Welcome. You'll find comments and information here about education in Tennessee with a focus on Nashville as well other issues as I keep an eye on legislation and news. You'll quickly realize I'm a conservative Christian who isn't the quiet submissive type and doesn't mind rankling, if necessary, to get the job done.
This map from HillBuzz puts that 'just a guy in the neighborhood' line in perspective.
Toni Preckwinkle is a powerful Chicago Alderman. The rest of Obama's very near neighbors I'm sure you all know.
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8:29 AM
Labels: Barack Obama
16 comments:
...You know, I live in that same neighborhood, at the moment. I could walk to 50th in between classes, and Dorchester is just a street over from my present home.
It's actually lovely here, this time of year. I get up every morning and walk past a school playground on my way to class. However blustery and chill the wind is, there are always kids outside, chasing one another around and laughing. I can scarcely go anywhere without bumping into someone walking the family dog or a sweet, elderly couple wandering along, together. If there's political radicalism lurking around every corner, it runs whenever I'm around and replaces itself with Obama signs in the store windows.
It's not exactly an alien world of crime and radicalism and deceit, around here. People make their homes here, make their living, raise their kids and go about their lives. The fact that a figures with tainted pasts such as Ayers live in the neighborhood hardly diminishes that. It is simply a nice place to live.
So am I understand that you decide who you're going to vote for based on...zip codes?
NS: Great use of the understatement: "Ayers has a 'tainted' past". I understand these folks have families and a life...that doesn't make them right to lead this nation or influence anyone who wants to.
TheRine: Right. I overlook experience, walking the talk, sacrifice and service, successes and agreement on a whole slew of issues from abortion to the war on terror and only vote for McCain because of zip code.
I posted the map to show that, unlike here in Nashville (and lots of other places in the US) where most of the neighborhood aren't square blocks and the neighbors so easily accessible...these folks are within blocks of one another.
My point is that the vast majority of Hyde Park's residents, as far as I can tell, are perfectly decent, normal people. Sure, the neighborhood has extreme nuts like Bill Ayers. But the idea that those nuts reflect the Hyde Park community as a whole is insane. It has no rational basis.
I live close enough to Bill Ayers' house that I could walk there and give him a jell-o mold, right now, if I so chose. Does that in some way involve me in his heinous actions? Does it somehow reflect on me that I've chosen to live a few blocks away from him? What about all the parents who drop their kids off at the school I walk past every day? Are they somehow implicated in the sick actions of someone whom they likely never spared a thought to, when they decided to move here?
The answer, I think, is obviously "no." Evil does not move by osmosis, and the only way that I could agree with Bill Ayers' views or sympathize with the wrongs that he committed is by actually agreeing or sympathizing with them. That's true whether I live in Hyde Park itself or in Idaho or in China or anywhere else. One's zip code hardly dictates one's beliefs.
(By way of comparison, if my family moved in next to yours, it would be crazy to suggest that we would agree on any of the myriad things that we obviously disagree on.)
If you want to claim that Obama somehow sympathizes with Ayers or someone else, as such, you'll need to give real proof. By the standards of this post, though, you should suspect me of sympathizing with Ayers just as much as you suspect Obama. Likewise, you should suspect the kids I walk past on the playground every day. We're only a few blocks farther off from Ayers than Obama is.
And I'd hope you'd agree that there's no reason of suspecting either me or the kids on the jungle gym of plotting to blow up the Pentagon.
First off, It's not TheRine. It's Therine. Like Catherine minus the Ca. But anyway.
You said, "I posted the map to show that, unlike here in Nashville (and lots of other places in the US) where most of the neighborhood aren't square blocks and the neighbors so easily accessible...these folks are within blocks of one another."
And? So what? I grew up in a neighbourhood with drug dealers and sex offenders, often literally just down the street. That doesn't mean that I am or was a drug dealer or sex offender, however. Nor does it mean that I sympathise with drug dealers or sex offenders. Your claim that there's some signification to the location of Obama's house is quite simple-minded at best; pointless propaganda at worst.
And N.S., perhaps it's just me, but the idea of taking Ayers a jell-o mold amuses me no end.
My apologies for the typo on your moniker, Therine.
No, it doesn't make the neighbors similar to them...but it does make access pretty darn convenient. Even if the snow gets pretty deep in winter, they're just a short walk away.
Alright, so, we all agree that people who live close to one another won't have any problems getting to each other's houses. I don't think anyone disputes that.
And it also seems that we all agree that someone living in close proximity to others doesn't make the one person similar to his neighbors.
Which leaves me a bit baffled as to what the point of this post is. I'm assuming you didn't just mean to point out how wonderfully walkable Hyde Park is. What does this stuff tell us about Obama?
What's the point of the post???? Did you read the initial post? It puts his neighborhood in perspective. Not everyone is as familiar with your adopted neighborhood as you and Therine are.
Basically, what I'm trying to ask is: do you think that the map you posted implies some sort of troubling connection between Obama and the other figures on the map?
It seems likely that you do or that you originally did, given the nature of the post that you linked to, as well as the the fact that the map chose to highlight the exact same neighbors that conservatives are accusing Obama of having troubling connections with.
But, if that's what you meant, it doesn't make much sense, since you agree that living near these people doesn't make Obama at all similar to them.
And, if you don't mean that, it would clear things up a great deal, if you said as much.
Care to post maps showing where McCain's houses are, then? I mean, he's got seven of them. Surely that would put things in perspective as well...
Fine. HillBuzz provided the Obama map. You provide maps of the 4 block areas area around all 7 homes owned by John McCain/Cindy McCain/Family Trust with pins at the locations of the right-wing nut jobs who want to "break free from the essential constraints" in the Constitution and install a theocracy and I'll publish them here.
Oooh- could you put this song along with it?
You don't seem to get my point. I don't care where *either* of the candidates live. You're the one who seems to think the location of their residences some how "provides perspective", in which case I'd assume you'd also be interested in John McCain's whereabouts.
I, for my part, have already said that said I don't believe their zip codes matter.
William--your post has been deleted for using a profanity. Feel free to repost without using impolite language.
I get it. You think Republicans are swiftboating Obama. Swiftboating doesn't eqaual Borking, btw. The first is based on truth and revealing who the candidate is---the second is based on slander and libel and reveals who the slanderers are. I'm happy to align with the swiftboaters.
Yea? In your mind "swiftboating" means revealing the truth. To everyone else in common usage, it means smear.
When comparing the way TN votes to the rest of America, it's easy to see why this state lags behind the nation in education.
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