“1 in 14 Military Veterans Say They Support McCain”: How Can This be?

26324 Responseshttp://hyerstandard.com/2008/08/14/1-in-14-military-veterans-say-they-support-mccain-how-can-this-be/%221+in+14+Military+Veterans+Say+They+Support+McCain%22%3A+How+Can+This+be%3F2008-08-15+02%3A36%3A18admin to ““1 in 14 Military Veterans Say They Support McCain”: How Can This be?”

1. hey on August 14th, 2008 8:20 pm
   

   Quick question…

   Why did you delete your kos piece on the lawyer call from abeles people?

2. hey on August 14th, 2008 8:41 pm
   

   also did you see this post made by your lawyer friend ‘defending’ paula and the deniers?

   If my great grandmother told me I was related to the Queen of England, that does not give me an automatic invitation to Christmas at Balmoral – especially if I had previously been included on sufferance but disrupted the proceedings and behaved badly. Would you think that because the Queen didn’t want me back it showed she was a sexist, anti-irish, or hates lawyer? Hopefully not. So why do you automatically assume the only reason the Hemings weren’t included must be racism? The Hemings descendents have no “right” to attend a purely private function, and given their bad behavior and machinations to party-crash, they were no longer welcome. That’s not racism, that’s freedom of association.

   Unfortunately, the first time these allegations came to light, to spare annoyance to her family, my sister choose to “ride it out”. This time she is not going to do that. She did nothing wrong, but has vilified by your report. Prior to his “blog”, Mr. Smith had several e-mail conversations with Paula, and even had her home number, but he didn’t even bother to ask her about the AP article, to confirm or deny – which was the very least he could have done.

   Liese Howarth
   http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/paula_abeles_responds/

3. Ignorant People Annoy Me on August 15th, 2008 12:08 pm
   

   ”

   Quick question…

   Why did you delete your kos piece on the lawyer call from abeles people?”

   I don’t really have the right to speak for anyone however I think I can provide the answer to this question. The site was sold a little over a month ago, and I am pretty sure there was a lot of house cleaning done.

   I am not sure though. I wish the piece was still up – it was hilarious. Its still on Google cache isn’t it? I know it got so popular if you typed in Liese’s name in Google it was the second or third link from the top, ha ha. Thats what she gets though ya know.

   “If my great grandmother told me I was related to the Queen of England, that does not give me an automatic invitation to Christmas at Balmoral – especially if I had previously been included on sufferance but disrupted the proceedings and behaved badly. Would you think that because the Queen didn’t want me back it showed she was a sexist, anti-irish, or hates lawyer? Hopefully not. So why do you automatically assume the only reason the Hemings weren’t included must be racism? The Hemings descendents have no “right” to attend a purely private function, and given their bad behavior and machinations to party-crash, they were no longer welcome. That’s not racism, that’s freedom of association.

   HAHA, I didn’t even realize this was actually the lunatic herself. WOW, I am getting a chance to correspond with bonified wing nut.

   Well Mrs. Crazy let me begin by saying you are trule a sad individual – and I mean that with all my heart. That said, let me move on to your analogy. Frankly mam – It is one of the worse comparisons/hypotheticals I have ever come across, I mean it fails miserably to draw any logical rational as to why the racist (aka Abeles aka your sister) acted how she did, or justify it what so ever.

   First, the black descendent’s of Jefferson didn’t live across the Atlantic ocean, they lived in Virgina as well as other countries all within US borders. Second of all – going by your hare brained analogy – if the you were a direct descendant from the queen and the situation (you know, slavery, forced sex, etc, etc) was the same, as it was in the Monticello case then YES you too would have a right to go to the family reunion regardless of where it was held. And then if you began acting up or as you put it under the assumption of how the hemming s decedents would act – and I stress the word assumption here – “their bad behavior and machinations to party-crash” then you would probably be asked to leave the gathering. Innocent until proven guilty SWEETIE, you should know this, you’re a lawyer – not a good one, but a lawyer none the less.

   “That’s not racism, that’s freedom of association.

   Again, you are so far of base it’s comical. You cite freedom of association – unfortunately in family disputes where the parents are no longer in the picture the whole freedom of association argument is null and void. Hemming’s was a slave OK, do you understand that? The situation would have NEVER happened if it weren’t for the egregious practices of both the times and Jefferson himself. You should freshen up on your basic law Liese, you clearly need it.

   In closing I would like to say that your sister, by all determining factors out there in the public domain is a racist bigot, who will do, act, and say anything regardless of whether or not she is right, wrong, or just clueless. And as far as you go darling, well you are simply an ideologue who is out of her league.

   You are a Transportation Law attorney, and I am sure you are good at transportation law. I suggest you stick to it and stop making a fool out of yourself, and shining the spotlight on your sisters past.

