Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.

And if we only have one national holiday named for an individual, who should it be?

I'm just wondering when Cinco de Mayo will become an observed US holiday.

"And if we only have one national holiday named for an individual, who should it be?"

You mean besides Christmas?

I'd like to say Mr. Nixon.

But on this one, Dr. King is the winner.

Just remember that it was President Reagan who formalized the Dr. King holiday in 1981.

Herb

And also remember that the conservative south didn't do squat, which is a prominent factor of today's GOP.

I vote for Dr. King. He was taken from us too early. Those who took him, are the problem --and remain so today.

I'd say it is a tie.

MLK. Lead the people into wanting changes.

Lyndon Johnson. He did the dirty work and made it law. He didn't have to do this.

The Dr. king holiday did not become a national holiday until 1986, if Im not mistaken.

"Lyndon Johnson. He did the dirty work and made it law. He didn't have to do this."

He was prophetic about it too.
After signing, he said: We have just lost the South for a generation.

Nixon exploited this with his "Southern strategy".

Civil Rights Act of 1964, Beano.

LBJ caught a lot of heat from his fellow Southern Democrats for signing that bill into law as well. Most of the footwork for the law was done by the Kennedy administration (JFK himself didn't exactly embrace the civil rights movement, he was outraged by the riots in Mobile where the police department sent the dogs and fire hoses on protesters and that got the ball rolling) but LBJ took that ball and punched it into the end zone.

At this point, MLK is the only American to have his or her own holiday. We don't celebrate Washington's or Lincoln's birthdays anymore - now we have "President's Day." I think while King deserved national recognition, it might be unfair to give him his own holiday. Instead, perhaps we could have a "Civil Rights Day" on his birthday and celebrate not only his achievements but those of other important individuals in the area of civil rights.

If one wishes to celebrate the achievements of LBJ or Nixon on President's Day, feel free.

Andrew

Well we DO have "Black History Month" (which, ironically, is February. Give the African-Americans the shortest month of the year to celebrate and use to educate the masses about their plight, such a backhanded compliment by us pasty-white folks!) ...

...'conservative south didn't do squat...'

Oh, REALLY?

You mean like Robert KKK Byrd, George Wallace and Mr. Gore's father, all democrats who fought against the Civil Rights Act? It was because of conservative republicans that it passed.

Herb

Nice revisionist history. The GOP of today and of yesteryear is no friend to the black community. This is evidenced by the black vote. They vote for the party that looks out for them, not the party that would prefer they keep quiet in the back of the bus.

I may be cynical, but I don't think most Americans pay close attention to the real reason for any paid holiday, anyway. Do a lot of folks really sit around on July 4th thinking about 1776? Or think about the sacrifices Americans made on Memorial Day or Veteran's Day? Other than in the media, did the average American ponder civil rights today? I highly doubt it.

Andrew

Probably not. But there were Church services, special programming, and other such things going on.

...I don't think most Americans pay close attention to the real reason for any paid holiday...
I doubt it, too. People say they feel so overworked that they really don't care. Add to the fact that in many jobs these days, one doesn't get holidays off (or, if they do, they are unpaid). Just something to think about when you're in a grocery store or some other establishment buying whatever on some day like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Do a lot of folks really sit around on July 4th thinking about 1776?
I for one don't celebrate Independence Day - I don't think any of the reason for celebrating it really exists anymore.

It wasn't Nixon!!! He hated Jews and Blacks alike. He is heard talking on some of his secret tapes about how much he hated Jews and N*****s. I think he was screaming it.....
The man was a RACIST pig.

Actually, Trixter, Mr. Nixon was a friend of Israel and had high-ranking Jewish people in his cabinet, including Henry the K.

Herb

"The GOP of today and of yesteryear is no friend to the black community."

Classic socialist revisionism.

Our greatest president who freed the slaves, Mr. Lincoln, was a Republican. And Mr. Bush has appointed many African-Americans to high positions and also in his cabinet, including Condoleeza Rice.
I didn't expect a defense for Robert KKK Byrd, George Wallace and Mr. Gore. That's because you have none.

Spin on.

Herb

Condi's black?

Yes, black enough to have had police escort her to school.

"Rice was eight when her schoolmate Denise McNair, aged 11, was killed in the bombing of the primarily black Sixteenth Street Baptist Church by white supremacists on September 15, 1963. Rice has commented upon that moment in her life:

I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed."

Wikipedia–Condoleezza Rice, Commencement Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004

Yeah, she's 'black enough.' But if Dr. Rice were a liberal, you would not have dared to mock her.

Herb

LMFAO!

Hey, it's not conservative that gets her mocked. It's her shitty JOB PERFORMANCE.

Has nothing to do with her skin, gender, etc...

She just sucks, like most of this administration does.

Right. Has nothing to do with her skin.

That's why the comment was made questioning if she was 'black enough.'

