Tuesday, January 1, 2013

A History Lesson to Start the New Year

It's the first day of the year that wasn't supposed to be.

So Happy 2013, kittens!

One of my New Year's resolutions is to Improve The Stupid, and that means learning something every day. Here's your first test. If you don't know the answers, just guess. A pretty good guess would be "b".

BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY
NOTE: All answers are "b."

1. What Party was founded as the anti-slavery Party and fought to free blacks from slavery?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

2. What was the Party of Abraham Lincoln who signed the emancipation proclamation that resulted in the Juneteenth celebrations that occur in black communities today?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

3. What Party passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting blacks freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

4. What Party passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting blacks protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, and was the Party of most blacks prior to the 1960’s, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

5. What was the Party of the founding fathers of the NAACP?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

6. What was the Party of President Dwight Eisenhower who sent U.S. troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools, established the Civil Rights Commission in 1958, and appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ]  b. Republican Party

7.   What Party, by the greatest percentage, passed the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950’s and 1960’s?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

8. What was the Party of President Richard Nixon who instituted the first Affirmative Action program in 1969 with the Philadelphia Plan that established goals and timetables?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

9. What is the Party of President George W. Bush who appointed more blacks to high-level positions than any president in history and who spent record money education, job training and health care to help black Americans prosper?
            [ ] a. Democratic Party
            [ ] b. Republican Party

BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY
NOTE: All answers are "b."

10. What Party fought to keep blacks in slavery and was the Party of the Ku Klux Klan?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

11. What Party from 1870 to 1930 used fraud, whippings, lynching, murder, intimidation, and mutilation to get the black vote, and passed the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which legalized racial discrimination and denied blacks their rights as citizens?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

12. What was the Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry Truman who rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

13. What was the Party of President Lyndon Johnson, who called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “that [N-word] preacher” because he opposed the Viet Nam War; and President John F. Kennedy who voted against the 1957 Civil Rights law as a Senator, then as president opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after becoming president and the FBI investigate Dr. King on suspicion of being a communist?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

14. What is the Party of the late Senators Robert Byrd who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Ernest “Fritz” Hollings who hoisted the Confederate flag over the state capitol in South Carolina while governor, and Ted Kennedy who called black judicial nominees “Neanderthals” while blocking their appointments?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

15. What was the Party of President Bill Clinton who failed to fight the terrorists after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, sent troops to war in Bosnia and Kosovo without Congressional approval, vetoed the Welfare Reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

16. What is the Party of Vice President Al Gore whose father voted against the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960’s, and who lost the 2000 election as confirmed by a second recount of Florida votes by the “Miami Herald” and a consortium of major news organizations and the ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that blacks were not denied the right to vote?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

17. What Party is against school vouchers, against school prayers, and takes the black vote for granted without ever acknowledging their racist past or apologizing for trying to expand slavery, lynching blacks and passing the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that caused great harm to blacks?
            [ ] a. Republican Party
            [ ] b. Democratic Party

 From the National Black Republican Association website.


11 comments:

  1. Amazing what you can get away with once you realize all you have to do is give away other people's money. In exchange for a little pretense and a fistful of cash half the population will clamp the chains on their own ankles.

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    1. In exchange for a little pretense and a fistful of cash half the population will clamp the chains on their own ankles.

      OMG! RG, exactly that.

      I was saying the same thing to my husband today. That we have lived with Johnson's Great Society for 50 years now and there are people who have been into the welfare/poverty cycle with a parent who was also in the welfare/poverty cycle. Who are their role models? What is their culture? How do you escape from a prison you don't even recognize AS a prison? And when someone points out that it is, in fact, a prison, they just shrug and say, "Where's my phone and my Obama cash? I don't care if I'm in prison as long as I'm taken care of."

      Because, the saddest thing is, they don't believe they are capable of anything more. You can break a people's spirit in one generation. Look at North Korea. Look at Cuba. Look at Venezuela. All prisons with relatively docile inmates.

