Sixto Diaz Rodriguez - Link to Audio
Good Friday Morning to You!
We start this morning off with your calls! It's Friday Open Lines....Tell us what's on your mind. Call us at 313.577.1019! And at 10:25, President Bush will address the nation- stay tuned.
Later on, we'll talk about the legacy on Andy Warhol. Richard Weisman was a patron and friend of the artist, we'll talk with him about the new exhibit he's bringing to the Cranbrook Art Museum.
We'll also be chatting with Pete Markus. He's the author of a very different kind on novel entitled Bob, or Man on Boat.
And Live in Studio A, we are pleased as jam to have Cass Corridor legend Rodriguez perform! More than 40 years after the release of his classic 1968 album, Cold Fact, this Detroit gem is making a resurgence with his music- be a part of it right here on Detroit Today this morning at 11:30am.
Listener Comments
I don't know what people expect to find about BHO; they're not used to people not having "skeletons" in their closets. McCain has lots.
The only thing more pitiful than this administration are the Conservative Working Class voters here with McCain signs in their yards. Slaves proud of their chains.
http://losttoy.livejournal.com/123435.html
Also, I would be curious if this caller would change his mind if he realized that General Petraeus's opinion and strategies are almost identical to Sen. Obama's, even though McCain has tried to criticize Obama's.
I would be curious if this caller would change his mind if he realized that General Petraeus's opinion and strategies are identical to Sen. Obama's and not McCain's.
I think Obama will serve as a dignified, wise and respected Commander-in-chief. The war right now is being conducted by troops from our National Guard. This doesn't make sense. I think Obama could actually inspire young men and women to serve, if we are serving in the right conflicts. I hope the young caller will reconsider.
By Roland Martin
CNN Contributor
Editor's Note: A nationally syndicated columnist and Chicago-based radio host, Roland Martin has said he will vote for Barack Obama in November. He is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith" and "Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America." Visit his Web site for more information.
Roland Martin says blasting one person's associations can boomerang.
(CNN) -- During the Democratic primaries, I wrote a column for CNN.com about how easy it is for any candidate to tar and feather another about their associations with less-than-acceptable figures.
Sen. Hillary Clinton tried to blast Sen. Barack Obama for unsolicited comments made by Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, and folks like Fox News' Sean Hannity were happy to run with it, saying it was evidence that the junior senator from Illinois was unfit to be president.
But critics like Hannity never bothered to raise the issue of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp praising Farrakhan for his focus on self-help. Not only that, nearly everyone in the media was afraid to bring up the fact that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell had high praise for Farrakhan when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia, even as the Muslim leader sat just 20 feet away!
Again, blasting one person's associations can come back to bite you.
We now see Gov. Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign trying to stir the pot by invoking William Ayers, a 1960s radical who was a major figure in the Weather Underground, a group that bombed the Pentagon and committed other unspeakable acts of terrorism against their own country.
Don't Miss
Ayers, Obama crossed paths on boards
Analysis: No game changer this time
In Depth: Commentaries
Palin has been hammering home the point on the campaign trail that Obama and Ayers were friends, "palling around" the Windy City, even though the Weather Underground committed these crimes when Obama was just a child. And never mind the fact that Ayers and Obama were involved in a multimillion-dollar education grant that was funded by a right-wing Republican, media magnate Walter Annenberg. Do you hear any of them castigating this late Republican pillar?
The McCain camp, along with their right-wing media comrades, want to convince you that Obama should not have decided to serve with Ayers, who was named the Citizen of the Year in Chicago in 1987 for his education work, and who is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Now, if someone was seen as an acceptable figure by business, political and education figures, many of whom support both Democrats and Republicans, should Obama be faulted for sitting on a board with the guy?
So, let's use that same logic and apply it to McCain.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat from Chicago who serves as one of the national co-chairs for Obama, told me on The Tom Joyner Morning Show that if we are to use the association tag as evidence of a candidate being unfit for president, what about McCain serving and working alongside people with virulent bigoted pasts like Sens. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?
Do we have evidence that these individuals committed specific acts against African-Americans during Jim Crow? No. But we do know that their hateful words, and willingness to uphold laws that were absolutely anti-American, did not represent the best of this nation.
Thurmond ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948 with a platform of maintaining segregation. Based on Helms' policies, he didn't see blacks as full Americans.
Bombing the Pentagon is horrible and indefensible. But declaring yourself a patriot while you speak such hateful and venomous words against your own countrymen, who just happen to be black, and then trying to oppress them, is just as indefensible.
So, did McCain work with them? Did he not speak with them? Should McCain have declared that he would not work alongside these men because of their past? Should the self-described maverick who believes in integrity and character have taken the honorable stance of resigning from the Senate to protest these hateful characters serving in the U.S. Senate?
No. And this is why this association argument is so weak and impotent.
For goodness' sakes, Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist organization!
Now, if Ayers was involved in these despicable acts today -- or Byrd and his late Senate colleagues -- then it is fair game.
But no candidate should have to be held responsible for the actions of someone else that took place years ago.
