Senator Robert "Sheets" Byrd
 

Interesting that our first half-Kenyan president did such a moving tribute for the KKK member in the Senate, who actually tried to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Will the hypocrisy never cease...?

It's all in the Hope and Change

You mean like the hypocrisy of calling the President half-Kenyan for the sole purpose of trying to degrade the man, then in the same sentence dissing another regarding civil rights?

Byrd disavowed his KKK past a long time ago, and has spent the subsequent years doing a great deal of good for society through his position as a way of atonement.

Like an atoned pedophilic, homosexual priest?

he did filibuster, and vote against the civil rights act. he also voted against both thurgood marshall and clarence thomas when they were nominated to the supreme court...and he may have said the kkk was a wrong, but it wasn't long ago that he was trying to atone for using the 'n' word...i read some of his bio today. i found it...

well, they say don't speak ill of the dead, so i'll just say my condolences to his family.

Why should Obama care about what Byrd was up to in '64?


All successful politicians pander to their peeps. I've been to West Virginia and I can only imagine what it must have been like almost 40 years ago.

Joey says you can't do that. Hypocrisy.

Some others call it manners, though :tro:

you mean back before everyone edifice had the name 'byrd' on the front, in some form or fashion? surprised they didn't just rename the whole state.
west byrdginia

Politics - like it or not - is about steering resources to your peeps. These old fogies are like experts at it.

What he did was no different than what Cheney did as President of the US when Bush was serving under him ... he basically directed boatloads of resources to his peeps.

Peeps in Sheets

the Michael Jackson Family Edition

It is hypocrisy to extoll the virtues of someone who is now dead, when they were the opposite of everything you supposedly believe when they were alive.

If a Republican had either been a member of the KKK OR voted against the Civil Rights Act, we'd never hear the end of it. But Byrd does both, and pretty much embarassed himself on every occasion where he was near a microphone, and somehow he's another "Lion of the Senate"? Yeah, OK.

Look at what the press did to Senator Trent Lott when he said some very broad and sweeping flattery for 100 year old Senator Strom Thurmond. Lott never said he supported the Dixiecrat agenda, but he said of the former presidential candidate Thurmond something along the lines of "Maybe things would have been better had Thurmond won." That wasn't a racial statement, but don't try to tell the Left that one. Everything is racial when it suits them. But when Byrd, one of their own legislators, has speeches about "white n-words", and writings I won't repeat mentioned here (fourth paragraph, inset):

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politicalju...lf?ft=1&f=1014

everythings just great. That is the definition of hypocrisy, his death notwithstanding.

Byrd endorsed Obama.

Why wouldn't he extoll his virtues?

Everyone is missing the point. WE NEED TERM LIMITS IN CONGRESS.

there you go again. :(

He was a White Lion.

There are people who started out thinking the Conservatives view of the world is simply the obvious common-sense truth (especially if they grow up surrounded by Conservatives.) When they get their 1st so called "good" job, it's only then that they realize that the world is set up to favor a very few in society. Then, they simply work harder (because that's the Conservative cure-all fix for anything) only to realize that hard work is often overlooked by the deciders. It's at this point (regardless of their future) that many people realize the Conservative view is a highly-oversimplified load of crap. Luck, looks, people-pleasing skills, family contacts etc. all rival hard work's value in moving up in the world. No, they didn't know this before. They bought the Conservative load of crap. Now they know. They go on with their life, and regardless of how well they do, they know the Conservatives are dead wrong. That's one reason there are a lot of rich people who aren't Conservatives. I say this, because people can be wrong about something early on in their life, and realize it. I'm not saying it happened with Senator Byrd. I think it's a possibility. It's also a possibility that he never changed, and just hid his true racist feelings until he died. Lott certainly had very few signs of changing his racist views. Not so with Byrd. On something like this, people will often let the harmed group make the call. Meaning that Byrd would have probably been gone if Blacks thought he hadn't changed. It's a fair issue to bring up. I think people were aware of his past, and made a judgement about whether he had changed inside. It is a judgement call. People constantly make excuses for Muslim Scum, and the main excuse is that they are born into the bad environment. Unfortunately, the Muslims rarely see the light, and, hopefully, Byrd did.

Well, I'd like to point out that what Byrd said in that paragraph on that webpage is worse than just about anything any non-Democrat has said regarding race relations in the last 50 years or so. George Wallace comes close, but he was another Democrat.

what joey can't see is that byrd wasn't frozen in his 1964 views unlike a lot of politician's. he renounced them while noting that the shame of those views would never leave him. he became a reliable vote in favor of civil rights legislation from 1967 onwards.

the george wallace reference is telling. wallace was an unrepentant racist as a politician. however, he also eventually renounced his racist past. the last years of his life he spent sunday's in black southern churches talking about his past and asking for forgiveness. the conservative movements dreaded "apology tour".

conservatives don't like change and apparently from the comments here, also don't believe sincere change is possible.

So the moral of the story is if you want to be racist make sure you're a democrat.

:tro::tro: