Provost for six years and oversaw a budget of $1.5 billion and 1400 faculty members. (Let us not pretend either that Stanford University is a conservative institution or that Rice could have successfully handled this position without an amazing amount of talent.)

Neither H. Clinton nor Obama have any executive experience or achieved any accomplishments that seem worthy of the most important job in the world. How sad that in the United States, today, nearly half of our country seems unable to tell the difference between merit and media hype…

Joy then, in her infinite wisdom throws out: What is the Ku Klux Klan going to do in this election?

Whoopi- trying to sound intellectual asserts that she can’t understand why they would do this because “It would be quite transparent.”

Elisabeth tries to correct the record: Don’t shortchange her either in terms of qualifications.  She’s been a woman who is incredibly powerful and I’m sure has a lot of information than maybe another candidate would in terms of the Democratic, I mean Republican, Vice Presidential seat. She’s been there, I mean look, if you’re going to take away from her qualifications I don’t think you can just say “It’s good because you would have a Black person and a woman.”

A brief biography of Dr. Rice- who has a master’s degree from Notre Dame and her Ph.D. from the University of Denver- can be found by clicking here.

I now remember why I started to blog on these people’s “Views” and am sorry I stopped…