The Republic of Fear

Opinion | thepilot.com

Tomorrow night is Halloween, when kids (and many adults) dress up as the things that scare us most — ghosts, vampires, witches, skeletons, etc.

(Bet you thought I was going to slip a Trump joke in there, didn’t you? Nah, too easy.) So let’s talk about fear.

Let’s face it — there’s plenty of fear to go around. America seems to have gone from the Home of the Brave to a Republic of Fear. The country whose president once famously proclaimed “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” now seems to be afraid of everything.

To hear some people tell it, fanatical Muslim jihadists are arriving by the tens of thousands, and even their children can’t be trusted not to murder us in our beds. Mexicans are pouring across the border in hordes that would make the Mongols look like a Sunday School outing, hell-bent on raping our women and taking our jobs.

There are so many mad killers out there just waiting to shoot us all down like cattle for whatever reason that some people feel like they need to strap on a shootin’ iron, Wild West style, to go out and get a Happy Meal with the wife and kids. Perverts are dressing up as women to get into women’s bathrooms by claiming they’re transgendered.

Drug cartels! Knockout gamers! Ebola! Zika! Attacks on the power grid! It’s enough to make you want to run into the basement and nail all the doors shut.

The ironic thing is, though, we’ve actually never been safer. While there’s been a slight uptick in crime this year, violent crime has been falling steadily for years.

According to studies done by the Pew Research Center, more Mexican immigrants are leaving than are coming to the U.S., and Border Patrol reports show that fewer and fewer Mexicans are making the attempt. And 78 percent of that “flood of refugees,” according to figures released by the State Department, are women or children, with children making up 58 percent.

The New York Times used data from the “Officer Down Memorial Page,” which “tracks law enforcement officer fatalities in real time” to show that officer deaths from hostile action have been falling steadily for years and are at historic lows.

Ebola’s been knocked back into the jungle. There has never been an epidemic of fake transgender people sneaking into women’s rooms — believe me, if there were, women would have dealt with it by now.

And yet, if you want to see fear turn to frothing rage, try to point any of the above out to some people. Try to tell them the sky’s not falling, and they’ll scream at you that it is and that you’re part of the conspiracy to keep the fall quiet for political gain.

Why? How do people get so wedded to their fear? It’s easy to see where it comes from. And, no, I’m not going to blame Fox News, at least not exclusively. Again, that would be too easy.

Fear-mongering has been a staple of media, and broadcast media in particular, for years. My wife and I used to laugh at a local newscast that was so obsessed with “alerting” viewers to hazards, including venetian blinds, radon and (I swear this is true) apples, that we ended up calling it “Everything In Your House Will Kill You — Film at 11.”

Now, fast-forward 20 years, expand that across multiple national networks, broadcasting 24/7/365, and every one of them dedicated to keeping you terrified and glued to the set. Add into that brew the internet, the technology that finally made literally true the old saying that “a lie travels around the world before the truth gets out of bed.”

Frankly, I have to admire the courage of anyone who’s not actually hiding under the bed after all that.

So what do we do? How do we get our tickets out of the Republic of Fear? Well, we could just turn off all the fear-mongering media and unplug the internet. But we know that’s not going to happen. So I’d recommend a rigorous regimen of skepticism.

You don’t have to be afraid of something just because some TV talking head or Twitterer tells you to. Be rational. Be logical. Demand to see the evidence. And don’t let them make you afraid.

Happy Halloween.

A Constitutional Inconvenience?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Right-wingers love to talk about how much they love the Constitution. But while they may love it, sometimes it seems like they don’t like it very much.

Bring up the protections of the Fourth through Eighth Amendments, and they’ll tell you that “we give too many rights to criminals.” They’re not all that crazy about the 16th Amendment, which establishes the government’s right to levy income taxes.

In fact, the only Amendment they seem to like is the Second, and they treat the first half of that (about the “well-regulated militia”) as if it were an embarrassing relative whom they don’t like to talk about very much.