You might be able to get fellow leftists to buy that, but not anyone with a mind and a heart.

Herb

Actually the GOP of yesterday WAS indeed a friend of to the black community.

As mentioned above, that changed after Johnson signed the voting rights act.

Nixon saw that as a politcal opportunity, exploited it with his southern stategy, and that's when the racist south flocked to the new Republican party.

South didn't do squat, how about Carl Albert, who got LBJ's civil rights legislation through congress?

If the GOP is sooo good to blacks, why is it only 10% or so vote for them? Are they to dumb to realize how good the GOP would be for them? Or is it because the GOP doesn't hold their best interests at heart?

Why not ask Jesse Peterson, Condoleeza Rice, Alan Keyes, or Supreme Court Justice Thomas?

Herb

A broken clock is correct twice a day, so there are always exceptions to the rule. However, the sheer numbers of black voters who support Democrats must be because of something??

My thoughts are (right, wrong or indifferent, they are my thoughts) that it is not just the Blacks that support Democrats; it is generally most of the minorities.

My feeling is that, while not exclusively so, most of the lower income people in the US are from some minority and since the Democrats favor more social give away programs than the Republicans do, the lower income folks, no matter what race or nationality, will favor the Democrats since they will benefit from it the most.

I don't know if that's true or not. It's just how it seems to me.

I'll probably get flamed bad for stating this, but that is how I perceive it.

And the other side of that coin is the wealthy voting Republican for the tax breaks that are favored by the Republicans for the wealthy. It's all about "What's in it for Me?"!

Skybill,

If you get flamed for stating it, I would think it would mostly be due to your phrasing.

Democrats favor more social give away programs

Maybe that's how you see it.
I'm more inclined to believe that you framed it that way to get a reaction.

There may be some Democrats that like to "give away" money to poor folks, but the ones I know are more for getting them by and helping them to stand on their own to become productive.

On the other hand, I see Republicans giving a whole lot away to Billionaires, and Corporations.

I think most Americans are okay giving a 'hand,' just not a 'hand out.'

The Great Society was a dismal failure. Even with the millions upon millions spent, inner city poverty only got worse. Out of wedlock births went up, as did crime and unemployment.

The Great Society was more of a hand out. But a hand, that's a different matter.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=9056

Herb

"The Great Society was a dismal failure."

Nope.

"The Great Society was a dismal failure."

Infant mortality stood at 26 deaths for each 1,000 live births when LBJ took office; today it stands at only 7.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, a reduction of almost 75 percent.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-55983378.html

Edit:

Herb, I'm not going to suggest that you don't care about babies after their born.
I think it's more charitable to consider you just plain ignorant.

Herb SPINS everything he can just for HIS cause. It's too bad he can't see that we're not ALL against him like he thinks... He just LOVES to re-write History to the way it sounds good to him.

The facts are in.

And the facts show that the Great Society was a dismal failure.

All that money spent, and there are more poor than ever.

Herb

"Dismal Failure" whilst "Out of wedlock births went up"...

WTF?

Gee, Herbbocrite, shouldn't that be a huge POSITIVE upside for you?

I'm with Amus, but I will "suggest" that it appears that you really don't give a rat's hiney about born babies.

It's true!

Nothing else matters, but fighting terror and getting right wing court appointments. --Herb.

"That's why the comment was made questioning if she was 'black enough.'

I said no such thing, so stop putting words in my mouth.

However, I will continue to mock her god-awful hair-don'ts, but these 2 DC professionals do it far better than I ever will:

http://wonkette.com/politics/condi-roundup/building-a-better-photo+op-326158.php

http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/2005/03/what-can-red-do-for-you.html

http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/
"I keep track of Condoleezza's hairdo so you don't have to."

And I concur with Missing, she sucks, regardless of what she looks like, and how great her legs are.

Did you not read or hear about the report out today about how the Bush admin has lied to us about Iraq over 900 (verifiable) times? D'oh!

I'll bet there is a higher number of low income whites compared to low income minorities in the US. Minorities may have the percentages, but whites have the numbers.

The facts are in.

And the facts show that the Great Society was a dismal failure.

All that money spent, and there are more poor than ever.

Herb

Facts with SUBSTANCE are in!!!!!

WOW!
Looks like the last 7 1/2 years have really Fed up America too,

---but the TEETH! Good god...

Is she somehow related to Eric Sten? But I just can't get past the Condibot's hair...

"The facts are in.

And the facts show that the Great Society was a dismal failure.

All that money spent, and there are more poor than ever."

First off, the Great Society never got off the ground, at least in the grand scale that LBJ wanted it to. A little police action in a faraway country called Vietnam kind of got in the way.

Also, how the hell is it LBJ's fault that we have more poor people than ever NOW?!? We can put a lot of the blame on the huge reduction of the middle class and increased poverty on Bush's version of trickle-down ecomomics. We can put a TON of it on these horseshit free-trade agreements we have with everyone, which is seeing all of our wealth and jobs going overseas. There's a ton of places to place the blame.

