to shirley sherrod. so far, so good. vilsack was contrite. robert gibbs at his press conference had a heart felt apology. people ask about some of the context after the dismiss, the white house and the ag department. we didn t go to the details on that. they re not being completely transparent. but right now they realize they screwed up big time. both sides the white house and the ag department. and i think they sincerely want this want to make good. want to make shirley sherrod as whole as possible and get out. what i find a little hard to believe is that they have no push-back whatsoever against the fact that she was the victim of a right-wing smear that was mounted quite purposefully. there are media and and partisan players out there who are targeting the white house, this administration,ç for thei
john vilsack didn t look at the whole videotape. didn t ask when ms. sherrod worked for the usda and not 24 years ago and she didn t. we could have waited all day. we could have had media circus, said the deputy chief of staff at the white house. we took decisive action. a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere. jim mecina didn t look at the whole videotape. didn t first ask if the decisive action might have been like sending drafuss to devil s island. a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere this atmosphere. this atmosphere exists because the people around him have let this president be dumbed down. the question used to be, fire it up. and the rhetorical answer ready to go. the question now is fire it up, the answer now is not ready because we can t afford the impression of looking presidential and neutral and
own ideological ends, that s fine. but they re doing it with false information. there seems to be no sort of indignation about that in the administration. vilsack met with the congressional black caucus and they figured out that the ag department never filed anything against black farmers. the usda in that case had to reach two different billion dollar settlements with black farmers in two different lawsuits in 1999, again this year. for him to walk in to a meeting like that with a black caucus knowing his history, what can he possibly say to them? i m really sorry. oddly enough or ironically enough, that s part of the defense. the white house has said, because of the awful history at the u.s. department of
if you let your ideological enemies like glenn beck define your terms, you ve lost bigtime. if you re not going to fight for your people when they re pummeled unfarly by fox and andrew brightbart and glenn beck and sean hannity, you don t have a lot of a spine. that s what made the obama administration supporters ill at ease, sick in their stomach. how quickly they moved to cut off someone who might haveç le to a bad spot on glenn beck. and, of course, as we know, there s no basis for that bad spot eventually. now, are you buying the vilsack line of no pressure from the white house? since when on racial politics and a hot one like this leave it to, the guys at the ag department will figure this out. sounds like there might have
seemingly noncredible and scrambling to undo the unnecessary damage. when you re falsely vilified and sacked, you ve been vilsacked. but tonight, agriculture secretary tom vilsack both apologized to shirley sherrard and asked her to come back to work. i ve learned a lot of lessons from this experience in the last couple of days. one of the lessons i learned is that these types of decisions require time. i didn t take the time. i should have. and as a result, a good woman has gone through a very difficult period. and i ll have to live with that for a long, long time. vilsack s agency posted fo e she appeared to recount her thoughts about a white farmer. it was blogger brightbart. he s the same one thatç brough us the incomplete and fraudulent