Black and Progressive Sociologists for Obama

2011-12-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul's racism exposed. The Libertarian views of Ron Paul that were published in his newsletter reveal his views about blacks. Particularly repugnant were his views about blacks and welfare in the '90s following the Los Angeles rebellion and his assertion that all District of Columbia black males are criminals, or at least prone to be. RGN.

Newsmax

Ron Paul Dogged by Racism Charges

Thursday, December 22, 2011 03:08 PM

By: Martin Gould
Ron Paul may be flying high in the Iowa polls, but his newsletters from the early 1990s continue to haunt him.

On Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate stormed out of an interview with CNN when chief political analyst Gloria Borger pressed him on claims that he made disparaging comments about blacks and Jews, among other incendiary remarks found in the letters.

Though the newsletters were published under several names — including “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “The Ron Paul Political Report,” “The Ron Paul Survival Report” and “The Ron Paul Investment Letter”— the Texas congressman has insisted that he knew nothing about the offensive remarks made in the newsletters.

“I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them at the time, and I disavow them,” he said before unclipping his microphone.

Paul did admit to making money from the newsletters that bore his name but he suggested that he didn’t pay any attention to what was written under his name on the newsletter masthead.

“I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written, and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this. CNN does it every single time. When are you going to wear yourself out?” he said.

And when Borger insisted, “These things are pretty incendiary,” Paul belittled their importance, saying: “Only because of people like you.”

The full article:
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Paul-newsletters-racism-CNN/2011/12/22/id/421916

Labor and Progressives Join Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-05T22:50:00.002-04:00

The most important event today is the Occupy Wall Street Movement. This movement is going to change politics in America. With the union movement joining this spontaneous movement there is a chance that this will be a counter to the right wing hegemony. This movement will provide the President with the momentum to become that transformational presidency he promised. We need to thank the young people for changing the course of this nation. RGN

Labor and Progressive Groups JoinOccupy Wall Street in Solidarity March

By Josh Eidelson, AlterNet
Posted on October 5, 2011, Printed on October 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152619/labor_and_progressive_groups_join_occupy_wall_street_in_solidarity_march

The increasing labor and leftsupport for the Occupy Wall Street movement will be on full display thisevening, as members of unions and long-time community groups march from NewYork City Hall to meet the occupation activists in Zuccotti Park, AKALiberty Plaza. The march arrives as the two-week-old occupation is capturingnational media attention, receiving ugly police pushback, and spawning dozensof actions across the United States.

While union members have been partof Occupy Wall Street from the beginning, the past week has been marked byincreasingly broad and public union support. Friday AFL-CIO President RichardTrumka described the action as "a validtactic," and "being in the streets" as "sometimes the onlyrecourse you have." Sunday the AFL-CIO distributed a statement passed bydelegates at its Young Workers Summit declaring solidarity with Occupy WallStreet. Trumka yesterday told Mike Elk of In These Times that theAFL-CIO will vote on an official endorsement today. Occupy Wall Street thisweek drew the official support of large international unions including the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the United Steel Workers (USW), and the nation'slargest public sector union, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME).

Meanwhile, several major New Yorkunions and community groups last week announced today's march, which leaves City Hallat 4:30 PM. "In this case," says Dan Cantor, Executive Director ofthe labor-backed Working Families Party (WFP), "labor is following theyouth of America."

Mary Clinton, an Occupy Wall Streetactivist, led a training on encampment activism at the AFL-CIO's national YoungWorkers Summit in Minneapolis and proposed the solidarity resolution passedthere. Clinton says she was encouraged by the broad support among the summit's800 participants, and sees supporting Occupy Wall Street as a chance for unions"to participate in a broader struggle which I think will be necessary inorder to make the gains we want to see and will benefit their members."Clinton, a former organizing intern with the Writer's Guild of America, is nowa graduate student in labor studies at the City University of New York (CUNY).She describes linking arms with Occupy Wall Street and community allies as abetter way forward for labor unions. Too many, she argues, approached the NewYork City budget debate by "trying to cut backdoor deals." "Inorder to see a budget that doesn't have cuts in social services and lay offteachers," Clinton says, "we need to see a stronger movement,"working more closely with other allies.

The full article

From TruthDig: "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace"

2011-09-23T19:24:00.001-04:00

This piece by Chris Hedges is an important contribution to our understanding of President Barack Obama. In his interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, many of the President's basic instincts, his fundamental values, are revealed. Yet, Hedges paints a picture of the President as one who sold out his pastor. It was Hedges who provided us with Cornel West's demeaning characterization of the President. Hedges is to be applauded for his principled progressive ideas when it comes to "the system." On the other hand, it must be recognized that the ideas he promotes, in their unadulterated form, are not compatible with pragmatic politics.

Obama did not sellout Reverend Wright. When Fox News went on its campaign to discredit Obama's candidacy, in an endless loop of video clippings, Fox displayed Wright with his rant to "goddamn America" as Obama's pastor and close confidant. In response to Fox's determined and racist efforts to derail his candidacy, Obama was so committed to maintaining his relationship with Reverend Wright, he gave what was considered to be a historic speech on race. In essence, that speech was in defense of Wright, whose relationship he in some ways maintained to be as important as that of his grandmother.

On Sunday April 28, 2008, I attended Detroit's NAACP Freedom Fund dinner at which Wright was still a hero in the Black community. Later that week, he appeared on the Bill Moyers show in which Moyers allowed Wright to show is allegiance to America by presenting the record of his military service and an opportunity to explain to the nation the precepts on black liberation theology. But then Wright made a mockery of himself at the National Press Club on that following Monday, leaving Obama no choice but to distance himself from Wright. Obama did not sellout Wright. Wright's behavior was an embarrassment. He discredited himself and his theology at that press conference.

What is revealed in this interview is Obama's integrity and commitment to the American people and the black community. The Hedges, West/Smiley and Wright criticisms of the President have more to do with America's economics and politics than Obama's personal commitment, or lack thereof. Wright discusses an Obama who did not want to run for the Illinois senate if Carol Mosely Brawn was going to run. Wright also pointed out the Obama being brought to tears when he came to understand the limitations of the Congressional Black Caucus. Wright pointed out as well, Obama's commitment to the poor as exemplified by his community organizing to combat poverty in Algelt Housing Projects. Wright pointed out this essence of Barack Obama, a person of compassion, integrity, and fairness.

Yet Hedges uses Wright and West criticisms as examples of Obama having "squandered ...[his] soul" through "cowardice and moral bankruptcy." These personal attacks are disgraceful because they lie about the man. It was his decency that got him elected. The attacks ignore the fact that Obama must perform the role of president in a hostile white nationalist America and obstructionist Republican party. He is not a dictator. Obama was elected to the "institution of the AMERICAN presidency." Any major deviation from his "responsibility" as president in protecting "American values" would lead to his being discredited and delegitimized. As Obama said on the night of his election, he was elected to be the president of "even those people who did not vote for me." To not recognize that is naive at best or nihilist, at worst. These attacks make it hard to hard to distinguish which is which. RGN

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall FromGrace

BarackObama’s politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor, theRev. Jeremiah Wright, exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In thatmoment, playing the part of Judas, he surrendered the last shreds of hisintegrity. He became nothing more than a pawn of power, or as CornelWest says, “a black mascot for Wall Street.” Obama, once the glitterof power fades, will have to grapple with the fact that he was a traitor notonly to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized hischildren and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself.Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered—hissoul.

Thehealth of a nation is measured by how it treats its prophets. When theseprophets are ignored and reviled, when they become figures of ridicule, whenthey are labeled by the chattering classes and power elite as fools, then thereis no check left on moral decay and the degeneration of the state. Wright, whospent 36 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side,since the 2008 presidential campaign has endured slander and calumny and weatheredcharacter assassination, misinterpretation and abuse, and yet he doggedlycontinues Sunday after Sunday to thunder the word of God from pulpits acrossthe country.

Fascism's American Expression in Century 21: Tea Party Reveals Itself to the World

2011-09-16T20:58:00.001-04:00

Paul Krugman

The Tea Party has revealed itself for the fascist movement that it is. The NAACP provided ample research that the movement was racist. Among other things, the Nazis were racists. But their racism was just one indicator of their backward misanthropic beliefs. They don't just hate people of color. They don't like people who are not " just like" them. They have no humanitarian compassion. They are selfish. But more importantly, they believe that might is right. An essential characteristic of white supremacy is its "iron fist" fascist tendencies. How else could lynching and Jim Crow be explained? Being intolerant is not limited to the issue of race. At the CNN-Tea Party debate this past week, the audience cheered at all of the wrong times. They cheered when Governor Rick Perry defended the 235 executions that have taken place during his tenure as Governor. Even more, they cheered when Congressman Ron Paul, in response to a question about what should be the fate of a young (white) male in a coma but no health insurance? Should there not be a safety net, provided by the government? Should he be just left to die??? Congressman Paul said the young man had made his choice and that the government had no role in providing him support. To the amazement of host Wolf Blitzer, the cheers from the audience were in enthusiastic support for the notion that he was "free to die!!!" Columnist Paul Krugman explores the real meaning of Ron Paul's and the Tea Parties' stance on Americans being "Free to Die." RGN

Free to Die

ByPAUL KRUGMAN

Back in 1980, just as America wasmaking its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to thechange with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode,the genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal choiceand empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed and amplified by RonaldReagan.

But that was then. Today, “free tochoose” has become “free to die.”

I’m referring, as you might guess,to what happened during Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzerasked Representative Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chosenot to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six monthsof intensive care. Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — takingyour own risks.” Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether “society shouldjust let him die.”

And the crowd erupted with cheersand shouts of “Yeah!”

The incident highlighted somethingthat I don’t think most political commentators have fully absorbed: at thispoint, American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions.

Now, there are two things you shouldknow about the Blitzer-Paul exchange. The first is that after the crowd weighedin, Mr. Paul basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearteddoctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people receivedthe care they needed — or at least they would if they hadn’t been corrupted bythe welfare state. Sorry, but that’s a fantasy. People who can’t affordessential medical care often fail to get it, and always have — and sometimesthey die as a result.

The second is that very few of thosewho die from lack of medical care look like Mr. Blitzer’s hypotheticalindividual who could and should have bought insurance. In reality, mostuninsured Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or arerejected by insurers because they have chronic conditions.

The full column

The Attacks on Obama are Wrong Headed: Right and Left

2011-09-02T17:28:00.000-04:00

The racist Tea Party has been on a constant vicious attack since the summer of 2009 beginning with their town hall attacks on the health care legislation. Mitch McConnell, following Rush Limbaugh's declaration that he wanted Obama to fail, stated his commitment to make the President a one-term president. McConnell and his Republican legislators oppose everything Obama proposes for two reasons: 1) he's a Democrat and 2) he's black. More recently, this chorus has been joined by members of the left. Unlike the Republicans, the attacks on the left are that the President is not black enough or not committed to helping black people. This is the position of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. Likewise, Clarence Lang, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education has been very critical of the Obama for not addressing the major economic disparities facing the black community.

Like his right wing counterparts, Cornel West has called for the President's defeat. His was a plea for Senator Bernie Sanders to challenge the President in the primary elections would, like Ted Kennedy's challenge of President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 campaign lead to his defeat in the general election.

In his analysis Jonathan Chait (below) provides an analysis of why the left is wrong and short-sighted in its attack on the President. What the left does not realize is that the President is up against a racist right wing opposition that is committed to his defeat and secondly he is not a dictator that can command his every policy desire. Consequently, Chait argues that the highly partisan right and its polar opposite the highly partisan left are both wrong headed in their attacks on the President. RGN

What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama
By JONATHAN CHAIT
Published: September 2, 2011

This has been the summer that liberal discontent with Obama has finally crystallized. The frustration has been simmering for a while — through centrist appointments, bank bailouts and the defeat of the public option, to name a few examples. But it has taken the debt-ceiling standoff and the threat of a double-dip recession to create a leftist critique of the president that stuck.

Obama’s image as a weakling and sellout on domestic issues now centers on his alleged resistance, from the very first days of his presidency, to do whatever was necessary to heal the economy. “The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history,” wrote the Emory professor Drew Westen in this newspaper, “was his handling of the stimulus.” Just as the conservative repudiation of George W. Bush boiled down to “he spent too much,” the liberal repudiation of Obama has settled on “he didn’t spend enough.”

There’s truth in that. President Obama underestimated the depth of the crisis in 2009 and left himself with bad options in the event the economy failed to recover as quickly as he hoped. And yet the wave of criticism from the left over the stimulus is fundamentally flawed: it ignores the real choices Obama faced (and the progressive decisions he made) and wishes away any constraints upon his power.

The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections. Only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster. Moreover, Republican opposition has proved immune even to persistent and successful attempts by Obama to mobilize public opinion. Americans overwhelmingly favor deficit reduction that includes both spending and taxes and favor higher taxes on the rich in particular. Obama even made a series of crusading speeches on this theme. The result? Nada.

That kind of analysis, however, just feels wrong to liberals, who remember Bush steamrolling his agenda through Congress with no such complaints about obstructionism. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently invoked “the panoply of domestic legislation — including Bush tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement — that Bush pushed through Congress in his first term.”

Yes, Bush passed his tax cuts — by using a method called reconciliation, which can avoid a filibuster but can be used only on budget issues. On No Child Left Behind and Medicare, he cut deals expanding government, which the right-wing equivalents of Greenwald denounced as a massive sellout. Bush did have one episode where he tried to force through a major domestic reform against a Senate filibuster: his crusade to privatize Social Security. Just as liberals urge Obama to do today, Bush barnstormed the country, pounding his message and pressuring Democrats, whom he cast as obstructionists. The result? Nada, beyond the collapse of Bush’s popularity.

Perhaps the oddest feature of the liberal indictment of Obama is its conclusion that Obama should have focused all his political capital on economic recovery. “He could likely have passed many small follow-up stimulative laws in 2009,” Jon Walker of the popular blog Firedoglake wrote last month. “Instead, he pivoted away from the economic crisis because he wrongly ignored those who warned the crisis was going to get worse.”

It’s worth recalling that several weeks before Obama proposed an $800 billion stimulus, House Democrats had floated a $500 billion stimulus. (Oddly, this never resulted in liberals portraying Nancy Pelosi as a congenitally timid right-wing enabler.) At the time, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus was seen by Congress, pundits and business leaders — that is to say, just about everybody who mattered — as mind-bogglingly large. News reports invariably described it as “huge,” “massive” or other terms suggesting it was unrealistically large, even kind of pornographic. The favored cliché used to describe the reaction in Congress was “sticker shock.”

Compounding the problem, Obama proposed his stimulus shortly after the Congressional Budget Office predicted deficits topping a trillion dollars. Even before Obama took office, and for months afterward, “everybody who mattered” insisted that the crisis required Obama to scale back the domestic initiatives he campaigned on, especially health care reform, but also cap-and-trade, financial regulation and so on. Colin Powell, a reliable barometer of elite opinion, warned in July of 2009: “I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all.”

Rather than deploy every ounce of his leverage to force moderate Republicans, whose votes he needed, to swallow a larger stimulus than they wanted, Obama clearly husbanded some of his political capital. Why? Because in the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former. At the time, this was the course liberals wanted and centrists opposed.

The full article

Michelle Bachmann's Crazy Ideas About Black Farmers

2011-08-16T11:21:00.000-04:00

A Short History of Black-Owned Land in America

Michelle Bachmann's Crazy Ideas About Black Farmers

By HEATHER GRAY

A few months ago I was asked to speak at Georgia State University about Black-owned land issues and the plight of Black farmers. This was a presentation before professors and students in urban Atlanta. I realized as I spoke that my audience was not informed about rural issues and ongoing racism in the deep South. Social change is a painstakingly slow process and when you are in the city it's hard to conceive what happens in rural areas - often isolated rural areas. This is why I was asked to speak, of course, but still it was a revealing experience. They also wanted me to refer to the second phase of the Black farmer lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture.

I began the presentation at Georgia State University with a delineation of historical dates of the rather constrained opportunities for Black land ownership in America. Invariably the policies in America resulted in some kind of betrayal followed by Black resistance. I started with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Then Congress creates the Department of Agriculture in 1862. Then also in 1862 was the Homestead Act – here's a description:

Congress passes the Homestead Act to open western lands to independent farmers rather than slave owners. This land was available also for freed slaves but there were few as slavery was still the law of the land. The parcels were 160 acres. Eventually 1.6 million homesteads were granted and 270,000,000 acres of federal land was privatized. It also dispossessed Native Americans of land and wealth. This was land reform largely for whites the likes of which was never offered to freed slaves after the Civil War or at any time in history.

Clearly, the Homestead Act, as well as the creation of the Department of Agriculture, was partly a response by the federal government to the South and its southern plantation owners. The South had successfully seceded from the Union, was engaged in war, and had wanted to extend the slaveocracy to the western territories.

A little known fact is that prior to the south seceding from the Union in the 1860's, in the May 1844 edition of "The Liberator" the renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called for the north to secede from the government for precisely the opposite reason. The reason being that the Constitution of the United States adopted after the Revolutionary War was "at the expense of the colored population of the country." With the three-fifths clause allowing the enslaved individuals to be counted as three-fifths of a person – albeit a non-voting person - the South controlled Congress and the nation. Garrison said it was time "to set the captive free by the potency of truth."

By January 1865 Congress adopted the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery. Also in January1865, while in Savannah after his famous trek through Georgia, General William T. Sherman issues Field Order 15– here's a description:

After meeting with freed slaves in Savannah, Georgia - in what became known as the Savannah Colloquy - General William T. Sherman responded to their pleas for land. In January, he issued his famous Field Order 15, which set aside a huge swath of abandoned land along the Georgia and South Carolina coast for black families to have forty acres plots. He also said that army mules no longer in use would be offered to Black farmers. This is likely where the "Forty Acres and a Mule" legend began. Sherman never stated whether this was to be a permanent or temporary land acquisition.

With hopes being raised by many in the Black community, Sherman's Field Order was ultimately the beginning of betrayal by the federal government on land distribution. Here's more:

• 1865 (March) Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau) providing for the allocation of 'unoccupied land' to freedmen (not to exceed 40 acres). Rather than 40 acres as requested, Congress allowed the Freedmen's Bureau to sell only 5 to 10 acre tracts of land to freed slaves.

• 1865 (April 9) Civil War ends.

• 1865 (April 14 ) Republican President Abraham Lincoln assassinated and succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson (former U.S. Senator from Tennessee).

• 1865 (May) President Johnson announces his Reconstruction Plan. The plan calls for the Southern States to abolish slavery but does not offer a role for Blacks in Reconstruction. The southern states are to determine the role for Blacks without a federal mandate.

• 1865 (June) Some 40,000 freed slaves were settled on what was referred to as "Sherman's Land" on some 400,000 acres of land in Georgia and South Carolina. Much of this land was for rice cultivation. The Freedmen begin to create their own government; white access to the area was denied; and they begin to cultivate their land.

• 1865 (Summer) President Johnson reverses Sherman's Field Order 15 by ordering that virtually all plantation lands given to freed slaves be returned to the original plantation owners.

The history, of course, moves into the 20th century with the struggles of Jim Crow in the South. The important point to be made, however, is that there has always been resistance and action by the Black community to the constraints on their achieving freedom and justice. By the early 1900's, for example, Blacks owned some 15 million acres of land – this was an enormous achievement.

Fast forward to 1946 when the USDA's Farmers Home Administration was created to provide credit to farmers – it was known as the "lending institution of last resort". But Blacks have rarely been able to access adequate credit from USDA offices across the South. These county offices have invariably been headed by whites that clearly wanted to make sure that the monies were going to the white community and to white farmers. This is the legacy of actions, for example, of white planters in the Mississippi delta who made sure that New Deal agriculture policies of the 1930's, such as the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA), benefited them and not Black farmers.

Ultimately, in the 1990's, Blacks sued the government and settled what is now the Pigford v Vilsack lawsuit.

A colleague of mine from Tuskegee University once said that the closer you get to farmers the harder it is for policies to be implemented. This is true. The Secretary of Agriculture might give directives from his office in Washington DC; the directives will then be given to the state directors of the USDA; and then the state directors will send policy information to the various counties in the state and this is where the rubber hits the road as it were. This is where the policies should impact farmers and be offered to farmers but it is also where the entrenched social prejudices and cultural alienation are most keenly felt. Black farmers have always received abysmally poor treatment in these county offices and comparatively relatively little capital in loans for their farm operations or farm ownership opportunities have been provided – thus the lawsuit.

Nevertheless, Obama's Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has been attempting to change the system starting with civil rights directives in the department when he was first appointed; engaging in a study of civil rights abuses; developing a "strike force" in the South to ensure fair treatment for all in the implementation of farm programs, etc. We are also witnessing some changes at the local level thanks to his initiatives and the result of the Black farmer lawsuit.

Regarding the Pigford lawsuit, Blacks led the way yet again in seeking justice. By the time Vilsack became Obama's Secretary there were lawsuits pending from women, Native American and Latino farmers thanks to the leadership of Black farmers in the rural south who's lawsuit provided opportunities for others who were also being marginalized by USDA offices.

Suffice it to say, Representative Michelle Bachman (R-MN) decries the Black lawsuit against the USDA as reparations. I wish the lawsuit was, in fact, reparations for centuries of abuse of Blacks by white supremacists in America. Alas, it is not. Word has it that Bachman is also enamored about a book by Robert E. Lee that purports the benefits of slavery. Perhaps Bachman should first be a slave and see how she benefits. At the very least, Bachman and her co-hort, Representative Stephen King (R-IA), provide the opportunity for us to share more information about the Pigford lawsuit. (See the October 6, 2010 response "Pigford advocates respond to congressional critics")

The full article

Eugene Robinson: The straw poll winner -- Barack Obama

2011-08-16T08:54:00.001-04:00

Even though President Obama's approval rating has dropped below 40%, Eugene Robinson believes that with Michelle Bachman winning the Iowa straw poll, saneness in the person of Obama will win out. Surely, White Christian Nationalism will not become the ruling politics because it is so extreme. Recall, Michelle Bachman was among those who opposed raising of the debt ceiling. Eugene Robinson assures us America is not that crazy. RGN

The straw poll winner: Barack Obama

By Eugene Robinson, Published: August 15

AMES, Iowa

Strolling through the pageant of unhealthful food and unsound ideology that is the Iowa straw poll, amid the good-natured Republicans who swept Michele Bachmann to an impressive victory, I couldn’t help but reflect that this quadrennial exercise is one crazy way to pick a major-party candidate for president.

You’ll note that I used the words “Michele Bachmann” and “president” in the same sentence. That someone with views as extreme as Bachmann’s could win — and that Ron Paul, who seems to inhabit his own little reality, could finish second — would seem to rob the straw poll of all but comic value, making it analogous to the opening joke a speaker might tell to warm up a stone-faced audience. But the ritual is serious business, as poor Tim Pawlenty found out. Less than 24 hours after he finished a distant third in the straw poll, “former candidate” became his new honorific.

Long before the results were tallied, it seemed clear that Pawlenty was in trouble. Like the other candidates who participated Saturday, he had a big tent on the grounds of the Iowa State University coliseum where voters could enjoy free food and entertainment. People were happy to line up for the Famous Dave’s barbecue that Pawlenty was serving, but they didn’t stay long — and when they walked away, they weren’t wearing the green Pawlenty T-shirts that signaled support. By mid-afternoon, volunteers were glum.

The full article

Lessons from Iowa: White Christian Nationalism the New Face of Fascism

2011-08-16T00:30:00.004-04:00

A major force in Republican and conservative politics has been white Christian nationalism. What's not clearly articulated is that what we call the evangelicals are really white Christian nationalists. Under the guise of religion, white Christian nationalism is a political force. Their religion is used to promote white nationalism. At this point in the winnowing of Republicans presidential candidates, two white evangelicals are in the lead, Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry. These candidates are idolized by a large segment of the electorate. It is not likely to be Bachman, because she has made several flawed assertions. She is not likely to stand the scrutiny of campaign. Rick Perry, the Govenor of Texas since Bush's ascendancy to the White House, seems the ideal candidate. Perry's closest affiliations certainly lump him among some of the nation's foremost white Christian nationalists. This strain of American politics under girds the promotion of intolerance. The historic Bob Jones case of racist policies relative interracial dating is one of the best known cases, but Jerry Falwel and the so-called religious right are largely, though not exclusively southern, in its base. Mix this white religious fervor with an electoral majority is a very dangerous contradiction. A "rightness of whiteness" cloaked in the flag and the Bible will be nothing less than American fascism. Its enemies will be: people of color, the poor, sexual orientations they don't like, women who want the right to choose, and others wanting to protect the democratic rights all. Knowing the possibility of this outcome, we need to make sure that these forces, including Rick Perry, are defeated in our next election and our future as a diverse democratic America. The article below by Michelle Goldberg raised the essential question what of "A Christian Plot for Domination?" RGN

A Christian Plot for Domination?

Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren't just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world.

by Michelle Goldberg | August 14, 2011 10:51 PM EDT

With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called paranoid. In a contemptuous 2006 First Things review of several books, including Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, and my own Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era.”

Now, however, we have the most theocratic Republican field in American history, and suddenly, the concept of Dominionism is reaching mainstream audiences. Writing about Bachmann in The New Yorker this month, Ryan Lizza spent several paragraphs explaining how the premise fit into the Minnesota congresswoman’s intellectual and theological development. And a recent Texas Observer cover story on Rick Perry examined his relationship with the New Apostolic Reformation, a Dominionist variant of Pentecostalism that coalesced about a decade ago. “[W]hat makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government,” wrote Forrest Wilder. Its members “believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take ‘dominion’ over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the ‘Seven Mountains’ of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world.”

