NAACP's Benjamin Jealous, and recent Tea Party story

I like the comment by Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, at the end of this recent story (7/19/10) concerning Tea Party figure Mark Williams.  Jealous said: "Good riddance, Mark Williams." 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39909.html

Update to previous post, and Ron Rosenbaum essay from April

An Update to the previous post:  The North Iowa Tea Party billboard referred to in the post was replaced, yesterday, by a public service billboard.  Another Tea Party message, evidently, will soon appear in its place.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/07/tea-party-billboard-comparing-obama-with-hitler-lenin-removed-in-iowa/1

In the previous post, the AOL writer referred to a Ron Rosenbaum essay from April, in which Rosenbaum addressed the matter of language used by a number of Tea Party critics of President Obama and his administration.

In his essay in Slate, titled "The Tea Party's Toxic Take on History," Rosenbaum wrote:  "Listen to Tea Partiers on cable news—or read the signs they hoist or their Internet comments—and you frequently encounter the flagrant abuse, the historically ignorant misuse, of words such as tyranny, communist, Marxist, fascist, and socialist." 

Rosenbaum's essay is excellent.  It can be found at this link:

http://www.slate.com/id/2251669

Anti-Obama lunacy

From AOL News:

"Obama, Hitler and Lenin Share New Tea Party Billboard"

http://www.aolnews.com/surge-desk/article/new-tea-party-billboard-of-obama-hitler-and-lenin-receives-complaints-from-other-tea-partiers/19553093

The Gulf catastrophe

The ongoing oil spill is utterly heartbreaking, and sickening.

Like many, I still cannot understand how a company the size of BP didn’t have in place not only one, but two, or three, backup plans, in the event of a catastrophe.

The National Audubon Society (http://www.audubon.org/) is one of the groups involved in addressing the disaster.

Here is a link, concerning its Gulf-related efforts; there is a link, on that page, if you'd like to make a donation concerning the group's work related to the spill.

http://www.audubonaction.org/site/PageServer?pagename=aa_HowtoHelp

Here, as well, is a link concerning the work of another group involved in the Gulf, the National Wildlife Federation:

http://www.nwf.org/Home/Oil-Spill.aspx

Dana Milbank, on Helen Thomas and Hezbollah

From Dana Milbank, in his Washington Post on-line column “Rough Sketch” (June 9, 2010):

The good news for Helen Thomas: She finally got somebody to defend her position on Israeli Jews.

The bad news: It's Hezbollah.

Thomas expressed "what people across the globe believe: that Israel is a racist state of murderers and thugs," said Hezbollah, a group of murderers and thugs.

The Gaza ship

That people behind (and supportive of) the Gaza flotilla were hoping for violence is clear.

This is from a May 28th press release, from the group “Gaza Freedom March,” days before the raid by Israeli soldiers:

“A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade.”

They wanted violence—just as Hamas, which began its firing of thousands of rockets at Israel after Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, wanted Israel to attack, in response. Israel did respond, forcefully, in the winter of 2008-2009.

*******************

On April 29th, I posted a link to a column by Stu Bykofsky of the Philadelphia Daily News, in which he wrote, critically, of a speech by the Palestinian figure Hanan Ashrawi.

Here’s another good column by Bykofsky, about the raid by Israel on the Gaza-bound ship.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/20100603_Stu_Bykofsky__Its_own_history_holds_answer_for_Israel.html#axzz0podKSlqz

Recommended Reading

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, By David Shields (Knopf, 2010).

For a full review of the book, please click on this link:

http://andrewleefielding2.blogspot.com/p/books.html