"In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you," Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate. "No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years"
Dole assures McClellan that he won't read the book -- "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job"
"That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively," Dole concludes. "You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"
After 20 years Obama was just about to get up and walk out of the door in protest of Wright’s demagoguery but don’t you know it, the old man goes and retires.
To come full circle with the quote from his speech that I found so irritating on Tuesday, if Obama sincerely believes the great national conversation on race can’t wait a moment longer, why didn’t he use the bully pulpit of being a presidential candidate to start it last year? Why now, if it’s not just a cynical attempt to distract attention from his own scandal? The obvious answer: Because to force a discussion of race then would have it made too easy for Hillary to ghettoize him as a “black candidate” before the primaries. He held off to preserve his chances. That’s fine, but contrast his approach to race with McCain’s approach to Iraq. As far back as eleven months ago, before the surge results were in and doom awaited any candidate who dared take a hawkish line, Maverick was telling audiences that he’d rather lose the election than lose the war. The issue came first, his own political ambitions came second. There’s a little character comparison worth mulling. And since we’ve already had one exit question today that’ll be asked forever, here’s another: If the Wright thing had never blown up, would Obama have ever delivered this allegedly urgently important, historically significant meditation on race? You think?
Michael Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP. Here's his response to Obama's speech:
I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.
Well, I am black, and I can't relate to a "black experience" that shields and explains old-style black ministers who rant and rave about supposed racial differences and about how America ought to be damned.
Don’t tell me words don’t matter.
‘I have a dream.’ Just words?
‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words?
‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words? Just speeches?
New Barack:
'God damn America.' Just words.
'US government created Aids, supplied drugs to our community.' Just words.
'US of KKKA.' Just words.
'What we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing.' Just words.
'Until now, I was never proud of my country.' Just words from my wife.
"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."
Wow. And Imus didn't even claim that the AIDS virus had been unleashed by the government to commit genocide against the black population. Harsh, Barack. Very harsh.
OK, so Kwame's problems aren't just about his affair and perjury; it turns out that there's also possible favors for friends in city contracting, the infamous Manoogian Mansion stripper party is back, and by gum if this doesn't also have a whiff of murder about it:
A retired Detroit Police Department clerk came forward Monday to say she saw a police report in 2002 in which stripper Tamara Greene described being attacked by Carlita Kilpatrick, wife of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, during a party at the Manoogian Mansion.
The court affidavit by former clerk Joyce Carolyn Rogers of Troy marks the first time a Detroit police employee has stated that a report on the long-rumored party and assault exists.
Rogers told the Free Press she came forward on the advice of her psychiatrist.
"According to the report, the mayor's wife walked into a room and witnessed Ms. Greene touching Mayor Kilpatrick in a manner that upset the mayor's wife," Rogers, 65, said in the affidavit. "The report further states that the mayor's wife witnessed this, left the room and returned with a wooden object in her hand and began assaulting Ms. Greene."
The report indicated Greene was taken to a hospital because she was injured, Rogers said. "It was clear to me as a clerk working in records that Ms. Greene wanted to press charges against Carlita Kilpatrick," Rogers said in the affidavit.
It's a mystery that never had a definitive answer, the story of a Detroit stripper known as Strawberry who was killed in a hail of gunfire while sitting in a car with her boyfriend in the predawn darkness of April 30, 2003.
Since then, Detroit police and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick have combated persistent rumors and lawsuit allegations that Tamara Greene was killed because she danced at a wild party at the Manoogian Mansion.
Despite repeated denials by the mayor and a state investigation that dismissed the claims as urban legend, the story has persisted and is being fueled by fresh allegations raised by a former homicide detective as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Greene's 14-year-old son.
In a 10-page affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, former Lt. Alvin Bowman says he believes Greene, 27, was killed by a Detroit cop and that police officials derailed his homicide investigation.
"I suspected that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer," Bowman said in the document.
Spend a few moments scrolling through the Detroit Free Press archive of Kilpatrick scandal-related coverage and your jaw will drop. Considering that Kwame is just the latest in a long line of lousy officials in Detroit, it's really no surprise that a once-great city has been reduced to a hellhole. This is the sort of thing that happens when the politics of a city become entirely dominated by race, bad economics, and corruption.
Michigan Central Station, Abandoned - Corktown, Detroit
Unfortunately, he doesn't appear to have a brain. Last night, he gave his annual State of the City address and had this to say about the sex and perjury scandal that he has, through his own actions, mired himself in:
And finally tonight, and this may be the most talked-about part of this speech after laying out all of that, but I feel that I cannot leave this auditorium with my wife and my sons sitting there without addressing this issue. In the past 30 days, I've been called a n------, a n----- more than any time in my entire life. In the past three days, I've received more death threats than I have in my entire administration. I've heard these words before, but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children. I have to say this because it's very personal to me. I don't believe that a Nielsen rating is worth the life of my children or your children. This unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality has to stop. And it's seriously time, we've never been here before and I don't care if they cut the TV off, we've never been in a situation like this before. Where you can say anything, do anything, have no facts, no research, no nothing and you can launch a hate-driven, bigoted assault on a family.
I humbly ask members of council, I humbly ask the business community, I humbly ask the religious community, I humbly ask the brothers and sisters of the city of Detroit, I humbly ask we say 'No more' together. I humbly ask that we say "No more' together.