The latest thing the wingnuts don’t like about the Constitution is the 14th Amendment, which provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

That “all persons” provision means that if you’re born here, you’re an American. Period. This Constitutional principle, commonly known as “birthright citizenship,” has become problematic for people who spend most of their waking hours terrified of the tide of Scary Brown People Who’ve Come to Take Our Stuff.

Donald Trump, as the current de facto leader of the Republican Party, brought the issue to the forefront. Following up on his famous “they’re rapists” comment, he laid out his plan for dealing with the estimated 11 million people already here illegally: “They have to go.”

Asked about what happens to those whose children were born here, Trump, a good family man if ever there was one, claimed we’d keep families together, but “they have to go.” When Bill O’Reilly pressed him on the question of deporting actual U.S. citizens, Trump blithely hand-waved away 147 years of 14th Amendment precedent, telling O’Reilly that “very good lawyers” had told him calling them citizens is “not going to hold up in court.”

Yes, folks, you heard right. The 14th Amendment, which clearly states that if you’re born here you’re a citizen won’t survive constitutional scrutiny, according to unidentified “very good lawyers.” In other words, Donald Trump apparently thinks the Constitution itself is unconstitutional.

This is, of course, utter claptrap, and deserving of nothing but scorn and derision. But since the majority of the Republican field are like rudderless sailboats that blow hither and yon in the wind that emanates from Donald Trump’s wherever, they began rushing to assure us that they, too, either didn’t believe in birthright citizenship at all or that they thought it needed to be done away with.

“We need to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants,” Gov. Bobby Jindal’s campaign declared on Twitter. Dr. Ben Carson told Breitbart.com that “it doesn’t make any sense to me that people could come in here, have a baby and that baby becomes an American citizen.” Sen. Lindsey Graham took a moment off from gibbering about Islamic terrorists under everyone’s bed to say, “I think it’s a bad practice to give citizenship based on birth.”

Former Sen. Rick Santorum insists that we don’t have to amend the Constitution to do away with birthright citizenship. We “merely have to pass a law.” I guess this is true if by passing a statute we can change the literal meaning of the words “all persons born” to “all white persons born.”

For his part, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker seemed to be vying for the coveted Mitt Romney Ribbon for Campaign Weaselry. Walker told NBC reporter Kasie Hunt in response to a direct question that we should “absolutely” abolish birthright citizenship. Later, however, he said to CNBC he is “not taking a position on it one way or the other.” Still later, he took a third stance with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, answering “no” when asked if we should “repeal or modify” the 14th Amendment—but only after Stephanopoulos had asked him three times.

But remember folks: Only Democrats flip-flop. Republicans “evolve.” Walker’s “evolving” before our eyes like something that came out of an egg in a bad horror film.

I well remember the screaming tantrum the Republicans threw when it was revealed that Barack Obama once called the Constitution as originally written “an imperfect document … that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.”

He was, of course, talking about the way the original document embraced slavery as an institution, but from the way Rush Limbaugh and others reacted, you’d have thought the president had proposed using the sacred text to line the White House birdcage before setting it on fire.

Amazing, though, how disposable the beloved Constitution becomes when it comes to getting at the Scary Brown People — and their children. Principles you discard when inconvenient to your prejudices are not principles at all.

Running Away From Obama: How'd That Work Out For Ya?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

So what happened this past Tuesday? What was the cause of this so-called “Republican Wave”?

You can blame the gerrymandering, which marginalizes Democratic votes and concentrates Republican ones. That certainly didn’t hurt Renee “I need MY paycheck!” Ellmers in her race against Clay Aiken.

But that doesn’t explain Kay Hagan losing to Thom Tillis, nor does it explain Republican victories in other U.S. Senate and state governor’s races.

You can blame the pernicious influence of money in politics. But the fact is, both sides spent huge amounts of money, and in North Carolina, Hagan actually outspent Tillis.

So what was it? You might come to the conclusion that people just don’t like Democratic policies. But then you’d have to explain away what happened when certain measures were actually put on the ballots in various states:

— Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota passed bills to raise the minimum wage, even while electing politicians who opposed such an increase. Not only did these measures pass, but they passed by wide margins. (A similar bill passed in Illinois, but it’s only considered “advisory” and doesn’t have the force of law.)