   ~Rick from DC

4. Ignorant People Annoy Me on August 15th, 2008 12:12 pm
   

   Oh and Liese, you should really check out the links before you cite them in your argument. Here is just a portion of the proof being rolled out at rumproast that clearly shows the facts fow what they are:

   Kevin,

   I’m setting aside my snarky nature to make a very serious comment here. This woman and the people she associates with are pathetic. I’ve studied Jefferson closely enough, before and after the DNA tests proved that Hemings and Jefferson blood was mixed, to know she is a self-delusional, racist denier, whose brain functions like the brains of the intelligent design nut-balls. They use mock trials and other non-scientific evidence to “prove” the fantasy they so desperately wish for. A short visit to the link she provided confirmed this for me.

   For those who haven’t followed the Jefferson-Hemings case, Annette Gordon-Reed is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Professor of Law at New York Law School. She is black. Gordon-Reed used evidence-based research that was scholarly, both from a legal standpoint, and also from an historical standpoint, to evaluate the case of Hemings and Jefferson. Her most excellent book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy was published in 1997, before the DNA tests. Because of my interest in history, I read the book (before the DNA tests) and concluded based on the evidence that Thomas Jefferson had fathered all of Sally Hemings known children. While there was a mountain of circumstantial evidence all of which led to the same conclusion, the key for me was the memoir of Madison Hemings, their son, published in an Ohio Newspaper in 1873 (link below), along with the evidence that always put Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in the same place at the approximate time of conception of each of their children.

   Interestingly, in the preface to her book, Gordon-Reed anticipated her deniers:

   I approach this task as a law professor and lawyer looking at how professionals in other disciplines–historians and, to a lesser extent, journalists–analyze and use items of evidence and the concept of proof. My look at the writing on this subject suggests that some scholars and commentators, when confronting the Jefferson-Hemings controversy, often use terms such as evidence, proof, and burden of proof, as a way of demonstrating the serious nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged. However, there seems to be come confusion about what those terms and phrases actually mean and how they are most effectively and fairly used.

   Consider the difference between the nature of evidence and the nature of proof. Evidence goes toward establishing proof. By way of analogy, evidence can be described as the bricks that go into making up a wall of proof. Some scholars and commentators, who almost invariably approach the subject of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in a defensive posture, have demanded that every brick of evidence that the two might have had a relationship amount to its own individual wall of proof. If the item of evidence offered does not itself add up to proof, they deem it to be “no evidence,” or alternatively, never mention it at all. Demanding that individual items of evidence amount to proof sets a standard that can only be met in the rarest of circumstances, either in history or in the law. There are, no doubt, many things that have been designated historical truths on the basis of far less evidence than exists on this matter.

   Abeles and her fellow deniers refute the bricks and ignore the wall.

   I also read a Jefferson biography called American Spinx, which was written before the DNA tests by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph J. Ellis. The intent of Ellis’ book was not to conclude about the likelihood of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison, but Ellis nonetheless rendered an opinion in an appendix to the book. I have to go by memory because I don’t have the book here, but my recollection is that Ellis acknowledged the extraordinary work of Gordon-Reed, and the quality of evidence presented by her, and admitted it could well be true, but said he had a hard time believing, culturally and politically, that Jefferson would have had a sexual liaison with one of his slaves. While Ellis hedged and acknowledged his uncertainty on the matter, he believed it unlikely that Jefferson had fathered Hemings’ children.

   Then came the DNA tests, in 1999, which proved that Hemings blood contained Jefferson DNA. The deniers argue that the Jefferson DNA could have come from any male Jefferson who was related by blood to Thomas. This is true, but only one male Jefferson was always in the right place, at the right time to be the father of Sally Hemings’ children. Yes, that’s right, it’s the TJ we know and love. In other words, the DNA tests became the evidentiary mother-of-all-bricks in an amazing wall of proof that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ children. Only the most racist, pure-white believing, faith-like, creationist-out-of-whole-cloth denier could go to the lengths Abeles and her ilk have to deny the truth that stands before them.

   And the Pulitzer winning Joseph J. Ellis now acknowledges that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ children. You can read his comment from 2000 here. He says:

   How then to put it? To say that Jefferson’s paternity of several Hemings children is proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” sounds about right … the new scholarly consensus is that Jefferson and Hemings were sexual partners.

   Madison Hemings’ amazing 1873 memoir is here at Frontline on PBS.org.