The full article

West/Smiley "Refudiated" in Detroit

2011-08-15T01:02:00.001-04:00

West & Smiley's poverty tour hits a bump in Detroit. Their attacks on the President are rejected. RGN

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Award winning public television host Tavis Smiley along with former Harvard professor Dr. Cornell West drove their poverty bus tour into Detroit Monday.
The town hall meeting was held in the auditorium at city hall and was packed with people supporting President Obama.
They had heard Smiley and West would be bashing the president for failing to make the plight of the poor an issue.
There was some rowdiness and rudeness that made it tough for Smiley to make some of his points but not enough to disrupt the meeting.
Earlier, Smiley told Action News "this is not an anti-Obama tour." However he also said the debt ceiling deal the President struck with Congress "does not extend unemployment benefits, close corporate loopholes or raise one cent for the poor."
The tour will travel to about two dozen cities.

See the video

Cornel: The President is Dissing Me!

2011-08-15T00:46:00.000-04:00

Cornel West suffers from delusion. His notion of his self importance is bizarre. It is interesting that Larry Summers informed him that he was an embarrassment to Harvard. RGN

Cornel West Flunks the President

By ANDREW GOLDMAN

What’s with the black suit, white shirt, black tie outfit you always wear? Do you have anything else in your closet?
I’ve got four black suits that I circulate, and they are my cemetery clothes — my uniform that keeps me ready for battle.

Your cemetery clothes?
It’s ready to die, brother. If I drop dead, I am coffin-ready. I got my tie, my white shirt, everything. Just fix my Afro nice in the coffin.

So let me ask you: in 2007, you introduced Barack Obama as your “brother, companion and comrade.” But in May, you referred to him as “the black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs” and the “head of the American killing machine.” What in the world happened?
It was a cry from the heart. What happened was that greed at the top has squeezed so much of the juices of the body politic. Poor people and working people have not been a fundamental focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.

But you have also acknowledged that this is more than just political — you’ve said that after campaigning for him at 65 events, you were miffed that he didn’t return your phone calls or say thank you.
I think he had to keep me at a distance. There’s no doubt that he didn’t want to be identified with a black leftist. But we’re talking about one phone call, man. That’s all. One private phone call.

He was running a successful candidacy for president. He might have been busy.
So many of the pundits assume that it’s just egoism: “Who does Cornel West think he is? The president is busy.” But there’s such a thing as decency in human relations.

O.K., but did you also have to say that Obama “feels most comfortable with upper-middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart”?
It’s in no way an attempt to devalue white or Jewish brothers. It’s an objective fact. In his administration, he’s got a significant number of very smart white brothers and very smart Jewish brothers. You think that’s unimportant?

When Larry Summers was president of Harvard, he told you your rap album was an “embarrassment” to the university, and you quit soon after. He was one of Obama’s first appointments. Did that strike a particular feeling in your heart?
I couldn’t help it. I’m a human being, indeed. Given the disrespect he showed me? Oh, my God. Again, it’s political much more than it’s personal. Summers was in captivity to Wall Street interests. But it’s personal too.

You have 30 seconds of private time with the president — what do you say to him?
I would say: “Look at that bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office and recognize that tears are flowing when you let Geithner and others shape your economic policy, when you refuse to focus on poor and working people or when you drop the drone bombs that kill innocent civilians. Tim Geithner does not represent the legacy of Martin King.”

See the full interview

The Obama Presidency: Racism Run Amok

2011-08-13T17:17:00.002-04:00

It's a Great Time to Be Racist

By: Nsenga Burton

Posted: August 12, 2011 at 12:57 AM

Let's face it: There's only one explanation for some of the attacks on President Obama.

Racists have officially lost their minds. In recent weeks, the venom spewed at President Barack Obama would leave one to believe that we are in the midst of a racist renaissance. "A dick," "jackass," "tar baby, "your boy" -- you name it and the president has been called it. For some reason, some people are so enraged by how this country is purportedly being run that they cannot separate a real critique of the president's decisions from mean-spirited name-calling related to his race.

Yes, the country that likes to pretend that it is far removed from its racist past has engaged in the verbal equivalent of a throwback jersey. Some people have reached far back into that Reconstruction-era closet, pulled out that dingy jersey adorned with racial slurs, shaken it out and put it on proudly. Elected officials have reduced themselves to behaving like petulant children, storming in and out of meetings and running to the media to lob personal attacks at the president, then offering lame apologies shortly afterward.

Is this the postracial era that so many people theorized about following the election of the nation's first black president? Try post-Reconstruction, because the harmful slurs and images being tossed around the Internet and in public spaces hark back more to a racist past than to a racially ambiguous future.

It's not surprising that President Obama is being received in such a way.

Trouble From the Start
We got a peek at what was to come just seven months into President Obama's tenure. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted, "You lie!" during the president's speech about health care reform. Clearly Wilson had a flashback to legalized segregation, when folks publicly bullied, threatened and heckled blacks to remind them of who was "in charge."

Wilson subsequently issued an apology, saying his actions were "regrettable" and he'd let his emotions take over. He was just the first of a series of elected officials acting like fools and then offering weak apologies as a remedy for said actions.

To be clear, "You lie!" is not a racist exclamation. Yet and still, it is insulting and in recent memory has not been used against any other president, even when he may have been lying about one thing or another. President George W. Bush and the weapons of mass destruction, for example, or President Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal could have triggered such a response.

The full article

Black Women Historians on "The Help"

2011-08-12T15:46:00.002-04:00

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated “black” dialect. In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Word Count: 766

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:

Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley

The Street by Ann Petry

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to:

ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com

Progressives not recognizing racism in their criticism of Obama

2011-08-12T09:42:00.003-04:00

Below is a great piece. I made this very argument to a couple of our colleagues just yesterday. I just heard a Rep Himes-NY remind his progressive friends of all that Obama has accomplished in 3 yrs!!! Racism is at the base of this opposition to Obama is on the right and the left. The Republicans and other white nationalists that have poisoned our politics. On the other hand, these lefties blame Obama for OUR weakness. We have lost EVERY battle: Van Jones, Acorn, Sherrod, etc. And we would not have lost Sherrod were it not for the weakness of the NAACP. If Barney Frank says the use of the 14^th Amendment would have been an impeachable offense, Obama’s decision to make a deal was not a sign of weakness.

It is reminiscent as the author says of the Smiley/West politics of the personal. "Obama’s not black enough" (read: weak, not radical enough). He's not Martin and He's not Malcolm. Even though his accomplishments have been historic, he "compromises too much." Where is the sense of politics, of governance? He is operating in context in a racially hostile environment, an environment in which mainstream reporters on mainstream or what Ismael Reed calls the "Jim Crow media." RGN

Progressives don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spots.

The predominately white progressive intelligentsia don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spot. We don't see the role of race in how he seems to understand himself and how other perceive him.

The complete article

Krugman: The President Surrenders!!!!!

2011-08-01T13:11:00.003-04:00

Progressives are dismayed and disappointed that President Obama capitulated on the "the deal" that permitted the debt ceiling to be raised. Raising the debt ceiling has ALWAYS been essential and routine. But in their goal to make President Obama a "failure" and a "one term president," the right wing in the Congress extracted spending cuts without any enhanced revenues (taxes) to address the deficit and the debt. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman says the President surrendered to his opposition. See Krugman below. RGN

July 31, 2011

The President Surrenders

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong.

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.

The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It doesn’t work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of the historical record.

Indeed, slashing spending while the economy is depressed won’t even help the budget situation much, and might well make it worse. On one side, interest rates on federal borrowing are currently very low, so spending cuts now will do little to reduce future interest costs. On the other side, making the economy weaker now will also hurt its long-run prospects, which will in turn reduce future revenue. So those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker.

The full article.

The Nation on Frances Fox Piven

2011-01-26T18:18:00.002-05:00

The danger of the Glenn Beck attacks on Frances Fox Piven cannot be overstated. With the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, we can see the dangerous climate that has been promoted by America's white nationalist politics. Besides Bill O'Rielly and Rush Limbaugh, the Pied Piper for this movement is Glenn Beck. Among his targets is Frances Fox Piven. The Editors of The Nation provide an excellent analysis of Beck and the climate to which he contributes. RGN

Glenn Beck Targets Frances Fox Piven

The Editors
The Nation
January 20, 2011

On the afternoon of January 6, Frances Fox Piven, a distinguished professor, legendary activist, writer and longtime contributor to this magazine, received an e-mail from an unknown correspondent. There was no text, just a subject line that read: DIE YOU CUNT. It was not the first piece of hateful e-mail Piven had gotten, nor would it be the last. One writer told her to "go back to Canada you dumb bitch"; another ended with this wish: "may cancer find you soon."

Piven was unnerved but not surprised. These are not pretty e-mails, but they appear positively decorous compared with what has been written about her by commentators on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, where she's been the target of a relentless campaign to demonize her—and worse. There, under cover of anonymous handles, scores of people have called for Piven's murder, even volunteering to do the job with their own hands. "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back," wrote superwrench4. "ONE SHOT...ONE KILL!" proclaimed Jst1425. "The only redistribution I am interested in is that of a precious metal.... LEAD," declared Patriot1952. Posts like these are interwoven with ripples of misogyny, outbursts of bizarre anti-Semitism and crude insults about Piven's looks (she's actually a noted beauty) and age (she's 78).

This fusillade was evidently set off by Piven's recent Nation editorial calling for a mass movement of the unemployed ["Mobilizing the Jobless [1]," January 10/17]. But Beck has had Piven in his cross-hairs for some time. In the past few years he's featured Piven, along with her late husband, Richard Cloward, in at least twenty-eight broadcasts, all of which paint them as masterminds of an overarching left-wing plot called "the Cloward-Piven strategy," which supposedly engineered the financial crisis of 2008, healthcare reform, Obama's election and massive voter fraud, among other world-historical events (see Richard Kim, "The Mad Tea Party [2]," April 12, 2010). Cloward and Piven, Beck once argued, are "fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system." In his most recent diatribe against Piven (January 17) he repeatedly called her "the enemy of the Constitution." In Beck's telling, because Piven and her comrades on the left support civil disobedience in some circumstances, it is they—not the heavily armed militias of the radical right—who threaten Americans' safety.

It's tempting not to dignify such ludicrous distortions with a response. But in brief: Piven, throughout her career as an activist and academic, has embodied the best of American democracy. It has been her life's work to amplify the voices of the disenfranchised through voter registration drives, grassroots organization and, when necessary, street protest. The way economic injustice warps and erodes our democracy has been a central preoccupation. But passive lament has never been her game. Recognizing the leverage that oppressed groups have—and working with them to use it—is her special genius.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that the pseudo-populist right finds her so threatening. The highly personalized and concerted campaign against Piven, already unsettling, takes on added gravity in the context of the recent shootings of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, federal judge John Roll and eighteen other people in Arizona. But while commentators debate whether the killer in that case—the mentally disturbed Jared Loughner—was inspired by the ravings of right-wing demagogues, the forgotten story of Byron Williams provides a straightforward example of the way hateful rhetoric fuels violence.

In July, Williams, a convicted bank robber, put on a suit of body armor and got in a car with a 9-mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308 caliber rifle equipped with armor-piercing bullets and set off for San Francisco. His destination was the Tides Foundation, which had been mentioned at that point in at least twenty-nine episodes of the Glenn Beck show, sometimes along with Piven. His goal, as he later told police, was to kill "people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU" in order to "start a revolution." Williams's mother said that he had been watching TV news and was upset at "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing-agenda items." Or, as Williams himself put it, "I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind." California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for driving erratically and, after a firefight, subdued and arrested him before he could blow anyone else's mind away.

For a responsible journalist and a responsible media outlet, such an incident would have spurred a process of intense self-scrutiny. But this is Glenn Beck and Fox, and as is evident from the campaign against Piven, nothing of the sort occurred. In the hundreds of posts about Piven on The Blaze, there is not one admonition to tone down the violent rhetoric, not one clear instance in which an editor intervened to moderate the thread. In fact, commenters seem at liberty to egg one another on: one poster pointedly noted that Piven lives in New York City and teaches at CUNY; another then linked to a website that listed Piven's home address and phone number. "Why is this woman still alive?" asked capnjack. "Mainly because you haven't killed her, I imagine. See, someone that really cares and has the courage of their conviction must actually DO SOMETHING," responded Diamondback. And the calls for assassination are not limited to Piven. As Civilunrestnow put it in a post that perfectly captures the tenor of right-wing eliminationist fantasy, "I say bring it. 90 million legal gun owners with over 220 million legal firearms, MOST in the hands of people who claim to be center RIGHT. I think it's time to reduce the surplus population of leeches, lay abouts, left wing nut jobs, the main stream media, liberal politicians and MOST defense attorneys."

Of course, crazed right-wingers enjoy the protection of the First Amendment, too. But the overwhelming and transparent calls for murder on Beck's website, among other right-wing hot spots, can't be casually dismissed as "just talk." At one time it was all just talk for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Dr. George Tiller's assassin, Scott Roeder, too. We were lucky that police happened to pull over Byron Williams before he reached the Tides Foundation's door. In a sense Glenn Beck was lucky too. How long will this luck hold out?

Need to Fight Back in Defense of a Colleague: Frances Fox Piven

2011-01-26T17:51:00.000-05:00

Glenn Beck is certifiable. Yet, his outrage continues. Over the course of his machinations, he has concocted that one of our most honored colleagues is the reason for American ruin. Beck has singled out Frances Fox Piven to construct his grand conspiracy to destroy America. Fox News with its dedication to white nationalism has placed Beck as its evangelist. It is time to fight back. Media matters is a good place to start. RGN

Dear Friend:

Over the past year, Glenn Beck has launched numerous false attacks against renowned Sociologist and progressive civil rights chamption Frances Fox Piven.

As a result of Beck's accusations that Piven promotes violence and is an "enemy of the constitution," numerous violent threats to Piven have been posted on Beck's website.

It is absolutely irresponsible -- and dangerous -- to let Beck continue his rhetoric and false attacks against Piven.

Tell Fox News President Roger Ailes it is his responsibility to stop

Beck's attacks now:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_piven_attacks/?r_by=-3608226-CKtjMYx&rc=mailto2

Tea Party White Nationalism and "Social Engineering"

2011-01-26T13:55:00.003-05:00

It is needless to say that the Tea Party movement is a white nationalist movement. Conservatives or the right wing are in their heydey with the victories of the Tea Party movement. Their economic policies of tax cuts for the rich are winning the day due to the widespread Tea Party victories in the 2010 elections. As opposed to its racist reputation, there is an attempt to make the case that the Tea Party movement is an economic formation. While to SOME degree that may be accurate, the driving force of the Tea Party is white nationalism. They were formed to oppose America's first African American president. Arizona's white nationalist laws, including those that would permit a Jared Loughner to purchase his gun and clips, are a prime example of Tea Party governance. The story below by Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post on a North Carolina Republican school board is about the district's integration policy of longstanding being overturned by its Tea Party members. RGN

Republican school board in N.C. backed by tea party abolishes integration policy

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 12, 2011; 12:38 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. - The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.

But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to "say no to the social engineers!" it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation's most celebrated integration efforts.

And as the board moves toward a system in which students attend neighborhood schools, some members are embracing the provocative idea that concentrating poor children, who are usually minorities, in a few schools could have merits - logic that critics are blasting as a 21st-century case for segregation.

The situation unfolding here in some ways represents a first foray of tea party conservatives into the business of shaping a public school system, and it has made Wake County the center of a fierce debate over the principle first enshrined in the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education: that diversity and quality education go hand in hand.

The new school board has won applause from parents who blame the old policy - which sought to avoid high-poverty, racially isolated schools - for an array of problems in the district and who say that promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools.

"This is Raleigh in 2010, not Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s - my life is integrated," said John Tedesco, a new board member. "We need new paradigms."

But critics accuse the new board of pursuing an ideological agenda aimed at nothing less than sounding the official death knell of government-sponsored integration in one of the last places to promote it. Without a diversity policy in place, they say, the county will inevitably slip into the pattern that defines most districts across the country, where schools in well-off neighborhoods are decent and those in poor, usually minority neighborhoods struggle.

The NAACP has filed a civil rights complaint arguing that 700 initial student transfers the new board approved have already increased racial segregation, violating laws that prohibit the use of federal funding for discriminatory purposes. In recent weeks, federal education officials visited the county, the first step toward a possible investigation.

"So far, all the chatter we heard from tea partyers has not manifested in actually putting in place retrograde policies. But this is one place where they have literally attempted to turn back the clock," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP.

School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta referred questions on the matter to the district's attorney, who declined to comment. Tedesco, who has emerged as the most vocal among the new majority on the nine-member board, said he and his colleagues are only seeking a simpler system in which children attend the schools closest to them. If the result is a handful of high-poverty schools, he said, perhaps that will better serve the most challenged students.

"If we had a school that was, like, 80 percent high-poverty, the public would see the challenges, the need to make it successful," he said. "Right now, we have diluted the problem, so we can ignore it."

So far, the board shows few signs of shifting course. Last month, it announced that Anthony J. Tata, former chief operating officer of the D.C. schools, will replace a superintendent who resigned to protest the new board's intentions. Tata, a retired general, names conservative commentator Glenn Beck and the Tea Party Patriots among his "likes" on his Facebook page.

Tata did not return calls seeking comment, but he said in a recent news conference in Raleigh that he supports the direction the new board is taking, and cited the District as an example of a place where neighborhood schools are "working."

Beyond 'your little world'

The story unfolding here is striking because of the school district's unusual history. It sprawls 800 square miles and includes public housing in Raleigh, wealthy enclaves near town, and the booming suburbs beyond, home to newcomers that include many new school board members. The county is about 72 percent white, 20 percent black and 9 percent Latino. About 10 percent live in poverty.

Usually, such large territory is divided into smaller districts with students assigned to the nearest schools. And because neighborhoods are still mostly defined by race and socioeconomic status, poor and minority kids wind up in high-poverty schools that struggle with problems such as retaining the best teachers.

Officials in Raleigh tried to head off that scenario. As white flight hit in the 1970s, civic leaders merged the city and county into a single district. And in 2000, they shifted from racial to economic integration, adopting a goal that no school should have more than 40 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, the proxy for poverty.

The district tried to strike this balance through student assignments and choice, establishing magnet programs in poor areas to draw middle-class kids. Although most students here ride buses to school, officials said fewer than 10 percent are bused to a school to maintain diversity, and most bus rides are less than five miles.

"We knew that over time, high-poverty schools tend to lose high-quality teachers, leadership, key students - you see an erosion," said Bill McNeal, a former superintendent who instituted the goal as part of a broad academic plan. "But we never expected economic diversity to solve all our problems."

Over the years, both Republican and Democratic school boards supported the system. A study of 2007 graduation rates by EdWeek magazine ranked Wake County 17th among the nation's 50 largest districts, with a rate of 64 percent, just below Virginia's Prince William County. While most students posted gains in state reading and math tests last year - more than three-quarters passed - the stubborn achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has persisted, though it has narrowed by some measures. And many parents see benefits beyond test scores.

"I want these kids to be culturally diverse," said Clarence McClain, who is African American and the guardian of a niece and nephew who are doing well in county schools. "If they're with kids who are all the same way, to break out of that is impossible. You've got to step outside your little world."

'Constant shuffling'

But as the county has boomed in recent years - adding as many as 6,000 students a year - poverty levels at some schools have exceeded 70 percent. And many suburban parents have complained that their children are being reassigned from one school to the next. Officials blame this on the unprecedented growth, but parents blame the diversity goal.

"Basically, all the problems have roots in the diversity policy," said Kathleen Brennan, who formed a parent group to challenge the system. "There was just this constant shuffling every year." She added: "These people are patting themselves on the back and only 54 percent of [poor] kids are graduating. And I'm being painted a racist. But isn't it racist to have low expectations?"

As she and others have delved deeper, they've found that qualified minority students are underenrolled in advanced math classes, for instance, a problem that school officials said they've known about for years, but that strikes many parents as revelatory. Some have even come to see the diversity policy as a kind of profiling that assumes poor kids are more likely to struggle.

"I don't want us to go back to racially isolated schools," said Shila Nordone, who is biracial and has two children in county schools. "But right now, it's as if the best we can do is dilute these kids out so they don't cause problems. It sickens me."

In their quest to end the diversity policy, the frustrated parents have found some influential partners, among them retail magnate and Republican operative Art Pope.

Following his guidance, the GOP fielded the victorious bloc of school board candidates who railed against "forced busing." The nation's largest tea party organizers, Americans for Prosperity - on whose national board Pope sits - cast the old school board members as arrogant "leftists." Two libertarian think tanks, which Pope funds almost exclusively, have deployed experts on TV and radio.

"We are losing sight of the educational mission of schools to make them into some socially acceptable melting pot," said Terry Stoops, a researcher at the libertarian John Locke Foundation. "Those who support these policies are imposing their vision on everyone else."

'Disastrous' results

Things have not gone smoothly as the new school board has attempted to define its vision for raising student achievement. A preliminary map of new school assignments did not please some of the new majority's own constituents. And critics expressed alarm that the plan would create a handful of high-poverty, racially isolated schools, a scenario that the new majority has begun embracing.

Pope, who is a former state legislator, said he would back extra funding for such schools.

"If we end up with a concentration of students underperforming academically, it may be easier to reach out to them," he said. "Hypothetically, we should consider that as well."

The NAACP and others have criticized that as separate-but-equal logic.

"It's not as if this is a new idea, 'Let's experiment and see what happens when poor kids are put together in one school,' " said Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank that advocates for economic integration. "We know. The results are almost always disastrous."

Many local leaders see another irony in the possible balkanization of the county's schools at a time when society is becoming more interconnected than ever.

"People want schools that mirror their neighborhood, but the bigger picture is my kid in the suburbs is connected to kids in Raleigh," said the Rev. Earl Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh. "We're trying to connect to the world but we're separating locally? There is something wrong."

Karenga on the Tea Party, the Constitution, and Black America.

2011-01-26T13:26:00.001-05:00

In this Tea Party era there is a lot of talk about the Constitution by right wing Tea Partiers who lack understanding of the document. There is a "faith" endorsement. Like they love the Bible they love the Constitution, even when they have no idea what it says. Representative Michelle Bachman recently stated that the Founding Fathers, including John QUINCY Adams, wrung slavery right out of the Constitution. Dr. Maulana Karenga puts this white nationalist offensive in perspective. RGN

Quoting the Constitution in Public: Whistlin’ Dixie in the Dark

Dr. Maulana Karenga

It is a sign of the rough and jagged edges of the times in which we
live, this surreal juncture of history where we encounter and are
cultivated to accept, with minimum and often misguided response, various
forms of fear-and-hate mongering, lies, illusions and political
lap-dancing – all deceptive by nature, diversionary by design, and
ultimately unfulfilling. Passed off as a time and arrival of a new
politics, it is a time and context in which hype and hypocrisy are
packaged and peddled as patriotism; the reform and reality of universal
health care is portrayed as something akin to sin; and corporate funding
and manipulation of anti-government sentiment is camouflaged as
constitutional concern and love of country.

For all this flag-draped drama and related talk of constitutional tests
and of turning the country back over to the American people, hides the
continued strengthening of corporate power, evident in the increased
funding of candidates, including Tea Party members; proposed
deregulation; rampant privatization; an ever-growing military budget and
prison-industrial complex; tax preference for the rich and continuing
foreign aid to friendly dictators and brutal allies in open and
unannounced wars and occupations around the world.

It is a time and context in which gun-totin’ and gun talk of “targeting
and taking out” opponents serve as both appetizers and main meal on the
menu of rightwing radio, and their political discourse and campaigns,
and where such vicious rhetoric and social craziness mix and merge with
personal anger and insanity to provoke and produce tragic results as
recently witnessed in Tucson. For in spite of denials, such a context
gives company and confirmation to the mentally disturbed and violent who
put in practice the right wing’s irresponsible and provocative call for
“Second Amendment remedies”.

Last week, the new colonists came to Washington town, Constitution in
hand, corporate interests in mind and chaos in their announced
intentions. Indeed, they came wildly dedicated and determined to
disrupt, reverse, repeal and otherwise neutralize the laws, legislative
initiatives and any and all efforts of President Obama to successfully
govern – a concentrated hostility which, in spite of ritual denial,
suggests racial implications. Thus, it is seriously suspected that they
quote the Constitution in public and whistle Dixie in the dark. Like the
original colonists, whom they seek to model and mirror in their confused
and fantasized conceptions of history, they are in acute and constant
denial concerning the contradictions in their beliefs, behavior and
exalted claims. And likewise, they are woefully unwilling to concede the
destructive and divisive nature of their self-righteous and exclusionist
ideas and activities, which foster and fuel racist and nativist hatred
and violence.

They began their public show, lining up like elementary school children
to read the Constitution on the House floor in deference to their doting
Tea Party foster parents. It was for the true believers a religious
ritual, the reading of a sacred text with related claims of the
brilliance and anointment of the Framers. But to hold to the myths, they
had to call for an amended version of the Constitution. For the original
version of the Constitution, like the men who wrote it, was too flawed
to justify the flowery claims made for it. It, like its writers, needed
to be remade into a more acceptable image, free of the racism, sexism
and classism that stained it. Indeed, the original version sanctioned
African enslavement, denied the wholeness of African humanity, setting
it as 3/5 of a person and rejecting our right of freedom even thru
escape. It also denied women the right to vote, favored property owners
and set aside the Senate for the more noble White men among them. It is
these inconvenient and uncomfortable facts in the Constitution’s
original construction that the new colonists sought to erase and not
reveal by reading a revised and sanitized version of it with its
corrective reconsiderations called amendments.

Such immature and uncritical conceptions of the document and attempts to
talk about it as a holy writ, unchanged and unchangeable, and to force
others to accept it is both self-deceptive and dangerous. It calls for a
paper patriotism devoid of real people with real problems and real
struggles to solve them. In other words, such an approach to the
Constitution denies its original flaws and the flaws of its Framers;
denies the changes made to correct these flaws; denies the history and
the life-and-death struggles required for the changes; and denies the
ongoing need to constantly reinterpret and change the document in light
of deeper and more ethical understandings of how we ought to live
together and relate.