Give the man credit for that greatest of modern Democrat virtues, audacity, but no more credit than that. I find it somewhat hard to believe that Kilpatrick is being flooded with racist hate mail threatening him and his family, but then again, who knows. Perhaps there is a significant cadre of racist morons out there who simply can't figure out that this case is about race about as much as Bill Clinton's impeachment was about sex - specifically, not at all. It's about perjury, lawbreaking, character, and the fitness of an executive to lead a city or the country. For Kilpatrick to play the race card in order to weasel out of the consequences of his actions is laughable and pathetic. "Unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality"? What, for reporting what you clearly did and demanding that you be held accountable for the $8.4 million you cost to an already financially devastated city? Where's the regret for your clearly unethical and illegal activities that got you and your city into this mess in the first place?
I believe the Detroit media has responded to Kilpatrick's tantrum. The Detroit News editorializes:
...for the longest time, it seemed as if he were going to stare past that elephant in the room and focus determinedly on the progress of his administration and the hopes for the future. It was a rousing speech, filled with new initiatives aimed at easing his citizens' concerns about public safety, education and neighborhood services. Not a word about his personal travails, until the end.
And then Kilpatrick blew it. He angrily and audaciously defined the scandal as a bigoted attack, claiming he's been called the n-word; that he and his family have been threatened; and that opponents with an "unethical, illegal lynch mob mentality" are trying to tear him down.
He blamed everyone but the real villain -- himself.
It's not the first time Kilpatrick has selfishly played the race card to escape a jam. But it may be the most cynical, coming at a time when his personal conduct and poor choices have stalled progress in Detroit and slammed a hammer into the fledgling and fragile attempts to get beyond differences and establish regional unity in Metro Detroit.
The Free Press has two editorials on the matter. From the first:
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick gets at best an "incomplete" for Tuesday night's State of the City address. At worst, an "incredible" for what he didn't address and a closing rhetorical flourish in which Kilpatrick declared himself and his family to be victims of his self-created problems.
Ending a fairly lackluster speech, the mayor said he has faced unprecedented death threats, racial slurs and "a hate-driven, bigoted assault on our family" since the so-called text-message scandal erupted. He called for unity and said he "will continue to focus on building the next Detroit," without acknowledging that he's the one pulling focus from the myriad tasks at hand, and diverting money the city could use to get some of the work done.
In his State of the City speech a year ago, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick issued a challenge.
It moved me then. It saddens me now.
"Men of Detroit," the mayor implored, "I am talking to you not just as mayor, but as a father, a husband and a fellow Detroiter. As men of Detroit, we must step up together and take a leadership role in saving our city. ... Men of Detroit, the time is now for us to take the openhearted and courageous way."
Wonderful words to inspire Detroiters to "man up" against violence, crime and joblessness in the city. In a broad sense, to take responsibility for themselves, their own actions, and how they relate to the city's future.
But they were words that could have been directed at the mayor himself Tuesday, as he gave his 2008 address under the cloud of his inartful dodging of responsibility for the text message scandal.
Was Kilpatrick's tirade at the end of his speech, in which he claimed the media and nearly everyone else are to blame for the brutal effects of this scandal on his family, his idea of taking responsibility? The shameful, divisive words he used to draw false lines between those who want him to own up and those he expects to give him a pass will serve only to prolong the agony in this community.
This whole episode was sad to begin with, but Kilpatrick just made it pathetic. Predictable, considering that this is Detroit after all, but pathetic.
Note to self: When transferring large amounts of money to an illegal business, try not to act in a blatantly suspicious manner.
Spitzer last year had wanted to wire transfer more than $10,000 from his branch to what turned out to be the front for the prostitution ring, QAT Consulting Group, which also uses a number of other names, in New Jersey, the sources said.
But Spitzer had the money broken down into several smaller amounts of under $10,000 each, apparently to avoid getting around federal regulations requiring the reporting of the transfer of $10,000 or more, the sources said. The regulations are aimed at helping spot possible illegal business activities, such as frauds or drug deals.
Apparently, having second thoughts about even sending the total amount in this manner because it still might reveal what he was doing, Spitzer then asked that the bank to take his name off the wires, the sources said.
Bank officials declined, however, saying that it was improper to do so and in any event, it was too late to do so, because the money already had been sent, the sources said.
The bank then, as is required by law, filed an SAR, or Suspicious Activity Report, with the Internal Revenue Service, reporting the transfer of the money that exceeded $10,000, but had been broken down into smaller amounts, the sources said.
...an analyst at the regional IRS office in Hauppauge noted Spitzer's particular SAR and singled it out for attention to criminal investigators, the sources said.
The assumption, the sources said, was that Spitzer was somehow being victimized either by a blackmailer or an impostor. The agents also speculated that perhaps the governor was involved in some sort of political corruption, the sources reiterated.
The agents, located at an IRS office at 1180 Veterans Memorial Hwy. in Hauppauge, then joined with prosecutors in the Southern District in New York to determine the circumstances surrounding the transfer of the money and the nature of the company it was going to.... To the surprise of the prosecutors and the agents, what they uncovered apparently was an international prostitution ring, whose most significant client was likely the governor of New York.
