17 Jun 11
Originally posted by whodeyObama is a Marxist? What kind of version of political history is that?
http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.word.press.com/2011/06/15/marxist-idiot-barak-obama-just-makes-up-history-of-statue-of-liberty/
Listen to it yourself. Obama whiffs at the history of the statue without blinking an eye. Just stunning.
17 Jun 11
Here is a link to the text of Obama's speech:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/07/01/transcript-of-obamas-immigration-speech/
A pretty impressive - and politically astute - speech by the U.S. President. It would seem that right wing blogosphere [whose condemnation of the speech is basically incoherent] seeks to distract attention from its content and meaning.
17 Jun 11
I'm not sure what whodey is aiming at, but here's an excerpt of what Obama said:
And inspired by what she saw and heard, she [Emma Lazarus] wrote down her thoughts and donated a piece of work to help pay for the construction of a new statue — the Statue of Liberty — which actually was funded in part by small donations from people across America.
Here's an excerpt from the Wiki article on the Statue of Liberty:
Fundraising for the statue had begun in 1882. The committee organized a large number of money-raising events.[71] As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue. At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.[72] The resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", including the iconic lines "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty and is inscribed on a plaque in the museum in the base.[73]
Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged. Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project in 1884. An attempt the next year to have Congress provide $100,000, sufficient to complete the project, failed when Democratic representatives would not agree to the appropriation. The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal. With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.[74] Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000 (the equivalent of $2.3 million today).[32] Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given.[75] The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial."[76] One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with."[77] Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman."[76] Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn (the cities would not merge until 1898) donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons.[78] A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35.[76]
As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal.[79] In June, New Yorkers displayed their new-found enthusiasm for the statue, as the French vessel Isère arrived with the crates holding the disassembled statue on board. Two hundred thousand people lined the docks and hundreds of boats put to sea to welcome the Isère.[80] After five months of daily calls to donate to the statue fund, on August 11, 1885, the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar.[81]
17 Jun 11
Originally posted by BartsWhodey purports to be seriously concerned about the issue of immigration. And yet here we have the U.S. President making a keynote speech about the issue of immigration and whodey is quibbling about whether, in construction terms, a pedestal is part of its statue.
What exactly is your issue with his statement ?