Lyndon Baines Johnson isn't one of them.

In the eyes of God, Herb is a dismal failure.

"All that money spent, and there are more poor than ever."

A little reality here.

1964
Population = 191,888,791
Poverty Rate = 19%
Poor = 36,458,870

2007
Population = 301,139,947
Poverty Rate = 12% (2004)
Poor = 57,216,590

In the eyes of God, Herbbocrite is also wrong. And he makes stuff up.

Technically he's right.

57,216,590 > 36,458,870

But is either being deliberately misleading,
or is reinforcing the ignorance theory.

And I don't think God looks too kindly on either.
In this day and age ingorance is a choice.

With Herb being a MAN of God it's funny that he would try to re-write history or post UN-truths knowing that God is watching....
Wonder who's really pulling his strings....

Totally misleading figures, the official poverty level hasn't risen at the same level as inflation, so their are probably more in poverty as a percentage than before.

Johnson's Great Society addicted many low income people, black and white on welfare, and there was and is little incentive for people to try and move off it.

Nwokie,

Are you saying that the poverty level is not adjusted for inflation?

I can't find anything that indicates that.

Could you please provide a link?

This from Wikipedia:

"Determining the poverty line is usually done by finding the total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. This approach is needs-based in that an assessment is made of the minimum expenditure needed to maintain a tolerable life. This was the original basis of the poverty line in the United States, whose poverty threshold has since been raised due to inflation. In developing countries, the most expensive of these resources is typically the rent required to live in an apartment."

it is adjusted, but not for inflation, they use a pretty complex formula, that is weighted towards the cost of food, which historically goes up slower than inflation.

Also its a national poverty rate, excepting Alaska and hawaii, so its the same poverty rate in Mississippi and California.

All you might want to know is at
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/faq.shtml#differences

okie sez: "Johnson's Great Society addicted many low income people, black and white on welfare, and there was and is little incentive for people to try and move off it."

Most people on welfare are children and their moms. It is difficult for mom to work, pay for babysitters and raise children.

Please explain your lie about addiction.

What lie, check statistice, when I lived in chicago, about 10 years ago, the local paper did a series of articles about people in the housing projects, in one "Cabri Green"sp? which housed about 10 thousand people, less than 10 families had full time jobs.

And there were several programs to move people into self supporting lifestyles, but in nearly all cases the person would show up for work on time the first day, next day be a little late, the next a lot late, then just not show up.

At the glass plant my mom used to work at, they needed a bunch of new workers, well paying jobs, over $15.00 per hour, this was 20 years ago, so they hired a lot of people off long term welfare rolls, none of them stayed over 2 weeks.

disabled? couldn't find baby sitters?

There are some deadbeats on the welfare rolls, but by and large most of the people on welfare are women and children -- forced-to-work programs isn't gonna save much money.

So how to we work towards getting them off the welfare rolls?

Right now there is no incentive to not work and have the government (pronounced: taxpayer) support you.

Edit: As I mentioned above, I don't have a problem lending a helping hand to those truly in need. What I'm not in favor of is a perpetual handout.

I have no problem in eliminating as many illegal's as possible, and telling the people on long term welfare, we will send you out to the fields, or wherever and you will work. Or no assistance.

Let's start by KEEPING JOBS IN AMERICA!

Without question, the Republicans did make great strides in Civil Rights under Eisenhower. After all, he not only shook hands with fellow Republican, Jackie Robinson, on national television, but actually worked both publicly and behind the scenes to change our country.

All of that good humor evaporated with the defeat of Nixon in 1960. A great deal of blood would be spilled before the party regained power. When they did, they had about as much in common with Lincoln as his pro-slavery adversaries.

"Actually the GOP of yesterday WAS indeed a friend of to the black community. As mentioned above, that changed after Johnson signed the voting rights act. Nixon saw that as a political opportunity, exploited it with his southern strategy, and that's when the racist south flocked to the new Republican party."

Exactly Amus! The icing on the cake was the multiple assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy. That ensured that the power structure would stay to the right of center through the 1968 election. Even before Chicago, the Democrats were completely split, so for Nixon it was just a matter of climbing aboard and taking the ride.

Eight years later, Gerald Ford, had folks like Agriculture Secretary, Earl Butz, in the cabinet. You might remember that ol' Earl said this in 1976:

"I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit."

Though the entire quote was only published in two newspapers nationally, the party was thereafter associated with racism. In fact, this ditty from the movie Loose Shoes was inspired by that moment.

Who did more for Civil Rights? Boiled down to one person, it would be Doctor King by a huge margin. In reality, ordinary Americans were the biggest factor in the freedom of minorities. We still hold the key. The only way that change truly takes hold is when it becomes part of the conscience of individuals.