The late and renowned Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in his
1987 Bicentennial Speech, urged us to move beyond such mindless and
uncritical celebration of Constitution and country. He noted that such a
celebration cultivates a tendency “to oversimplify and overlook the many
other events that have been instrumental to our achievements as a
nation.” Moreover, it “invites a complacent belief that the vision of
those who debated and compromised in Philadelphia yielded the ‘more
perfect union’ it is said we enjoy now.” For Justice Marshall, the
Constitution was not “forever fixed” at Philadelphia. And he noted, he
did not “find the wisdom, foresight and sense of justice exhibited by
the Framers particularly profound.”

Indeed, he states “To the contrary, the government they devised was
defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and
momentous societal transformation to attain the system of constitutional
government and its respect for individual freedoms and human rights we
hold fundamental today.” Thus, in recognizing the progressive changes
made from enslavement and exclusion to our unfinished struggles for
freedom and inclusion, “the credit does not belong to the Framers. It
belongs to those who refused to acquiesce to outdated notions of
‘liberty’, ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ and who strived to better them.” He
concluded that a rightful reading and a “sensitive understanding of the
Constitution’s inherent defects” will let us “see that the true miracle
was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life, a life nurtured
through two turbulent centuries of our own making.”

Justice Marshall argued that this history requires more than
“festivities with flag-waving fervor.” Rather, it calls for
commemoration of “the suffering, struggle and sacrifice that has
triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document.” And
it deserves our viewing the document and its history “with hopes not
realized and promises not fulfilled” and therefore, with a commitment to
ongoing and increased struggles to achieve the hopes and promise, and
open up new horizons of human life and history.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State
University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural
Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of
Family, Community and Culture and Introduction to Black Studies, 4th

Edition, www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

Cunnigen: On Haley Barbour on Race and Racism in Mississippi (Revised)

2011-01-20T14:47:00.005-05:00

Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, has made absurd assertions that in his experience racism was no longer an issue. Professor Donald Cunnigen sets the record straight. He challenges Barbour's recollection of the times. RGN

The White Citizens Councils and Haley Barbour

The White Citizens Councils and Haley Barbour

As Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson has stated accurately, the White Citizens Councils members were no more than Klansmen in business suits. Unlike Joe Scarborough who attended schools in Mississippi from 1969-1974 and was oblivious to the existence of the White Citizens Councils, I grew up in Mississippi during the heyday of the White Citizens Councils from the late 1950’s through my high school years in 1970’s Mississippi. It was a powerful group that had a strong impact on the lives of African-Americans and whites in Mississippi.

When I conducted research for my dissertation on white southern liberals in Mississippi, I discovered the impact of the White Citizens Council. One of my research subjects was a racially progressive Jewish businessman. His business was boycotted by the efforts of the White Citizens Council. The boycott was a result of his decision not to fire African American workers in his dry cleaning establishment who planned to enroll their children in the newly proposed integrated Jackson (Mississippi) Public Schools. The boycott was so effective that he lost his business. As a man of conviction and integrity, he felt it was not his role to dictate to his workers the appropriate racial position regarding the education of their children. In his mind, American citizens had a right to provide the best education available for their children.

In the case of African-Americans, the White Citizens Council sympathizers published the names of African-American students who opted to participate in the integration of public schools via the new “Freedom of Choice” program. It was a program designed to prevent the massive integration of schools by allowing only a limited number of students to enroll in the local white schools, i. e., those students and their parents signed a consent form. The forms provided the names of the students and parents to local authorities who often used the information in nefarious ways. Consequently, their families were harassed and many parents lost their jobs. Personally, this activity had a direct impact on my own attempt to enroll in the local white high school. After I covertly submitted a form to enroll in the white high school, my mother’s fears for my physical safety and my father’s fear of job loss as a public school teacher resulted in their insistence that I remain in the African-American high school. My father personally contacted the school district to inform the authorities that I would remain in my present all-African American school rather than join a small group of students who integrated our local white high school. The White Citizens Councils were not viewed by my parents as a mild-mannered group of whites who were adverse to destroying the lives and livelihoods of African-Americans.

Mississippi tax payers, African-American and white, witnessed the White Citizens Councils take a pseudo-state sponsored role in the governmental affairs of Mississippi. The White Citizens Councils had an office located in close proximity to the state Capitol. The organization produced slick television presentations to support their segregationist point of view. In addition, it created a network of segregationist academies to thwart school integration. There was no doubt in the minds of any African-American of the period that the White Citizens Councils were more than benign middle-class whites who provided “segregationist leadership” in the period. The White Citizens Councils represented a powerful force in the arsenal of the segregationists throughout the South.

The impact of the White Citizens Councils continues to have an impact on the state because many of the old segregation academies have become critical elements in the state’s educational system. As a result, many communities have poorly funded segregated public school systems due to the middle-class white exodus from the systems. The grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren of the old White Citizens Council stalwarts are now the students in those academies. While the old racist rhetoric and ideology which was the basis for the formation of the schools may not be obviously present, the underpinnings of a racist history may still linger in other ways. On the national scene, “racial events” in southern states do not capture the attention of the media; for example, many African-Americans in Mississippi were well aware that former Senator Trent Lott spoke at a White Citizens Council event long before the infamous Strom Thurmond incident.

While the South has made tremendous strides in race relations, it is unfortunate that some individuals have chosen for political expediency to “whitewash” reality by creating a false racial narrative that does not vaguely resemble the life experiences of many African-Americans, especially in Mississippi. Progress can be made in American race relations when all parties acknowledge and appreciate the complex racial history that has made our nation great.

Donald Cunnigen, Ph.D.

Ishmael Reed on the President and the "Professional Left"

2010-12-17T14:46:00.008-05:00

The President is being hammered by Progressives for his compromise with the Republicans. Some have even suggested that he should be challenged in a primary. What world are these people living in? Their naivete will guarantee Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority to become a permanent reality. Things are bad enough as they are. With Obama we have a chance to overturn the "Reagan Revolution" to build on the 2008 victory, as opposed to the governance of the "Atlas Shrug" and Tea Party crowds. The Tea Party success in the last election should have served as a "call to arms," figuratively speaking, to prepare for 2012. Instead, the President is being vilified not just from the Tea Party but from his own base.

When in response to a question in which a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who raised the issue about his base accusing him having no spine, the President was clear that being "purist" is not amenable to governing. As he said, holding such a position would mean "nothing would get done." It is distasteful that the Bush tax cuts for America's richest were extended. That was a bad decision on the President's part. What would have been a worse decision on his part would have been to allow the Republicans in the Senate to block all legislation. To turn an extension of unemployment benefits to the next Congress would be irresponsible. To have allowed everyone's taxes to go up on January 1 would be calamitous. Not only would every American be angry at the tax hike, they would blame it on the President. He has to govern. He is confronted by Republicans who are using every tactic in their power to defeat the President.   Moreover, a tax hike that is not agreed to, is likely to destabilize an already bad economy. Simply for these intransigent Republicans, the worse things are the better for their politics.

A major part of the problem is that the progressive mentality is a movement mentality -- an ideological orientation -- that is not always conducive to governing. The President is in a different position. He has to govern. As the nation's leading politician, he must be a pragmatist. He is not a dictator.   Nor are Democrats committed to "a line."

As evidenced by the health care reform debate, many Democrats are very conservative. The Republicans on the other hand, are either ideologues or irrelevant.   Republicans who are not hardliners have been either marginalized in the Congress or defeated by Tea Party challengers. This is the context in which the President make his judgments and run the government.

Ishmael Reed challenges the understanding of Progressives when it comes to having a Black man negotiating the political terrain. RGN

What Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama

By ISHMAEL REED

Oakland, Calif.

NOT all of my white teachers viewed me as a discipline problem. To the annoyance of my fellow students, one teacher selected me regularly to lead assembly programs. A high school teacher insisted that I learn about the theater. She was an America-firster who supplied me with right-wing pamphlets and magazines that I’d read at breakfast and she didn’t seem bothered by my returning them with some of the pages stuck together with syrup.

But most of them did see me as an annoyance, and gave me the grades to prove it.

I’ve been thinking recently of all those D’s for deportment on my report cards. I thought of them, for instance, when I read a response to an essay I had written about Mark Twain that appeared in “A New Literary History of America.” One of the country’s leading critics, who writes for a prominent progressive blog, called the essay “rowdy,” which I interpreted to mean “lack of deportment.” Perhaps this was because I cited “Huckleberry Finn” to show that some white women managed household slaves, a departure from the revisionist theory that sees Scarlett O’Hara as some kind of feminist martyr.

I thought of them when I pointed out to a leading progressive that the Tea Party included neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers — and he called me a “bully.” He believes that the Tea Party is a grass-roots uprising against Wall Street, a curious reading since the movement gained its impetus from a rant against the president delivered by a television personality on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The full article

Controversial responses: President Obama on "60 Minutes"

2010-11-08T12:07:00.004-05:00

Robert Newby

Responses to the President's remarks at the press conference and "60 Minutes" have created quite a stir. Many feel he was too conciliatory when it came to the election results. There was a feeling that he took the blame for things that were not of his making. In fact, his achievements have been favorably compared to FDR and Lyndon Johnson. Even so, the Tea Party movement has demonized him and his policies because he is black. The NAACP, with its Report on Tea Party Nationalism, exposed the racism that has been central to the President's opposition. Yet, the historic victories by Republicans and Tea Party candidates nationwide were portrayed as something the President has done wrong. For many, there is a resentment that the President is "taking responsibility" for forces that want make him "the other" and want to "take their country back." One can only assume is that the President is assuming that old Harry Truman saying that "the buck stops here." By taking responsibility for election results that were based largely by a veiled white nationalism, he appears to many to caving in to the opposition. On the other hand, we should be reminded that the President has said that he is the President of even those folks who did not vote for him. Here is the "60 Minutes" interview: RGN

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/04/60minutes/main7021844.shtml?tag=nl.e875

View from Canada: Trashing the President

2010-11-04T23:14:00.002-04:00

William Thomas

The blog has been silent since the passing of Ron Walters. Now that the election in which the President acknowledged he was "shellacked," it is time to bring clarity to what happened. Obviously, the right wing demonized the President and made the election as a referendum on him and his policies. Talk about a "vast right wing conspiracy?" Clearly the Tea Parties are a racist formation with their lies that Obama is a socialist, a Muslim, Hitler, Lenin, you name it, anything that Americans abhor. Here is a perspective from the OCTOBER 2010 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE. A Canadian puts is all in perspective. RGN

America - He's your President for Goodness Sake!

By William Thomas

Posted: Friday, October 1st, 2010

There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a Republican or Democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the people at the helm.

Suddenly President Barack Obama, with the potential to become an exceptional president has become the glaring exception to that unwritten, patriotic rule.

Four days before President Obama’s inauguration, before he officially took charge of the American government, Rush Limbaugh boasted publicly that he hoped the president would fail. Of course, when the president fails the country flounders. Wishing harm upon your country in order to further your own narrow political views is selfish, sinister and a tad treasonous as well.

Subsequently, during his State of the Union address, which is pretty much a pep rally for America, an unknown congressional representative from South Carolina, later identified as Joe Wilson, stopped the show when he called the President of the United States a liar. The president showed great restraint in ignoring this unprecedented insult and carried on with his speech. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so stunned by the slur, she forgot to jump to her feet while clapping wildly, 30 or 40 times after that.

Last spring, President Obama took his wife Michelle to see a play in New York City and republicans attacked him over the cost of security for the excursion. The president can’t take his wife out to dinner and a show without being scrutinized by the political opposition? As history has proven, a president in a theatre without adequate security is a tragically bad idea.

Remember: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

At some point, the treatment of President Obama went from offensive to ugly and then to downright dangerous.

The health-care debate, which looked more like extreme fighting in a mud pit than a national dialogue, revealed a very vulgar side of America.

President Obama’s face appeared on protest signs white-faced and blood-mouthed in a satanic clown image. In other tasteless portrayals, people who disagreed with his position distorted his face to look like Hitler complete with mustache and swastika.

Odd, that burning the flag makes Americans crazy, but depicting the president as a clown and a maniacal fascist is accepted as part of the new rude America.

Maligning the image of the leader of the free world is one thing, putting the president’s life in peril is quite another. More than once, men with guns were videotaped at the health-care rallies where the president spoke. Again, history shows that letting men with guns get within range of a president has not served America well in the past.

And still the “birthers” are out there claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States, although public documentation proves otherwise. Hawaii is definitely part of the United States, but the Panama Canal Zone where his electoral opponent Senator John McCain was born? Nobody’s sure.

Last month, a 44-year-old woman in Buffalo was quite taken by President Obama when she met him in a chicken wing restaurant called Duff’s. Did she say something about a pleasure and an honour to meet the man or utter encouraging words for the difficult job he is doing? No. Quote: “You’re a hottie with a smokin’ little body.”

Lady, that was the President of the United States you were addressing, not one of the Jonas Brothers! He’s your president for goodness sakes, not the guy driving the Zamboni at “Monster Trucks On Ice.” Maybe next it’ll be, “Take Your President To A Topless Bar Day.”

In President Barack Obama, Americans have a charismatic leader with a good and honest heart. Unlike his predecessor, he’s a very intelligent leader. And unlike that president’s predecessor, he’s a highly moral man.

In President Obama, Americans have the real deal, the whole package and a leader that citizens of almost every country around the world look to with great envy. Given the opportunity, Canadians would trade our leader, hell, most of our leaders for Obama in a heartbeat.

What America has in Obama is a head of state with vitality and insight and youth. Think about it, Barack Obama is a young Nelson Mandela. Mandela was the face of change and charity for all of Africa but he was too old to make it happen. The great things Obama might do for America and the world could go on for decades after he’s out of office.

America, you know not what you have.

The man is being challenged unfairly, characterized with vulgarity and treated with the kind of deep disrespect to which no previous president was subjected. It’s like the day after electing the first black man to be president, thereby electrifying the world with hope and joy, Americans sobered up and decided the bad old days were better.

President Obama may fail but it will not be a Richard Nixon default fraught with larceny and lies. President Obama, given a fair chance, will surely succeed but his triumph will never come with a Bill Clinton caveat – “if only he’d got control of that zipper.”

Please. Give the man a fair, fighting chance. This incivility toward the leader who won over Americans and gave hope to billions of people around the world that their lives could be enhanced by his example, just naturally has to stop.

Believe me, when Americans drive by the White House and see a sign on the lawn that reads: “No shirt. No shoes. No service,” they’ll realize this new national rudeness has gone way, way too far.

OCTOBER 2010 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE

VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND

Our Loss of Ron Walters -- 1938-2010: A Major Contributor to the Blog No More

2010-09-28T19:23:00.015-04:00

Wichita East Drum Section, Fall 1952

The following are my remarks at the funeral service for Dr. Ronald W. Walters. My perspective was that of a lifelong friend. The memorial service at Howard University's Cramton Auditorium was a wonderful celebration of Ron's life work. The more personal side of Ron's life was the central theme of his funeral service. Ron's overall contributions were enormous -- nationally and internationally. Walters was rocognized to be "The Tallest Tree." Having been appropriately recognized and honored for his professional life, my reflections were an extension of the family, more personal, specifically our friendship growing up. My remarks were made at the funeral. Since my time was limited to three minutes, my remarks were edited to fit the those constraints. Here are the comments in full. With Walters being a regular contributor to the blog, this tribute is a recognition of his insight on black politics. RGN

Reflections on a Lifelong Friendship: Remembering Ronald W. Walters, Ph.D.

Robert G. Newby. Ph. D.

Ron Walters was my friend, my best man, my brother. We exchanged the Best Man role in each other's weddings. Being an only child, when I say he was my brother, he was my brother. Pat asked me to make a few remarks about our growing up. My bond with Ron began at the end of my junior year at Wichita High School East in the spring of 1952. For the next year, my senior year, I was to be the head drummer in the marching band. At the behest of the band director, Kenneth Thompson, I recruited Ron to join our drum section at East as opposed to our cross-town rival, North. He chose to join me in that drum section and we have been more or less joined at the hip ever since.

Another aspect of that bonding was our respective identities were often blurred, since we were the only two blacks in this band of about 80 musicians and we both played the drums. About the second football game of the season I was injured in a freak accident and missed a game, which meant to all those white students in stands, he became “Newby.” To many of them he remained Newby for the next two years after I had graduated. I must say that our band director, who was very much ahead of his time, for not only was I the head drummer, he broke precedent to appoint me the first student, black or white, to be director of the pep band. When Ron became a senior two years later he had those same responsibilities. An interesting side point about Ron and I sharing the East High band together: When the picture of the drum section was taken -- note now I was the senior and I was the head drummer -- we were arranged for the photo shot. Of the nine members of the drum section along with our drums and symbols, there were two black faces in the photo. Ron is placed front row center. I am on the second row at the end. I assume the photographer thought Ron to be more photogenic. For those of you who have seen Ron’s captivating smile, you know the photographer was right. As it turned out over the course of those early years, I may have run interference for Ron, but make no mistake, he was always the star.

During Ron’s hospitalization, I had the stark reminder of one of the jobs we had while in college. There was a group of about five of us African American students at Wichita State University who worked in the inhalation therapy department at Wesley hospital. Ron, Syd Dobson, and I, administered inhalation therapy treatments. Syd went on to become a technician with a heart transplant group in San Diego.

The three of us formed our social clique that had to the audacity to name ourselves “Le Clique.” To display this bond, at Syd’s urging, we often wore matching blazers with a patch with overlays of a compass, a double eighth note, and a gavel. The patch was indicative of our professional ambitions. Syd at that time envisioned himself as being an engineer, the compass represented Syd’s desire to be an engineer. Ron’s aspiration at the moment to be a lawyer was represented by the gavel. The musical notes of course represented by my interest in music. In retrospect, the whole idea seems to be rather juvenile but it sure seemed cool at the time. With both Ron and Syd having passed in October 2009, this is truly a sad day. This formation preceded Ron’s being the founding Polemarch of the University of Wichita, now Wichita State University, Kappa Alpha Psi chapter in 1958. Needless to say, Ron had a lifetime bond with those brothers he crossed over with: Galyn Vesey, who was Ron’s closest friend from Kindergarten on, Robert Blackwell, Lenward Holness, Howard Stewart, Charles Tisdale, Earl West, Willie Williams, and Billy Alexander.

There is one story about Ron and I that really puts our University Wichita times in perspective. In the summer of 1957, we were desperate for summer jobs. For some reason Wesley Hospital was out of the equation. We had heard that "running on the road" was a great summer job for young black male college students. We were striking out when it came to decent jobs in Wichita. Recall that we were the restricted to “Negro Jobs” at the time. The word was that out of Minneapolis between the railroads, the Great Northern, Burlington Northern, and the Northern Pacific, employed young black college males to work the Pullman and dining cars. We had been told that the railroads would start hiring on about the 18th to the 20th of June. Travelling between Minneapolis and Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco sounded like a fantastic opportunity. So, to beat the onrush of competitors, Ron and I took off for Minneapolis on the 9th or 10th of June. When we got there we were informed by railroad after railroad we were about 10 days too soon.

While in Minneapolis we discovered something we had not seen before, a black enterprise whose clientele was white. I think their name was Huggy Boys or something like that. We met their son who was a Kappa and had just finished his freshman year at Howard. We thought him kind of “out there” and representative of Frazier’s writings about the black bourgeosie of the time. Seemingly, his daily dress was suit, tie, hat and cane. Nonetheless, for the time that we were there, the family was kind to us, to the point of taking our calls from prospective employers.

After a week of being told that no hiring would begin before about the 18th of the month we came to the conclusion that even though lodging was not costing us anything, my car was our lodging, we could not last for another week. Moreover, we discovered that with its 10,000 lakes, the mosquitos in the Twin Cities in early June are fierce. On a Saturday, and no job prospects at hand, we decided that if we left Minneapolis by about noon we would get back to the Esquire Club before it closed so that we could party. We danced every kind of dance to be danced that night, fast dances, slow dances, the cha, cha, cha, you name it we danced it. Because we had to be flexible when it came to job applications, we had all of right attire, but we had slept in the car for a week. Nonetheless, we must not have “offended” anyone. Thankfully, no dances were refused.

The thing I will miss most in Ron’s absence is that he and I could always laugh at the same things. In the summer of 1963, in preparation for his marriage, Ron had found a job as a orderly at Crittenden Hospital in Detroit. I was living in Pontiac. Ron spent the summer with me. Our friends were a group of African American school teachers in the Detroit and Pontiac schools. This was still a time when teaching or social work, for all intents and purposes, were the only professions for young college grads. In this group were individuals who thought that their intellectual prowess was superior to everyone, particularly these two dudes from the flatlands of Kansas. After all, their degrees were from University of Michigan. At an afternoon backyard picnic, Ron and I paired up for a game that was popular at the time, "Password." Our experiences together allowed us to defeat all comers for hours, often with one-word clues. That afternoon was a highlight that we often reflected on and brought us much delight as a confirmation of our bond.

As many of you know, Ron was an avid fan of both tennis and football. As stated, Ron was in the marching band not on the football team. He was around the game of football. Before he was a fan of that Washington NFL football team, with its politically incorrect name, he was a fan of the East Aces and after that the Wichita Shockers and I assume Fisk’s team, as well. He liked the game. When it comes to the NFL, his team was always victorious over my team in even in the playoffs and when that team had a Hall of Famer, another native Wichitan, Barry Sanders. It is not necessary that I name the team for which I have season tickets for 34 years.

Ron’s love of tennis comes not just as an observer. Our game was at the courts of McKinley park, Wichita’s largest segregated park. That park has since been renamed McAdam’s park in the namesake of Wichita’s first black park administrator. Ron and I had a pretty good game. We both dug deep to spend $35 for the top of the line Slazenger rackets. We modeled our game after the Panchos, Segura and Gonzalez. We were not in the class of Charles McAfee, however. Charlie was the first African American to get a tennis scholarship to the University of Nebraska. Notice the scholarship was not to the University of Kansas. McAfee who was one of our role models, went on to become an award winning architect. The tennis culture at the park was socialization process of its own. Apart from McAfee, we often competed with these Korean war vets who called themselves the “Hungarian Freedom Fighters.” Hours on the courts particularly in addition to the trash talking, when no women were on the courts, the conversation was just like the barbershop when it came to race and politics.

Ron’s leaving Wichita for Fisk was clearly a case of racism having done us, the nation, a big favor. As indicated by the sit-in, Ron was ahead of his time. When it came to the social side of our relationship we were equals but when it came to politics, he was the leader. He introduced me to DuBois and E. Franklin Frazier. As a high school student, Ron participated in Boys State, an activity that no black students that I know of had participated. I don’t know if Ron was a member of the national Honor Society or not, which would have been very difficult for a black student at that time. I do know that his high school grades were exemplar. Even so, when he was a sophomore at Wichita, he received a “C” on a paper for a government class. He got the “C” with the explanation from the professor that the paper was really an “A” paper but he knew no “colored boy” could write a paper of that quality.” The very next semester with my encouragement he went to Fisk, where he thrived to become the student and scholar he became. Going to black America’s academic roots and legacy helped shape him in a way he never would have developed at Wichita State.

I have always been proud to say that I was able to be a part of his really big transition in academia. From a frustrating struggle following King's assassination, as the regional director for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission in Battle Creek, I came to DC to spend time with Ron and Pat and check out the “Poor People’s” campaign. The night I was to leave for DC, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. While on my visit, my brother in law at the time was a graduate student at Brandeis, was desperately hoping I could find Ron. The students at the university had just successfully negotiated for an African American studies program. Ron’s Ph.D. with an emphasis on Africa made him an ideal candidate to provide leadership for such a program. Ron became the pioneer. The real victory for the students is that with his commitment to academic excellence, the program at Brandeis gave shape to an academic mission not simply a center from which to wage protest.

As brilliant as Ron was, in about 1972, I discovered he had a blind spot, when it came to race. When I was in graduate school at Stanford, he came to the campus for a visit. Having grown up in a very white Kansas and attended school in a segregated Tennessee and attended graduate school at American University, the diversity of the Bay Area, with its large Asian and Latino populations presented a challenge to his paradigm. His question to me was “Who are all of these people?” In Wichita there were some Mexican Americans but their numbers were few. Even though there were some Chinese restaurants in town, we had no Chinese classmates. Surely, he was cognizant that people of color, other than blacks lived in America, but not in these numbers. He went on to provide international consultations on the role of white nationalism in Latin South America.

In preparation for that excellent story on Ron that appeared in the Washington Post on September 12th, and even though he chose not to include it in his story, Matt Scheur asked me a profound question about Ron: What shaped Ron’s ideas, particularly notions that he would defy well entrenched social norms? Ron’s family was not middle class or members of Wichita’s black elite but they were entrepreneurs. His grandfather was a plumber, I believe. His grandfather had brothers who were also in the trades as carpenters, brick masons, radio/TV repair, you name it. They were independent not relying on whites for their livelihood. His father was Gilmor Walters, known in Wichita for being a “race man.” He had been in the service and served as the Warrant Officer for the Army’s Black musicians. Gilmore’s organizational affiliation was primarily the “colored” Musician’s local. From that platform he would express his protest by writing letters to the editor. Once his son had a Ph.D. in "black liberation" he became unrelenting in his attack on the system. This was the family context of his socialization, independence, and a commitment to the black community.

It is important that we recognize that the Dockum Drug Store sit-in did not just fall from the sky. Ron’s family always supported his leadership in the community. Also, as Aldon Morris points out in his award winning book, “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” in regional meetings of the NAACP, chapters in Kansas, Oklahoma, and other states in the Midwest shared ideas about how to attack segregation. In his capacity as President of Wichita’s NAACP Youth Chapter that Ron attended these meetings. Though not an NAACP meeting per se, it was such a meeting at the University of Illinois-Urbana that Ron met his companion for life, Pat. When he came back to Wichita, he proclaimed to all that he had met his love. A student at Philander-Smith, she was intellectually strong with a commitment to civil rights. In fact, as he described it, the two of them had stayed up all night talking civil rights. Our response was sure, talking civil rights?

