About Republicans and Race

The scene at a rally for Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]
 
So it seems that Jonah Goldberg is upset at those nasty liberals again — this time for having the audacity to say that racism, embodied in the tenure of the recently deceased Jesse Helms, is a significant cog in the Republican Party machinery.

I think I see another book in the works: "Liberal Racism: In Which I Continue To Project The Right’s Own Worst Propensities Onto My Opponents." Or something like that. At least, that’s what happened the last time he got on one of these jags.

He’s already off to a great start:

For the last several years preening liberals have argued that conservatism and "Dixiecrat-ism" are symbiotic, if not one and the same. These liberals, in the words of Bill Voegeli:

"… believe—or avail themselves of the political advantages of professing to believe—that the essence of conservatism is and always has been Dixiecrat-ism. This is not a point of antiquarian interest; the clear implication is that everything that conservatism has accomplished and stood for since 1965—Reagan, the tax revolt, law-and-order, deregulation, the fight against affirmative action, the critique of the welfare state…everything—is the poisoned fruit of the poisoned tree."

This is akin to what Goldberg did in Liberal Fascism: create three big fat strawmen and then oooh and aaah as they go up in flames. The first is a "modern liberal" who is a caricature with only a vague resemblance to anything any known or representative liberal actually is like. The second is a liberal’s description of conservatism that similarly has only a superficial resemblance to what any serious liberal actually says. And the third is a version of conservatism that is so narrow and self-serving that it effectively obliterates a substantial portion of the Americans who, historically, have actually been considered "conservatives" at the time.

You can see this as he trundles onward:

The line peddled by Paul Krugman and countless others, that the GOP majorities and victories of the last thirty years are all the poisoned fruit of the poisoned tree of Dixie is simply untrue. Whatever Helms’ personal druthers, his political maneuvering room was constrained by the fact that the GOP is not a racist party.

… Now, a word about the South. I’m no expert, but the story of the South’s sloughing off of racism and its movement into the GOP fold, is one of the most egregiously under-told and distorted tales of modern political history. (John O’Sullivan points to one aspect of it here.) The bigotry aimed at the South never ceases to amaze me. Indeed, it is astounding to me how the left tells us we need to understand the nuance of, say, the Jihadi mind in all of its shades of gray, but when it comes to the voting habits of law-abiding white North Carolinians all you need to know is that if a white hand pulls a lever for a Republican politician, that hand must be attached to a racist, and that racism guided the hand to vote for a Republican. The South is a complicated place. Racism was certainly its central shortcoming, but it was hardly its only feature. That so many people can only see the racism, even as its half-life accelerates, says more about their myopia than it does about the region it casts its gaze on.

So, a brief reality check: Goldberg does not cite any liberals who actually say that "the essence of conservatism is and always has been Dixiecrat-ism" because, frankly, there aren’t very many of them.

Most liberals and other critics of the American right take a much more nuanced and realistic view — essentially, that not every conservative is a racist, but rather that every actively practicing racist is a conservative; and that this is the case in today’s context not just because racists always have been conservatives, but because the conservative movement has made constant accommodations and appeals to them.

This has been so for a long time, but has become even more self-evident as the Republican Party became the party of the Dixiecrats. The Southern Strategy (note that Goldberg evades any mention of this whatsoever) not only was designed to provide wink-and-nudge acknowledgment to racists that the GOP was on their side but to blunt the advancement of minority interests.

Functionally, this not only pulled the GOP farther to the right, but it also had the effect of continuing to empower racists and enable them to translate their beliefs into law. Indeed, the GOP at one time was not a racist party. But as it reached for power, it empowered and recruited racist elements to the extent that it became functionally racist. It was not a mere coincidence that David Duke was attracted to the GOP. It may have couched policy choices in non-racist terms throughout, but in adamantly defending white privilege and attacking programs to help minorities, it undertook the agenda of racists. Goldberg can deny that this is distinct from actual racism all he likes, but in the real world it becomes a distinction without a difference.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the racist and non-racist elements of conservatism, but that also implies that they are not identical; rather, what’s clear is that the GOP has pandered to racists as a means to obtaining electoral strength enough to win power, and the racists have accepted the muting of their old-fashioned bigotry in exchange for gaining political power. Were it not for the ministrations of the GOP to their withering corpse of an ideology, white supremacy would have vanished from the political scene many years ago.

