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Nasty comments made by Sen. Lott

 
 
Baz Auckland
22:55 / 12.12.02

From Yahoo news: Bush Takes Offence to Lott Remarks

One of those things you don't hear at first... but man, what was he thinking?

"Lott's troubles began with remarks last week at an event marking Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday. Lott said Mississippians were proud to have voted for Thurmond in 1948, when the South Carolina politician was running for president as a staunch segregationist.

"And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either," Lott said.

On Monday, he apologized in a short statement for his "poor choice of words."

When that didn't stem the growing consternation, he apologized again Wednesday, saying his words were "terrible" and "insensitive."

...Democrats are calling for his resignation, while Bush is tryring to convince him to stay...
 
 
zarathustra_k
00:09 / 13.12.02
Why do people even respect Thurmond is the real question.
 
 
Baz Auckland
03:47 / 13.12.02
People respect him? Apparently he's the last senator to be elected by Civil War veterans.... the problem with this is that he's not 'ex-senator'. Shouldn't there be term limits or something?
 
 
Slim
05:13 / 13.12.02
Funny story: My roomate walks into the room and says that the national fraternity board on which he sits told him to direct all calls to the main hq. Ten seconds later CNN starts talking about Lott, a fraternity man (a racist fratboy? I'm shocked!) led the charge to keep blacks out of the fraternity when he was in college.

Lott is a son of a bitch and always has been. Even my mother, a pretty staunch Republican, dislikes him for being the slime that he is. As for Strom, well, he's an institution. And yes, he was a racist but that was what, 40 years ago? Perhaps he has changed, I don't know. I'm not in support of term limits. Let the people vote in who they want to even if he is a senile geriatric with one foot already in the grave.
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
11:10 / 13.12.02
Strom's 100.

Seven years ago, Strom changed.
 
 
Ethan Hawke
13:04 / 13.12.02
Um, guys....Lott's comments were made at Thurmond's retirement party. Hence, he soon will be an "ex-senator."

The senate is a funny place - it's a mutual admiration society like none other. Senators, as a whole, are very respectful of other Senators and ex-Senators. They're always given the benefit of the doubt by each other. That's why we have, for example, John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Most of the people in the Senate knew him personally, and weren't inclined to dig up dirt on him.

This is why the reactions of other Senators to Lott's remarks (and to the continued existance of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, both now retiring) was so muted. Tom Daschle made a typically mealy-mouthed statement in support of Lott (which also makes sense in that it would be handy for the Democrats to have Lott around to demonize as a "newt" during the next election cycle). It was only after Al Gore and others started vocally criticizing Lott and calling on him for to resign that sitting Senators (most notably John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, both presidential aspirants) piled on.

From the way the Bushies have operated in the past, (SEC chairman Harvey Pitt "resigning" on the day of the election, the Henry Kissinger appointment the day before Thanksgiving, and the recent "resignations" of O'Neill and the other guy whose name i forget right now) they'll probably force Lott to resign, oh, say either today (when the news of embattled pederast enabler Cardinal Law (not, unfortunately, the name of an ecclesiastical courtroom drama) eats up column inches) or next Friday, when the holidays are immanent and no news reporter is in the mood for writing.

Or perhaps Lott's support among the hard-core fundy base of the GOP is too strong for Bush to oust him. Still, Republicans have made a hash of their majority already, and they haven't even assumed power yet.
 
 
Baz Auckland
17:07 / 21.12.02
Lott's gone... and a classic from today's Boondocks:

 
 
Turk
05:41 / 22.12.02
A part of me wishes to celebrate Lott's remarks, the less appealing the Republican party the better, you know?
But as the ever excellent AlterNet.org points out, why do we get antsy about what politicians say when what the do is far more worse?
Even us internet plebs in our lefty-liberal ivory towers tend to get into greater tizzies about what the bastards say rather than what they do.
 
  
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