American Senator Trent Lott

[antryg]

For the sake of his party he should step down from the post but remain a Senator. If he quits then the Democratic Gov. will replace him with a democrat. (makes sense to me) Even though his feelings are hurt he should realize that his leadership just hinders his party's programs. If he stays, the next few years will just be one revelation after another as his past is put on parade.

[The Hunter of Jahanna]

I am sure some one will correct me if I am wrong, but didnt Lott just say that Sen. Thurmond should have won when he ran for president back in the 40's? Takeing into account that this was at a retirement party, MAYBE he was just trying to say something nice to the old man. I dont think that Sen. Lott meant any kind of racist seniments when he said that. I think he was just trying to be a little kiss ass.

A little off topic, but so what if Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond are complete unredemable racists? Strom Thurmond has been in politics since before most of us were born. He ran for president on a segragationists platform and the people of Mississippi keep voteing him into office as a senator. This can only mean 1 of 2 things ,

#1 Everyone in Mississippi is a card carrying racist

OR

#2 Thurmons personal opinions dont affect his job preformance and he tries to do what is best for his state.

I will let you decide which is which.

[Angelousss]

1st of all yes it he was trying to say something nice to the senator.
2nd they are from different states, i believe strom is a South Carolinian

His words were something along the lines of "if strom had been elected we would not have the problems we have today"
Strom was the nominee for a segregationist party, running on segregationist platform. What problems was he talking about?

[Bardan the Slayer]

Maybe he wasn't talking about any problems in specific. He wasn't giving a treatise on the state of your nation today vs. the segregationist parallel you could have had. He was giving a naively stated sucky-up comment to an old man judged worthy of an empty sucky-up comment, and the media is making it bite him in the butt for no other reason than to expose a politician as a 'racist' at every available opportunity (and if there isn't one, the media will create one!) sells newspapers and raises viewing figures.

Or that's how this Brit sees it

[ 12-18-2002, 12:04 AM: Message edited by: Bardan the Slayer ]

[John D Harris]

Angelouss, Hunter, Bardan,
I said that very thing on page one. Sen. Lott has to stay and fight or Every Rep will be a bigger target. I'm Glad to see there is somebody else that sees another possibilty in what was said other then IT must be racism, and ONLY racism.

Are the Reps. a party that runs like scared school girls (and that's an insult to Scared school girls everywhere) when called racist? Given the real history of the Rep. party NO! Now is the time to set the record staight. The Reps. passed the FIRST Civl rights laws over the Veto of a Dem. President Andrew Johnson Abe's replacement, in 1866 or 67, the Reps passed the first voting rights bills around the same time. They also passed more civil rights bills in the 1880's or 90's (my memory ain't what it used to be) the Split with the Reps and the NAACP came in the early part of the 20th century, during Teddy Rose. Presidency over an incident in Galvaston, Tx. where Black soliders were fired on by the locals. When the Pres. sent people to investigate the soliders clammed up, for what ever reason, and it made them look guilty. Teddy fired the lot of them because they wouldn't talk the NAACP thought he was wrong. Years later it was proved Teddy was wrong, President Nixon I believe then set the record straight and Exonerated (SP?) the soliders. THAT'S the same R.M. Nixon that met with MLK in 1958 while he was VP 2-3 years before JFK and RFK had the FBI secretly tape MLK to get dirt on MLK. 1954 or 55 Rep. President Eisenhower(sp?) sent the Nat. Guard to Little Rock ,Ak to protect some little school girls and make sure they were able to go to school. Those little school girls had heavly pigmented skin, if you are the kind of person that pays attention to race you could lable them African-Americans, or you could call them some other names like the one's the Ak. Senator DID, that was Bill Cliton's Mentor. The same Senator that Pres. Clinton gave this nations highest civilain medal too. 1957, Pres. E. pushed through tha next round of civil rights laws, Laws that were voted against by JFK when he was a Senator, and LBJ tried to weaken. The Civil Rights laws of the Mid 60's, 80%+ of the Republicans in both houses of Congress voted for them, while only 60%+ of the Democrats voted for the Civil Rights laws. If anybody would bother to do the math they would see that 60%+ of the Dem. WERE NOT enough votes to get the laws passed. Does anybody remember the big Bru-haha a couple of years ago in Ca. about afirmative action? You know the #1 issue that makes you racist if you are against it! Well Does any one want to take a guess as to who started it? Come on take a guess, yeah thats Right that most kind and wonderful President ...JFK... NO!!!!...how about...LBJ...NO!!! OH NO it couldn't be yes it Was President Richard Milhouse Nixon the same man that met with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1958 the first high ranking U.S.A. elected offical to do so!!!! The Democrat controled Congress & Senate didn't pass ANY affrimative Action laws until Later, after a Rep President had taken action. Nixon was also the first to propose the earned income credit for poor needy families with children in his first term, It was held up by the Democrats in Congress.

FDR, a Dem., did not do anything to enforce the civil rights laws during the 30's & 40's in the South. He Allowed the segregationst South to blatently violate the 14th admendment, Oh yeah, something else that WAS PASSED by the Republicans. Does anybody remember in the early 70's when Busing was forced in that most wonderful of liberal Democrat cities, Boston? I do, I remember watching TV and seeing all the people of lightly pigmented skin hold up signs and sing bye-bye Black bird when the buses unloaded CHILDERN that had heavly pigmented skin.

Anybody want to guess which political party is trying to pass one of the top issues of parents that have heavly pigmented skin? Hint: It's School Choice you know School Vouchers.
Why It's those evil Raskely Republicans.

This is one Southern Conservative Republican that Ain't going to sit back and take it.