— Washington state passed a referendum that mandates universal background checks for gun purchases. The bill passed with 60 percent of the popular vote, despite millions of dollars poured into the state by the NRA and other gun rights groups to fight it.

— Voters in Colorado and North Dakota rejected so-called “personhood” laws, which define human life as beginning at fertilization of the egg. It’s clearly a back-door attempt to restrict reproductive freedom, and voters in those states soundly defeated both measures.

— Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. A solid majority of Floridians (57 percent) voted to legalize it for medical use, but that measure fell short of the 60 percent it would have needed to become law.

It seems that voters, when asked to choose, favor liberal policies on the minimum wage, gun control, reproductive choice, and even legal weed. Yet they don’t seem to like Democratic candidates. And I know why.

It’s because they act like such wimps.

One of the recurring themes of campaign coverage was how Democratic candidates were “running away” from President Obama. He’s “wildly unpopular,” the press assured us, despite the steadily decreasing jobless rate, a declining deficit, millions of Americans getting health insurance as a result of the much-reviled Affordable Care Act, and 63 months of economic expansion.

And boy, did they ever run away. Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes refused to even say whether or not she’d voted for the president. Clay Aiken told reporters he didn’t want the president to appear with him. Incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan spent all her time touting herself as the “most moderate” senator.

Republicans, on the other hand, constantly repeated, “Hagan voted with Obama 96 percent of the time."  They painted Hagan as “the deciding vote for Obamacare.” (Funny how every incumbent Democrat in every state was “the deciding vote for Obamacare.”) In the last days of the election, they even put it on the signs: HAGAN=OBAMACARE.

And not once did I hear her stand up and say, “Yeah, I voted for Obamacare, and here’s why: No pre-existing condition exclusions, no lifetime caps on coverage, more people are getting insured, and you can keep your kids covered until they’re 26.” You know, all the things people tell pollsters they like — so long as you don’t call it Obamacare.

Here’s the thing about trying to run away from the president from your party: You’re also running away from the policies that you voted for. That doesn’t work. The Republicans aren’t going to let you do it, and trying to do it makes you look weak, craven, and wholly dependent on polls to determine your loyalty.

Not only does it not work, but as we’ve seen above, it’s so unnecessary. Remember, the president you’re so shy about being seen with got elected twice by large margins. People actually want a lot of the same things the Democrats claim to want. You want to motivate your base voters, the ones you really need in the midterms, then stand up and say, “Yeah, I voted for that, and I’d do it again. I did it because it’ll help the people of my country and my state, and here’s why I say that …”

You want better turnout, Democrats. You need to move the polls, not chase them. You need to stop listening to overpaid Beltway consultants who tell you people won’t like you if you come out strong for the things that help people. You know, the ones Democrats are supposed to believe in.

A few noisy people may not like liberal policies, but everyone hates a two-faced coward.

THE GOBSHITES SPEAK: 

The comments in The Pilot since this column went live show that the Right's not even trying to hide the racism any more:

From commenter "PearlHarbor":  A couple of articles I read called the election white man's revenge.

Articles where? Stormfront.com? The KKK Journal? 

And of course, our old friend "Francis" spoke from beneath his concealing hood of anonymity: As much as it pains me to say this Obama may have been just what we needed, something had to wake White America up, we have been far to lenient and passive when it comes to allowing others dictate their demands, from illegal immigrants marching in our streets to the moral Monday crowd driven by the NAACP trying to use their numbers, it's always been about them, never us, time to think about what we want for a change.

Yes, Francis, let's never forget that it's the white man who is the truly oppressed minority in this country. Wake up, white men!

Jesus. 

If Both Sides Do It, Why Do I Never Get E-mail Like This From Liberals?

From todays' e-mail, proving once again the point of todays' column: "What the average person does not realize is that North Carolina government for at least the last 100 if not 125 years has been under the thumb of nigra democratic rule. This year, the first time in over one century, the Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office It is great. russ"

Wingnut Media Fails Once Again

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

By now, we’ve all heard of the egregiously racist things spouted by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling to his trophy girlfriend in a recorded phone conversation that was recently released to every media outlet, with the possible exception of the “Sesame Street News Flash.”