Moreover, the argument that racism is dying on the vine in the South is absurd and laughable on its face, because the legacy and influence of racism remains pervasive there and not only persists, but does so precisely because the GOP has given it power foothold within its own ranks. The most painfully obvious example of this is the continuing outsize influence of the neo-Confederate movement within the party: This movement, as I’ve discussed at length previously, is not merely arch-conservative but positively radical; it not only defends the Confederacy and slavery and denounces Lincoln, but it argues for outright secession. Sean Wilentz has written at some length about it, among others.

And then there has been the more recent surge in racist nativism emanating from Republican ranks, particularly from the more "arch conservative" faction of the party. One suspects that Goldberg would simply like to define them away as not being "real conservatives" (that was how he handled the matter in his book), but rest assured they would do the same to him. To the rest of us, well, if it walks like a Klansman …

Of course, "libertarian" Republicans like Goldberg are in steadfast denial about the significance of these strains, but the heat of those denials can’t dissipate the ongoing hard reality.

The overarching narrative that Goldberg is trying to construct here is the same one he deployed in Liberal Fascism, to wit, one in which conservatism is narrowly and conveniently redefined to include only the libertarian/free-market component while denying that other components — particularly the racist, anti-gay, and generally xenophobic blocs — don’t really represent conservatism.

This, put nicely, is a gargantuan pile of horseshit. Conservatism as we have known it in America is not just Russell Kirk and William Buckley but also John J. Calhoun, Theodore Bilbo, and Strom Thurmond. There are indeed libertarian and anti-centralized-government strands to conservatism, but there have also always been reactionary, bellicose, jingoistic and simply racist strands to it as well; the Southern Strategy, in fact, had the effect of wrapping those strands together and bringing them to real political power.

This was embodied in Jesse Helms, an unrepentant racist and homophobe whose Bircherite worldview poisoned the nation’s political climate for three decades and more. A lot of people have reminisced about Helms this week, but my favorite Helms story — because it illustrates his core nature, as well as that of his fellow conservatives, brilliantly — comes from a Sept. 12, 1995 Reuters news report:

Helms (R-N.C.) seemed somewhat shocked when the caller from Alabama said, "Mr. Helms, I know this might not be politically correct to say these days, but I think you should get a Nobel Peace Prize for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers."

"Oh, dear," guest host Robert Novak said.

"Whoops," said Helms. "Well, thank you, I think."

"That was the bad word," Novak said. "That was politically incorrect. We really don’t condone that kind of language, do we?"

"No. No," said Helms, a vocal opponent of affirmative action.

Helms went to say the slur is not part of his lexicon.

"My father didn’t condone it when I was a little boy," the 73-year-old senator said. "One of the worst spankings I ever got was when I used that word, and I don’t think I’ve ever used it since."

What was noteworthy about both Novak’s and Helms’ responses, of course, was that they were flustered over the use of "the n-word". Neither bothered to even address, let alone repudiate, the content of the man’s remarks — you know, the part about "keeping the niggers down." Indeed, Helms seemed to thank him for them.

There may have been much more to Jesse Helms — but his bigoted approach to race revealed a narrow, pinched, and mean-spirited mind dedicated ultimately to primitive racial nationalism and willing to inflict injustice and harm on those he considered his lessers, and that manifested itself in a broad array of policy choices. And that, in the end, is exactly what we can say about the Republican Party, too.

Now You Can Be A Minuteman From The Comfort Of Your Couch!

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Now here’s some exciting news:

"Couch Patrol" Launches Monday

Operation Virtual Vigilance Ready to Go

After a delay to allow correction of technical difficulties having to do with camera scheduling , a system of border cameras controlled over the Internet that Fox News labeled the "couch patrol" last April, will begin full-scale operation this Monday, July 8, according to American Border Patrol.

Originally conceived by ABP in September of 2005, the border camera system, now called Operation Virtual Vigilance, can be controlled over the Internet, including pan-and-tilt and camera controls (zoom, etc.). At present ABP operates two systems, both on its ranch in Southeastern Arizona. One camera is stationary and the other, with its solar power, can be moved from place to place. More systems are to be added to the network in the near future.

Color and thermal cameras are used.