   Abeles is a corrosively defensive nutball who will deny a wall of proof that towers before her so that she might fulfill her own wish in her own brain.
   Comment by poputonian on 06/21/08 at 12:40 PM

   Thanks, Kev, for the update above. Here’s another one that I think might really make some heads explode: I believe Thomas Jefferson loved Sally Hemings. Now, being the smart, open-mined guy I am, I know there aren’t enough bricks in this particular wall to constitute proof of love, but there are enough bricks to indicate their liaison lasted more than thirty years. Also, there are enough bricks to indicate TJ fathered all of Sally’s children. And finally, as to the love, here is what Madison Hemings wrote about his father, which he no doubt learned from his mother:

   He had sons born to him, but they died in early infancy, so he then had but two children–Martha and Maria. The latter was left home, but afterwards was ordered to follow him to France. She was three years or so younger than Martha. My mother accompanied her as a body servant. When Mr. Jefferson went to France Martha was just budding into womanhood. Their stay (my mother’s and Maria’s) was about eighteen months. But during that time my mother became Mr. Jefferson’s concubine, and when he was called back home she was enciente by him. He desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him but she demurred. She was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him. To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years. In consequence of his promise, on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia.

   I suppose a case could be made that TJ was just really horny, but given that Sally was the half-sister to his deceased wife Martha Wales, I’m imagining Sally as a Halle Berry look-alike and someone who TJ could have been quite enamored with. I know I don’t know enough to claim TJ loved her, so I won’t claim proof, but it’s how I want to see Jefferson and until there is evidence to suggest otherwise, it is what I will believe about him.
   Comment by poputonian on 06/21/08 at 01:28 PM

   One more and I’ll quit. Annette Gordon-Reed has written a new book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which is set to be published in September.

   This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings’s siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson’s wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family’s compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written.

   Now, take a peek at advance praise for the book (note that two of the reviewers, Ellis and Morgan, are Pulitzer winners) and consider this against claims made by Abeles:

   “Annette Gordon-Reed has broken a path into territory that has hitherto eluded historians: what happens to intimate human relations, those between lover and loved, parent and child, brother and sister, when one among them is enslaved to another. In a richly detailed narrative of events, public and private, she reconstructs the feelings of the participants: Thomas Jefferson, his slave mistress, and her blood relatives. The result is not simply a fascinating story in itself, but a new perspective on how the humanity of slaves and a slave owner could adjust and survive in circumstances designed to obliterate it. We have had other studies of master-slave relationships, but none that has penetrated to the depth of this one.”—Edmund S. Morgan, author of American Slavery

   “Thomas Jefferson often described his slaves at Monticello as ‘my family.’ Annette Gordon-Reed has taken that description seriously. Surely more seriously than Jefferson ever intended! The result, the story of the Hemings family, is the most comprehensive account of one slave family ever written. It is not a pretty story, but it is poignant beyond belief. And it demonstrates conclusively that we must put aside Gone With the Wind forever and begin to study Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx

   “This is not only a riveting history of a slave family on a grand scale, it is also a rarely seen portrait of the family in the Big House, with a remarkable account of the relationship of white and black families. This work catapults Gordon-Reed into the very first rank of historians of slavery.”—John Hope Franklin, author of From Slavery to Freedom

   “Jefferson’s Monticello is a great American icon. But this book allows us to see the place as never before—as the Hemingses’ Monticello. And when Jefferson is in Paris, so are James and Sally Hemings. From years of painstaking research and deep personal engagement with all the Jefferson controversies, Annette Gordon-Reed has crafted a brave, compelling, and moving family saga about slavery and freedom. This is a thoroughly human story about an inhuman institution, told from the inside looking out. Jefferson owned the Hemingses and fathered some of them as he tried to scientifically manage their lives and labor in minute detail; Gordon-Reed never lets us forget that. But more importantly, this work is a beautifully written, textured story about race, tragedy, and sometimes hope—America’s story. If this country has a modern Shakespeare looking for material, Gordon-Reed has provided it.”—David W. Blight, author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation

   “Annette Gordon-Reed is a prodigiously gifted historian and The Hemingses of Monticello is her masterpiece. Bringing the Hemings family out of the shadows and into vibrant life, Gordon-Reed restores them to their proper role at Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home. As she reconstructs the lives and times of Elizabeth Hemings, her children, among them, James and Sally, and many, many other family members, Gordon-Reed illuminates the history of slavery and race in the Old Dominion. Jefferson’s Virginia—and Jefferson himself—will never look the same again.”—Peter Onuf, author of Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood and The Mind of Thomas Jefferson

   “Annette Gordon-Reed’s splendid achievement will have the last word on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, for one cannot imagine another historian matching her exhaustive research and interpretive balance.”—David Levering-Lewis, author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century

   About the Author
   Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. She lives in New York City.

   I did notice that one of the “experts” at the link Abeles referenced was some legal dude from Alabama. Gosh, the truth about Jefferson and Hemings is such a tough call.
   Comment by poputonian on 06/21/08 at 02:09 PM

   Very interesting and convincing. John Hope Franklin is God.
   Comment by Paledave on 06/21/08 at 09:16 PM

   I don´t think Mrs. Abeles will be posting anymore rebuttals here. She appears to be a lost cause…

   Nice work Poputonian!!
   Comment by Manamongst Hussein on 06/21/08 at 10:53 PM

   Thanks Liese, you continue to make both you and your sister look absolutely insane – GOOD JOB!

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