Immediately, right-wing media leapt into action, their crack investigative teams digging hard for the answer to the most important question of all: How do we turn this into an attack on the Democrats?

“Racist Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Is a Democrat,” blared a blog post on the National Review website. “Report: Clippers Owner Caught In Racist Rant Is a Democratic Donor,” said Fox Nation. Right-wing icon Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report told us that “NBA Sterling is a Democrat,” while Tucker Carlson’s vanity project The Daily Caller claimed “Race Hate Spewing Clippers Owner Is Democratic Donor.”

All of this, it seems, was based on the fact that, as The Daily Caller put it, “Between 1990 and 1992 Donald Sterling made a $2,000 donation to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a $1,000 donation to current Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as well as a $1,000 donation to the recalled former governor of California, Gray Davis.”

Got that? A multibillionaire makes donations of his pocket change to three Democrats 22 years ago, and suddenly he’s a “Democratic donor,” for purposes of right-wing smear campaigns.

I suppose they were desperate for something to latch onto after the debacle in which rising star Cliven Bundy turned out to be not only a freeloading welfare rancher and domestic terrorist, but a racist nutball as well — but only after he was embraced by the likes of Sean Hannity and Rand Paul.

Now, of course, they’re backpedaling on their support for Bundy faster than Wile E. Coyote when he realizes he’s gone over the edge of the cliff, while the wingnut media scramble desperately to find someone to take the heat off. I guess Donald Sterling looked like the perfect target.

Problem with the Sterling-as-Democrat charge is that, according to California’s voter registration rolls, it turns out that the creepy old dude’s a registered Republican and has been since 1998. Oops. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to make an issue of Sterling’s party affiliation — huh, guys?

Once again, members of the right-wing media have fallen flat on their faces in their desperate attempt to support one of the most absurd Republican tropes: “We’re not racist. Democrats are the real racists, because of Robert Byrd. So there.”

Apparently, the party whose supporters wave signs showing President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, a party that courts the support of a washed-up rock star who calls that president a “subhuman mongrel,” a party that has no problem with its most prominent talk show host referring to the first lady as “uppity” and playing songs about “Barack the Magic Negro,” a party that embraced a candidate who told Iowa primary voters, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” (even though there are more white than black welfare recipients) — apparently it’s very important to that party to distract from the pervasive racism in its own current ranks by convincing the American people that it’s the Democrats who are the real racists because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act 50 years ago (although most Northern Democrats supported it), and Sen. Robert Byrd was in the KKK before most of us were born.

Forgive me if I don’t find this argument convincing, especially after the years since 1964 — those years that brought us the GOP’s race-baiting “Southern Strategy,” giving us gems like Bush the Elder’s Willie Horton ad (AHHH! SCARY BLACK MAN!) and Jesse Helms’ infamous “White Hands” spot (“You needed that job, but the government said it had to go to a minority”).

I’m not saying that all Republicans are racists or that there are no racists in the Democratic Party. Clearly neither of those is true. I’m saying that an awful lot more racists seem to find a welcoming home in the GOP, and that the first step to solving your problem is to admit that you have one. It’s a simple truth the Raging Republican Right doesn’t seem to have learned.

Donald Sterling is now banned from the NBA for life. It’s a pity that the GOP doesn’t have the same backbone to deal with its virulent racist wing.

What's Setting Them Off Now?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

A couple of weeks ago, an anonymous staffer at the allegedly liberal TV network MSNBC took to Twitter to mention an ad that was scheduled to run during the Super Bowl: “Maybe the right wing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new Cheerios ad w/​biracial family.”

You may remember when the first commercial featuring the attractive African-American dad, white mom and annoyingly cute daughter aired. Racist trolls came out of the woodwork.

“Shoving multiculturalism down our throats when we know it fails … awesome,” groused one neo-segregationist on the popular site Reddit.

(You can tell the right-wingers by their code words, particularly their hatred of multiculturalism and obsession with things being “shoved down their throats.”)

“Why are we celebrating race traitors and their ugly monkey children?” posted another, sounding exactly like some of the comments posted about Michelle Obama and her daughters on right-wing sites like Breitbart.com and RedState. YouTube had to shut its comments section down because of the flood of racist, hateful comments made about the video.

Let me tell you, folks, when you get too nasty for YouTube’s notoriously vile comments section, you have reached a new depth. We are talking the Marianas Trench of awfulness. “Sinister,” “an abomination” and “disgusting propaganda” are just some of the ones that can be printed here.

So it wasn’t that bold to predict a backlash from those persistent voices on the right who use conservatism as a cover for their bigotry and hatred. However, let us not forget one of the right’s most sacred beliefs: pointing out that racism exists, has existed, or even might exist is worse than actual racism.

Rather than distance themselves from the people who attacked the original ad, people like RNC Chairman Reince Priebus demanded an apology from MSNBC and said he was ”banning” all RNC staff and “Republican surrogates” from appearing on the network, even though MSNBC had apologized for and deleted the offending tweet within three hours. The rest of the right-wing noise machine followed suit.

So, predictably, MSNBC head Phil Griffin went into full grovel mode, assuring the poor babies whom the tweet had offended that “the tweet last night was outrageous and unacceptable,” and that the person responsible had been sacked.

(After which Fox News, in a show of solidarity, fired frequent commentators Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly for all the nasty things they’ve said about liberals. Ha ha! Just kidding about that last bit.)

So the Super Bowl came and went, and sure enough, there didn’t seem to be nearly as much uproar over the new Cheerios ad. Probably because this time, right-wing rage was directed at Coca-Cola for an ad showing happy, smiling people — white, black, Latino, Asian, even a brief shot of a gay couple roller-skating with their child — over a sound track of “America the Beautiful” sung in a variety of languages.

The tag at the end of the commercial was “America Is Beautiful,” which you’d think no one could object to. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. Right-wing reaction was predictably apoplectic.

“Coca-Cola is the official drink of illegals crossing the border,” tweeted Fox’s Todd Starnes. Despite the fact that nothing in the ad said anything about immigrants not learning English, the hashtag #speakamerican took off on Twitter, as in this message from someone calling himself @RealTrueCon: “#Characters in these Cola commercials, from Mexicans to Indians, learn to #SpeakAmerican already! Or better don’t be in ’em.”

(Of course, unless you’re speaking Cherokee, Navajo or any one of a plethora of Native American tongues, you’re not really “Speaking American,” are you?)

Then there was this from those right-wing stalwarts at Breitbart.com: “When the company used such an iconic song, one often sung in churches on the Fourth of July … to push multiculturalism down our throats [sound familiar?], it’s no wonder conservatives were outraged.”

Actually, it’s never any wonder when conservatives are outraged. The only surprises come when you try to figure out what trivial thing is going to set them off next.

To be a right-winger in 21st century America is apparently to go through life like a raw exposed nerve, just looking for something, anything, to trigger another explosion of incomprehensible rage.

It must be exhausting for them. Glad I’m not one.

Just Sayin'

In a recent online debate,  some right winger trotted out the old cliche that "Democrats are the real racists because Robert Byrd." 

If your go-to argument to counter the completely accurate observation that today's right wing movement has an ugly strain of racism running through it is to point out that a Democrat, now deceased, was in the Klan in the 1940's and opposed civil rights in the 1960's--over 50 years ago--then you have decisively lost the debate.

Barack Obama: Time Traveler

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Listen: Barack Obama has come unstuck in time.

Recently, the polling outfit Public Policy Polling did a survey of self-identified Republicans in Louisiana. They were asked whether they called themselves liberal or conservative (not surprisingly, 88 percent said they were either “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative”) and who they supported for the 2016 GOP nomination (also not surprisingly for this early stage, answers were all over the map and inconclusive).

But one question resulted in a truly jaw-dropping answer. When asked, “Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?”

Trick question, right? After all, at the time of the hurricane in 2005, The President Who Must Not Be Named was chief executive. The commander in chief. The Big Kahuna. And, let us not forget, he was the guy who appointed the infamously inept Michael “Brownie” Brown as director of FEMA and told him, “You’re doin’ a heck of a job, Brownie,” as people died. Barack Obama was only an up-and-coming but still junior senator from Illinois.

And yet, 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans said it was Obama who was responsible for the botched response. Another 44 percent said they weren’t sure.

I guess this should probably come as no great surprise. This is, after all, the party that blamed President Obama for the Great Recession, even though the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (the people who keep an eye on such things) pegged the beginning of the recession at December 2007. And lest we forget, John McCain Who Was a POW ran ads blaming Obama for high gas prices during the 2008 campaign.

By the way, did you know that Obama is also to blame for all current racism in America? Yes, the latest Republican trope seems to be that because Barack Obama commented on the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case by observing (accurately) that a lot of young black men have been viewed with suspicion and fear by white people for years, and that that’s actually happened to him, we are now “divided along racial lines,” and it’s all his fault.

Because, as we all know, racism never existed before the Leader of the Free World “stuck his nose” (as they put it) into the issue. Apparently, the right has barely learned to tolerate the president being black; having him mention that he’s had experiences common to black men in America is grounds for yet another explosion of white self-pity and butthurt.

And, of course, it’s an article of faith in the land of Wingnuttia that Barack Obama was personally involved in the IRS “targeting” of conservative groups (even though all the evidence now shows that both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized). It’s also an article of faith that he personally issued a “stand down” order calling off a rescue attempt in Benghazi and therefore caused the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

When I say “faith,” by the way, I’m using the word in the sense of “nutty things they believe and will defend even unto death even in the face of all evidence to the contrary.”

But this idea that, apparently, Barack Obama can travel back in time to screw things up is a new mutation of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

What will the GOP try to blame next on Time Traveling Barack Obama (hereinafter referred to as TTBO)? Will Darrell Issa claim to have discovered TTBO’s voice screaming “Kill Whitey” on the newly released Watergate tapes?

Will we hear Glenn Beck blubbering that TTBO knew ahead of time that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and did nothing because he wanted to promote a liberal racial agenda by getting America into a war that would eventually result in the desegregation of the U.S. military?

Will Michele Bachmann announce the finding of a secret scroll that implicates TTBO in the assassination of Julius Caesar because he wanted the African empire of Carthage to win the Punic Wars? (I know, Carthage was defeated nearly 50 years before Julius was born, but this is Michele Bachmann we’re talking about here.)

What? You think any of this is too crazy for even the Republicans to say? Friends, in a world where a full 73 percent of the GOPers in the Pelican State either think Barack Obama was in charge of the response to hurricane Katrina or are willing to believe that he was, there is no such thing as too crazy.

This is Outreach?

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It’s pretty much accepted wisdom at this point that, in order to succeed on a national level, the Republican Party is going to have to broaden its appeal.

As South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham put it, “The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

So what are conservative Republicans doing to expand their appeal on the national level?

Well, you have Phyllis Schlafly of the right-wing Eagle Forum going on conservative radio and explaining that it’s useless to try to reach out to Latinos because they don’t “have any Republican inclinations at all,” and “they’re running an illegitimacy rate that’s just about the same as the blacks are.”

Further, she said, Latinos “come from a country where they have no experience with limited government. And the types of rights we have in the Bill of Rights, they don’t understand that at all. You can’t even talk to them about what the Republican principle is.”

Perhaps someone can explain to Mrs. Schlafly, first off, that Latinos don’t come from “a country.” There is no country called Latinostan. Also, they can explain to her that insulting, en masse, the fastest-growing voting group in the U.S. is the path to political extinction.

Meanwhile, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Off His Meds) defended his opposition to immigration reform and asserted that Latinos won’t punish the GOP at the ballot box with this gem: “I think you will see people start waking up and go, ‘Wow, I’m Hispanic and these Republicans really like me. … Wow, this Republican really does want me to do well. That’s the party I ought to be in!”



Yeah, Louie, let me know how that condescending and paternalistic attitude works out for you. Of course, this is the guy who once berated the attorney general for casting “aspersions on his asparagus,” much to the confusion of all in the hearing room, so maybe he’s jockeying for Michele Bachmann’s soon-to-be-vacant position as Head Loony of the Republican Caucus.



