Hotline After Dark: On The Front Lines
Lots of Iraq talk last night:
NBC's Russert, reporting on a meeting between GOP congressional members and the admin: "They told the president, and one said, quote, 'My district is prepared for defeat. We need candor. We need honesty, Mr. President.' The president responded, I don't want to pass this off to another president. I don't want to pass this off particularly to a Democratic president, underscoring he understood how serious the situation was. ... The Republican congressman then went on to say, The word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President, there's no longer any credibility. It has to come from General Petraeus. The meeting lasted an hour and 15 minutes and was, in the words of one, remarkable for the bluntness and no-holds-barred honesty in the message delivered by all these Republican congressmen" ("Nightly News," 5/9).
Washington Post's Milbank: "These are, while not Republican leaders, are certainly mainstream Republicans, vulnerable Republicans, the president obviously realizing that not only does this Iraq war risk a larger Democratic majorities in Congress, but risks handing the presidency to the Democrats as well" ("Countdown," MSNBC, 5/9).
Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT): "I think what's going to ultimately happen is Reid is going to decide to take up a bill and fund for the rest of this year, the fiscal year, until the end of September, and I think that's about as sensible as he can do at the moment" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 5/9).
FNC's Kondracke: "The vice president is over there telling them to move and meanwhile, the prime minister's national security advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie was in Washington yesterday trying to get members of Congress to be patient. ... If they could meet in the middle, a happy medium somewhere, that would be fine, if there were some patience in Washington and some speed in Iraq this might all work out" ("Special Report," 5/9).
AL'S LATEST ISSUE
Rev. Al Sharpton was on "PZ Now" and asked about his comments on Mitt Romney's religion.
Sharpton: "The argument was over atheists. The argument was not about Mormon -- real believers, not atheists, was going to vote against him anyway, because I don't think Romney will win. ... I didn't bring this up -- Hitchens did -- has opened the door for me to say, well, wait a minute. Is Hitchens right?"
Sharpton, on Mormonism: "If, prior to '65, '78, whenever it was, they did not see blacks as equal, I don't believe that as real worshipers of God, because I don't believe God distinguishes between people. That's not bigotry. That is responding to their bigotry" (CNN, 5/9).
Christopher Hitchens, asked his reaction to Sharpton's comments: "He's a bit of a crowd pleaser. In fact, that's one of the best-known things about him. And he was trying to be funny. But he was reacting to a point that I made seriously, which was, it surprises me that Governor Romney is not asked more often, nor at all, about the fact that his church was officially racist until at least 1965" ("Lou Dobbs Tonight," CNN, 5/9). [EMILY GOODIN]
So it comes out today that multiple-choice Romney's wife donated to Planned Parenthood just like Giuliani. Romney definitely is a god-father of all the flip-flopers. Is Hotline going to cover this news?? Lets see how they defend Romney now.
1987: Sharpton spreads the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting heatedly that a 15-year-old black girl was abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singles out Steve Pagones, a young prosecutor. Pagones is wholly innocent -- the crime never occurred -- but Sharpton taunts him: "If we're lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it." Pagones does sue, and eventually wins a $345,000 verdict for defamation. To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.
1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.
1995: When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. "We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.
Romney is up front about his beliefs, and how and why they have changed. No need to defend someone who explains himself.