Zakaria vs Beck

Oh, Fareed. You sexy, sexy man.



Well done.

The Confederate Party - Steve King Edition

Rep Steve King is one of the crazies, but this is raising the bar even for him:

"Figure this out, Madame Speaker: We have a very, very urban Senator, Barack Obama, who has decided he's going to run for president, and what does he do? He introduces legislation to create a whole new Pigford claim."

"We've got to stand up at some point and say, 'We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress.' That war's been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there's no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery. No one's filing that claim."

THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK! LIKE, SUPER BLACK. BLACK BLACK BLACK!

Does it even need to be said that his argument is idiotic?  He's claiming there are more claimants than there are farmers, but of course the whole point is that USDA discrimination against black farmers caused many of them to lose their farms!  And just because the class of affected people are black by definition, doesn't make it slavery reparations.  What about all the descendants of slaves who weren't farmers during the 80s and 90s?  Wouldn't they have to be included as well to make this slavery reparations?

It's like they don't even try to make honest arguments.  It's so monumentally frustrating.

GOP's Pledge With America

One more data point in the "GOP isn't even trying with minorities anymore" theme that I documented previously here.  Check out this collage of all the photos in the newly released Pledge With America, and see who is missing:

That's right.  One black woman out of hundreds of whites.  It's Southern Strategy all the way for the GOP.

Imam Rauf Finally Weighs In

In an Op-Ed in the Times:

Lost amid the commotion is the good that has come out of the recent discussion. I want to draw attention, specifically, to the open, law-based and tolerant actions that have taken place, and that are particularly striking for Muslims.

President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg both spoke out in support of our project. As I traveled overseas, I saw firsthand how their words and actions made a tremendous impact on the Muslim street and on Muslim leaders. It was striking: a Christian president and a Jewish mayor of New York supporting the rights of Muslims. Their statements sent a powerful message about what America stands for, and will be remembered as a milestone in improving American-Muslim relations.

The wonderful outpouring of support for our right to build this community center from across the social, religious and political spectrum seriously undermines the ability of anti-American radicals to recruit young, impressionable Muslims by falsely claiming that America persecutes Muslims for their faith. These efforts by radicals at distortion endanger our national security and the personal security of Americans worldwide. This is why Americans must not back away from completion of this project. If we do, we cede the discourse and, essentially, our future to radicals on both sides. The paradigm of a clash between the West and the Muslim world will continue, as it has in recent decades at terrible cost. It is a paradigm we must shift.

Duh?

Maybe it's the time I've spent living in radically different cultures than my own that makes this type of understanding trivial... I don't know.  I just can't understand how people can be so incapable of putting themselves in another's shoes.

Data Points on the Muslim Thing, Ctd.

Via TPM:

I was just looking at this piece in a local paper about the as-yet-unconfirmed report of gunshots being fired at a mosque construction site in Murfreesboro when members of the congregation were inspecting damage from suspected arson-vandalism the night before.

Here's one of the comments ...

Data Points on the Muslim Thing

A man walked into a mosque with a wine bottle in hand, shouted some lovely racial slurs, and pissed on the prayer rugs.

What fun this is.  Thank you, Republicans.

"Are You A Muslim?" If Yes, Get Stabbed.

These are the wages of the divisive hatred that the professional right continually spews.

According to Detective Marc Nell, at 6:12 pm last night, the driver picked up Michael Enright, 21, of Brewster, NY, at the intersection of 24th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. The cab proceeded to drive north, and Enright asked the driver, who Nell identified as a 43-year-old Asian male, if he was Muslim. After the driver responded that he was, Enright allegedly stabbed him repeatedly with a Leatherman tool, according to police.

"[Enright] stabbed the driver in the throat, right arm, left forearm, right thumb and upper lip," Nell said.

From TPM:

Our reporter Eric Lach just spoke to the NYPD. They confirmed the key details of the story and said the attack will be charged as 2nd degree attempted murder and a hate crime. The suspect in the case is Michael Enright, 21. Full report soon.

"But we don't support violence!  We just think that Muslims aren't real Americans, that all Muslims are Jihadists, and that they want to dominate America with their Sharia Law!"


In fact, this crime reminds me of this near assault by the Tea Partiers:

Fox News and the Southern Strategy

John Chait on Fox News' renewed attempts to stir the Southern Strategy.  Keep in mind that this was written before the further validating example of Shirley Sherrod.

One of the very few impressive things about conservatives over the last few years is that their opposition to President Obama, though frequently unhinged, misinformed, hypocritical, or outright dishonest, has generally lacked much in the way of racial animus. Obviously you can find some exceptions -- Rush Limbaugh is a notable one, casting health care as "reparations" and trying to make his listeners fear that "in Obama's America," black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Limbaugh has largely been an exception against the general trend of de-racialized nuttiness on the right.

What you're starting to see from Fox News now, though, is the most widespread and mainstream right-wing effort to exploit racial fears against Obama. The putative issue is the claim that the Obama Justice Department is failing to prosecute a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. If you're interested in the merits of the case, which are extremely flimsy, a good rundown can be found at Fourth Branch. Even if the conservative interpretation of this event were actually true, it's obviously a tiny matter. Nobody has produced a voter who even claims to have been intimidated -- the voters at the polling station were virtually all black anyway -- nor is there any credible claim of anything remotely approaching a systematic attempt to intimidate white voters at the polls.

It's a well made case.  Worth the read.

Southern Strategy, Alive and Well

From The Hill:

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have requested a hearing to investigate alleged racial bias within the Department of Justice, according to a letter sent Friday to committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

The request came in relation to a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party that was first prosecuted as a civil action in January 2009, then dismissed for two of the three defendants the following May. An injunction was issued for the last defendant.

House Judiciary Republicans also moved for further investigation on Thursday, urging President Obama in a letter to direct Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor for the case.

Remember, two of the last three RNC Chairmen admitted to using the Southern Strategy. The current RNC Chairman has said the GOP has been pursuing the strategy for "the last 40-plus years." Looks like it's sticking around.

Also, keep in mind that the New Black Panther story is completely made up.  So sayeth honest conservatives.

Final Word on New Black Panthers

Steve Bennen references the events in the items I posted earlier, then concludes with this, which I will quote to the end:

That should be the end of it, but in some Republican circles, this exceedingly dull story is being treated as a major scandal (at least, they're pretending to consider it a scandal, in the hopes of generating racial tensions before the midterm elections). In just the last few weeks, Fox News has aired 95 segments -- that's not a typo -- about the issue. Megyn Kelly, the hyper-partisan activist/anchor, not only aired 45 segments in 15 days, she lashed out at a conservative guest who dismissed the relevance of the story.

To his credit, Politico's Ben Smith ran a piece late yesterday that effectively ends the "controversy."

A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.


But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department's handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party -- a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months -- Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.


"This doesn't have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration," said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims "in the initial discussions" of the Panther case last year.


"My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president," Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.

Those pushing this garbage aren't exactly subtle in their intentions. Why hyperventilate about a two-year-old story that Bush's own Justice Department found too insignificant to care about? Because some Republicans hope to generate racial animus before the elections, trying to get white voters angry with the Obama administration.

Jon Chait explained this week, "What you're starting to see from Fox News now, though, is the most widespread and mainstream right-wing effort to exploit racial fears against Obama.... There has been a great deal of right-wing insanity unleashed over the last year and a half, but this is the first time that the fear has an explicitly racial cast. You now have the largest organ of movement conservatism promoting Limbaugh's idee fixe that the Obama administration represents black America's historical revenge against whites."

It's as disgusting as anything we've seen from the right in the past 18 months.

Palin's Mama Grizzlies and Race

I wont link to the contentless, argument-free trash.  You've no doubt seen it.


The striking thing to me is the departure from what I've come to expect from GOP promo videos.  You need to have those strategically placed minority faces in order to try to fool some of them into thinking you're not the Party of Racists.  (Not elusively racist, of course, but if you're a Racist, you're almost certainly a Republican.)  Remember George W. Bush's Compassionate Conservatism Gallery at the White House?  Of the 21 photos, 19 were of President Bush talking to the blacks.


Anyway, I was struck by the distinct lack of non-white faces in that 2 minute Palin video.  At first I thought there weren't any minorities in the video, but I figured that couldn't be right.  So I went back scene by scene and counted, without recounting people from the same event twice.  I also didn't count Sarah every time she appeared.  I also didn't count white people that weren't clearly visible.  Of 340 people shown in that video, only four were nonwhite.  Two of those were security guards, and one of them only had a hand flash through the corner of the frame.  The remaining two brown people were both women, but both were part of the background of the scene, away from the focus of attention.


That's amazing.  It's like they're not even trying to hide it anymore.  Obama has driven them mad.

Rep Inglis(R) Is Now Free To Speak

Republican Representative Bob Inglis has been making a splash lately.  He lost his GOP primary because he had the gall to try to lead his constituents away from the fever swamps by telling them to "Turn turn the television off when Glenn Beck comes on."  Remember, Inglis was a 1994 Republican Revolutionary, and no moderate.  Of course, Rep. Inglis lost to his Tea Partying opponent.  There is no room in the Republican Party for anything but the most hard core conservatives.

Luckily for us, now that he's not beholden to his crazy-ass voters he's giving "straight-talk" to the AP:

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

"I love the South. I'm a Southerner. But I can feel it," he said.

Racism. It's the Teapartiers, my friends.  When your spiritual leader is someone that's convinced Obama is ruining the economy on purpose in order to give him the chance to make reparations to the blacks for slavery, then Racism is par for the course.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

Ahhh, honesty. Refreshing.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Very nice, Rep Inglis. Way to Lead.  Better late than never.

Certainty and the New Black Panthers

I had a wonderful discussion today about the Black Panther voter intimidation with one of my conservative friends, and although I presented ample evidence and argument, his ultimate response was along the lines of "Well, I've got my interpretation and I'm sticking to it."  He would like to believe that Bush Administration lawyers acted to incorrectly protect the Black Panthers from an election tampering charge on the day Obama was elected, so he does.  It would require so many people acting against their political interests that it strains credulity, but he sticks to it.

Doesn't that strike you as religious thinking?

Well, here's another data point, from the conservative bastion National Review, making my case:

Forget about the New Black Panther Party case; it is very small potatoes. Perhaps the Panthers should have been prosecuted under section 11 (b) of the Voting Rights Act for their actions of November 2008, but the legal standards that must be met to prove voter intimidation -- the charge -- are very high.

In the 45 years since the act was passed, there have been a total of three successful prosecutions. The incident involved only three Panthers at a single majority-black precinct in Philadelphia. So far -- after months of hearings, testimony and investigation -- no one has produced actual evidence that any voters were too scared to cast their ballots. Too much overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges has been devoted to this case.

A number of conservatives have charged that the Philadelphia Black Panther decision demonstrates that attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have racial double standards. How many attorneys in what positions? A pervasive culture that affected the handling of this case? No direct quotations or other evidence substantiate the charge.

Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, makes a perfectly plausible argument: Different lawyers read this barely litigated statutory provision differently.

There you have it. As I said to my friend, the evidence just wasn't there for a conviction, so they left it at civil charges rather than criminal. The Obama Administration then went on to slap the baton-wielder with the maximum penalty still available.  How does that count as the Black President giving special favors to Blacks?

Oh wait, I forgot the rule: the National Review is probably a liberal plant!

Reagan the Anti-White Racist

Here's how Reagan went about picking Supreme Court nominees:

In the course of our discussion with Reagan the first time we were talking about the candidates . . . we had talked about Scalia. Reagan had asked me whether Scalia was of Italian extraction. I think he used the word 'extraction,' and I said, 'Yes, he's of Italian extraction.' Reagan said, 'That's the man I want to nominate, so I want to meet him.' We brought Scalia in. . . . The president met Scalia, and he offered Scalia the job right on the spot, in about 15 minutes, very little ceremony here. Scalia accepted on the spot. He was delighted. That was it. . . .

I think [Reagan] felt that it would be great to put an Italian American on the Supreme Court. He had all the usual American instincts: 'We don't have an Italian American on the court, so we ought to have one.' He really felt good about doing that. It wasn't principle so much as that kind of emotional commitment.

What an affirmative action loving, anti-white racist.

Powerful Stupid & FoxNews Says McCain has Lost

If you've been anywhere near the newsbox the last two days then you know about the story of the Big Black Mugger Blacky Fondler BlacketyBlackBlack Obama Supporter Who Assaulted a White Woman.  Drudge said it was true, so it was reported all day long that this big darky had targetted the white woman because she was a McCain supporter.  In addition to the beating, fondling, and political rage, the man carved a "B" into her cheek with a dull knife so she'd remember who she was supposed to vote for come election day.

For much of yesterday, the Pennsylvania McCain campgaign flogged the story.  They were the ones that informed us that the "B" stood for Barack, in fact.  Very helpful.  In response to this story, Fox News Editor John Moody said this:

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

Now, finally we come to the victim herself.  Look at this picture and see if anything jumps out at you:

That's right, the "B" is backwards... like you would get if you did it in a mirror.  Or perhaps the welfare loving darky is so uneducated by his ghetto schools he writes his B's backwards like Toys 'R Us.  Of course, the girl has recanted the whole story.  She made it all up.

That is some powerful stupid.

Finally, for those who think that racism is a thing of the past we can safely ignore, and moreover condemn people like Reverend Wright for not being able to move on, remember that within living memory such a craven lie of a story would have lead to a good old fasioned lynching of the nearest black guy.  Sometimes the leaders of the lynchmob would even be prosecuted for it!  ... but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Update: She's now telling the police that she's "upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm."  Hahaha!

Racism Exists

These videos from McCain/Palin rallies are real eye-openers for us Whiteys. I've sorta always thought that racism still exists, but that it couldn't be that wide spread even here in the south. But seeing this exact performance parroted again and again, in city after city, makes me considerably more open to the "racism affects our lives" argument that some minorities make.

"Go back to Africa" indeed.

California Women's Group and Racism

I know I'm saying this a lot, but all I can come up with is "Wow.  Just wow."

Wow.

Virginia GOP

The Virginia GOP's latest mailer.  America must look evil in its (big black) eyes:

Yup.  No racists here.  Move along.

Ingraham Off-Air = Evil Beast

(Just in case you missed it, for context:)



If you enjoy watching Fox News people be angry, then you can watch Laura Ingraham just absolutely hate on everyone in the studio for 9 solid minutes. Fun stuff, for those into reveling in the pain of their enemies.

It's even got them mentioning that a "some Hispanic-looking man" must be an illegal. Awesome.

Hot (White) Chicks Dig Obama

McCain's campaign finally did it. They released an ad making an explicitly racial/sexual attack on Obama. The statement in this ad couldn't be clearer: Hot (White) Chicks Dig Obama.

1) The five "Hot Chicks" featured in the ad were all white. If you count all females in the ad, it was 7 white, 1 black (a newscaster). So clearly, you've got pretty white women in mind when you get hit with the "Hot Chicks Dig Obama" line.

2) When you talk about Culture in America, you're talking about White Middle Class Culture. Therefore, if you don't specify, what your mind conjures is a white woman. The Conservative's response to this is, "YOU'RE being the racist. I don't see race. Just like Stephen Colbert." Bullshit. This is coded communication to your Southern Strategy base. So much for the Bush Administration's apology for those tactics, huh?

Now, not everyone is bothered by the thought of black men fiending after all your white women, but a significantly larger number is bothered by the thought of the young black stud dating their daughter, or their sister.

Finally, to drill home the point that this is an actual racist attack, remember that just 40 years ago black men who "didn't know their place" and so much as looked at a white woman could find themselves hung from a tree. Lynchings are the cultural progenitor of McCain's campaign for President at this point.

That poor, poor man. Rove has always vied against McCain, originally in 2000. He won in 2000 by destroying McCain personally. Rove clandestinely orchestrated attacks that went after McCain's daughter, saying she was a half-black illegitimate child. They attacked McCain over the South Carolina Confederate Flag, making him endorse what he admits he knew at the time was a hateful symbol "for all the wrong reasons. For ambition." They attacked him on his POW status, saying that his time in prison made him crazy and unfit to run the country.

So, Rove has historically competed with McCain, but I wonder if somewhere along the way he grew to hate him as well. Because once again, Rove is personally destroying McCain reputation. McCain's Rove'd-Up Campaign is taking him into the depths of the sewer. If to be a Patriot is to love and defend your country and therefore its traditions, then McCain's campaign is unPatriotic in the same sense that all of Rove's campaigns have been. The man defeated Ann Richards for Governor of Texas by starting a rumor she was a lesbian, for God's sake! The man will channel the worst parts of human nature, and wring victory from our underlying tribalism. It's discouraging generally, and it's heartbreaking to see it happen to McCain, someone I once admired greatly. It looks like Rove will defeat McCain for a second time, and this time he'll stay down.

If only McCain 2000 was running, for the thousandth time.