And when they’re not busy watching the border — or maybe when the endless monotony of the uninterrupted desert landscape gets to be too fucking boring to watch (which will be after about 10 minutes at most) — hey, they can play that shooter video game where you pick off the Mexican border crossers.

Actually, this probably is good news. These people will represent one hell of lot less danger both to themselves as well as other people by just staying on their couches. Really.

‘That’s Some Catch, That Catch-22.’ ‘It’s The Best There Is’

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Imagine being stuck in a Kafkaesque nightmare like the one my pal Eric Ward faces:

I’m African-American and my family moved to California almost a hundred years ago after a lynching took place outside their hometown in Kentucky.

I’m also undocumented, or in the current anti-immigrant vernacular, “illegal.” I don’t have the necessary documents to prove my identity. Therefore, within four years, I won’t be able to vote, have access to social services, or receive state identification to travel.

How did this happen? Well, it all began when Ward — who has a visual disability, so he does not carry a driver’s license — lost his passport and Social Security card in an airport mishap. To replace them, he found he needed a copy of his birth certificate. After much wrangling, he finally obtained it.

But that was just the beginning:

A few days later I headed to the Social Security Administration to obtain a replacement social security card. But when I got there, the Social Security Administration said I needed more than just a copy of my birth certificate. They said I also needed a passport, driver’s license, or state identification card to prove my identity.

But since I went to the Social Security Administration to obtain a new copy of my social security card so I could get a new passport, the Social Security Administration didn’t know what to do with me. So, they told me to head across town to the Illinois Secretary of State’s office to get my social security card. But when I arrived, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office said I needed my social security card to obtain any official document to prove my identity.

Now I’m stuck in a Catch-22 and I’m not alone in this predicament. Almost nine percent of African Americans (18 or older) are unable to document their citizenship. * Roughly 2 million African Americans, eleven million native born citizens, and nearly twice as many low income Americans than citizens with higher incomes don’t have a social security card, driver’s licenses, passport, birth certificate or proof of naturalization. *

As Swati Pandi at the LA Times blog observes, this all boils down to a simple formula: "Want to prove who you are? Get a birth certificate. Want to get a birth certificate? Prove who you are."

It’s not just African Americans who are being swept up in this hysteria, and it isn’t just this misbegotten measure that is victimizing ordinary American citizens. You can also include Native Americans and senior citizens among those whose status as voting citizens is now considered dubious:

Bernice Todd’s Choctaw family roots are sunk deep in the soil of Oklahoma, a state whose very name is Choctaw for "red people." But in the middle of a debilitating battle with cancer, Todd, a 39-year-old who cleans homes at a trailer park and baby-sits for a living, lost her state Medicaid health care coverage because, although she’s a Native American, she could not prove she is a U.S. citizen.

While Todd’s case is rich in irony, she is one of tens of thousands of Americans who are falling victim to a new federal rule—aimed at keeping illegal immigrants off the Medicaid rolls—requiring that recipients prove their citizenship and identity with documents many don’t have.

… States have always been required to check a Medicaid applicant’s eligibility, which includes citizenship. But a July 2006 rule, enforced by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), now demands specific documents as proof, such as a passport or a birth certificate, driver’s license or military record. States face fines if they don’t comply.

The rule, which neither CMS nor the Bush administration requested, was adopted by the Republican-dominated Congress in 2005 despite the fact that there was no evidence that undocumented immigrants were falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to get Medicaid.

"This rule was the answer to a problem that really doesn’t exist," says Donna Cohen Ross, an analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, a nonpartisan research organization.

That pretty much describes the nativist approach to immigration in general. And in the process of fixing something by making it worse, they’re conveniently disenfranchising thousands, perhaps millions, of American citizens, stripping them of their rights as citizens.

I happen to be one of those old-fashioned curmudgeons who believes that citizenship is a sacred part of how a democratic republic functions, and that taking away those rights is not what government should be in the business of doing. But maybe that’s just me.

Hulk Smash Evil Muslim Brown People! Rarrgh!

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Here’s Ted Stevens, via CelticDiva and Progressive Alaska, talking about Mark Steyn’s travesty of a book America Alone:

Read the book America Alone. A lot of people complain about that book … look at the demographic concepts of that book and just think about what’s going on in the world and decide whether we want to become Italy or we want to become … France, in terms of our society and how it’s impacted by those who are really against us.