From that night on, their life’s work was fused. As was said so many times yesterday [at the Howard memorial service], whatever Ron’s accomplishments, he did not do them alone. Pat was his constant support and critic. That night in Urbana led to a marriage just short of 50 years, and a commitment to the black community and black politics that has been unparalleled, and taken us to a different place. Ron will be missed but we can rest assured that in Pat his legacy will be preserved.

Bob Herbert on "Post-Racial" Politics and Forgetting the Base

2010-09-22T16:10:00.001-04:00

Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert has cut to the quick when it comes to these so-called "post-racial" politics. The notion of a "post-racial" society was a media construction anyway. Gwen Ifil's "analysis" contributed to this fantasy. She may have been correct in reporting the perspectives of some of this new generation of politicians. But the naivete in the face of America's deep-seated white nationalism could make these post-racial notions no more than fantasies. I never heard Obama make such a claim but obviously some bought the media hype to their peril. The most recent case of this peril was Adrian Fenty, the mayor of Washington, DC. As Herbert points out, Fenty surrounded himself with a view towards administration without a consideration for politics, particularly black politics. An even more arrogant case, however, was that of Arthur Davis, the Congressman from Alabama. He ran for Governor as a "blue dog" Democrat. We are talking Alabama here. Davis was running against Obama's agenda to appease white voters. Black voters were so disgusted with his "post-racial politics," they voted for his opponent. Problems in the black community go beyond issues of competence and rationality. There are hostile forces out there -- white nationalist forces -- which are at the core of politics in this country. Appeasement is not the answer. These politics are racial to which Herbert alludes. While blacks are positive in this age of Obama, that promise is on shaky ground when the President cannot even discuss HIS race. RGN

September 20, 2010

Neglecting the BaseBy BOB HERBERT

Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it was striking, nevertheless.

The mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty, one of the so-called postracial black leaders, suffered a humiliating defeat in his bid for re-election last week when African-American voters deserted him in droves. The very same week President Obama, the most prominent of the so-called postracial types, was moving aggressively to shore up his support among black voters.

Mr. Obama, who usually goes out of his way to avoid overtly racial comments and appeals, made an impassioned plea during a fiery speech Saturday night at a black-tie event sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. “I need everybody here,” he said, “to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back your workplaces, to go to the churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops. And tell them we’ve got more work to do.”

It’s no secret that the president is in trouble politically, and that Democrats in Congress are fighting desperately to hold on to their majorities. But much less attention has been given to the level of disenchantment among black voters, who have been hammered disproportionately by the recession and largely taken for granted by the Democratic Party. That disenchantment is likely to translate into lower turnout among blacks this fall.

The idea that we had moved into some kind of postracial era was always a ridiculous notion. Attitudes have undoubtedly changed for the better over the past half-century, and young people as a whole are less hung up on race than their elders. But race is still a very big deal in the United States, which is precisely why black leaders like Mr. Fenty and Mr. Obama try so hard to behave as though they are governing in some sort of pristine civic environment in which the very idea of race has been erased.

Full article

From the Nation to Rahm: Don't Let the Door Hit You Where the Dog Bit You!!!

2010-09-09T19:59:00.000-04:00

Ari Berman said it all by celebrating the likelihood that Rahm Emanuel will be leaving the White House soon. For progressive Obama supporters, this is great news. The demeaning labeling of the "professional left" by Robert Gibbs was the result of a Rahm White House. It was Rahm who first called the left a bunch of f****** retards. It was revealed recently that he shared a similar sentiment with regard to the UAW. To not have respect for labor, the heart and soul of the working class, is beyond shameful. He should have been gone!

As Berman points out, while there MAY have been some plusses in have someone with Emanuel's experience in both the White House and the Congress, much of his work within the party has been to turn the party to the right. Also, his disdain for those most wanting change and having cast their hopes with Obama makes him unfit to run this White House. RGN

The Sooner Rahm Leaves, the Better for Obama

Ari Berman
September 8, 2010

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s announcement that he will not seek a seventh term has prompted widespread speculation that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel [1] will run as Daley’s successor. "I'd be shocked if he doesn't run [2]," a senior administration official told the Washington Post.

The sooner Rahm leaves Washington, the better for Barack Obama. His White House is desperately in need of a serious shakeup, especially with Democrats facing a tidal wave of losses in the midterms. Replacing Rahm is the best place to start.

I’ll never quite understand why a transformational candidate who ran under the banner of a new style of politics chose the ultimate old-school inside operator to control his administration. Rahm isn’t solely to blame for diluting Obama’s unique outsider brand, but he’s a major reason why. After all, in the Clinton White House and in Congress, Rahm was often at odds with the very grassroots activists who powered Obama’s presidential campaign. As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in ‘06, he famously clashed with party chair Howard Dean and recruited conservative Blue Dog candidates at the expense of legitimate progressive challengers [3]. Rahm brought his corporate centrism to the White House, pushing for a smaller-than-needed stimulus bill, urging Obama not to pursue healthcare reform [4], watering down the bill when he did and calling progressive activists who wanted to pressure obstructionist Democrats “fucking retarded [5].” He later apologized to Sarah Palin but not to the Democratic activists he insulted.

Rahm’s alleged biggest asset—his ties to Capitol Hill and intricate knowledge of Beltway politics—paid few dividends for Obama. The president’s legislative agenda has hit a brick wall in the Senate and the dysfunction of the Democratic Congress, which Emanuel has done little to tame, helps explain why voters are set to punish the party in power this November. “If picking the leading practitioner of the dark arts of the capital was a Faustian bargain for Obama in the name of getting things done, why haven’t things got done?” asked Peter Baker of the New York Times in a profile titled “The Limits of Rahmism [6].” In other words, if you sell your soul, you better get something good for it in return. Instead, Obama is facing the prospect of a Republican Congress and an uphill re-election bid. No wonder Rahm is so eager to get out of town.

For full article: click here

Funding the “birthers” and the Tea Bag movements: Kansas’ White Christian Nationalism Contends for America Hegemony

2010-09-06T23:43:00.006-04:00

By now most have heard rumors about the Koch Brothers being a power behind the smear campaign and degradation of the office of the presidency by the Tea Baggers. Rachel Maddow did a report on the brothers’ support of extreme right wing – white nationalist – politics. Koch Industries is based in Wichita Kansas. Having been born and raised in Kansas, I am not embarrassed about being from Kansas (home is home), but I must say I am embarrassed for Kansas. I left Kansas in 1961, thank goodness. I had my issues with its racism to the point of being a part of a sit-in at Dockums Drug Store in 1958, but Kansas was not Mississippi. More recently, however, Kansas backward political climate was revealed by the State Board of Education’s requirement that creationism be taught right beside evolution in school curriculum.

This fact alone proved Thomas Frank’s point in his award winning book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” He concluded that the reason these working class and farm communities did not vote their economic interests was for cultural reasons. White Christian Nationalism has been at the center of the anti-abortion debate. With Bill O'Reilly and Fox News fanning the flames, Wichita was storm center for the anti-abortion movement that led to the assassination of Dr. Howard Tiller in his church.

With bizarre coincidence, one of the nation’s more infamous serial killers terrorized and killed at least 10 people, mostly women, in Wichita from the 1974 to the 1991. The BTK killer for “Blind them, Torture them and Kill them.” He committed these heinous acts as he terrorized that city of 300,000. The interesting thing about Dennis Rader, the serial killer, was linked him to this White Christian Nationalist culture as President of his fundamentalist Lutheran congregation. He was not arrested until 2004 when his ego got in the way of his secret. He thought someone was going to steal his story. Another personal coincidence when it comes to my Kansas connection, it was my cousin, Judge Greg Waller, who sentenced Rader to 175 years in prison.

When I attended my 55th high school reunion in October 2008, the Obama supporters were an intimidated minority. Of the over 90 alums in attendance, about 10 or 12 supported Obama. They formed their own little quiet campaign. After announcing at the dinner that I had informed the Obama campaign that the class of ’53 was behind him, I was booed. Even though a few of these Republicans did whisper to me later that they were going to vote for Obama, the husband (Class of ’51) of one of my classmates vowed that if Obama won he was leaving the country. Often I get email from distribution lists of classmates. Like Koch’s campaign, ridiculing the President is the order of the day. One thing this shows is that race trumps respect for the institution of the presidency.

Is it any wonder that major funder of the Tea Party comes right out of this milieu. The Koch brothers are putting their libertarian ideology to work to demonize the President just because he is African American. The brothers are underwriting the so-called “grassroots” Tea Party movement. While that may not be a surprise, what is more likely to be very illuminating is how connected they are to America’s elite, sharing the spotlight with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg at the Metropolitan Opera. These connections are buying legitimacy for their criminal behavior. There is a consistency between their racist politics and their anti-government capitalist class interests. Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said:

“The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

Remember the Birchite billboards denouncing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as Communist? These are the same people who are pushing the white Christian Nationalist Tea Bagger, “birther,” anti-immigration, and “Ground Zero” anti-Muslim sentiment. Now they are exposed. Jane Mayer is a must read. RGN

COVERT OPERATIONS

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

by Jane Mayer AUGUST 30, 2010

David H. Koch in 1996. He and his brother Charles are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes.

On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.

The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.

One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.

With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

For the full article click here

Haley Barbour: White Nationalist Revisionism

2010-09-05T00:21:00.002-04:00

Lies, damned lies and white nationalism. Haley Barbour has come under heavy criticism for lying about his personal and Mississippi's racist history. Speaking as a Republican, as opposed to those Jim Crow Southern Democrats, Barbour claims that when he attended Ole Miss race "we never thought twice about it." He attended Ole Miss in the mid-1960s. He left in his senior year to be a part of Richard Nixon's white nationalist Southern Strategy for his 1968 presidential campaign. Recall that in 1964, civil rights workers were being killed in the State's "legal" and illegal acts to protect segregation. Just prior to these deeds, in 1961, there was a riot on Ole Miss' campus in which a French journalist was killed as a part of the protest attempting to block the enrollment of James Meredith, the first African American to attend Ole Miss. It was this hostile context in which Haley Barbour claims that the University of Mississippi was integrated and which he "never thought twice about [race]." The facts on race in Mississippi in the mid 1960s betray Barbour's revisionist history. Other voices about the desegregation of the Ole Miss Medical School attests to some smooth changes but lots of maintenance of segregation which Barbour says he never gave a thought about. See also: Rachel Maddow on Haley Barbour on the lack of racism of his Mississippi generation. RGN

BARBOUR EXPLAINS THE SOUTH WITH BASELESS, REVISIONIST HISTORY.... For much of the 20th century, America's Southeast, now the Republicans' strongest region, was closely aligned with Democratic politics. The shift began quickly after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, culminating in the Republican stronghold we see today.

As far as likely presidential candidate Haley Barbour of Mississippi, the corporate-lobbyist-turned governor, is concerned, the transition can be explained as a matter of generational change. Barbour's version of events, though, is so wildly ridiculous, it bears no resemblance to reality.

Barbour has invented his own sanitized, suburb-friendly version of history -- an account that paints the South's shift to the GOP as the product of young, racially inclusive conservatives who had reasons completely separate and apart from racial politics for abandoning their forebears' partisan allegiances. In an interview with Human Events that was posted on Wednesday, Barbour insists that "the people who led the change of parties in the South ... was my generation. My generation who went to integrated schools. I went to integrated college -- never thought twice about it." Segregationists in the South, in his telling, were "old Democrats," but "by my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn't gonna be that way anymore. So the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration."

This is utter nonsense.

This comes up from time to time, especially when Republicans are feeling defensive about race (or when right-wing Mississippi governors prepare to run against the nation's first African-American president), so let's set the record straight.

The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to competing constituencies -- southern conservative whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.

It wasn't easy. As Steve Kornacki reminds us, "When the party ratified a civil rights plank at its 1948 convention, Southern Democrats staged a walkout and lined up behind Strom Thurmond, South Carolina's governor and (like all Southern Democrats of the time) an arch-segregationist. Running under the Dixiecrat banner, Thurmond won four Deep South states that fall."

As the party shifted, the Democratic mainstream embraced its new role. Republicans, meanwhile, also changed.

In the wake of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party welcomed the white supremacists who no longer felt comfortable in the Democratic Party. Indeed, in 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform. Other than his home state, Goldwater won exactly five states in that race: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. To pretend this had nothing to do with race -- we're talking about states that hadn't backed a GOP candidate since the Civil War -- is absurd.

This was, of course, right around the time when figures like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond made the transition -- leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP.

In the ensuing years, Democrats embraced their role as the party of diversity, inclusion, and civil rights. Republicans became the party of the "Southern Strategy," opposition to affirmative action, campaigns based on race-baiting, vote-caging, discriminatory voter-ID laws, and politicians like Helms and Thurmond.

Indeed, as the chairman of the Republican National Committee recently conceded, his party deliberately used racial division for electoral gain for the last four decades.

Matt Finkelstein, who noted that Barbour's version of history "is so grossly distorted that it's tough to decide where to start," added, "Barbour says that he was raised an 'Eastland Democrat,' but fails to mention that Jim Eastland once said that 'segregation is not discrimination,' but rather 'the law of God.'"

Barbour, a man who placed a Confederate flag signed by Jefferson Davis in his office, surely knows his historical perspective is radically untrue. He's just hoping the public doesn't know better. It's ugly and cynical ... and par for the course for one of America's least honorable politicians.

—Steve Benen 10:45 AM Permalink

On the "Mosque" and other Matters: Eugene Robinson Exposes the Racist Lies

2010-08-24T15:59:00.001-04:00

Eugene Robinson

The right-wing fiasco in opposition the proposed Muslim cultural center in Manhattan is simply another case of white nationalist reaction to the Obama presidency.  This whole debate about where the center should be located is irrelevant. A Constitutional right is just that a right.   Being "sensitive" to people who would deny you the exercise of a fundamental citizenship right is not the issue.  As Eugene Robinson pointed out in an exchange, desegregating Little Rock's Central High would not have happened had the nine African American students not exercised their rights in deference to the city's and the nation's  racist "sensitivities."

The "hysteria" as Robinson calls it, is just another case of white nationalism run amok, threatened by America's growing diversity and the fact that  the President is black. There are several major issues that are linked in this opposition. The opposition to the cultural center is headed up and given voice by the same people have aided and abetted the Tea Party and "birther" movements. These are the same voices that we hear when it comes to the Arizona laws on illegal immigration and restricting multicultural education.   These are the same voices that participated in the smearing of Shirley Sherrod.

Supposedly, this bigotry is about the grieving 9-11 families. It's about Pam Geller, a Holocaust denier, Nazi sympathizer and co-author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America.  (Geller's co-author is Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.)  It was not the 9-11 families that started this latest expression of white nationalist street campaign to oppose this center as being on hallowed ground. This flame was lit and then fanned by Pam Geller. This is not just about Muslims standing by their right to build the center at this location.   This is about right of Muslims to freely practice their religion not just in New York but anywhere in America. Mosques are being opposed and desecrated all over America. To not stand the right of this Imam to build this center on this site is to cave in to America's worst legacy -- white nationalist mob rule -- by some of its dregs.

In some ways Howard Dean is right. There needs to be a discussion between the 9-11 families and Imam Rauf and his associates. However, the discussion should not about the "appropriate location" of the center, but ways in which the center aims to address their "sensitivities" as a part of the center's peaceful outreach.  RGN

The right-wing, blinded by its own hysteria
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, August 24, 2010; A15

When did the loudmouths of the American right become such a bunch of fraidy-cats and professional victims? Or is it all just an act?

The hysteria over plans for an innocuous Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan -- two blocks from Ground Zero, amid an urban hodgepodge of office buildings, eateries and strip clubs -- is wildly out of proportion. It would be laughable if it didn't threaten to do great harm to the global campaign against Islamic terrorism.

It is by now firmly established that the project, dubbed Park51, is promoted by a peacenik Muslim cleric whose sermons often sound a bit like the musings of new-age guru Deepak Chopra. It is also undisputed fact that the imam in question, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is such a moderate that the U.S. government regularly sends him as an emissary to Muslim countries to preach peace, coexistence and dialogue.

Yet right-wing commentators and politicians have twisted themselves in knots to portray the Park51 project as a grievous assault -- and "the American people" as victims. Victims of what? Rauf's sinister plot to despoil the city with a fitness center, a swimming pool and -- shudder -- a space for the performing arts?

The whole "controversy" is ridiculous. Yet conservatives who should know better are doing their best to exploit widespread ignorance about Islam by transforming it into fear and anger. They imply, but don't come right out and say, that it was Islam itself that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, rather than an extremist fringe that espouses what the vast majority of the world's Muslims consider a perversion of the faith. They paint Park51 as a "victory dance" over the hallowed ground where thousands of Americans died -- never mind that there wouldn't even be a sight line between the building and Ground Zero -- and suggest that the project, even though it would be run by an imam who's practically a flower child, could somehow serve as a recruiting center for terrorists.

Message to anyone who will listen: You're a victim. Be very afraid.

In the process, this anti-mosque pitchfork brigade is surely recruiting terrorists left and right. As Ahmad Moussalli, a professor at the American University of Beirut, told the Los Angeles Times: "Rejecting this has become like rejecting Islam itself." All the Islamophobic rhetoric tends to reinforce the jihadists' main argument, which is that the United States and the West seek to destroy the faith held dear by more than 1 billion souls.

The thing is, though, that the manufactured brouhaha over the Park51 project is part of a larger pattern in which the far right embraces victimhood and stokes fear. The faction that likes to portray itself as a bunch of John Waynes and "mama grizzlies," it turns out, spends an awful lot of time cowering in the corner and complaining about how beastly everyone else is being.

Witness the frequent eruptions over instances of reverse racism -- real or imagined. The Shirley Sherrod affair was the most recent example of how eagerly the far right wants to sell the false narrative that African Americans, once they achieve positions of authority, will use their newly acquired power to punish whites for historical discrimination. The facts of the Sherrod case, as they finally emerged, argue persuasively against this fictional tale of longed-for revenge. But it will be back.

And look at the hysteria over illegal immigration. Facts don't matter -- for example, that the flow of undocumented migrants has decreased, or that border enforcement under President Obama is much tougher than under George W. Bush, or that illegal immigrants are not responsible for any kind of crime wave. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), has gone so far as to sound the alarm about alleged "terror babies." The idea is that undocumented pregnant women would cross the border so that their children could have U.S. citizenship, then take the babies away to be raised as terrorists -- who would be able to come back in 20 years or so, with legitimate U.S. passports, and presumably wreak untold havoc. No, I did not make that up.

Is the far right really afraid of its own shadow? Do these people really have so little faith in our nation's strength, resilience and values? I hope this is all just cynical political calculation, because there are genuine threats and challenges out there. We'll be better off meeting them with a spine, not a whine.

Dowd Rightly Disses Gibbs and the White House but Challanges "the Professional Left"

2010-08-22T19:35:00.002-04:00

Maureen Dowd

Robert Gibbs was wrong in attacking "the professional left" whatever that means. Much of that "left" was the most passionate in working for the President's election. It is that left that most wants to see him succeed. So, for Gibbs to make his denigrating statements about the most progressive politics in the nation was impolitic to say they least. Because of his actions, Maureen Dowd has called for Gibbs to step down. He should. But it should also be understood that this is not the first time. Recall that during the health care debate, Rahm Emmanuel did some similar name-calling when it came to some of the "demands" of the left. Unfortunately, this is the present atmosphere in the current staff. There needs to be change in the White House staff in order to change the climate.

On the other hand, there is a contradiction within the left side of politics in America when it comes to governance. The politics of "the professional left" has at its core movement politics. Being on the outside of what has been center-right politics, the left has always been in protest mode. We have been great at protest. We changed America. The success of our protests has made protest as our raison d'etre. That said, one of Maureen Dowd's points is valid. For many on the left, "pragmatism is moral compromise." As President, Obama's accomplishments are being discussed in favorable comparison when it comes to two of the nation's historic presidents, FDR and LBJ. -- in just one and a half years!! To its adherents, Social movement goals are not to be compromised.

One of the first on the "professional left" to criticize the President was Bill Maher. Maher argued early on that Obama was not kicking, like George Bush. What is ignored is that Bush had a Congress and the white nation wedded to his ideological hegemony. Obama is not an authoritarian, nor could he be. As he said on election night, he is the President of all Americans, even those who did not vote for him. To govern requires compromise. Obama's failures as far as the left is concerned are that he has not gone far enough. While his white nationalist opposition is unmitigated in their attempts to de-legitimize his presidency, or as Media Matters frames it, Fox News and Tea Party campaigns to complete the "Willie Hortonization of the Presidency of Barack Obama."

When it comes to universal health care, Ted Kennedy always regretted not taking an earlier compromise then refining it, much the way in which Medicare has been improved over time. While there needs to be a left to push social policy. That needs to come from rank and file social movement. I am reminded of the silliness of some criticism that degrade the President because HE is not carrying out King's vision. As Amiri Baraka argued "If we don't do nothing, he won't do nothing." The President who campaigned as a "pragmatic progressive" is not the left's enemy. Both the White House and the left should understand that. After 30 plus years of Reaganism and white nationalist hegemony it is time consolidate the idea that "the truth" is on the left and have Americans believe it!! RGN

No Love From the Lefties

By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

Robert Gibbs should be yanked as White House press secretary.

Not because of his outburst against the “professional left.” He was right about that. In an interview with The Hill last week, Gibbs once more proved Michael Kinsley’s maxim that a gaffe is just truth slipping out.

He said the president’s lefty critics “ought to be drug-tested,” would only “be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon,” and “wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

His colleagues tried to excuse Gibbs by saying he was suffering from a bug going around the White House. But the press secretary and the president are understandably frustrated over the asymmetry at the heart of American politics: Rand Paul and Sharron Angle aside, Republicans often find a way to exploit their extremes for political advantage, while Democratic extremes typically do damage to a Democratic president.

One of the most disgusting things about Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl, and now the former maverick John McCain, is that they are happy to be co-opted by the radicals in their party to form one movement against President Obama.

On the Republican side, the crazies often end up helping the Republican leadership. On the Democratic side, the radicals are constantly sniping at Obama, expressing their feelings of betrayal.

Fox built up a Republican president; MSNBC is trying to make its reputation by tearing down a Democratic one.

We’ve known that the left was mad at Obama, but now we know Obama is mad at the left. Obama and Gibbs are upset that the lefties won’t recognize the necessity of compromise. The left is snapping back: What necessity? You won 365 electoral votes. You have both houses of Congress. And bipartisanship is an illusion.

Democrats are not prepared to go the whole way to appease their ideologues. The Republican leaders on the Hill, on the other hand, seem perfectly happy to go all out.

W.’s reign of error so enraged Democrats that they were bound by one desire: to get rid of him. Bush, Cheney and Rove inspired the Democrats to spawn a powerful lefty tower of babble led by Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore and the blogosphere.

After Bush, Democrats thought the way to paper over the distinction between liberals and radical lefties was to call everyone progressives. But calling yourself a progressive is just a stupid disguise where you pretend the contradiction isn’t there.

Some liberals, like the president, felt he could live without the public option, whereas lefties thought the public option was essential. Some liberals, like the president, think you can escalate our wars to end them, whereas lefties just want the wars ended.

There are deep schisms within the Democratic Party that were masked for a time, first by Bush and then by Obama’s election. Now that the Democrats have the presidency and the power and can enact legislation, it’s apparent that the word progressive is kind of meaningless.

President Obama is testing how elastic he can be, how much realism he can have before he betrays his idealism. For better and worse, he is an elitist and a situationist. But the professional left — like the professional right — often considers pragmatism a moral compromise.

The lefties came to the defense of the centrist Clinton during impeachment. Now that Obama is under attack, however, they are not coming to his defense, even though he has given more to the liberal cause than the scandal-stunted Clinton ultimately achieved.

He has shepherded the biggest expansion of social programs since the Great Society and spearheaded the biggest spending program with the stimulus. But for the left (and for some economists), it was not as big as it ought to have been.

Obama got elected because of the clarity of his campaign and his speeches. But, surprisingly, he’s in some ways an incoherent president. He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.

He needs to communicate more clearly. And, in that department, Gibbs isn’t helpful. He’s often unresponsive and sometimes hostile to the press. His adversarial barking has only heightened tensions with a press that was once lampooned for fawning over his boss.

Gibbs does not see his job as a bridge between the press and the presidency. He sees himself more as a moat. He has always wanted to be an inside counselor to the president. So Obama — who bonded with Gibbs during the campaign, over sports, missing their families and how irritating the blog-around-the-clock press corps is — would be wise to promote him to a counselor. Let someone who shows less disdain for the press work with the press, and be the more engaging face of the White House.

March for Jobs and Justice: Fighting back from the assaults of Glenn Beck and the NRA

2010-08-16T11:19:00.001-04:00

As we alll know, the fascists have no shame. Ron Walters brings attention to the travesty of Glenn Beck and the NRA cynical rally at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, the anniversary of the March on Washington. As a counter to this farce, tradional Civil Rights leaders, including Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are calling on local communites to march for jobs and justice where ever you are. RGN

August 28: March for Jobs and Justice Where Ever You Are

By Ron Walters

We have to thank Rev. Al Sharpton and other Civil Rights leaders for turning our attention to the atrocity planned by Glenn Beck, Conservative Fox TV talk show host, to have a rally on the Lincoln monument on the anniversary of the March on Washington. Rather than “restoring honor” as they say, this march, heavily supported by the National Rifle Association is a perversion of the progressive spirit of the original nonviolent march, which held out the hope of racial reconciliation and that America would finally cash a check of justice that would allow all of us to invest in the great project of Democracy.

Glenn Beck is a white nationalist who frequently says that progressivism is the problem with democracy, so he and his Tea Party henchmen want to return America – virtually – to honor a set of values that were around when black people were still being lynched. I agree that he must not be allowed to appropriate the day of the great March and the values that we are still attempting to protect and uphold, so I will be there in Washington.

At the same time Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. is leading a March in Detroit, Michigan on August 28 to highlight the fact that the economic Stimulus and therefore, jobs have not reached many black communities and that going forward, Detroit, a City that is 82% black and economically challenged, is a symbol that we need a new national urban policy. Rev. Jackson is right to make clear the fact that jobs is the great issue of our times and where better to make that case than in Detroit.

Also, many people from New Orleans will not come to Washington because they will be commemorating the Katrina Hurricane damage and resurrection that weekend. In that event, I am told they will include elements of the other marches. But some national news organizations are planning their own five-year look at New Orleans and there are primary elections that day in the State, so that weekend also means that other events will have to struggle for press attention.

In any case, I think that people, especially in this economically challenged environment, should march where they are. If they can come to Washington, DC, or Detroit, or go to New Orleans, fine, but there is work to be done right there at home. It strikes me that, in sympathy with the national marches, local organizations could plan jobs marches to their local workforce agencies, city halls, construction projects where there are no blacks working, and other places where the demand for jobs by local people is a logical act. Many of us have talked about “civic engagement” well here is an opportunity to do just that, when the national spotlight could connect a national march to one held by a local community.

Perhaps this is a good idea that come too late, but I am reminded that many folks could not come to Washington, DC on August 28, 1963 and so they had local events. For example, I marched on Woodward Avenue in Detroit with hundreds of thousands of people and heard a version of the “I have a dream” speech a few days before it was given in Washington, DC. The same could be said about the Million Man March: people came by the boatloads in 1995, but by the celebration of the 10 year anniversary, an effort was made to urge folks to have local marches to highlight the values of the original march in their communities.

Finally, there is another reason why blacks should try out their local mobilization legs and that is the elections that are coming down the pike this fall. I will say more about the elections later, but it strikes me that since the National Coalition of Black Civic Participation is a sponsor of the March in Washington, DC that is sign that they are making a move to get organization thinking about how they will organize to get out the vote later on. So, these marches are about jobs and justice and respecting the values of the movement for which so many people gave their lives, time and energy. But they are also “right now” oriented to the present crisis of unemployment and to prevent the conservative movement from distorting Dr. King’s dream, but also to keeping political power in the hands of those who can help us best.

Dr. Ron Walters is a Political Analyst and Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. One of his latest books is: Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential Politics (Rowman and Littlefield)

Racists Called Out by Joe Conason

2010-08-16T02:10:00.000-04:00

The depths of the racism being expressed by today's right wing is consistent with its white nationalist history but the level of white antipathy toward the President has brought racism to the fore not expreienced since the 1950s and '60s. Joe Conason has put his finger right on it. These people commit acts that demean the President as a black man. These are racist acts. During the health care legisltative process, among the Tea Partiers near the Capitol that were persons who called black members of the Congress the N-word among other things. Congressman Cleaver was spat upon. But these degradations have been denied and covered up by the right wing media. We are at the stage we were in the 1950s and '60s in terms of expressed white antipathy toward the nation having a black president. In the Reagan years a majority voted for Reagan because of his miserable record on racism. Out of power, many of these white nationalists are desparate. And today, they are buttressed by Fox News, talk radio and the Internet where even the most extreme white supremacists are able to organize and spread propaganda. What is interesting that even the racists are denying their racism, There are also some who deny the Holocaust. RGN

The Racists Return

Posted on Aug 11, 2010

By Joe Conason

Among the most revealing aspects of life during the Obama presidency is the panoply of responses to a black family in the White House. What made so many of us proud of our country on Jan. 20, 2009, has increasingly provoked expressions of hatred from the far right. That is troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the behavior of conservatives who excuse, embolden or simply pretend to ignore the bigots surrounding them.

Last spring, after unruly tea party protesters on Capitol Hill were accused of spewing racial epithets at civil rights hero John Lewis, an African-American congressman from Georgia, conservatives rose up in furious denial. Where was the proof? How could anyone suggest that racial prejudice lurks behind the festering right-wing hatred of President Obama (and his family)? Anger over that episode still lingers in certain quarters, motivating the deceptively edited video attack on Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP by a website called Big Government, Inc.

Even if the alleged assault on Lewis and other black congressmen did occur, argued prominent commentators on the right, it somehow only proved that there is no racism in America worthy of concern. A writer for National Review (the conservative magazine that historically opposed civil rights legislation) confided that the whole subject made him yawn:

“That these things are even remotely newsworthy leads me to one conclusion: Racism in America is dead. We had slavery, then we had Jim Crow—and now we have the occasional public utterance of a bad word. Real racism has been reduced to de minimis levels, while charges of racism seem to increase.”

But this summer has seen several loud and ugly outbursts of very real racism—including threats of violence against the president of the United States—that go well beyond the utterance of any single word. As if suffering from a facial tic, leading figures on the right cannot seem to suppress their inner Klansman these days.

Is there any other way to explain Glenn Beck’s crazed rant comparing the Obama administration to an old movie about a society where apes and chimpanzees dominate humans? What did the Fox News host mean, exactly, when he shrieked: “It’s like the damned Planet of the Apes. Nothing makes sense!” Is there any other way to explain the grotesque new best-seller by radio host Laura Ingraham, “The Obama Diaries,” where, among other things, she depicts first lady Michelle Obama eating ribs at every meal? Why would she feel the need to describe the president as “uppity” by putting the word in the mouth of his mother-in-law? No wonder Stephen Colbert taunted Ms. Ingraham to her face for “hideous and hackneyed racial stereotyping.”

Of course, these are only two of the more egregious instances in recent weeks of social poisoning that dates back well over a year. Symptoms can be seen across the country now, even in amusement parks and church carnivals, where small children are exposed to this spiritual sickness.

At the Big Time fair held by Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Roseto, Pa., last week, a game called “Alien Attack” featured “an image of a suited black man holding a health care bill and wearing a belt buckle with a presidential seal,” at which players were encouraged to aim their popguns. Anybody who hit the cardboard figure in the head or the heart could win a prize. Irvin L. Good Jr., owner of Goodtime Amusements, who is responsible for this disgusting garbage, denied that the figure represents Mr. Obama. “We’re not interpreting it as Obama,” the inaptly named huckster told a local newspaper. “The name of the game is Alien Leader. If you’re offended, that’s fine, we duly note that.”

Meanwhile on the New Jersey shore, patrons of the Seaside Heights boardwalk could hurl baseballs at a black, jug-eared Obama figurine, winning a prize if they managed to smash it. As seen in a video posted on the Gawker website, this object closely resembles the grinning “lawn jockey” statuettes that used to festoon suburban lawns in a less decent era.

Most conservatives were late in taking responsibility for their movement’s immoral opposition to civil rights. It is time for them to step up and denounce the racism that is again disfiguring our country in their name.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.

White Nationalism and the 14th Amendment

2010-08-16T01:57:00.000-04:00

Harold Meyerson provides an excellent analysis of what is behind the GOP's notion to overturn the 14th Amendment. What it boils down to is a case of trying to protect the white nation. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency was the first time in history that someone not in and of the white nation was elected to hold the nation's highest and most prestigious position. As a consequence, his election represents a threat to continued white nationalist hegemony. That election was a victory over the vote of the white majority. Obama's victory was a victory of minoriities, including a minority of whites (43%). The nation's largest minority is Latino and it is growing. This demographic and the reality that in a few decades white might be a demographic minority is really at the root of the GOP's desire to repeal the 14th Amendment. Meyerson points out the irony of the 14th Amendment -- citizenship to everyone born on these shores, specifically former slaves -- being one of the GOP's greatest contributions to the nation's history. Rather than progress on the issue of illegal immigragtion, the myth being spread about "anchor babies" is noting more than white nationaliat anti-Latino race baiting. Given that the impetus for this is coming from the first Secessonist state, Meyerson offers a compromise. RGN

Why the GOP really wants to alter the 14th Amendment

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, August 11, 2010; A17

As Lindsey Graham and his fellow Republicans explain it, their sudden turn against conferring citizenship on anyone born in the United States was prompted by the mortal threat of "anchor babies" -- the children of foreigners who scurry to the States just in time to give birth to U.S. citizens.

The Republican war on the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is indeed directed at a mortal threat -- but not to the American nation. It is the threat that Latino voting poses to the Republican Party.

By proposing to revoke the citizenship of the estimated 4 million U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants -- and, presumably, the children's children and so on down the line -- Republicans are calling for more than the creation of a permanent noncitizen caste. They are endeavoring to solve what is probably their most crippling long-term political dilemma: the racial diversification of the electorate. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are trying to preserve their political prospects as a white folks' party in an increasingly multicolored land.

Absent a constitutional change -- to a lesser degree, even with it -- those prospects look mighty bleak. The demographic base of the Republican Party, as Ruy Teixeira demonstrates in a paper released by the Center for American Progress this summer, is shrinking as a share of the nation and the electorate. As the nation grows more racially and religiously diverse, Teixeira shows, its percentage of white Christians will decline to just 35 percent of the population by 2040.

The group that's growing fastest, of course, is Latinos. "Their numbers will triple to 133 million by 2050 from 47 million today," Teixeira writes, "while the number of non-Hispanic whites will remain essentially flat." Moreover, Latinos increasingly trend Democratic -- in a Gallup poll this year, 53 percent self-identified as Democrats; just 21 percent called themselves Republican.

To be sure, the wretched state of the economy could drive some otherwise Democratic-inclined Latino voters to the GOP this November. But Republicans are doing their damnedest to keep this from happening. Their embrace of Arizona's Suspicious-Looking-Latinos law and their enthusiasm for stripping Latino children of their citizenship will only hasten Latinos' flight.

Sentient Republican strategists such as Karl Rove have long understood that unless their party could win more Latino votes, it would eventually go the way of the Whigs. That's the main reason George W. Bush tried to persuade congressional Republicans to support immigration reform. But most lawmakers, reflecting the nativism of the Republican base, would have none of it.

By pushing for repeal of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, the GOP appears to have concluded: If you can't win them over -- indeed, if you're doing everything in your power to make their lives miserable -- revoke their citizenship.

On this page last week, my colleague E.J. Dionne Jr. rightly noted that by attacking the amendment, Republicans seek to undo one of their party's greatest and most inclusionary achievements. Civil War- and Reconstruction-era Republicans took pains to ensure the citizenship not only of freed slaves and their children. They -- in particular, Abraham Lincoln -- also decided not to permanently keep millions of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers from regaining their citizenship.

The Confederates had renounced all allegiance to the United States. They made war on the United States -- the Constitution's definition of treason -- and, in an effort to keep 4 million Americans enslaved, killed more of our soldiers than any foreign army ever did.

Yet Lincoln was determined to make it easy for Confederates to regain their citizenship. By taking an oath to support the United States and its Constitution, Confederates were made Americans again.

Suppose, though, that Lincoln had been filled with the spirit of today's Republicans. The crimes that Republicans ascribe to today's illegal immigrants pale next to those of Confederate leaders and supporters (chiefly, treason). A Lindsey Graham-like Lincoln would never have let the Confederates regain citizenship. Moreover, he would have denied citizenship to their children and their children's children. A large share of the nation, certainly of the white South, would have drifted endlessly in a legal limbo. The current Republican Party, anchored as it is in the white South, would scarcely exist.

So, the question for Lindsey Graham is: Are you serious about revoking the citizenship of 4 million children, their children and their children's children? How about a package deal: Stripping their citizenship in return for stripping the citizenship of Confederate descendants. A sort of Missouri Compromise for our times. Bipartisanship in action.

Senator, let me know what you think.
meyersonh@washpost.com

Bob Herbert on Shirley Sherrod

2010-08-07T15:36:00.000-04:00

This piece by Bob Herbert is a bit dated but should shared and in the archive. RGN

Thrown to the Wolves
By BOB HERBERT

The Shirley Sherrod story tells us so much about ourselves, and none of it is pretty. The most obvious and shameful fact is that the Obama administration, which runs from race issues the way thoroughbreds bolt from the starting gate, did not offer this woman anything resembling fair or respectful treatment before firing and publicly humiliating her.

Moving with the swiftness of fanatics on a hanging jury, big shots in the administration and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News came to exactly the same conclusion: Shirley Sherrod had to go — immediately! No time for facts. No time for justice.

What we have here is power run amok. Ms. Sherrod was not even called into an office to be fired face to face. She got the shocking news in her car. “They called me twice,” she told The Associated Press. “The last time, they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and submit my resignation on my BlackBerry, and that’s what I did.”

This woman was thrown to the wolves without even the courtesy of a conversation. Her side of the story? The truth? The administration wasn’t interested.

And the blame for that falls squarely on the people at the very top in the White House. Why didn’t President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden or Rahm (call me Rahmbo) Emanuel, or somebody somewhere in the upper echelon say, “Hey, what the heck are you doing? You can’t fire a person without hearing her side of the story. This is not the Kremlin. Are you nuts?”

And then, of course, there’s the media, and not just the wing nuts at Fox and the crazies in the right-wing blogosphere. A large segment of the mainstream crowd stampeded to condemn this woman solely on the basis of a grainy video clip, just two-and-a-half minutes long, that was trumpeted by a source whose track record should have set alarm bells ringing in the head of any responsible journalist.

This sorry episode shows the extent to which we’ve lost sight of the most basic elements of fair play, responsible reporting and common decency in this society. And we’ve turned the race issue entirely on its head. While racial discrimination is overwhelmingly directed against black people in the U.S., much of the nation and the media are poised to go berserk over the most specious allegations of racism against whites. Even the N.A.A.C.P. rushed to condemn Ms. Sherrod, calling her actions “shameful,” without bothering to seek out the facts — which, incredibly, had unfolded at an N.A.A.C.P. event!

Later, after officials at the organization had found and released a tape of Ms. Sherrod’s entire 45-minute speech, the group’s president, Ben Jealous, apologized and said the N.A.A.C.P. had been “snookered.”
Black people are in a terrible condition right now — economically, socially, educationally and otherwise — and there is no effective champion fighting for their interests. Mr. Jealous and the new edition of the N.A.A.C.P. have shown in this episode that they are not ready for prime time, and President Obama seems reluctant to even utter the word black. Or poor, for that matter.

We hear so much about the middle class, and it’s true that the middle class has suffered in this terrible recession. There’s a middle-class task force in the White House led by the vice president. But the people suffering most in this long economic tailspin are the poor and the black, and you don’t hear much about that.
Which brings us to the most important part of the Shirley Sherrod story. The point that Ms. Sherrod was making as she talked in her speech about the white farmer who had come to her for help was that we are all being sold a tragic bill of goods by the powerful forces that insist on pitting blacks, whites and other ethnic groups against one another.

Ms. Sherrod came to the realization, as she witnessed the plight of poverty-stricken white farmers in the South more than two decades ago, that the essential issue in this country “is really about those who have versus those who don’t.”

She explained how the wealthier classes have benefited from whites and blacks constantly being at each other’s throats, and how rampant racism has insidiously kept so many struggling whites from recognizing those many things they and their families have in common with economically struggling blacks, Hispanics and so on.
“It’s sad that we don’t have a roomful of whites and blacks here tonight,” she said, “because we have to overcome the divisions that we have.”

There is no way we’ll overcome those divisions if people who should know better keep bowing before and kowtowing to the toxic agenda of those on the right whose overriding goal is to foment hostility and hate.

Racists Tea Party Movement Collapsing????

2010-08-05T12:10:00.001-04:00

The Tea Party "Movement" emerged from the town hall meetings in the summer of 2009. It began as a manufactured opposition using scare tactics about health care reform, which these right wingers have tabbed the as "Obamacare." Rather than a grassroots movement as advertised, much of this effort grew out of Fox News and Dick Armey's health industry lobbying interests. Quickly, the anti-Obama sentiment morphed into anti-government protests that often portrayed the President in racist caricatures. This "movement" included "birthers" and urged on slogans demanding that they wanted to "take their country back." The analysis by Media Matters has exposed this so-called movement for what it is -- a fraud that is now falling apart. That is a good thing. Much of the President's historic accomplishments have been overshadowed by the negative noise of the Tea Parties and their personalities, not the least of whom are Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle of Neveda, Rand Paul of Kentucky and other disasters. Should the Tea Party collapse, it won't be a moment too soon. RGN

Memo to the media: The Tea Party movement has collapsed
August 05, 2010 8:15 am ET - by Eric Boehlert

Like rubberneckers on the misinformation highway, let’s slow down and gawk at the wreckage from last Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Philadelphia. Let’s look at the scattered debris and see what it says not only about the state of today’s Tea Party movement, but also what clues it provides for the political press corps in terms of how it should cover the anti-Obama rabble rousers.

The Saturday event was dubbed Uni-Tea, and was designed to feature mostly minority speakers as a way to send a message that not only isn’t the Tea Party movement racist, but that it seeks diversity amid its ranks.

Optimistic organizers, who boasted that their website had attracted 2 million hits during the run-up to the big rally, predicted a crowd of 3,000-4,000 people for the Philadelphia event. And they had every reason to be confident. After all, right-wing celebrity Andrew Breitbart, fresh off his Shirley Sherrod star turn, was scheduled to speak at the event, which was held on a gorgeous summer day in downtown Philadelphia on Independence Mall, where throngs of tourists would already be milling around. So it made sense, as Talking Points Memo reported, that organizers had 1,500 bottles of water on ice to hand out for the throngs who descended on the rally to cheer the Tea Party message.

But how many people actually showed up last Saturday for the national Tea Party rally? One local report put the number at 300. That’s right, 300, or less than one-tenth of the expected turnout. In fact, it’s possible more people showed up in Philadelphia last week to commemorate the opening of the new Apple computer store than showed up at the nationally promoted Tea Party rally featuring Andrew Breitbart.

Memo to the media: The Tea Party movement has collapsed.

And its collapse means it’s time for the press to rethink the way it covers the political equivalent of the Pet Rock, a fad that appears to be in its waning days of popularity.

I’d suggest that for more than a year the Beltway press has spent far too many man-hours obsessively chronicling the conservative Tea Partiers. Part of that overindulgence has been fueled by the bullying GOP Noise Machine, which has demanded around-the-clock Tea Party coverage as proof that journalists aren’t liberally biased. And part of it has simply been the media’s attraction to a political story that was new and rather unorthodox.

But it’s time to pull the plug, or at least it’s time for the press to tell the truth about the Tea Party’s rather sad state of affairs.

I don’t know why Tea Party events, like the one in Philadelphia, are now failures. Maybe people are turned off by the obvious and odious racial element that permeates parts of the movement. Or maybe people are disappointed at how little the Tea Party has been able to accomplish. Of course, it failed in stopping Obama's health care reform, a legislative initiative that Tea Party leaders and supporters rallied against.

The Tea Party also failed in stopping Obama's stimulus package, as well as the White House's push to bail out Detroit automakers and to reform financial institutions. So maybe that’s why people now stay home instead of creating Obama-hating posters and marching around.

But the truth is for the Tea Party movement, rallies matters and have been important to the media story, because the Tea Party has so few other traditional measuring sticks that journalists use. For instance, there is national party per se, no universal platform, not official agenda or elected officials or easily traceable fundraising arm. So the press has often judged the movement’s vitality based on the Tea Party rallies and what kind of turnout fervent anti-Obama followers could generate.

The oversized significance of the rallies may be one reason why conservative commentators have routinely lied about attendance and simply manufactured crowd counts that had no relation to the truth. (They’ve also lied about “millions of Americans” having taken to the streets as part of the Tea Party phenomenon.) And yes, last weekend Philadelphia was no exception, with one Tea Party blogger declaring she was “amazed” by the big turnout and dubbed the Breitbart event a “resounding success.”

But I’m sorry, do these photos suggest a four-figure crush of humanity was on hand in the City of Brotherly Love?

Talk about plenty of room down front! This looks like a crummy showing for a middle school fundraiser, let a lone a national event for the Tea Party. And by the way, the diversity angle was a total bust amid the predictably white Tea Party crowd. (You mean inviting Breitbart to speak at an event meant to attract black activists might have been a bad idea?)

The truth is media red flags should have gone up in late March when Tea Party heroine Sarah Palin headlined what sponsors modestly referred to as the “conservative Woodstock,” an all-day outdoor rally in Searchlight, Nevada, the home of Sen. Harry Reid. You’ll recall that at the actual Woodstock, approximately 500,000 attended the cultural (and political) milestone. But for the Searchlight “Woodstock,” just 8,000 people showed up. (Naturally, that didn’t stop Tea Party backers from concocting a far more pleasing tally for the event --20,000!)

Can you imagine if, during the height of the anti-war movement in the winter of 2003, Al Gore announced he was going to appear at the "Liberal Woodstock," and then just 8,000 people showed up? How do you think the Beltway chattering class would have portrayed that event, as well as the movement Gore was trying to lead? For Palin though, very few reporters or pundits focused on the weak Nevada turnout.

The next month on Tax Day, April 15, movement superstar Palin headlined a widely hyped, outdoor Tea Party event on the Boston Common. And again the turnout was very soft for what’s supposed to be a grassroots phenomenon sweeping the country -- just 5,000 people showed up to hear Palin and her Tea Party message in Boston. But once again, that didn’t stop supporters from fabricating a bigger and better crowd estimate -- 16,000!

Whether journalists paid any attention to the phony crowd estimate that Tea Party backers pushed, I don’t know. But the small crowds last spring should have given reporters pause about assigning too much significance to the ad-hoc group of activists.

It’s true that high-profile GOP primary wins by candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Marco Rubio in Florida filled the Tea Party’s sails, at least in the eyes of the press. But look again. According to local polling results, Angle, Paul, and Rubio have taken what should be easy wins for the GOP and turned them into toss-ups. Indeed, Democrats might hold onto control of the U.S. Senate only because of the Tea Party and its weak, inexperienced candidates.

Question for the press: If Angle, Paul and Rubio all find ways to lose in November (will Rubio even get 30 percent of the Florida vote?), can we officially -- and finally -- stop overindulging the Tea Party?

Copyright © 2009 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved

Blacks Split With Obama Over Education Reform

2010-08-02T22:45:00.001-04:00

Blacks Split With Obama Over Education Reform

By Ron Walters

At the recent National Urban League convention, President Obama’s speech took aim at criticisms that had been launched by the Black Civil Rights community over the educational reforms proposed by his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. The seventeen page document, “Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn through Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,’ was put together by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Urban League, Rainbow Push Coalition, National Council for Educating Black Children and the Schott Foundation for Public Education. My understanding is that the National Action Network was part of the group but ultimately not a signatory to the document. These organizations discovered last year that Duncan was putting together a draft proposal known as “Race To The Top” with little input from the African American community and this document stands as an important critique of that proposal from our point of view.

I knew that something was terribly wrong about the Duncan proposals when Diane Ravitch, an architect of “No Child Left Behind” in the Bush administration wrote a piece in The Nation explaining why she no longer supports NCLB. In that piece, she says, “I expected that Obama would throw out NCLB and start over. But, on the contrary, his administration has embraced some of the worst features of the George W. Bush era.” Specifically, she was talking about how her view of both “choice” and “accountability” had changed and her conclusion that neither would improve American education. A radical point of view!

So, President Obama at the NUL pointed to the unprecedented amount of funds for education in the Recovery Act that saved the jobs of many teachers and the recent roll-out of the grant program that provided funds for “Race To The Top” to the first 18 states. He defended the criticism that it was not supportive of minority students by saying that the state proposals had to have a robust minority program. But he spent a great deal of time suggesting that while he supported teachers, that they were, in effect, the lynchpin of accountability for his new reforms. Again, this view, very little different from the Bush administration, also goes after teachers unions as a barrier to the concept of accountability.

Moreover, since the Duncan plan has been criticized by the civil rights groups as too Charter School top heavy, the President defended it by saying that the bad ones would be closed down. But this didn’t challenge the concept, since a recent authoritative study by Margaret Raymond at Stanford University, for the pro-Charter Walton Family Foundation, found that only 17% of charters out-performed matched public schools, the other 83% were either no better or no worse. These findings are similar to Washington, DC which has the largest number of Charters in the country.

The support for Charters and public funding of private schools is the modern version of the segregated academies of the period before Brown v. Board of Education. Today, whites flee public schools demanding “Choice” as they become significantly populated by black and Hispanic students and so the neoliberal paradigm that devalues public education – where most black children are – has become official. Many Black parents support Choice because it has been sold to them as providing the best education.

The Obama administration has put the largest amount of money on the table for education in the history of the country. But he needs to change the paradigm of accountability as punishment if a school doesn’t turn around, to emphasize what Barbara Arnwine, President of the Lawyers Committee, says should be providing the necessary resources to enrich the academic culture to enable these schools to succeed. In this scheme of things, accountability should be changed to supplement the deficiencies in the resources foundation of a school, not to assume that all the needed resources are there and the teachers are the main culprit in lack of student achievement.

Teachers are but one factor. In a 21st century model of excellent education, the mountain of research that links poverty to education suggests that a more rigorous social unit should be developed for schools. Otherwise, the NCLB model of blaming teachers is what has led the Washington, DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee to fire 241 teachers, with 700 more on the list because they didn’t evaluate well on a questionable measurement standard.

The President suggests that while Duncan is “trying to shake things up” those who oppose him either resist change or are “comfortable with the status quo.” Does he really believe that these civil rights organizations don’t want the best for Black children?