      The whole thing is desperately sad.

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    2. It's a deeply sad thing Buttercup.

      People want security over freedom. They don't realise that it's a false security that will end as soon as the money flow from the taxpayers stops - which will be MUCH sooner than they think.

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    3. It's partly security but it's also easier to hand responsibility off to someone else. Then you get bitch about how your life sucks, you didn't lack ability or make bad decisions those horrible people who run things did. Much less unpleasant to blame other people for their failings instead of having to examine your own. It's a very seductive habit to fall into, you see it everywhere, at all levels of society.

      If you don't have good parents for role models there aren't many options left. Slender chance that they'd know a good guy/gal in the military, a preacher or an inspiring teacher. The entertainment industry used to have real-world role model types of characters and actors who pretty consistently played those types of characters but I don't think anything like that exists any more. I might be wrong there, I don't really watch much TV & Movies anymore.

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    4. "Much less unpleasant to blame other people for their failings instead of having to examine your own."

      Excellent point, RG, and right on the money.

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  2. I'm at the age where my work peers came from black families that had a strong bond, expected their children to excel and where introduced to the doorstep of a society that was actually invigorated with the idea that race was only skin deep.

    I see a dismay with some. With others, they've accepted the idea they are "victim" and should get whatever they think is fair for the inequalities they never faced. It's tragic and unconscionable. What makes it worse are the progressive bastards in Washington that perpetuate this debacle of societal experimentation.

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  3. Ah, so this is who started it - Nixon. And Bush continued.
    As soon as one race is favored, put in "special conditions" and promoted on any reasons besides merit - state racism is established. And all Americans suffer the consequences.
    There is not something Republicans should be proud of, if you ask me

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    1. I caught those two items myself and wasn't pleased. But I don't think I can go so far as to say the "Republicans started it." They perpetuated it. The Democrats never wanted them to leave the plantation and the Republicans just built a state-run one for them.

      Both parties have blood on their hands.

      It's the IDEAS that are so corrosive. And those ideas were floating around during Nixon's time...just after Johnson and the Great Society. Nixon was no great shakes all around. He instituted price controls, too, which were a dismal failure.

      And don't get me started on Bush's "compassionate conservatism". I could go bat shit crazy over that idea. But every time I thought I hated Bush, I remembered that we could have had Gore or Kerry...and I sucked it up.

      The biggest problem is that we honestly haven't had a decent candidate to vote for for decades. And now all the shit the stupid ones have done is coming to fruition. And it's going to hurt. For many. A lot.

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    2. And now we ARE going to have Kerry, and where - in State Dept!

      Re: decent candidate: we did. But he was running a)Libertarian ticket b) didn't have money for campaign c) was not even allowed by(R) to run in several states.

      Gary Johnson.

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    3. AAAAHHH, Gary Johnson. He started out as my JUMP OFF MY CHAIR FIST-PUMPING FAVORITE. His record in New Mexico was stellar, his background, superb. He was smart, young and hip. And I liked his straightforward willingness to discuss difficult social/freedom issues.

      But we do not live in an age where ideas and results are all that matter. Let's be honest here. We live in a world where image and appearance are more important than substance. And Gary was dismal on that. In the first debate he looked like he'd received a haircut from an escapee of a mental institution. What the HELL was that? Really. He looked not just bad...but CRAZY bad. I just sat in the chair and put my head in my hands.

      He was not ready for Prime Time. And, as sad as this is, that's the truth in this country. Looks matter more than substance. John Edwards' $400.00 haircut got him farther than anything he stood for or ever did or said.

      Maybe 2016? But he should call me. HAHAHAHA!

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    4. Yep, I will vote for him again - if we'll be alive in 4 yrs and he's running - and the country's voting booths still have choices on a ballot. Having current Admin and his minions (Kerry, again: WTF!?!?) on familiar Soviet-era trajectory makes me doubt that, though...

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