Ah yes. This was the book in which you could read the following passage:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out — as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ‘em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

As I said at the time:

I don’t see how it’s possible to interpret this excerpt — given that Steyn is also contending that these demographics are inevitable throughout Europe, and he offers no solution that would accommodate or assimilate Muslims — as anything other than outright advocacy of genocide and the Bosnian model of "ethnic cleansing" for the rest of Europe. Hitchens, rather typically, softens it by noting that Steyn is saying "that Serbo-fascist ethnic cleansing can appear more rational in retrospect than it did at the time."

And Senator Intertoobs thinks he’s just friggin’ brilliant. And no doubt, within the Village, he’s considered a serious person.

All I can say is: Go Mark Begich.

[H/t to Matt Browner Hamlin.]

Bush’s Grand Moff Tarkin Aims Death Star At Forestlands

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 For years, rural progressives have been trying to warn their neighbors that voting for Republicans meant voting for the rapine of the natural heritage in which they live. Most of those neighbors ignored them and voted Republican because they promised "jobs" and wrapped themselves in all-American values.


Now, as the Bush administration tries to inflict as much environmental havoc on the citizenry as it can on its way out the door, the chickens have come home to roost:

The Bush administration is preparing to ease the way for the nation’s largest private landowner to convert hundreds of thousands of acres of mountain forestland to residential subdivisions.

The deal was struck behind closed doors between Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, and Plum Creek Timber Co., a former logging company turned real estate investment trust that is building homes. Plum Creek owns more than 8 million acres nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana, where local officials were stunned and outraged at the deal.

"We have 40 years of Forest Service history that has been reversed in the last three months," said Pat O’Herren, an official in Missoula County, which is threatening to sue the Forest Service for forgoing environmental assessments and other procedures that would have given the public a voice in the matter.

The deal, which Rey said he expects to formalize next month, threatens to dramatically accelerate trends already transforming the region. Plum Creek’s shift from logging to real estate reflects a broader shift in the Western economy, from one long grounded in the industrial-scale extraction of natural resources to one based on accommodating the new residents who have made the region the fastest-growing in the nation.

Essentially, Rey is opening up millions of acres of forestland to development, which means that you’re going to see residential developments and McMansions sprouting up in the woods — not just in Montana but everywhere.

And the deal stinks like rotting trout. Just last week, Montana Sen. Jon Tester was demanding an investigation into these secret talks:

For the past two years, Tester said, the company has been negotiating behind closed doors with federal officials to expand the uses allowed under its road easements, which previously dealt only with logging. The proposed new easements would give Plum Creek the right to drive across public land for commercial, industrial or residential development, and according to Tester and several western Montana officials, would open up numerous tracts of land to real estate development.

With 1.2 million acres in its possession in western Montana, Plum Creek is the largest private landowner in the state.

Tester said he first heard of the negotiations two months ago, when local officials contacted his office in frustration because they had no ability to weigh in on public lands decisions affecting their counties.

Officials have said the deal, if it goes through, could put local and state government on the line for providing firefighting and other services to homes in wooded areas previously unimagined for real estate development.

Tester said he was especially concerned that negotiations have been going on in secret for so long.

“Transparency in government is pretty damned important,” he said.

Tester said he’s been “quizzing” Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey – who oversees the Forest Service – for two months to get details about the negotiations, to no avail.
He said he doesn’t know if the negotiations and road changes are necessarily illegal, but enough legal and other questions surround the changes that an impartial investigation is in order.

Tester and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., jointly asked the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to conduct the probe. In their Tuesday letter to the agency, the senators wrote that as recently as 2006 a Forest Service official in Seeley Lake concluded that such road easements were only for logging and could not be used for other purposes.

But two years later, in 2008, a Forest Service lawyer took exactly the opposite position, concluding that such easements were for whatever the timber company wanted to use them for.

Mark Rey, the mastermind of the deal, is the Grand Moff Tarkin of the West’s public lands. He has a long history — including major stints as a lobbyist for Northwest timber companies, including Plum Creek — that makes this deal reek of outright corruption.

But then, Rey has never been one to be much bothered by the niceties of the law or basic governmental decency. It nearly landed him in jail earlier when he faced a contempt-of-court citation for ignoring environmental laws and a judge’s orders to enforce them. He got off, but the judge handling the matter still blasted Rey and the Forest Service for their "systematic disregard of the rule of law."