Don’t worry, ladies — the Republican Party hasn’t forgotten you! Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz., of course) recently demonstrated, once again, the GOP’s ignorance of female anatomy by confidently asserting that exceptions from abortion restrictions in case of rape are unnecessary because such pregnancies are “rare.” He apparently forgot that ignorant BS like that cost the GOP a Senate seat less than a year ago.

During the recent debacle in Texas, where the legislature came back especially to pass a restrictive abortion law, Republican legislator Jodie Lautenberg struck a blow for gender equality in the area of ignorance by claiming that emergency rooms have “rape kits” that “clean women out” (for the record, the rape kits are for collecting criminal evidence). Scottie Nell Hughes, director of the Tea Party News Network, went on TV saying that rape victims who end resulting pregnancies should serve the same jail time as their rapists. And the beat goes on.

Of course, there are some who say that there’s no need for outreach, that “angry white guys” are enough to carry them to the White House and control of the Senate. I invite those people to compare and contrast a pair of events that happened right here this past week in North Carolina. They are the latest “Moral Monday” protest on the Halifax Mall behind the General Assembly building and the “Thankful Tuesday” counter-demonstration the next evening.According to The News & Observer, the police estimated 2,000 attendees at the Moral Monday protest. Organizers pegged the number at closer to 5,000. The Tuesday protest, on the other hand, drew a mere 200 people, holding signs that said, “Stop Abortion Now,” and “Thank you [Gov. Pat] McCrory.”

So, even using the lowest estimate, 10 times as many people turned out to protest the General Assembly’s current path as turned out to support it. And the pictures from the event really tell the tale: The Moral Monday folks are a strikingly diverse group, of all ages and races. The TT’s … not so much. They are, shall we say, ethnically homogenous, and not one of them looks younger than 60.

Of course, the generally low turnout for TT may be because right now even a lot of sane Republicans are getting disgusted with the General Assembly’s full-steam-ahead efforts to enact a radical right-wing social agenda at the expense of little details like a state budget.

Maybe they’d get better turnout if they called for a “Stop Futzing Around and Pass a Budget Already Tuesday.” Granted, it doesn’t roll as trippingly off the tongue, but I think it accurately sums up the frustration I’m hearing from Republican friends of the non-insane variety.  I know the GOP isn’t listening to me, but maybe it could listen to them.

They're Not Even Trying to Hide the Racism Any More

Rush Limbaugh Calls The First Lady ‘Uppity’ (VIDEO) | Addicting Info:

I’ll tell you something else. We don’t like paying millions of dollars for Mrs. Obama’s vacations. The NASCAR crowd doesn’t quite understand why when the husband and the wife are going to the same place, the first lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers-on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747. NASCAR people understand that’s a little bit of a waste. They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism.

There's no way he can spin this. Oh, he'll try, but 'uppity' is a racially charged word, and Limbaugh  knows it.

Rush Limbaugh's ratings are falling sharply. Hardly any Republican pol feels compelled to kiss his butt any more. He's trying desperately to get attention, and it's only going to get worse. 


This is mostly useful as a way of outing those idiots who claim "we're not racists, Democrats are the real racists, because Robert Byrd was in the KKK before any of us were born." Watch closely: anyone trying to defend Limbaugh and/or his use of the word 'uppity' is ipso facto racist. And I don't care if it offends them to be called what they are. 

Just When You Think They Can't Go Any Lower

A writer for the conservative magazine American Spectator claims Shirley Sherrod was lying when she says her father was "lynched." Why? Because Sherrod's father was beaten to death by white cops, not hanged.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Lessons Learned? I Wouldn't Bet the Farm On It

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It's been, to say the least, an interesting couple of weeks in American race relations. Things kicked off when the NAACP voted, at its annual convention, on a resolution that "condemns the bigoted elements within the tea party and asks for them to be repudiated." Note that the statement doesn't call all TPers racist. And as we know, it's not unusual in American politics for one group to ask another to "repudiate" its more fringe elements - so long as those fringe elements are on the so-called "left."

On one occasion, for instance, the late Tim Russert called on Barack Obama to repudiate, of all people, Harry Belafonte, for referring to President George W. Bush as a "terrorist," as if the rantings of an aging calypso star were somehow the responsibility of every black politician.

But, boy howdy, ask the TPers to distance themselves from the people at their rallies who carry signs showing the president as a witch doctor, complete with bone in nose, and just watch their old gray heads explode.

The immediate reaction was to go into their standard attack mode - as always, a variation on the old schoolyard riposte, "I know you are, but what am I?" It was the NAACP, the tea partiers asserted, who were the real racists.

Then the leader of a group called the Tea Party Express, a guy named Mark Williams, published a mock letter from the NAACP to Abraham Lincoln. "We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing," Williams wrote. "Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house."

Nope, no racism there.

Within a few days, Williams was, as requested, repudiated. He and the Tea Party Express were tossed out of the the Tea Party Federation. The NAACP issued a press release commending the federation. A new day of tolerance and understanding dawned in America.

Ha ha! Just kidding.

Enter Andrew Breitbart, the man who gave the world the infamous ACORN "pimp" tapes, in which members of the community organizing group were supposedly caught on tape advising a fake pimp and his prostitute how to set up in business and avoid taxes. The tapes were later discovered by the California attorney general's office to have been "heavily edited." They cut out the fact that, among other things, one ACORN worker had called the cops and that the supposed "pimp" (shown in the intro in full Superfly regalia) had actually been dressed in a suit and tie and claimed he was a law student.

After that, Breitbart was discredited and never again believed or taken seriously by anyone of any significance.

Hee hee! Got you again!

Breitbart claimed to have found a tape of a U.S. Department of Agriculture functionary named Shirley Sherrod telling an NAACP group that, in a former job, she hadn't given a white farmer who came to her for help "the full force of what she could do." She'd taken him to a white lawyer ("one of his own kind") and, as the clip ends, left him there.

The NAACP, apparently unaware of what a dishonest propagandist Breitbart is, condemned Sherrod. She lost her job with the USDA. Then the rest of the tape came out. Once again, things were not as Breitbart had presented them. Imagine that.

Sherrod found out that the lawyer she'd referred the farmer to hadn't done much. In fact, the poor guy was about to be foreclosed on. At that time, she went on to say, she realized that "it's really about those who have versus those who don't ... and they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic."

She got to work, she helped save the man's farm, and she and hisfamily remain friends to this day. He and his wife even went on CNN to try to clear Sherrod's name. Instead of a story of racism, it was a story of overcoming it. The NAACP and the White House apologized and USDA head Tom Vilsack offered Sherrod her job back. She's not sure she wants it, and who can blame her?

In the end, everyone learned a valuable lesson. From then on,everyone listened to what other people were actually saying, instead of filtering it through their own prejudices and trying to pick out little out-of-context nuggets to pelt their perceived enemies with.

Ho ho! That's a real knee-slapper, that one is.

GOP Senators Go After Kagan By Attacking...Thurgood Marshall?

Dana Milbank:

As confirmation hearings opened Monday afternoon, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the unusual approach of attacking Kagan because she admired the late justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked more than two decades ago.

Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl -- the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event -- was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said

It was, to say the least, a curious strategy to go after Marshall, the iconic civil rights lawyer who successfully argued Brown vs. Board of Education. Did Republicans think it would help their cause to criticize the first African American on the Supreme Court, a revered figure who has been celebrated with an airport, a postage stamp and a Broadway show? The guy is a saint -- literally. Marshall this spring was added to the Episcopal Church's list of "Holy Women and Holy Men," which the Episcopal Diocese of New York says "is akin to being granted sainthood."

With Kagan's confirmation hearings expected to last most of the week, Republicans may still have time to make cases against Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Gandhi.

Every day, in every way, the GOP continues to present themselves to the world as the party of cranky old white men who think the civil rights struggle and desegregation were bad things and who wish all those noisy brown people would just learn their place (and who indignantly shout about "playing the race card" when anyone points out this very obvious fact).

GO LEMMINGS GO!