Edit: In may have been the U.S. Marshals that Eisenhower sent to Litttle Rock instead of the National Guard. When you get to be my age sometimes you need to defrag the "Ole Grey Matter Hard Drive", but I got so much stuff stored on it I'm afraid the OS might crash

[ 12-18-2002, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: John D Harris ]

[Gregster]

Originally posted by Bardan the Slayer: Maybe he wasn't talking about any problems in specific. He wasn't giving a treatise on the state of your nation today vs. the segregationist parallel you could have had. He was giving a naively stated sucky-up comment to an old man judged worthy of an empty sucky-up comment, and the media is making it bite him in the butt for no other reason than to expose a politician as a 'racist' at every available opportunity (and if there isn't one, the media will create one!) sells newspapers and raises viewing figures. Or that's how this Brit sees it

Actually, Bardan, I think you're spot-on in your assessment.

[HolyWarrior]

and let's not forget former GRAND DRAGON of the KU KLUX KLAN Robert Byrd, Demonrat senator of West Virginia....

who as recently as 2001 used the term '/\/igger' in a speech, and has never apologized for that...

Being a demonrat means being above the law...

[skywalker]

Originally posted by HolyWarrior: and let's not forget former GRAND DRAGON of the KU KLUX KLAN Robert Byrd, Demonrat senator of West Virginia.... who as recently as 2001 used the term '/\/igger' in a speech, and has never apologized for that... Being a demonrat means being above the law...

With the flap about Trent Lott's comments, there is talk about censuring Robert Byrd for his comments(by Mitch McConnell). Funny though, there has been little gumbling by Democrats about the Lott "mistake" (as far as I know). Seems all the calls for his removal are from Republican Senators and civil rights groups.

Mark

[EDIT] Actually, I have heard comments from some Dems...Daschle said he accepted the first apology and then reversed himself...and Gore was pretty vocal about it too. There is probably more.

[ 12-20-2002, 06:18 AM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

[skywalker]

Found this to be fairly interesting:

Lott has Senate company for racial remarks

Black lawmaker says comments won't be tolerated

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Before Trent Lott's gaffe, at least a half dozen other current senators found themselves in political trouble in recent years over racial remarks that most later acknowledged were insensitive.

Unlike Lott, however, most were able to defuse the controversy with a well-timed apology.

During his first re-election campaign in 1994, Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, told a newspaper editor about a rancher who had asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those" blacks in Washington -- using a pejorative term.

When the editor asked how he responded, Burns replied with a chuckle, "I said, 'It's a hell of a challenge."'

Burns quickly apologized after the newspaper reported his comments.

Three years earlier, Burns had startled lobbyists outside the Senate chamber by remarking after passage of a civil rights bill that he was going to an auction of "slaves."

Burns, who voted for the bill, said through a spokesman that his remark had been misinterpreted because he was talking about a charity fund-raising event known as a "slave auction." He planned to talk with his son about the possibility of his son holding such an event to raise money for the youth's church confirmation class.

The senator also had to apologize in 1999 when he called Arabs "rag heads" while commenting on oil prices and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Democrats have not been immune from such controversy, either.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-South Carolina, joked to reporters in 1993 about African leaders who attend trade conferences in Switzerland: "Rather than eat each other, they'd just come up (to Switzerland) and get a good square meal."

The comment angered blacks, and even some Democratic supporters criticized Hollings. He declined to comment on the reaction, using a spokesman to insist he was only joking and trying to emphasize that the proposed trade agreement would hurt the textile industry.

Andy Davis, Hollings' spokesman, said Wednesday that Hollings has a record of more than 50 years of support for civil rights and has enjoyed widespread support in the black community.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, the Senate's longest serving member, was forced to apologize last year after he used a derogatory terms for blacks and applied it to whites in commenting on race relations during a televised interview. "The phrase dates to my boyhood and has no place in today's society," Byrd said afterward.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, a civil rights veteran, said comments like those by Burns, Byrd and Hollings will not be so easily dismissed in the future because of the controversy generated by Lott's favorable comments about Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign.

"This is a lesson for all elected officials," Lewis said. "They must understand that these types of comments will no longer be tolerated."

Lewis said Lott's comments struck a nerve that the others did not because Thurmond's presidential campaign "clearly was a systematic effort to preach the gospel of racial segregation and discrimination."

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said many of the earlier comments were just as hurtful to black Americans as Lott's. "We always feel disrespected, and we're intolerant to the extent we can be to all of them," she said.

One of the Senate's new Republicans, Sen.-elect Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, apologized during his campaign last summer for joking that the best way to combat terrorism was to turn a Georgia sheriff loose to "arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line."

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, drew fire from Democrats and black leaders in 1999 when he told an editorial board that George W. Bush would win the Republican nomination unless "some black woman comes forward with an illegitimate child that he fathered within the last 18 months."

After the NAACP demanded an apology, Bennett issued a statement saying he "certainly regrets" making the comment but insisting that those who heard the remark realized it had no racial overtones. An aide said Wednesday that Bennett was making a literary reference to events in a novel loosely based on President Clinton's 1992 campaign.

The most protracted racial controversy involved Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, during his 1986 confirmation hearings for a federal judgeship. Sessions, a federal prosecutor at the time, was accused of calling a black assistant prosecutor "boy"; of describing church and civil rights groups as "un-American"; of agreeing with a statement that a white civil rights lawyer was "a disgrace to his race"; and of stating that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was all right until he learned they smoked marijuana.

Sessions denied the allegations during hearings that stretched over several months, with the Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately rejecting his nomination. A decade later, he won election to the Senate to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Howell Heflin, who had cast one of the deciding votes against him in the Judiciary Committee.

Source:http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/....ap/index.html

Mark

[Ar-Cunin]

And now he has stepped down - end of story I guess