Sound familiar?

Here’s hoping Tester is able to get his investigation.

Oh, and a note to Barack Obama, who’s campaigning in Montana this weekend: Dude, here’s a chance to solidify your lead there. Because all those rural folks who voted Pubbie the past decade are ready and willing to have their minds changed. If Obama were smart, he’d blast Rey and the Republicans with both barrels on this.

Because nothing is more likely to ruin their way of life than Mark Rey’s McMansions.

The Race Zombies: Caught Between Hate For Obama, Contempt For McCain

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

It’s hard to tell who drives the racist right further over the edge — Barack Obama or John McCain. The prospect of a liberal black man as president makes them all twitchy and itchy, and there’s nothing they’d like to do more than vote against him. But then they’d have to vote for a phony like McCain, who doesn’t even pass their sniff test.


AlterNet’s Gabriel Thompson was in Alabama last weekend for the annual conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and his report is well worth the eye-opening read, just to get a sense for what a pack of jabbering cross-burners these folks really are. And as you can imagine, the prospect of an Obama presidency is driving them into a cannibalistic rage:

While Barack Obama has been subject to a whispering campaign, those whispers begin somewhere as shouts — and that somewhere is in places like the CCC’s annual meeting.

"There’s an election coming up, and no matter whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you better pay attention to what’s going on," Bishop says at the conclusion of his remarks. At this, the crowd murmurs. "We got a young man running for president. Don’t make no difference whether he’s black, white or yellow. But I have a problem with his ideology, with the things he believes in. Obama for president. I can’t even say that. This is a great turning point. ‘Mohammed’ Obama, is that right?"

"Hussein," the crowd calls out.

"That is something we just can’t afford in this country," Bishop says. "My grandkids can’t afford it. If you care about your grandkids’ rights, then this is the election. If the Hispanics and the blacks get together, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll do what we’re told. Now I know that McCain isn’t as conservative as we’d like –"

"He isn’t a conservative at all!" someone yells.

"You got that right!" adds another.

"But he can be our salvation," continues Bishop, clearly upset at the interruption.

"It’s time for you to stop talking," shouts an angry voice.

By now Bishop is livid. "Well, don’t come crying to me when you get your tails beat and have to say, ‘Yessuh, Mr. Obama.’"

All kinds of meaty takeaways in that:

– The far right, as I’ve observed previously, acts as a kind of echo chamber for the mainstream right where talking points, ideas, and agendas are tested out and gradually shaped. We’ve already been hearing the "Muslim Obama" crap from a large number of ostensibly mainstream right-wingers, so it’s just about a dead certainty the volume and intensity of it will rise as Election Day nears.

– What these guys are really scared of is being treated by black people in exactly the same way they have treated them ("Yessuh, Mr. Obama") if/when economic and social positions shift. (This is, incidentally, an old motif that dates back to the lynching-era hysteria about blacks raping white women when, in reality, white men raping black women was a commonplace, both before and after slavery.) And that is the chief anxiety of these men — that their own mistreatment of their fellow humans will come back to haunt them. As it happens, this is in fact a powerful appeal across many sectors of white society. So expect to hear strands of it woven into the GOP’s attacks on Obama.

– These guys really just can’t stomach McCain, mostly because he fails their "purity" tests. A lot of them feel sold down the river by Bush — though almost certainly this is not because Bush wasn’t conservative enough, but because he was incompetent and his presidency a disaster. McCain, in these people’s eyes, isn’t a true "conservative" — particularly not on the all-important right-wing hysterical issue du jour, immigration. And there’s a reason for that.

I know, I know. Couldn’t be happening to a nicer bunch of folks.

Goodbye, and Good Riddance

-- by Sara


Our long national nightmare of racism moved a few moments closer to daylight today, as Jesse Helms -- one of the more pernicious and persistent characters in that nightmare over the past six decades -- passed from the scene and on toward whatever reward awaits a man who made so many people so miserable for so long.

Pam Spaulding, a native North Carolinian who can hardly remember a time when Helms wasn't out there instigating that state's racists for his own political gain, offers her take here. She also quotes some of his most noxious public statements, including steamers like these:

"The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."
-- 1995

"The University of Negroes and Communists"
-- