BOGO: Buy One Get One Free: The BCCI Report fiasco/Race and Geraldine Ferraro

[elixir]

Since I running out of posts, I'm piggybacking here.

First up, The BCCI Report

I keep hearing about how one of my favorite - aw, shucks - my absolute favorite president, Bill Clinton, deep sixed the BCCI Report. Well I don't know much about it so I came upon a few articles that helped. It sounds like the BCCI Report investigated a period covering about 10+ years. The report was released in October of 1992, right at the end of Bush I's term. Along comes Bill with a pretty long to do list and a sizeable IOU to some of the BCCI players. Fill me in on how he covered it up, I can't seem to find it.

I did find this nifty piece
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/BCCI.htm

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Next up, Race and Geraldine Ferraro

There's a fine line between racist remarks and statements of fact. Here are some nice pieces on this topic.


RACE MAN
"More than any other maneuver, this one has brought Clinton into disrepute with important portions of the Democratic Party. A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the "race card" were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students. The Clinton campaign, in fact, has not racialized the campaign, and never had any reason to do so. Rather the Obama campaign and its supporters, well-prepared to play the "race-baiter card" before the primaries began, launched it with a vengeance when Obama ran into dire straits after his losses in New Hampshire and Nevada--and thereby created a campaign myth that has turned into an incontrovertible truth among political pundits, reporters, and various Obama supporters. This development is the latest sad commentary on the malign power of the press, hyping its own favorites and tearing down those it dislikes, to create pseudo-scandals of the sort that hounded Al Gore during the 2000 campaign. It is also a commentary on how race can make American politics go haywire. Above all, it is a commentary on the cutthroat, fraudulent politics that lie at the foundation of Obama's supposedly uplifting campaign.

http://www.slate.com/id/2186324/


Pssst!-- Ferraro Was Right

I guess Geraldine wasn't wrong. Who knew??

"His face. Hello! Mrs. Ferraro? If one of the "formeost" things Obama offers voters is the "face of a brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia, etc." doesn't that mean "he would not be in this position if he were white"? If you like Obama because he might "rebrand" America to the world--well, he wouldn't accomplish that simply by having his election televised, as Sullivan suggests he would, if he were white, would he? Or think in purely domestic terms. If Obama were white, he wouldn't embody hopes of a post-racial future. Duh! That's part of his appeal. It seems obvious. Why does Obama dispute it? Why isn't Ferraro allowed to acknowledge it? Is it OK for Obama's "face" to appeal to egghead Atlantic subscribers but not ordinary Wyoming caucusers? Or was Sullivan being "offensive"" and "ridiculous" too?"


http://www.slate.com/id/2186324/