http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090906/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_adviser_resigns

Van Jones.. G O N E.

Off by one day, but you did make the call.

I see that racism has been brought up and I feel that I must add something.

Being proud of ones race, culture, and heritage is not a bad thing and everyone should take pride in theirs, as it defines who you are.

The thing is, humanity as a whole needs to learn that no one race is better than the other. Once we stop the hate and bigotry that racism brings, we will all be better off.

Food for thought...

It's interesting to know that even Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves, was by definition a racist and a white supremest.

Here's a lesson that has been left out of your history books.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858

In 1858 Lincoln was nominated by the newly-formed Republican Party to challenge Steven Douglas, a Democrat, for his Illinois seat in the US Senate. During the campaign, "Little Giant" Douglas focused on the emotion-charged issue of race relations. He accused Lincoln, and Republicans in general, of advocating the political and social equality of the white and black races, and of thereby promoting racial amalgamation. Lincoln responded by strenuously denying the charge, and by arguing that because slavery was the chief cause of miscegenation in the United States, restricting its further spread into the western territories and new states would, in fact, reduce the possibility of race mixing. Lincoln thus came close to urging support for his party because it best represented white people's interests.

Between late August and mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas traveled together around the state to confront each other in seven historic debates. On August 21, before a crowd of 10,000 at Ottawa, Lincoln declared:

    I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
    I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and in as much as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.

(Created Equal?: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 117)

Many people accepted the rumors spread by Douglas supporters that Lincoln favored social equality of the races. Before the start of the September 18 debate at Charleston, Illinois, an elderly man approached Lincoln in a hotel and asked him if the stories were true. Recounting the encounter later before a crowd of 15,000, Lincoln declared:

    I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

 I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

(Created Equal?: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 235)

I highly recommend the book 'Abraham Lincoln' - a compilation of (amplified) C-SPAN interviews done during the runup to the 200th anniversary of his birth - by Brian Lamb and Susan Swain.

It's all there, the bad with the good.  And very enlightening.  I believe that by the end of the war, Lincoln was a fully converted abolitionist, that he truly believed slavery to be inconsistent with the ideals espoused in our Declaration of Independence, allowing for the fact that an abolitionist was not exactly the polar opposite of a racist.  The Emancipation Proclamation was not pretty.  What a difference martyrdom can make.

Doc, the whole thing was a perfect illustration of boorishness and tastelessness, typical of Van Jones throughout his illustrious carreer. This is a man who has had a policy of baiting the police, breaking through police barricades, and attacked them, and betrayed his friends and associates when convenient. When he turned "green" ( the watermelon effect; green on the outside, red on the inside), he muscled himself ahead of veterans of the environmental movement to get his hands on funding instead of them, "

But Jones also attracted a number of critics. During the conference, many environmental-justice groups were irritated by what they saw as Jones' attempt to appoint himself the leader of a movement in which he'd never before played a role.

In the aftermath of the event, seven of these groups wrote a letter to Jones expressing their concerns about the perceived glory-hogging of the Ella Baker Center team

. Henry Clark, the longtime executive director of the West County Toxics Coalition, and one of the signers, complained that Jones excluded the true leaders of the Bay Area movement. "They jumped out front to put themselves in the lead, to make contact with these funders, in more of an opportunistic way," he said.

Another incident involved the co-founders of the Appollo Alliance, who invited him to join:

Around that same time, the Apollo Alliance was launched in Washington, DC, with a catchy slogan: good jobs, clean energy. Modeled after President Kennedy's famous challenge to America to put a man on the Moon, the alliance is an effort to inspire the country into a frenzy of environmentally friendly inventiveness. But Jones approached the Apollo organizers because he believed that their original formulation of environmentalists plus labor unions wasn't ambitious enough. "I wanted to enrich their framework, which I thought started out with too little racial-justice understanding," he said. He was already working on the Ella Baker Center's own environmental program, but saw the Apollo Alliance as a useful partner, with a national platform. "I was met with absolutely open arms," he said.But while Jones continues to advance the ideas he developed along with the Apollo Alliance, the organization's cofounders Shellenberger and Nordhaus were both forced to remove themselves from the national board because of the controversy they stirred up.

Jones, with his message of effectiveness through solidarity, has come to embody the reaction against the two heretics.

It's been a little more than a year since two of Jones' fellow travelers dropped a bomb on the environmental movement in the form of a paper provocatively titled "The Death of Environmentalism.

Although the paper was primarily an assault upon the strategies of the left, Shellenberger and Nordhaus praised a few people and projects. One was Van Jones....

Jones and the authors met in 2005 and became close allies who brainstormed ideas for the new shape of the environmental movement.

Yet last spring, Jones spoke out against "The Death of Environmentalism...

The authors complain that Jones didn't begin critiquing their paper until he was surrounded by its detractors at the Apollo Alliance, a group whose strong ties to the Sierra Club guaranteed that it would take a stance against the two upstarts. Shellenberger said he saw Jones twice in the immediate aftermath of the shakeup. The first time, shortly after the paper was distributed, he said, "Van congratulated us; he praised the essay. He was very positive to us, privately." The next time, at a meeting of the California Apollo Alliance, Shellenberger remembers Jones saying, "Wow, a lot of people are really angry about this," before repeating his praise of the paper. But in the months after Jones joined the board, Shellenberger said, he began to criticize the paper and its authors.

 Holding this event was like crashing a funeral; that's his style, or lack thereof.

I checked out your link, and based on that and my own personal observations, there was no outbreak whatsoever in anti-Muslim hysteria. Do you remember President Bush coming out with his statement in support of Muslims?

Look at the statistics in the article:

The most dramatic change noted by the report was a more than 1,600 percent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims -- a jump from 28 hate incidents in 2000 to 481 last year.

But, look at this: 

After African Americans, the most victimized groups included Jews (1,196 victims)

Considering the circumstances, it's a testament to the basic decency of the American people that there wasn't a severe backlash.

Your statement that the Bush administration "the former administration refused to request warrants (as required by law)" is incorrect; they pursued warrants in numerous cases, and there is a class of wiretapping that does not require a warrant. Spying on soldiers, or anybody that may be performing treasonous acts, as some soldiers in fact did, is standard operating procedure around the world; the degree of it may be arguable, but the practise isn't.  

This, from you, " (the) former administration illustrated the fear mongering aspect in order to grab more dictatorial powers" is unintentionally amusing. Those of us not inspired by the new president, have a lot more to fear in this regard from him and his associates, considering their backgrounds. Mr. Bush was a pathetic failure if it was his intent to be dictatorial.

We should also try to learn why they enter terrorist groups in order to prevent problems in the future, if possible.

They enter these groups because they want to kill non-believers. Learning why will not prevent problems in the future.

Hey, Nakamichi guy. I'm glad to hear that you love how I'm preaching to you.

I never heard of Beck until recently, and haven't seen too many of his shows; however, I like the vast quantities of information on the people Obama associates with. When you watch a speech by Van Jones, or the man President Obama will use to silence Beck, Mark Lloyd, the new FCC Chief Diversity Officer, those aren't lies.

I have yet to quote Beck, and I haven't often referred to him. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to quote or refer to him; it's just that I haven't. 

I've been reading newspapers, books, and watching the news, among other things, for decades. I've arrived at my conclusions and viewpoints as a result of my own investigations.

One thing I've noticed is that you call him a racist. I've seen no evidence of that; do you have any?

I wonder what Denise thinks.