I fundamentally believe that this is nothing but a smokescreen and effort to ignore the real issues we face. Nobody should care about any of this when they are losing their jobs and having their homes foreclosed and finding themselves unable to afford to send their kids to college and to get access to health care.
What I find to be more deplorable is to hear McCain advisers say they want to turn the page to anything but the issue number one -- the economy.
If that kind of talk is coming from the camp of a guy who wants to be president, then that is something to be afraid of -- not a candidate's association with Ayers, or Thurmond, Helms or Byrd.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.
President Bush - thanks for summing up what everyone already knows. Can we please get a solution that works. Maybe tell the banking institutions to start trading - or the interest rates go back up. At this point the banks are waiting for the Fed to hit 0 interest rate before trading.
Strength and a "enough-is-enough" attitude is needed now - not a coddling one.
BTW - I think the name of this new bank should be called the only legislative bank of hank & bernank in honor of the unknown legislator, Henry(hank) paulson & Ben Bernanke(bernank). Party on America, wall st just ordered up a bunch of call girls, cocaine & champagne for themselves, joe sixpack enjoy your 40.
Please ask these folks who are so upset by Bill Ayers, what they think of Sarah Palin's associations with the Alaskan Independence Party...They hate this country too, and want to secede
Additionally - its your vote for Congress that actually has impact.
The Economy failing didn't start under Bush - Its been going on a long time. It was going on under Clinton - He didn't stop the bleeding, in fact his administration enabled the manifestation of this society of cheating on the books and everybody felt good cause the M O N E Y was tricking down some - but when you cheat the natural cycle, boost its peak when it hits it down turn it Crashes below - the bottom falls out and that is where we are- Democrats and Republicans cause this and neither really care about the people.
So, do you think that McCain pushing the plan to buy out people's mortgage during the debate is a move on behalf of Wall Street (to get the economy back in trickle down shape) which is wrapped in a Help-for-Main-Street bow or that he's sincere but misguided?
"As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.
Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.
Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.
I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director.
William C. Ibershof
Mill Valley, Calif., Oct. 8, 2008"
McCain, as far as I know, has done little to seperate himself from that scandal. It's all a matter of public record.
Can you name the other four members of the Keating 5?
But please consider the question I posed. How would you react if McCain was known to have strong ties to a former abortion clinic bomber who had repented his actions? Would it matter at all? Would you say that it was unfair to focus on that association?
A bank is only required by law to hold as little as 10% of the deposited funds as it's reserves. The rest is able to be lent out to other banks, businesses, and individuals as loans.(auto loans, morgages, and the like...) But rather than lend out what they have in reserve, the banks create the money to be lent out as a log entry in their database, and thusly, new money has been created.
It is simply a matter of repeating this process over and over again, as once the money is lent out, it will likely be deposited again in another bank, which will then be apart of its reserves and then be able to be loaned out again. And again. And again.
roughly speaking, this process can produce up to 9 times its original amount. So, in the case of the bailout, 700b can eventually become approximately 9 times that amount.
So, the question becomes, what gives this money its value? It steals it from the value of the money that is already in the system. This is how inflation works.
So, with all this extra money flooding the system our currency will be debased and inflated to the point where the cost of goods and services will be to expensive to afford.
And who will that most affect? The middle class, and the poor.
This is why the bailout is a bad idea.
''You're a liar,'' McCain snapped when a Republic reporter asked him about business ties between his wife and Keating. ''That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot,'' McCain said later in the same conversation. ''You do understand English, don't you?'' He also belittled the reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating. ''It's up to you to find that out, kids.''
Yet, the voters of Arizona forgave and forgot and reelected him as their senator. Like Kwame?
Incidents of McCain's hasty or poor judgement and quick temper continued over time. McCain's regrets over the incidents are out there for the record, too, if one digs past the whitewashing of history provided by his campaign. It's important to me because I do agree with him that "we need a cool hand at the tiller.
I can't recall two of the Keating5 senators but three stuck in my mind. I remember John Glenn because he was an astonaut, Don Riegle because he is from Michigan, and John McCain because he keeps campaigning to be president.
What more would strong ties to a repentant former abortion clinic bomber tell me than McCain's position on Roe v. Wade already provides?
From www.johnmccain.com
"Overturning Roe v. Wade
John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench."
If he was campaigning on a prochoice platform, an eyebrow might be raised but the lack of detail in the "strong ties" and "repentant" parts of your question rather muddies that.
The problem is, McCain's ties to Ayers is in the realm of education reform. If they were to share anti-war activities, the point you're trying to make with reference to radical activities earlier in the lives of Ayers and the hypothetical abortion clinic bomber would have some basis.
Friday, October 10, 2008 by Margaret
I assume you mean "Obama's ties to Ayers" not McCain's".
Obama keeps telling us how he was one of the few people in Congress to vote against the war.
Obviously, if McCain had strong ties to a former abortion clinic bomber it wouldn't change your opinion about him. But would you bring it up as a reason you're not voting for him?
The problem is, Obama has strong ties to a man who is not repentant for his violent past. That's the point.