Dr. Ron Walters is a Political Analysts and Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book, with Toni-Michelle Travis is: Democratic Destiny and the District of Columbia (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010)

Sherrod Attorney: Breitbart Suit Seeks To Be Deterrent

2010-08-02T22:40:00.000-04:00

Breitbart to get what he deserves, bankruptcy -- at least we hope. Shirley Sherrod has made it clear she will sue Andrew Breirbart for smearing her name -- a name that carries with it such a dedication for improving the lives of so many -- need we say -- black, white, Native American and women farmers. She and her family have suffered dearl at the hands of the Klan. She clearly understands what will hurt and we can only hope that she hurts him BAAAADDD!! Someone with no scrupples -- a racist retrograde -- deserves no less. RGN

Sherrod Attorney: Breitbart Suit Seeks To Be Deterrent

July 30, 2010 1:11 pm ET by Joe Strupp
Media Matters

Shirley Sherrod's longtime attorney said her pending lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart will seek to be a deterrent for future defamation actions, adding that it is not about money.

But Rose Sanders, who has known Sherrod for decades, stressed that it will seek monetary damages because "that is all right-wing capitalists understand."

"It will be a legal deterrent," Sanders, who is based in Selma, Ala., told me Friday. "That when you destroy a person's reputation, you will pay the consequences."

Sanders' comments follow Sherrod's announcement Thursday that she plans to sue Breitbart, who posted an excerpt on July 19 of a speech that Sherrod gave in front of a NAACP group. He claimed that the clip showed her engaging in racism.

The tape resulted in Sherrod being fired July 19, but she was later offered a new USDA job after it became clear that Breitbart's video had taken her statements out of context.

Several defamation lawyers have told Media Matters that Sherrod could have a good case against Breitbart.

Sanders said Friday: "It is clearly a case of defamation of character. He took an edited, out-of-context clip and posted it and caused her to lose her job. When you create a situation that caused victimization, you are the primary person responsible."

Sherrod could not be reached for comment Friday. Sanders said Sherrod is in the process of putting together a legal team to advise her on the case, with Sanders likely "adding support" to the team.

"There is a collection of people advising her," Sanders said, declining to name them. "She is putting together a legal team and the purpose is to show that people cannot perpetuate lies and destroy people's reputations without legal consequences."

Sanders said she did not know when or where the lawsuit would be filed or how much would be sought in damages: "She has to make sure it will be filed in a place where people are just."

Sanders also criticized Tom Vilsack, Agriculture Department secretary, whose department forced Sherrod to resign July 19, then offered her a new job: "Vilsack has not been disciplined and he should ask the president to discipline him. In his own way, he discriminated against Ms. Sherrod."

Exposed: Fox News' long history of race-baiting

2010-07-27T19:43:00.004-04:00

Media Matters is on the case. They are recording and exposing Fox News for what it is -- racist propaganda. By facilitating and amplifying Breitbart's libel against Shirley Sherrod, they have exposed themselves and left themselves vulnerable. Fox News claims that the White House and the NAACP are what made the story a story by the dismissal of Mrs Sherrod. It was Fox Nation, the Web site extension of Fox News, that broke the story on the Web. It was Fox Nation that was revving up the ratings for a lead up to Bill OReilly's 8:00p show. It was the news bureau that broke this story causing the unfortunate reaction from the NAACP and the Administration. Breitbart's false charge against Mrs Sherrod was a lie that fit Fox News narrative of spreading white resentment. The best resource in exposing Fox News propaganda machine is Media Matters. It was Media Matters that exposed Fox's "Willie Hortonization of Obama." The key on air players and detail are discussed in the full article. RGN

Fox News' long history of race-baiting
July 27, 2010 5:34 am ET

Howard Dean and Joan Walsh recently called out Fox News, criticizing what they called its "racist" handling of the deceptively edited Shirley Sherrod video clip. Indeed, Fox News and its personalities have a long history of aggressive race-baiting and racially charged commentary.

Walsh, Dean describe Fox as "racist," highlight Sherrod, New Black Panthers coverage
Howard Dean: Fox acted "absolutely racist." In a July 25 appearance on Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean told host Chris Wallace: "Let's just be blunt about this. I don't think Newt Gingrich is a racist, and you're certainly not a racist, but I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist. They took a -- they had an obligation to find out what was really in the [Sherrod] clip. They have been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this [Sherrod] business and [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor and all this other stuff."

Walsh: "It's true" that Sherrod is a victim of Fox racism. On the July 25 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, Walsh, Salon.com editor in chief, stated of Sherrod: "I'm not giving her a pass, but I think the idea that she shouldn't be able to say Fox or Breitbart is racist is preposterous. She gets to say that because it's true, and because, from her vantage point, it's especially true."

Walsh describes "Fox News's 50-state Southern strategy." In a July 25 Salon.com post, Walsh noted that Fox News is hyping "one 'scary black people' and 'Obama's a racist' story after another" and wrote: "Fox News has, sadly, become the purveyor of a 50-state 'Southern strategy,' the plan perfected by Richard Nixon to use race to scare Southern Democrats into becoming Republicans by insisting the other party wasn't merely trying to fight racism, but give blacks advantages over whites (Fox News boss Roger Ailes, of course, famously worked for Nixon)."

Fox pushes phony Sherrod video, keeps pushing after full video debunks "racism" attack
Fox's reaction to Breitbart's bogus video: "Racist" Sherrod "must resign." On the July 19 edition of his show, Bill O'Reilly played the out-of-context clip of Sherrod and said: "[T]hat is simply unacceptable. And Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately." Sean Hannity asserted that Sherrod's comments were "[j]ust the latest in a series of racial incidents." Guest-hosting Fox News' On the Record, Dana Perino suggested Sherrod's remarks were racist, saying, "The video adds fuel to a growing controversy after the NAACP approved a resolution condemning the tea party movement for not denouncing racist members." The next morning, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy said that Sherrod made "a speech to the NAACP that sure sounded racist." Later, after guest-host Alisyn Camerota asserted that Sherrod's remarks are "outrageous and perhaps everybody needs a refresher course on what racism looks like," Doocy responded that Sherrod's comments are "Exhibit A."

Even after Breitbart's racism smear was debunked, some Fox News personalities stayed on the attack. After the full video of Sherrod's remarks surfaced, indicating that her story was one of racial reconciliation rather than discrimination, some Fox News figures continued to attack Sherrod. Hannity asserted: "She still admits that she was discriminating against this white farmer." On Fox & Friends, guest host Juliet Huddy said that there "are things that I think are incriminating" in the full video of Sherrod's remarks that "I do think raise a lot of questions about whether or not she should be in the position that she held in the first place." Fox News contributor Dick Morris suggested that keeping Sherrod at the USDA would represent a "huge problem" for President Obama, adding, "It's like he has Reverend Wright on his staff." On The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Monica Crowley suggested that Sherrod may be among "radicals, racists, socialists" in the Obama administration.

Fox's nonstop hyping of the phony New Black Panthers scandal
Fox relentlessly pushes phony New Black Panthers scandal and uses it as an excuse for race-baiting. Fox News has hyped the manufactured scandal surrounding the New Black Panther Party more than 100 times. On America's Newsroom, Fox's Peter Johnson Jr. responded to a question from co-host Megyn Kelly about "what ... we know about [Attorney General] Eric Holder and his history of prosecuting this kind of case," by saying that "at Columbia college, he [Holder] was active in black student association[s] there" and that "at some point, there had been a takeover of the dean's office at Columbia." Morris used the New Black Panthers scandal to declare that Obama is "stereotyping himself as a racial president."

Fox baselessly links Obama and Holder to New Black Panthers case. Fox News figures baselessly asserted that Obama and Holder were involved in the Justice Department's decision in the New Black Panthers case. Kelly teased an interview with former Bush DOJ official Hans von Spakovsky by saying: "[S]erious allegations today that the decision to drop the now-infamous voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party may have reached all the way to the White House." Beck stated that "Obama comes in and decides suddenly in May of 2009 to drop the case." O'Reilly said Holder's "failure to prosecute is simply a dereliction of his sworn duty." Doocy asserted that "the attorney general drop[ped]" the charges against the New Black Panthers. And on Fox Business' America's Nightly Scoreboard, host David Asman claimed that Obama "is defending racists in ... letting the Black Panthers off." In fact, J. Christian Adams, the conservative activist who has pushed the phony story testified that he had no "indication" higher-ups were involved in the decision.

Racially charged rhetoric a major part of Fox News' history
In addition to their racially charged coverage of the Sherrod tape and New Black Panthers case, as highlighted by Dean and Walsh, Fox's employees have relentlessly stoked racial tensions on Fox News.

Rupert Murdoch
Fox News' race problem starts at the very top. Its parent company's chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch, baselessly claimed that Obama made a "very racist comment" and that Glenn Beck's characterization of Obama as a "racist" was "right." Murdoch also hired Roger Ailes as Fox News Channel president despite his prior history of using race for political gain.

Murdoch says Beck's "racist" comment "was right." Responding to Beck's description of Obama as a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," Murdoch said in a November 6, 2009, interview with Sky News Australia that while that "was something which perhaps shouldn't have been said about the president, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right." Murdoch also claimed that Obama "did make a very racist comment." A News Corp. spokesperson reportedly later told Politico that Murdoch "does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist."

When asked what "very racist comment" he was referring to, Murdoch says he "denied that absolutely." On November 19, 2009, Media Matters asked Murdoch to explain what he meant by his remark that Obama made a "very racist comment." Murdoch said, "I denied that absolutely." He added: "I don't believe he's a racist."

Roger Ailes
Before launching Fox News Channel, Ailes worked as a media consultant for several Republican campaigns in which evidence shows he appealed to racial fears and biases for political gain, and as executive producer for Rush Limbaugh's television show, during which Limbaugh made controversial statements about race. Under Ailes, Fox News has routinely engaged in race-baiting, as evidenced by the comments of Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and other Fox News personalities.

As Nixon campaign consultant, Ailes reportedly looked for a "Wallaceite cab-driver" to bring up race at televised town hall meetings. As media consultant for Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, Ailes directed televised town hall meetings in which Nixon answered questions from a supportive audience. According to historian Rick Pearlstein, Ailes suggested Nixon take a question from a "good, mean, Wallaceite cab-driver. Wouldn't that be great? Some guy to sit there and say, 'Awright, Mac, what about these niggers?' " Pearlstein wrote, "Nixon then could abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a 'moderate' version of the opinion. Ailes walked up and down a nearby taxi stand until he found a cabbie who fit the bill."

Ailes on 1988 strategy against Dukakis: "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Along with Lee Atwater, Ailes was credited with helping George H.W. Bush come from behind to beat Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. Part of that winning strategy included portraying Dukakis as "soft on crime" and connecting him with convicted felon Willie Horton. Horton committed assault, armed robbery, and rape in Maryland during a weekend furlough -- a program granting temporary release to prisoners that Dukakis supported but was created under the previous governor. While the Bush campaign did not produce the Horton ad that was widely criticized as "racist," Ailes did produce the "Revolving Door" ad that similarly attacked Dukakis for the furlough program. The campaign also created "The Risk," a negative ad that referenced "a furlough escapee" who "terrorized a Maryland couple." Ailes has been quoted as saying, "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

Ailes was media consultant for 1989 Giuliani campaign, whose attacks on Dinkins "prey[ed] upon the fears of the Jewish community." While Ailes was media consultant for Rudy Giuliani's first campaign for New York City mayor, the campaign placed an ad in a prominent Yiddish newspaper, The Algemeiner Journal, that featured an image of Giuliani's opponent David Dinkins -- who would become New York City's first African-American mayor -- alongside Jesse Jackson. The ad also displayed a photo of Giuliani with President George H.W. Bush, with the headline reading: ''Let the people of New York choose their own destiny" [New York Times, 9/30/1989]. Howard Kurtz reported that "Ira Silverman, vice president of the American Jewish Committee, said the Giuliani ad seemed a 'legitimate campaign tactic,' but said that he found it 'troubling' because it 'preys upon the fears of the Jewish community' " [Washington Post, 9/29/1989]. National Public Radio has further reported: "Giuliani also tagged Dinkins as a 'Jesse Jackson Democrat.' That was an appeal to the city's large contingent of Jewish voters, who had despised Jackson ever since he used an anti-Semitic epithet to describe New York City. In this context, Giuliani's signature issue of crime took on racial overtones, says political consultant Norman Adler." One of Giuliani's ads featured a New Yorker stating, "I'm tired of living in New York and being scared."

Ailes produced Limbaugh's television show. Ailes served as executive producer for Limbaugh's syndicated television show, which ran from 1992 to 1996. On his TV show, in response to Spike Lee's recommendation that African-American children be permitted to skip school to view Malcolm X, Limbaugh once said: "Spike, if you're going to do that, let's complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater and then blow it up on their way out" [Nexis transcript of Limbaugh's show on October 29, 1992]. And after Sen. Strom Thurmond -- who in 1948 ran for president on a States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) platform that advocated racial segregation -- told a gay service member during a 1993 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on gays in the military, "Your lifestyle is not normal," and asked if he had every sought psychiatric help, Limbaugh stated of Thurmond: "He is not encumbered by trying to be politically correct. He's not encumbered by all of the -- the so-called new niceties and proprieties. He just says it, and if you want to know what America used to be -- and a lot of people wish it still were -- then you listen to Strom Thurmond." Limbaugh added, "He got a standing ovation. Now people -- people applauded that. People applaud -- because -- you know, Strom Thurmond can say it because he's 90 years old and people say, Ah, he's just an old coot. He's from the old days,' and so forth. But that's what most people think. They just don't have the guts to say it. That's why they applaud when somebody does say it that directly and that simply" [Nexis transcript of Limbaugh's show, May 11, 1993].

For the full article and on-air personalities

Ron Walters: No White House Defense, So Racist Are Able Define Racism

2010-07-25T20:21:00.000-04:00

No White House Defense, So Racist Are Able Define Racism
By Ron Walters

The case of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired from her job at the Department of Agriculture for being charged by Andrew Breitbart, a white nationalist, with making a racist speech at a March NAACP conference is on its way to being respectfully resolved. Breitbart had placed an edited eight minute video of Ms. Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP conference in March on his website to make a case for racism within the NAACP. Ms. Sherrod said that she had taken her job to help Black people, but when a white farmer came to her for help, understanding that many Black farmers had received no help, she would have to determine, in light of his arrogance in dealing with her, just how much help she would give him. And although she decided that she would do just enough, circumstances caused her to rethink her initial decision and go above and beyond the call of duty, coming to believe that what really mattered was that he was poor and not just white and as such had much in common with blacks.

But what still sticks in my craw is that all the parties to the sorry treatment of Ms. Sherrod based their actions in agreement with the concept of racism as defined by Andrew Breitbart, that the eight minute video segment showed racism both in terms of Ms. Sherrod’s statements and the audience’s response. It’s simply not there.

Most people now understand that the speech was actually 35 minutes and that this small segment was taken out of context of a complete story. But it should be noted that even the first eight minutes were not racist. It was not racist that Ms. Sherrod wanted to work only for Black people. Charge Cesar Chavez with being racist for only working for Hispanics. It was not racist that she remembered the past mal-treatment of blacks and decided how much help she would give him. It would only have been racist if she decided she would give him less than equal service. It was not racist for some in the audience to respond audibly in agreement with Sherrod who voiced the irony that the shoe was on the other foot and she now had the power to determine how to help a white farmer knowing that Black farmers had faced trouble at the hands of whites.

In other words, the cultural context within the exchange between Ms. Sherrod and the NAACP audience was a legitimate one for the expression of her past experiences and its validation by the audience. It only appears racist when taken out of that cultural forum, as was the case of the video of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and thrown into an arena where it was evaluated at the hands of conservatives who had neither respect nor much knowledge of Black culture.

This means that the White House, the media and other institutions are vulnerable to having racial situations being defined by those with a distinctly political agenda if they do not change their approach. So, they should take racism seriously rather than running from the issue for the reasons that many have written about, because the President lives in a country where race is one of the most dynamic issues and his own race will continually invite some relationship to those issues. In this sense, it was, and is, naïve for him and his advisers to believe that they can either ignore these issues or handle them on an ad hoc basis. They are as serious to his success as passing health care legislation and they deserve “war room” attention.

Either the White House, the NAACP, MSNBC and various other media outlets, and the Agriculture Department all agreed with Breitbart’s definition of the video segment, or they were afraid to have to defend the video against a Fox News campaign by its show hosts to shape the speech as racist. Perhaps it was both, but if they had been accurate about the concept, the Right wing campaign would have come to a halt right there. These institutions need expert and trusted advisers on racial issues that they use in the decision-making process not just for damage control. The NAACP should have known better, and done better, and its expertise on the issue would have been able to inform others.

First Rev. Wright, then Van Jones, Acorn, the New Black Panthers, now Breitbart all lead to the conclusion that this White House is inept in the handling of racial issues. Since the culture war against it will not stop, it should develop the capacity and the confidence to face it down.

Dr. Ron Walters is a Political Analyst and Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. One of his books is: White Nationalist, Black Interests (Wayne State University Press)

Mitch Albom Breitbart the Smearer

2010-07-25T14:39:00.003-04:00

Long before Mitch Albom became a best selling author with a national reputation, Detroiters had the pleasure of reading his Detroit Free Press columns on an almost daily basis. Mitch has increbile insights not only about sports, but life as well. As his Tuesdays with Morrie shows not only is Mitch bright, he is very compassionate. His piece here on the Shirley Sherrod incident is right on target -- the blame here clearly is Breitbart's. Albom does does a great job in showing that what Breitbart does in not journalism. It was this breach that was the match -- Breitbart's match. What Mitch does not do is take on who poured or at least ready to pour gasoline on the flame -- Fox News!!! Fox News has been Breitbart's access to the mainstream. It was Fox News that was responsible for the firing of Van Jones, It was Fox News that destroyed Acorn. Was there some expectation that the Obama administration could survive, unharmed, from a 24/7 -- like The Reverend Jeremiah Wright -- full loops? The nation's #1 news source was fanning the flames even before they got to Bill O'Reilly's air time. Except for letting Fox News off the hook, Albom focuses in on the real culprit here a racist unethical Breitbart! RGN

In the Sherrod controversy, do shoot the messenger

BY MITCH ALBOM

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Posted: July 25, 2010

If a house is burned to the ground, you can whine about the firefighters or criticize the building material -- but first you blame the guy who started the fire, right?

Last week, a government worker named Shirley Sherrod was axed after a video clip of her NAACP speech was used to paint her as racist. In the blink of an eye, her reputation was burned down.

But once the whole speech was revealed -- proving the clip was way out of context -- her bosses were booed, the NAACP was blasted, even the president was chided.

And the guy who started the fire?

As of today, he still has matches.

Andrew Breitbart is the conservative blogger who posted the edited video of Sherrod. He put it on one of his five Web sites. Breitbart, a former Matt Drudge groupie, onetime E! Entertainment employee, and a guy who called Sen. Edward Kennedy, hours after his death, "a special pile of human excrement," hoisted that clip as evidence of reverse racism by the NAACP. He claimed the audience applauded such sentiments. The video showed no such thing.

But Breitbart lit the fire. He blew on the flames. As Sherrod would later tell CNN, "He knew exactly what would happen."

So Breitbart is where this sad story begins, where the blame lies and where the punishment should be doled out -- if there were any you could dole out.

Sadly, how do you punish a blogger like Breitbart? He simply slithers back into the muck that some confuse with journalism. Who does he have to answer to?

Nobody.

Not the whole truth

"I am," Breitbart boasted to the media last week, "public enemy No. 1 or 2 to the Democratic Party ... based upon the successes my journalism has had."

There are several things wrong with that statement. First, I doubt he counts that much.

Second, his journalism? It's not journalism if you look for only one point of view, post other people's stuff and don't even acknowledge how using chopped-up material to paint a full picture is wrong.

"Let me think about that," was what Breitbart said when asked whether he might have vetted the footage more carefully if given another chance.

Let me think about that?

Some people have called this incident a referendum on racism. I don't think so. It was a referendum on editing. A referendum on Internet blogging. A referendum on our blazing desire for explosive moments -- even out of context -- and our creeping slowness to see the full picture.

Anyone who watches the whole tape of Sherrod's speech sees an honest woman who tells of an incident with a white farmer 24 years ago that made her question her own prejudices. She goes on to say such things as:

"Working with him made me see 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. ...

"God helped me see that it's not just about black people. ... I've come to realize that we have to work together ... we have to overcome the divisions that we have."

Yet, even after all that, Breitbart's Web site contains pieces like "If Anyone Needs to Apologize, It's Shirley Sherrod." Breitbart actually said the following of Sherrod: "This person has not gotten past black versus white."

Sounds like he can't get past something himself.

What standards?

And that, of course, is hate. Hate makes the political world spin, particularly the blog world. The shrieking Ann Coulter, who can't possibly be taken seriously, actually claimed Breitbart was a "victim" of whomever set him up with this video. Sorry, but you can't fan your fame with "blockbuster" revelations, then blame others if they turn up bogus. It's like knocking over souvenirs in a curio shop; you break it, you Breitbart broke it, he bought it, but instead of taking responsibility for it, he spins and points to anyone else -- the liberals, President Barack Obama, the NAACP, even Sherrod herself, a woman who was nothing more than a pawn.

"I believe that I'm held to a higher standard," Breitbart told Politico. "If this video showed a picture of a caucasian talking in the exact same way but talking about a black person with an audience affirming and clapping that behavior, the reporter would be getting a Pulitzer Prize right now."

Response: 1) No, he wouldn't. 2) Showing an edited video is not "reporting." 3) You, Breitbart, are not held to any standard.

And that's the problem.

Contact MITCH ALBOM: or

malbom@freepress.com.

Are Black Leaders Brain Washed??

2010-07-24T19:44:00.000-04:00

Tom Burwell has raised the right question: "Are Black Leaders Brainwashed?" From our experience with this "new" black leadership, the conclusion must be a resounding, "Yes." The problem begins with this "new black leadership" to have itself cast as being "post racial." When Ben Jealous challenged the Tea Party to expose and expel the racists from their ranks was a master stroke. It was so good tax Fox News' Tea Party Express was expelled from the Tea Party movement. That would have been the first of many, but in the name of being "post racial" and making sure blacks do not discriminate against whites, this new leadership, this "post racial leadership" has failed the test. Seasoned civil rights activist, rather than being "snookered" would have known there was something fishy from the get. Being reported was an event that happened in your organization three months ago and you fall for the Okie-doke?? Give me a break. Part of the problem is that they tuned out on the Acorn story. The NAACP made no noise when Acorn was going down. This "new leadership" thinks that change is going to come from the heart. Hopefully, they now see that they racists have no heart. That change will come through struggle knowing that those white nationalist propagandists are out to "snooker" you. Rather than condemnation of Shirley Sherrod, an earlier generation would have demanded "Prove it!" RGN

Are Black Leaders Brainwashed?

By: Tom Burrell

Posted: July 23, 2010 at 12:56 PM

The rush to condemn Shirley Sherrod exposes a lack of courage that we cannot afford in the coming media war.

The debacle surrounding the virtual lynching of black agriculture official Shirley Sherrod has left everyone involved scrambling for cover. President Obama, while not directly linked to the premature decision to fire Sherrod, called her Thursday to apologize. Video provocateur Andrew Breitbart has insisted he was not after Sherrod but after the NAACP. Fox News' Glenn Beck displayed a time line on his show to argue he only covered the story after Sherrod was shown to have been unfairly dismissed.

But the role played by black leaders in this tragic story deserves a closer look. It tells us a lot about the state of black leadership in America and the lack of courage among these leaders in the face of the relentless campaign from the conservative right to demonize black America. When the incriminating video first aired, implying that Sherrod had discriminated against a white farmer, the NAACP quickly repudiated Sherrod, defining her words as ''appalling, shameful, intolerable and racist.'' CNN's Roland Martin expressed solidarity with the NAACP, saying its admonishment was correct.

When the truth came to light -- that the video posted by Breitbart was heavily edited to dilute Sherrod's anecdotal story of racial reconciliation -- NAACP president Ben Jealous retracted his organization's repudiation, claiming they had all been ''snookered'' by Fox News and Breitbart. Jealous said the orchestrated smear campaign represented a ''teachable moment'' for activists and journalists.

I beg to differ. For black political and community leaders, media pundits and voters, this is not just a ''teachable moment.'' It's our moment of reconciliation, our moment to take a stand. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Breitbart said he released the truncated Sherrod video in response to the NAACP's use of ''propaganda'' to smear the Tea Party. It was a classic pot-kettle maneuver from a member of the camp that has resurrected and expertly utilized fear-based, Nazi-era propagandizing techniques. Judging by the right's record, the Sherrod affair is just the warm-up act before the fall elections. It's a safe bet that race-based attacks will be part of the propaganda war to drive Obama from office.

On the winner-takes-all, scurrilous, new-media battlefield, there's no room for political naiveté or acquiescence. Frankly, it's embarrassing that the leader of a prominent civil rights organization allowed conservative operatives to influence his decision to demean a socially conscious black woman. To admit he was ''snookered'' by Fox News is akin to being surprised that the Ku Klux Klan's has a distaste for black people. Judging blacks ''without all the facts'' is a tepid response from a black president who doesn't seem to have the stomach for racial confrontations.

Wake Up, Stand Up

Rest assured, the propaganda war is in full swing. With a presidential election on the horizon, black leaders and black media must adopt a new code of conduct. Before the media's next ''big thing,'' we must identify the puppets and puppet masters -- the race baiters and power brokers who exploit America's fears and pull black leaders' strings. Now, more than ever, we have to recognize the indications of weak black leadership and deep racial conditioning.

In the ongoing battle for equality, opportunity and progress, it's imperative that we fully understand the new racial paradigm. We are but a few decades removed from the most heinous forms of racial barbarity and oppression, yet black people are expected to be contrite, apologetic and on the defensive so as not to be considered ''racist.''

A week before the Sherrod incident, NAACP members caught hell from conservatives after voting for a resolution demanding that the Tea Party ''repudiate the racists'' in its ranks. No doubt, the NAACP leader's knee-jerk response to Sherrod's supposed controversial remarks was motivated by a burning desire to acquiesce, to appear fair and balanced. Unfortunately, it is an attempt to please an unfair and unbalanced opposition that could care less about compromising overtures.

Considering the source, high-profile blacks should have vetted Breitbart and Fox News' story before trashing Sherrod. It's an indictment of black leadership (and that includes President Obama) if they aren't willing to fight for what's right even when it crosses into the unsavory realm of race.

The stakes are higher for people denied opportunity for centuries. It's reckless to abide with black leaders who place their own needs above the collective's. This is the time for media-savvy blacks, like the National Association of Black Journalists, to use their skills to fact-check, vet and counter rigged propaganda maneuvers. Expert black voices must emphasize the ramifications of losing the high-stakes media war. We must use our numbers and economic clout. Fox News and its advertisers should understand that there will be serious consequences if the network continues to underwrite propaganda disguised as ''fair and balanced'' news.

The story of an innocent black woman who became a pawn in the high stakes ''gotcha'' media game also speaks to the mercenary component of politics. Americans, repulsed by the idea that opportunistic media manipulators can destroy innocent lives, want the boundaries of decency reinforced.

According to recent news reports, Sherrod has been asked to consider a new and ''unique'' position with the USDA. This doesn't erase the fact that the NAACP and White House officials sacrificed Sherrod for reasons of self-interest. In an evolving environment dictated by a post-racial fantasy, we can ill afford brainwashed, compromising leadership.

A serious blow was struck against segregation 55 years ago when Rosa Parks refused to vacate a seat for a white passenger. Black leaders need to remember that progress inched forward because a real black hero remained seated on the bus -- unlike Shirley Sherrod, a modern-day hero who was thrown under it.

Tom Burrell is a marketing communications pioneer, founder and former CEO of Burrell Communications, and an Advertising Hall of Fame inductee. He is the author of Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority (Smiley Books).

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Too Quick to Blame the NAACP?????

2010-07-23T13:34:00.008-04:00

The criticism of the NAACP is well-deserved. One, it shows that there is a lack of experience at the helm. Julian Bond would have or should have known better the moment the name Sherrod and Georgia were mentioned in the same breath. Two, even without the name, the NAACP should have known that something from its own Web site was not racist!!! (At least it is my understanding that Breirbart got the clip from the NAACP Web site.)    It was the NAACP that legitimized the story! More senior movement people have had a long history with racist lies. The right wing lies about everything, including centuries of murder and of which Mrs. Sherrod's father was a victim of. If there were a vibrant black press as during The Movement days, the NAACP would not have been operating in such a vacuum.

Having laid much of the blame at the feet of the NAACP, pardon the cliche but hindsight is 20/20. Below Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press raises all of the right questions. Even so, there is a propaganda war out there that the NAACP dediced to take on. They challenged the racists to root out the racists in their ranks. The NAACP was asking them to commit suicide. The racists had to defend themselves. They defended themselves by attacking the NAACP at its soul contenenacing anti-white discrimination!!!   What the NAACP was prepared for was to reject "reverse racism" in its ranks. What it was not prepared for was for Fox News, a news organization, to LIE!!!   Distort, yes. But LIE!!!  And have every news source repeat that lie.

By the time the NAAC P got the story it was  9 hours old. It had been ruminating since about 11:00a. The story of thei USDA official committimng reverse discrimination was all over the blogosphrere. Given the repugnance of the lie, the inexperienced NAACP leadship got "snookered."    They didn't understand that the whole purpose of Fox News is to lie -- it is no exaggeration that we should be reminded of the ability of the Third Reich to construct reality, or the press of the Jim Crow South. Racist realities remain hegemonic. Fox News is the propaganda arm for America's white nationalism.

Media Matters gets it right when they say that Fox News is the "Wille Hortonization of the Presidency"   It was Roger Ailes who injected the Willie Horton commercial into the Bush-Dukakis campaign in 1988. Now Ailes has a cable network to use to stoke the flames of white resentment and promote his white nationalist views. This smear is at the feet of Fox News. At 9:11p NAACP issued its denounciation of Mrs. Sherrod in response to this 9:04p. report. RGN

9:04 p.m.: "Fox News Alert": Hannity reports that Sherrod has resigned and discusses the incident with Gingrich. On his Fox News program, Sean Hannity reported that Sherrod "resigned just a short time ago after she was caught on tape appearing to tell an audience that she had used her position to racially discriminate against white farmers." Hannity then aired Breitbart's "shocking video." In a later segment, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich stated: "Secretary Vilsack did exactly the right thing. I mean I often disagree with this administration. But firing her after that kind of viciously racist attitude was exactly the right thing to do." Hannity later stated: "My only thing is they weren't the ones that caught it. It was on Breitbart.com and it happened some time ago. So it's interesting that it took the new media to expose this." (accessed via Nexis)

Posted: July 23, 2010
Shirley Sherrod, Fox, NAACP, USDA and Obama

BY ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

"Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who haven't. They could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to help poor people -- those who don't have access the way others have."
-- Shirley Sherrod

When the news broke Monday that a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee was fired for being a racist, I wondered just what she had called her co-worker or client or supervisor.

When the venerable NAACP repudiated her, I figured she must have slapped somebody. Then came the news Tuesday that Shirley Sherrod not only was not a racist, but had shared with an audience her "Come to Jesus" moment, the moment she realized racism was wrong.

But this is where the story stopped me in my tracks: NAACP President Ben Jealous released a statement Tuesday saying his organization had been "snookered by Fox News and tea party activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias."

Huh?
A strange sequence Sherrod was fired after Fox Entertainment (it's not news) posted an edited video clip of Sherrod from a conservative activist. In the clip, Sherrod says she took a white farmer to a white lawyer
so he could be helped by his own kind. But she went on to say something that you didn't see on the activist's site or on Fox:

"Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who haven't. They could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to help poor people -- those who don't have access the way others have."

The family whose farm Sherrod eventually helped to save appeared on CNN to defend her.

So here's my question: A tea party activist posts 2 minutes and 38 seconds of a 43-minute speech.
Fox runs the video. The NAACP watches Fox. The Obama administration reacts to the NAACP. The USDA tells Sherrod to resign. ...

Oh, yeah ... the question: What the heck is wrong with the NAACP?

For full video of speech see Shirley Sherrod link to left.

We Need Shirley Sherrod's Memoir.....

2010-07-21T21:01:00.001-04:00

Shirley Sherrod Gets a White House Apology, Deserves a Book Contract

Melinda Henneberger

Editor in Chief

POSTED:

07/21/10

Shirley Sherrod, I will read your memoir!

Most of us had never heard of Sherrod until she was wrongly accused of racism and lost her USDA job over misleading video snippets publicized by the conservative Internet publisher Andrew Breitbart.

Proving once again that the camera can too lie, what we saw on the tape made it look like this African-American civil servant had withheld help from a white farmer it was her job to assist back in 1986. The whole tape showed that's not remotely what happened, though, and the farmer vigorously defended her: "We probably wouldn't have [our farm] today if it hadn't been for her leading us in the right direction," Eloise Spooner told CNN. "I wish she could get her job back because she was good to us, I tell you."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs apologized to Sherrod during Wednesday's briefing. "Members of this administration, members of the media, members of different political factions on both sides of this have all made determinations and judgments without a full set of facts," he said in explaining what happened.

"I can't speak for everybody involved, but I think we live in a culture [where] things whip around," he continued. "People want fast responses, we want to give fast responses, and I don't think there's any doubt that if we look at this, one of the great lessons we take away from this is to ask all of the questions first and to come to that full understanding."

[Update: Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack offered an even fuller apology at a late afternoon press conference, and said he has offered Sherrod a better job than the one she lost -- an offer she is apparently mulling. "I asked for Shirley's forgiveness and she has been gracious enough to give it to me,'' he said. "I did not think before I acted...This woman has been through hell."]

So all's well? Hardly, and I'm not quite ready to write Breitbart a thank-you note for bringing Sherrod to our attention. But rehired or retired, it looks like we could all learn something at the knee of this woman.

As we now know, she said absolutely nothing wrong in a March speech about an impulse she'd checked, a temptation she'd resisted, an experience she'd learned from 24 years earlier, as even the man who started all the mischief now admits.

"I feel bad they made this about her,'' Breitbart told MSNBC. (Who is this they you speak of, cowboy? And here I thought conservatives were all about personal responsibility. And in theory opposed the thought police.) On Hannity, he said he was looking for payback after the NAACP accused Tea Partiers of racism.

But I'm in awe of what Sherrod did right, not only in overcoming what haters did to her father, who was murdered by the KKK, but in having the humility to admit to her worst race-based impulses, which every one of us has. After this wrong has been righted, as it surely to goodness will be, I'd still like to hear a lot more about this woman, who even at the height of the craziness was cool as you please on television, calmly stating that she did wish the NAACP had checked with her before issuing a condemnation.

How about giving her whole life story a hearing? I, for one, am ready to pre-order on Amazon.

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Media Matters on the Shirley Sherrod Liie!!!

2010-07-21T12:58:00.003-04:00

Let's be clear. Fox News has waged war against this president. They are waging that war because he is black. If he were Michael Steele or Clarence Thomas doing the bidding of the white nationalists, they would be lavishing accolades all over him. But because he is not a sell out, he is fair game. Fox News has committed their full-time programing to stoking up white resentment. Their programming are attacks on anything black whether it is Van Jones, Acorn, New Black Panther Party or now Shirley Sherrod. When the White House said that Fox News was not news, Roger Ailes response has been "boy I will put you in your place!" As a consequence, Fox News is now pandering to white resentment as the "new news" whose ratings continue to climb. They intimidate the so-called mainstream media. In fact, the brother Kevin Merida, the omsbudsman for the Washington Post, apologized to Fox News for not following their lead on the New Black Panther Party. Fox News is pandering to racial warfare. This is dangerous stuff and responsible journalists should expose Ailes and Fox News for what they are White Nationalism Propaganda network!!!

Thanks to Media Matters their due diligence let's us know what Fox is up to. Here's the exposure of Breithbart of James O'Keefe fame with another lying video

Full video vindicates Sherrod, destroys Breitbart's accusations of racism. RGN

July 20, 2010 10:39 pm ET - by Matt McLaughlin

The NAACP has posted the video of Shirley Sherrod's March 27 speech, and it definitively proves false Andrew Breitbart's claim that the edited video he posted at his BigGovernment.com website is "evidence of racism."

In his first post about the video, Breitbart wrote: "In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn't do everything she can for him, because he is white."

Media Matters previously documented that Breitbart's original post suggested that the actions Sherrod described in the video came in her capacity as the USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development during the Obama administration. In fact, the actions she described came 24 years ago, when she when she worked with the Georgia field office for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund -- before she began working for the Agriculture Department.

And in the full video, Sherrod recounts how she ultimately helped the farmer avoid the foreclosure on his farm. Indeed, while Breitbart's video included Sherrod saying that she initially didn't to everything she could, it omitted her explanation that later she went to much greater lengths to help the farmer:

SHERROD: So, everything was going along fine -- I'm thinking he's being taken care of by the white lawyer, then they lift the injunction against USDA in May of '87 for two weeks and he was one of 13 farmers in Georgia who received a foreclosure notice. He called me. I said, well, go on and make an appointment at the lawyer. Let me know when it is and I'll meet you there.

So we met at the lawyer's office on the day they had given him. And this lawyer sat there -- he had been paying this lawyer, y'all. That's what got me. He had been paying the lawyer since November, and this was May. And the lawyer sat there and looked at him and said, "Well, y'all are getting old. Why don't you just let the farm go?" I could not believe he said that, so I said to the lawyer -- I told him, I can't believe you said that. I said: It's obvious to me that he cannot file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy to stop this foreclose, you have to file an 11. And the lawyer said to me, I'll do whatever you say -- whatever you think -- that's the way he put it. But he's paying him. He wasn't paying me any money. You know, so he said -- the lawyer said he would work on it.

And then, about seven days before that man would have been sold at the courthouse steps, the farmer called me and said the lawyer wasn't doing anything. And that's when I spent time there in my office calling everybody I could think so to try to see -- help me find the lawyer who would handle this.

She goes on to say how her encounter with the farmer "made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people" regardless of whether they were black, white, or Hispanic.

Breitbart's video edits out any of Sherrod's remarks about the true nature of her relationship with the farmer -- who today stated that Sherrod did her "level best to help him" -- and about the true meaning of her story.

Following are Sherrod's remarks at the March 27 NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet (the section in bold is what Breitbart's video included -- the rest was omitted):

Will the President Fight Back Against Fox News????

2010-07-20T22:32:00.002-04:00

The White House was wrong, but I digress.

In an earlier post there was a need to praise the "new leadership" of the NAACP in their challenge to the Tea Party's racism. Ben Jealous and the leadership deserved credit for forcing the Tea Parties to "confirm or deny" the racism in their ranks. As it happens the praise was too quick. This same leadership allowed themselves to betray a civils rights veteran in a knee jerk reaction to satisfy Fox News. Upon the first reports of Shirkley Sherrod's remarks, they caved demanded she be fired without understanding the facts. As was with the Acorn case, or or the New Black Panther Party case, or the Van Jones case, Fox News is committed to producing white resentment. They have no shame.

The Shirley Sherrod case was no less than what could be expected from Fox News, it was manufactured news. The report was a lie. Now that it is known that the story was a lie!!! Instead of a story about racial preference or racial divison, Ms Sherrod was telling a story of understanding and compassion, even for whites. Here is the NAACP retraction

The NAACP was only a part of the problem. More important, the White House had her fired because they were trying to kill a Glenn Beck story. She was harrassed and forced to pull beside the road to resign on the spot enroute from one work site to another. We cannot have Fox News shaping policies and practices when it comes to race and racism. Because of the humiliation the White House and the Department of Agriculture owe this hero who was really spreading the good word an apology, I an encouraging a letter writing campaign to the White House requesting that Mrs Sherrod be invited to the White House to receive a personal apology from the President. RGN

Fox News: Shirley Sherrod Acorn II

2010-07-20T14:33:00.001-04:00

Fox News has an agenda. Ramping up white resentment. It is whites who are victims according to Fox News. The latest is akin the "Acorn exposure" by indicted or was it convicted James O'Keefe. A USDA official made some comments that seemed miscontrued by a Fox News story. The charge in the Fox story was that Shirley Sherrod, an African American agent for a non-profit organization but now a USDA employee, expressed that she had treated a white farmer less than favorably because of this superior attitude. Ms Sherrod, dismissed by the administration, was telling a story of an event that had happened 24 years ago. And at a time when black farmers were being robbed of their land by white officials, public and private. It took CNN to run the full story. See the Daily Kos

Shirley Sherrod Tells her story

NAACP and Eugene Robinson to Tea Bag Racism

2010-07-20T12:32:00.001-04:00

For Ben Jealous and the NAACP, the resolution was a stroke of genius to demand that the Tea Party expel the openly white racists from their ranks. From the town meetings in the summer of 2009, the nation has witnessed a grotesque display of the most vicious racism since the days of Lester Maddox wielding his axe handle and brandishing a hand-gun chasing would be African American customers from his Pickwick restaurant in Atlanta in 1964. Having demonstrated his vow to uphold a segregation, he went on the become governor in 1967. There was a white nationalist solidarity with Maddox.

That was then, this is now. While the white majority may favor rolling the clock back, there is a new majority in America today. It is a coalition of enlightened whites, blacks, browns, tans, you name it. The demography of this new America is diverse. White dominance is on the wane. Yet for this group, there is a resentment that a black man is President. The Tea Parties and “birthers” are simply the last gasp of a popular white nationalism. At their rallies, the President has been displayed as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose and ways that seem to invite sedition. Such racist displays are an insult of not just the President but all Americans who believe in justice and equality. These people are out to “take their country back.” Consequently, any demand that they call out, expose and expel the racists is to defeat their very reason for being. Contrary to their disavowals, their whole raison d’etre is to oppose the black President. Talk about “divide and conqueror,” the NAACP resolution has requires that they affirm or deny the racism in their ranks. This new leadership is to be commended for having them turn on themselves.

Unlike the days of Lester Maddox, the white nationalist agenda does not fit with this new America.
In the column below Eugene Robinson gives praise to the Jealous and NAACP offensive. RGN
The Tea Party must purge racism from its ranks
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, July 20, 2010; A21

That was quick. We now have proof the NAACP was right.

When the nation's leading civil rights organization passed a resolution condemning displays of racism by Tea Party activists, leaders of the movement reacted with umbrage so thick you could cut it with a knife -- then demonstrated that the NAACP's allegation was entirely justified.

On Saturday, the National Tea Party Federation announced it had expelled one of the movement's most prominent figures -- a California blowhard named Mark Williams -- because of the outrageously racist things he had said about the NAACP. Ejected along with Williams was his whole organization, Tea Party Express, which had been a particularly active, high-profile group.

The last straw was a "satirical" letter that Williams, a former right-wing talk radio host, posted on his Web site. It was supposed to be a missive from NAACP President Ben Jealous to Abraham Lincoln, and the Tea Party Federation deemed it "clearly offensive." With good reason.

Here is one passage: "We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!"

Amazingly, it gets worse:

"Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government 'stop raising our taxes.' That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide-screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society? 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. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong."

That's not satire, it's hate speech. The national federation should be commended for moving quickly to cut all ties with this unreconstructed bigot. But Williams is not some obscure figure from the movement's outer fringe. He's a big player.

Tea Party Express lists as its "national sponsor" a political action committee named Our Country Deserves Better, which spent about $350,000 on Sen. Scott Brown's winning campaign in Massachusetts and is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nevada on behalf of GOP candidate Sharron Angle. Tea Party Express boasts on its Web site of having staged rallies featuring such speakers as Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and one Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber.

Have the rest of the movement's leaders never noticed Williams's rhetoric before now? His most recent obsession, before the NAACP flap, has been a crusade to halt construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero. He has called the proposed structure a place where Muslims would honor the al-Qaeda hijackers and "worship the terrorists' monkey-god." He has called President Obama an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug."

If Williams is now a pariah in Tea Party circles, that's progress. But this episode should prompt the national leadership to look inward and acknowledge -- not just to the rest of us, but also to themselves -- that ugly, racially charged rhetoric has been part of the movement's stock in trade all along. If the Tea Party groundswell is to mature into something important and lasting, it needs to purge itself of this poison.

And if the Republican Party is going to try to harness the Tea Party's passion on behalf of GOP candidates, responsible leaders need to make clear that racism will not be tolerated. Yet Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to talk about the NAACP flap when asked about it Sunday, and Sen. John Cornyn volunteered that accusing the Tea Party of racism is "slanderous."

It's not slander if it's the truth, senator. No one can deny that some fraction of the Tea Party's considerable energy is generated by racism. Excommunicating Mark Williams was a start to disowning and discarding this element -- but just a start.

And by the way, remember when Attorney General Eric Holder urged us to have a national conversation about race? Well, this is how we do it -- awkwardly and episodically, almost always in reaction to a specific event. We don't talk, we shout and grumble. It ain't pretty, but it's the American way.

The writer will be online to chat with readers at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, July 20, 2010. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

Sign the Petition to strenthen the fight to extend unemployment benefits...

2010-07-20T11:09:00.040-04:00

Here is the link to Donna Brazile's appeal to sign a petition to support the Democrats in their fight against the Republicans for an extension of unemployment benefits. This is a very important issue that demostrates that the Republicans are suffering from an affliction brought on by the likes of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. Between the Tea Party white nationalists and these Libertarian think tanks, these so-called conservatives are being exposed for not only being anti-people of color but in opposition to the America's so-called "middle class", it's working class. The Republicans oppose "promot[ing]the general welfare" of the American people. To oppose extending unemployment benefits in these times when there or 5 times as many people unemployed as there are jobs is not promoting the general welfare of the American people. To demagogue health care is totally contrary to promoting the general welfare of the American people. Talk about being un-American? Expose the Republicans!!! It's even time for the Reagan Democrats to come home.

The Kagan Nomination and the Trashing of Thrugood Marshall

2010-07-01T22:26:00.002-04:00

In the hearings on Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nominationIn keeping with the long tradition of white nationalists to disparage African Americans, Thurgood Marshall was repeatedly held up as an "activist" judge who legislated from the bench. What they meant was that any challenge to their white nationalist hegemony is activism. Though not willing to say it, to them Brown v. Board was "activism" that the South resents until this day. And it was Justice Marshall who was most responsible for overturning Jim Crow white supremacy as the law. With Marshall having been one of Kagan's mentors, the attempt was to tar Elana Kagan with the Thurgood Marshall's legacy. The Republicans were cut short in this endeavor when nominee Kagan reminded them that if confirmed they "would get Justice Kagan not Justice Marshall." Last year with Sotomayor they alienated the Latinos with their derisive "wise Latina" attacks. This year they have some full circle in attempting to degrade a civil rights icon. Ifill's analysis from "The Root" situates the Sessions, Kyl, Cronyn challenges in their context. RGN

Trashing Thurgood Marshall
By: Sherrilyn A. Ifill
Posted: June 30, 2010 at 4:08 PM

Just because Elena Kagan is white didn't stop Republicans from injecting race into her Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The second day of the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court was marked by some substantive dialogue, respectful banter and even an exchange of ethnic humor between the nominee and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans and Democrats alike seemed to have forgotten the previous day's tensions. But for many of us who'd sat in stunned silence while Republicans members of the committee used their opening statements to unleash an orchestrated disparagement of the record and legacy of Supreme Court justice and civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall, the wounds still felt raw.

The invocation of Marshall (35 times by Republicans) was a surprising new low, even for the shameless opportunism of modern confirmation hearings. At first it seemed astonishing as senator after senator -- Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) -- disparaged nominee Kagan's "association" with Thurgood Marshall. But the abandonment of the "Marshall as slur" tactic on day 2 suggests that the Republican senators' opening-day sucker punch may have backfired.

For Republicans, the issue of race is good for confirmation hearings. Last year's hearings for Justice Sonia Sotomayor proved an important turning point for congressional Republicans, who were uncertain in the first months of the Obama presidency how to handle their opposition to the new, popular, African-American president. It seems a long time ago now, but just last spring, Americans were still genuinely caught up in the transformative moment symbolized by the election of the first black president. In the heady early months of the Obama presidency, when many thought we might be heading for a post-racial America and things seemed so magical that a plane could land on the Hudson River with all passengers unharmed, Republicans were in a quandary. How should they package their opposition to the president without ruining the public's good racial mood? The election of Michael Steele as chair of the Republican National Committee -- an action that has since generated considerable buyer's remorse -- revealed the desperate effort by some GOP stalwarts to navigate the shoals of the new racial politics. That was before health care town halls and the emergence of the Tea Party.

Indeed, the president's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and the discovery of her "wise Latina" remarks gave congressional Republicans their land legs. Critiques of Justice Sotomayor as a racial partisan allowed some Republicans to recycle old-school racial tropes.

Obama and Sotomayor were painted as a kind of tag-team black-Latino duo of racial-quota champions, preparing to take away the jobs and educational opportunities of hardworking whites like firefighter Frank Ricci. By the time the Sotomayor hearings were over, the bloom had faded from the Obama rose and we were full into the volatile town halls. President Obama's angry off-the-cuff reaction to the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (The Root's editor-in-chief) by an overzealous white police officer, and the much derided "beer summit," helped cap what turned out to be a very good summer for the Republican Party.

So when President Obama nominated Solicitor General Kagan to the bench, Republican senators on the Judiciary Committe faced an understandable dilemma. Kagan is a pragmatic centrist, admired by a number of high-profile conservatives. She's not a person of color, and she has no track record as a civil rights lawyer or champion. She has never been inclined to give inflammatory partisan statements, and even her work in the Clinton administration reveals Kagan to be a careful compromiser rather than liberal firebrand. On her record, Kagan leaves little for Republicans to attack. But the Republican base understands better than its Democratic counterpart the significance of Supreme Court nominations to the goals and aims of the party, and so Republicans are able to talk to their core constituency through confirmation hearings in ways that Democrats cannot. Race, class and culture divisions are themes that some Republican senators turn to again and again at confirmation hearings. They do this by invoking the specter of out-of-touch elites, unqualified racial minorities, the dangers of international law, and equal rights for gays and lesbians.
And so it was attack by association. Kagan's work as Thurgood Marshall's law clerk after she graduated from Harvard Law seemed too good an opportunity for some Republicans on the committee to pass up. Invoking Justice Marshall as an activist gave the Republicans on the committee the chance to criticize the kind of nominee they wish President Obama had nominated: one who was black and unabashedly liberal. The fact that President Obama chose not to appoint such a nominee (precisely to deny Republicans the opportunity to paralyze the country with divisive and unproductive hearings) was of no importance. Elena Kagan was, in essence, raced by the committee members, who used Justice Marshall as a racial stand-in for President Obama and a proxy in the ongoing culture wars.

Outside the Senate Judiciary hearing room, Justice Marshall is regarded as one of the greatest lawyers and most admired judges of the 20th century, so the way the Republicans talked about him -- as a dangerous judicial activist "outside the mainstream" -- was pure theater. Marshall was an unabashed liberal at a time when that word was simply a place on the ideological spectrum, not an indictment. Indeed, Marshall's place on the legal spectrum is well within the mainstream of legal thought -- so much so that he was confirmed by a vote of 69-11 for a seat on the Supreme Court in 1967.

Marshall's record as a justice can stand up to any ad hominem attack. It includes, in addition to a principled stance against the constitutionality of the death penalty, his decision holding that even a white criminal defendant may challenge the systematic exclusion of blacks from participating in the jury, his opinion striking down a city ordinance that drew distinctions between permissible and impermissible protest speech, and his oft-cited statement in his opinion protecting privacy rights that "if the First Amendment means anything, it means that the State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving the government the power to control men's minds."

The legacy of Thurgood Marshall as a legal giant who compelled the American legal system to honor the true and intended meaning of the word "equality" in the 14th amendment to the Constitution is unassailable. Republicans know this. But the tantalizing benefit of playing the race card at the Kagan confirmation hearings was just too attractive for some of the Republicans on the committee to resist. Even Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who's been around long enough to know better but who has perhaps been made uneasy by the surprising decision of voters to kick fellow senator Bennett out of office -- got in on the fun in an interview with MSNBC. Kudos go the Republican members of the committee who refused to engage in this shameful and divisive game (it's you again, Sen. Lindsay Graham [R-S.C.]).

Republicans may have gotten more than they bargained for in the negative reactions to their Marshall bashing. Perhaps this explained their considerably more courtly performance on day 2. But their work was done. Race had been insidiously inserted into the confirmation hearings to remind the right wing base of the GOP what these hearings are really all about.
Sherrilyn Ifill, who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Law, writes about the law for The Root.

Krugman: A Coming Depression????

2010-06-29T21:37:00.001-04:00

Paul Krugman has been almost a lone voice on the need, in this economic downturn, to urge the need for more spending not less. Krugman's logic seems sound but the last remnants of the Reagan Revolution struggle to stay their demise. Apart from the economics, and with the election of America's first African American President, the white nationalism that is at the core of Reaganism has turned the Republicans into the "Party of No." As the intellectual leader of the Republican party has said: "I want this President to fail." In this context of Republican obstructionism, getting meaningful legislation passed requires compromises that make most of the historic policies more symbolic than substantial in the change they represent. This is the context that the President faces as he attempts to implement policies that help the American people, including people who have been harmed by the economic downturn.

Having said that, it is this dying "Reaganism" that stands in the way of policies that would most turn around this economy. With the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, the need for a dramatic and dynamic shift to renewable energy would seem to be opportune. There is a need for bold moves FDR moves to get out of this economic slump that could become, as warned by Krugman, a full fledged depression. Unfortunately, this stalemate could stand in the way of a full economic recovery on the President's watch. RGN

June 27, 2010
The Third Depression
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In 2008 and 2009, it seemed as if we might have learned from history. Unlike their predecessors, who raised interest rates in the face of financial crisis, the current leaders of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank slashed rates and moved to support credit markets.
Unlike governments of the past, which tried to balance budgets in the face of a plunging economy, today’s governments allowed deficits to rise. And better policies helped the world avoid complete collapse: the recession brought on by the financial crisis arguably ended last summer.

But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

As far as rhetoric is concerned, the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence. As a practical matter, however, America isn’t doing much better. The Fed seems aware of the deflationary risks — but what it proposes to do about these risks is, well, nothing. The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.

Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.
So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Elections do have consequences: A Civil Rights Division...Again.

2010-06-04T22:17:00.000-04:00

Obama promised a return to civil rights enforcement. Jerry Markon provides an update. Bush and the Republicans undermined the civil rights division of the Justice Department. With electon of Obama and his appointment of Eric Holder as Attorney General, the mission of the division is being restored. RGN

Justice Department's Civil Rights Division steps up enforcement
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010; A16

When Thomas E. Perez took over the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October, he found an office that was a shadow of its historic self.

Nearly 70 percent of the lawyers had left between 2003 and 2007, a mass exodus that came during allegations the Bush administration was politicizing hiring. Internal watchdogs concluded that the division's former head had refused to hire lawyers he labeled "commies" and had transferred one for allegedly writing in "ebonics," allegations the official denied. Civil rights groups said the unit had lost its traditional civil rights focus.

"We had to do some healing," said Perez, 48, a former Maryland official and deputy assistant attorney general under Republican and Democratic presidents. "We had to restore the partnership between the career staff and the political leadership. And frankly, certain civil rights laws were not being enforced."

That is changing: Justice Department officials say the division -- created in 1957 to help the Freedom Riders and students seeking to integrate public schools -- has stepped up enforcement of employment, disability rights and other anti-discrimination laws. Hate crimes and police misconduct are a renewed focus, and several section chiefs from the George W. Bush era have left. More than 30 people have been or are about to be hired as part of an 18 percent budget increase this year, the largest in the division's history. It will bring in 102 new people.

And in recent weeks, the division has taken a leading role in preparing for a possible Obama administration lawsuit against Arizona over the state's new immigration law.

"I think we have positioned the division to carry out its traditional mission of enforcement and be nimble enough to respond to emerging challenges," Perez said, citing cases such as a $6.1 million settlement with AIG subsidiaries to resolve allegations of discrimination against African American borrowers and the creation of a fair-lending unit in response to the economic crisis. The unit has 49 active investigations.

Justice officials could not provide overall comparisons with the first 17 months of the Bush administration, but in employment discrimination, for example, the Justice Department under President Obama filed 29 cases through March 20. One case was filed during the same period in the Bush administration.

The heightened focus on civil rights is a priority that flows directly from the top. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is a former civil rights lawyer who has vowed to make the division the department's "crown jewel," and Obama said in his January State of the Union address: "My administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination."

Civil rights groups and some former Justice lawyers give the division generally high marks, though some Bush administration veterans and conservatives are critical.

"The division had been decimated, and as someone who spent more than 20 years there, I was very saddened to see the state of affairs," said Gerry Hebert, a former senior official in the division's voting section. He said Perez has made "a great start."

Robert N. Driscoll, a senior civil rights official in the Bush administration, credited Perez with securing large budget increases but said the division is "trying to intimidate political opponents." He cited the threats to sue over the Arizona law and a civil rights investigation of a controversial Arizona sheriff over tough immigration enforcement.

"Opening a case and saber-rattling is not accomplishing anything," said Driscoll, who is representing the sheriff, Joseph M. Arpaio. The department has acknowledged a civil investigation of Arpaio's office, and sources familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity said a federal grand jury in Phoenix has been empaneled as part of a criminal probe.

Perez insisted it is actually the opposite, that the division has returned to its apolitical roots. As part of a theme he calls "restoration and transformation," he said hiring is once more primarily in the hands of career lawyers rather than political appointees. About 5,000 people have applied for jobs, and about a dozen who left in the Bush years have been rehired.

Among recent cases, the division obtained the largest-ever settlement of rental-discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act: $2.7 million from the owners of Los Angeles apartment buildings for discriminating against African Americans and Hispanics. Prosecutors are also zeroing in on emerging areas of enforcement, such as growing threats to civil rights groups on the Internet.

A particular focus is restoring relations with such groups, which Perez calls "our eyes and ears." He added, "We can't be everywhere."

John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the relationship is much improved. "When we call them, they listen," he said. "I think they're on track and on mission. It's just too early to tell what will happen."

Ron Walters on "Blame Obama All the Time"

2010-05-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

Ron Walters in the Black Commentator makes plain that the "blame Obama game of the right" is a bit out of place. It is as if the President should have known in advance that the oil gusher was going to happen and make it stop immediately. James "Ragin' Cajun" Carville is all over the tube castigating the President, arguing that "we are dying down here!" But the real point that he makes is that "the right" is into their game, "blame Obama all the time." RGN

Blame Obama all of the Time
Ron Walters

I couldn’t believe the headlines in a recent issue of the Los Angeles Times which asked whether President Obama had responsibility for the oil spill on the Louisiana, Mississippi coastline. Of course, as President, he has a responsibility to see that it is cleaned up, first by the resources of BP, the company that made the mess, but ultimately by the US Government. But at this stage of the crisis, the article felt decidedly like there was some culpability of Obama for not having had his Minerals Management Service regulate oil drilling more vigorously. This doesn’t wash, because it’s like blaming the Obama administration for not being able to see into the future, but it is consistent with the way in which he has been viewed increasingly.

The Obama administration has increasingly found it difficult to claim that it inherited a mammoth set of problems that they have tried to fix by applying federal resources to them. That is the issue about oil drilling. Remember the Republican mantra, “drill baby drill” and oil executives being secretly shifted into the White House to help Vice President Chaney set energy policy?

This was especially evident in the attempt to characterize the recent elections as a referendum on the Obama administration, but it was thwarted because the Republicans failed to nationalize the election sufficiently, so that it turned out to be a referendum on the Tea Party instead. Nevertheless, Obama was referred to nearly as a pariah, someone whom candidates should have been reluctant to campaign with because of the faulty view that the Health Care act was unpopular with the American people. Strikingly, in this way, they made an incorrect parallel to similar feelings many Republican candidates had toward George Bush in the last year of his administration.

But is it was not realistic for Democrats to respond to the pariah painting of Obama when he has passed historic legislation with Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress that will benefit millions of people. What happened is that the media overplayed the Tea Party phenomenon, blowing up the anti-Obama sentiments of a relatively small segment of the electorate and proposing that Obama’s association with Democratic candidates would have a negative effect. In a May 23rd article, the dean of political journalists, David Broder of The Washington Post characterized the Obama administration this way: “…the fundamental tension in the political system is becoming clear. A liberal government is struggling to impose its agenda on an electorate increasingly responsive to an activist conservative movement operating inside the Republican party.” He should know better; maybe he does.

The problem with being President of the United States is that ultimately the big problems will land in your lap and so, whether or not Obama inherited a horrendous set of problems, they eventually will become his the longer they go unresolved. The difficulty here is trying determine whether this happens naturally or whether people are placing things in his lap in a blame circus designed to complicate his governance and eventually bring him down. The degree of the Obama blame game is indeed withering, almost everything is found to have been related to some fault of the manner in which it was handled by his administration.

One of the most amazing things is the references – by people who should know better -- to Obama as almost a singular decision maker who is inexperienced and mistake prone, ignoring the fact that he deliberately brought into his own close company in the White House and into Cabinet agencies experienced people who have a major role in running the government.

The Obama administration must now know as a result of the fight over health care is that it is not enough to do something good for the American people and have it speak for itself. Why the Republican minority has been able, time and again, to define the actions of the administration is not a puzzle, the Obama administration – and the Democratic party in general -- is horrible at message discipline. Republicans all sing from the same hymn book while Democrats are all over the map and even supporters are often left confused about what the various spokespersons are attempting to communicate and how what they say attacks their opponents successfully.
Democrats have to get better at message competition because I don’t expect the blame game to let up any time soon.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Dr. Ron Walters, PhD is a Political Analyst, Author and Professor Emeritus of the University of Maryland, College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (The Politics of Race and Ethnicity) (University of Michigan Press). Click here to contact Dr. Walters.

Rachel Maddow demolishes Rand Paul

2010-05-20T13:04:00.003-04:00

Normally, introductory comments are offered here. No need for that. The interview (Rachel and Paul) speaks for itself and says it all. RGN

The Tea Party favorite says he'd have marched with Martin Luther King Jr., but he opposes the law that forced businesses to serve him Video
By Joan Walsh

Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul is squirming under the bright lights of national media attention since he toppled Mitch McConnell's handpicked candidate Trey Grayson Tuesday night. On Wednesday, an interview he gave to the Louisville Courier-Journal, in which he seemed to say he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, hit the Internet and cable television. Wednesday night MSNBC's Rachel Maddow interviewed him and tried to get him to clarify his remarks, and Paul tried to talk his way out of siding with the terrible folks who wouldn't let black students sit at those Southern lunch counters in 1960.

But Paul basically sided with the terrible folks. The Tea Party hero said he thought the Civil Rights Act was fine when it came to desegregating public institutions, but not private businesses. He called the issue of desegregating lunch counters "obscure," and implied the First Amendment gave business owners the right to be racist.

You've got to watch the whole interview. At the end, Paul seemed to understand that he's going to be explaining his benighted civil rights views for a long, long time – but he seemed to blame Maddow. "You bring up something that is really not an issue…a red herring, it's a political ploy…and that's the way it will be used," he complained at the end of the interview. Whether the Civil Rights Act should have applied to private businesses – "not really an issue," says Tea Party hero Rand Paul.

It's going to become increasingly clear that the Tea Party movement wants to revoke the Great Society, the New Deal and the laws that were the result of the civil rights movement. Paul may be right that his views are "not really an issue" with his Tea Party supporters, although I have to think some of them won't enjoy watching him look like a slippery politician as he fails, over and over, to answer Maddow's questions directly. It's a long way to November, but I'd be pretty happy to be Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway right about now.

Here's the interview. Don't watch if you can't stand to see a politician sweat.

Next Court Nominee and African American Woman??

2010-05-12T20:28:00.008-04:00

Sophia Nelson for "The Root" has raised the right question: When will there be a black woman on the Supreme Court? This is a great question and one I assume will be taken care of when it comes to President Obama's next Supreme Court appointment. Certainly Obama will nominate an African American woman to the Court during his tenure as President. That will be an HISTORIC appointment, big time.

Since the current African American on the Court was a cynical appointment with President George H. W. Bush playing the "race card" and satisfying the desires of the ideological white nationalist right wing. Immediately coming to mind for his next appointment, particularly with the need for a progressive balance on the Court, would be Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree, Obama's mentor. With more considerations there would be several problems with his nomination: 1) Ogletree if appointed would not be on the bench for another 30 or even 40 years, he's too old; 2) an Ogletree nomination WOULD get a filibuster from the Republicans, he's broken too many barriers and he makes a great case for reparations; and 3) in the spirit of a Court that is representative of the people, the void is the absence of an African American woman.

With the confirmation of Elena Kagan, the Court will have three women, two of whom are Jewish. Sotomayor of course is Latina and Catholic. Not counting Stevens, who is retiring and Kagan is nominated to replce, the four men remaining are all conservative Catholics, including anti-black brotherman, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. There is a serious need to counter-balance Thomas -- the justice who has never asked a question in oral argument.

With that being the case, I am reminded of a scene in which Jeffrey Toobin was being interviewed about his book, "The Nine." In that interview one thing becomes obvious, to many Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, is a joke, literally. Even though the program is more than an hour long the laughter evoked by the mention of Thomas' name occurs in the first 5 minutes. It is worth the look. That being the case it is even more urgent that the absence of an African American female. It is inconceivable that the next appointment will not be a black woman. RGN

A Supreme Snub by Obama
By: Sophia Nelson
Posted: May 12, 2010 at 10:07 AM

His nominee for the high court is qualified, but why weren't more black women considered?

President Barack Obama needed only to look across his dinner table each evening or in the bed next to him each night to see a well-educated and well-qualified black female attorney who could have made a great U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

For reasons surpassing my understanding, however, the president apparently did not include a black female jurist on his so-called "short list" of choices to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, even though no black woman has ever served on the high court.

There's no doubt that Solicitor Gen. Elena Kagan, a white woman who is a former Harvard Law School dean and Ivy League graduate, is well-qualified. Yet, of those jurists considered seriously by the president (Washington, D.C., Appeals Court Judge Merrick B. Garland, a white male; U.S. Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood of Chicago, a white female; and a spate of others leaked to the media since April) only one black judge, Leah Sears Ward, was a contender.

A few of the women who should have been in contention are Marian Wright Edelman, longtime president of the Children's Defense Fund and the first black woman admitted to practice in the state of Mississippi in the 1960s; Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and who Obama supported while he was a senator; Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier, who, despite the controversy when she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be an assistant U.S. attorney general, is an excellent legal scholar; and Elaine R. Jones, formerly of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who has three decades of experience as a litigator and civil rights activist.

The question many in the black female legal community (of which I am a part) are asking is why did the sisters get passed over once again?

As I write about extensively in my forthcoming book, Black. Female. Accomplished. Redefined., (Smiley Books, A Hay House Publishing Partner, October 2010) black women in the legal profession have had a difficult time making it to partner status in big firms, attaining high positions as general counsel of the nation's top corporations and landing jobs as deans of top law schools. These achievements can be stepping stones to becoming a high-profile jurist, which, in turn, can lead down the path to top judicial appointments. Yet, despite law firms' diversity efforts over the past two decades, they still have problems retaining and promoting black women. This is a great mystery, considering the fact that more than 50 percent of law school students are female and that white women have made great strides into the upper echelons of the profession. Not so for black women and women of color in general, which is the reason I vigorously supported Justice Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.

The reasons black women have been passed over once again for the nation's high court is simple. As the American Bar Association wrote in its 2007 report, titled "Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms":

Women of color experience a double whammy of gender and race, unlike white women or even men of color, who share at least one of these characteristics (gender or race) with those in the upper strata of management. Women of color may face exclusion from informal networks, inadequate institutional support, and challenges to their authority and credibility. They often feel isolated and alienated, sometimes even from other women. Women of color in law firms have been consistently invisible and often ignored in spite of many of the diversity efforts under way in law firms. Our progress on diversity generally has been slow, but our progress with women of color has been even slower.

We need to do a better job of making sure that the black female talent we do have in the United States is better groomed, and that the "bench" is filled with some heavy hitters who can step up and easily fill the nation's top law firms, courtrooms and courts. It bothers me that since the first black woman, Charlotte E. Ray, was admitted to the Bar in 1872, we have not seen fit to elevate a sister to the Supreme Court.

Kagan will make a fine justice if confirmed, and she will be the fourth woman in history to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. I just can't help wondering how long black women will have to wait until we see someone who looks like us in that position. Until then, I suppose we will remain largely invisible and have to patiently wait our turn.

http://www.theroot.com/views/supreme-snub-obama

Sophia Nelson, Esq., is the author of the forthcoming book, Black. Female. Accomplished. Redefined., and is a regular contributor to The Root.

Right Wing Over-Reach: The Limits of Anti-Obama???

2010-05-08T13:29:00.005-04:00

Of all ot the Washington insider pundits, Ron Brownstein seems to get it right more than most. His analysis tends to be more sober and less of the "group think" than his mainstream colleagues. All over the tube and beyond, the nation's pundits have the country quaking in its boots about what's going to happen in November with the threat of Tea Party and other right wing conservatives will be the major threat to the Democrats in Washington and Obama's abiliity to govern. Brownstein suggests an alternative narrative: the likelihood that the conservatives will contribute to their own marginalization and isolation. Essentially, Brownstein makes the case that opposition to "everything Obama" has become the litmus test in Republican circles. Not buying the conservative mantra, the populace seems to be more receptive to Obama's policies. Brownstein warns that Tea Party and Club for Growth politics might do well among Republicans, but isolate themselves when it comes to general elections. RGN

POLITICAL CONNECTIONS

The Conservative Tide: A party too narrow for Specter, Crist, and maybe Bennett will face a tough challenge building a majority coalition.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
by Ronald Brownstein

Republicans who say that President Obama's stimulus plan hasn't created any jobs must ignore not only the Congressional Budget Office (whose latest estimate put the total as high as 2.1 million) but also the more immediate examples of Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey.

Florida's Rubio and Pennsylvania's Toomey are gainfully employed through November as Republican Senate candidates. And each has that job largely because his principal GOP rival was ostracized in the party after endorsing Obama's plan. In Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party last year after concluding that he couldn't beat the staunchly conservative Toomey in a primary. In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist last week abandoned the GOP primary for an independent Senate bid after reaching the same judgment about Rubio.

The GOP's rightward march could leave it on shaky ground with voters focused more on results than ideology.

The conservative tide inside the GOP that lifted Rubio and Toomey shows no sign of cresting. On May 8, Sen. Robert Bennett faces a strong risk of being denied renomination by the Utah GOP convention. Bennett is hardly a moderate, but conservative activists have mobilized against him because of his vote for the 2008 financial bailout bill and his authorship of bipartisan health reform legislation that included an individual mandate.

Many analysts doubt that Bennett will attract enough convention support to qualify for the primary. Meanwhile, just across the border, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee, is struggling in his re-election bid against an energetic primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

In today's hyperpartisan, quasi-parliamentary politics, demands for ideological purity and party loyalty are growing on both sides: Centrist Sen. Blanche Lincoln is facing a serious threat in Arkansas's Democratic primary. But these forces are barking loudest inside the GOP -- as is evident in everything from congressional Republicans' united vote against Obama's health plan to the support that all but one Republican in the Arizona Legislature gave to their state's confrontational new immigration law. The possibility that Republicans might capture U.S. Senate seats in Illinois and Delaware this fall with moderate nominees shades, but doesn't alter, the picture of a party betting that the road to recovery begins with a hard right turn.

So far, there's little evidence that course is hurting the GOP's prospects in the 2010 election. The great political surprise of Obama's presidency is that amid these hard times, the electorate has directed its frustration less against Big Business (though it is hardly popular) than against Big Government, especially as Obama has aggressively expanded Washington's reach in response to the economic crisis.

While racial minorities largely embrace Obama's direction, polls consistently show most whites recoiling. In the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor national survey, released on May 7, just 36 percent of white respondents said that Obama's economic agenda prevented an even deeper downturn. A majority, 53 percent, instead said that it bloated the federal debt without doing much good. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie had it right, at least in terms of the white electorate, when he insisted this week that the public is "very worried that government has grown beyond its responsible limits."

The questions for the GOP, though, are how much of that reaction is a permanent ideological rejection of Obama's agenda, and how much is temporary disappointment that it has not yet produced more results. In the Heartland Monitor poll, just one-third of adults endorsed the conservative notion that government is more the problem than the solution to our economic difficulties; another third backed the liberal conviction that government must play an active role in policing the marketplace. The decisive remainder, about three in 10, said they were open to an activist government but weren't convinced that it could deliver results that improve their lives. Even among white respondents, just two-fifths picked the flatly anti-government option.

Those findings suggest that if the budding economic recovery accelerates, the GOP's rightward march could leave it on shaky ground with voters focused more on results than ideology. It's possible such a dynamic could help Democrats in November (especially in affluent districts), but it's more likely to lift Obama in 2012. The president has almost certainly overestimated the public's tolerance for government activism and will probably need to pivot toward reforming and streamlining Washington. But however well Republicans perform in 2010, a party too narrow for Specter, Crist, and maybe Bennett will face a tough challenge building a presidential majority coalition in 2012, when economic distress could be easing and the electorate swelling with more young people and minorities.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/politicalconnections.php

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The Threat to White Nationalsim: The Obama Presidency

2010-05-02T23:19:00.005-04:00

This post is an abridged version of a presentation made at the recent joint meetings of the North Central Sociological Association (NCSA) and Midwest Sociological Society(MSS)in Chicago. This piece was prepared for publication in the NCSA newsletter. RGN

The Presidency of Barack Obama and the New Faces of America’s White Nationalism
by Robert Newby
Central Michigan University

The presidency of African American Barack Obama after one year has been a case of celebration by his supporters, but one of resentment for many among America’s white majority. His election was epochal in that for over 200 years, all forty-three of his predecessors were white. Beginning in 1790, citizenship was restricted to whites. Until the Brown decision in 1954, the citizenship status of blacks was dubious. Now, a half century later, a person of color, a black man, its 44th President, the nation’s First Citizen.

From the moment of his election, the question became what does his election say about race in America today, a nation that has historically reserved its lowest regard for blacks? Early on the question was asked: “Is America ready for a black president?” In translation, that question meant: “Will whites vote for a black man to be president?” Barack Obama answered that question by saying to his confidants when he decided to run: “America is ready to have a black President.” The Obama campaign was historic for its overwhelming grassroots support, specifically its successful use of the Internet. Essentially his victory in 97% white Iowa paved the way for his Democratic nomination. With a coalition of minorities, 97% of the black vote, 67% of the Latino vote, 62% Asian vote and 43% of the white vote, Obama’s victory over McCain for the presidency was resounding. He was right, “America was ready for a black president.”

The election may have proved him to have been right about the American electorate, but it is now clear that he was not right when it comes to much of white America. A majority of white Americans, fifty-five per cent, voted for McCain. Ninety percent of McCain’s votes were whites. For the first the time in America’s history, the Presidency is in the hands of a man who is not white. Obama’s election represents a major threat to the white nationalist core that has been central to U.S. politics from before its inception as a nation. Until the accommodations made by the white nation as a result of World War II, the Brown decision, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, with few exceptions, citizenship was restricted to being white.

As stated at SNCC’s (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) 50th anniversary celebration recently, “…African Americans are not in these positions today because a sudden change of heart occurred in this nation.” He went on to say, “There was pressure” mounted against a resistant white nationalist regimes. The 1964 Civil Rights and the 1965 Voting Rights Acts, based upon the principles of Brown, altered the citizenship status of blacks during this period. These advances notwithstanding, it was Reagan who re-legitimized national the white nationalist discourse for the nation. Even so, the failures of the Bush administration and the election of Obama brought the “Reagan revolution” to its end.

It is this defeated “Reagan Revolution” that is resisting acceptance of the democratic outcome of the election that serves as the core of the Tea-Parties. It was Reagan who popularized the saying that the scariest eleven words in the English language are: “I am from the government and I am here to help.” This anti-government sentiment is exacerbated now that the head of government is an African American. A black president is not legitimate in the eyes of the white nationalists. It was this “he is not one of us” sentiment that gave rise to the demands for the President’s birth certificate, or the “birther” movement.

The Republican legislature of Arizona has passed legislation requiring the President to produce a birth certificate in order to be on the ballot in 2012. A similar bill has been introduced in the Georgia legislature. Not only is his American citizenship questioned, among the Tea-Partiers, the President is portrayed as a socialist, a communist, a fascist, a Muslim, even a witch doctor with a bone in his nose. In their eyes he is not “American.” It is this sentiment that leads to call that they “want their country back.”

Armed demonstrators at Tea-Party rallies, accompanied by an inflammatory rhetoric, symbolic of armed revolutionary struggle makes today’s context one that is unsettling. Gun sales have escalated to record levels. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the anti-government militias have grown by 250%. The developments are ominous. As reminded by President Clinton in reference to the 15th anniversary of Oklahoma City bombing, a similar anti-government sentiment was extant. The anti-government white nationalists who declare “he’s not one of us” are at war with the changing demographics of America not just an election outcome.

Threatened by this “new majority,” the Tea-Party, “birther,” and militia movements find themselves in association with some very dangerous currents in today’s racial politics that may not bode well for our society’s future. The salient question is to what extent will these forces go in their efforts to maintain white dominance in the face of a changed demography in America?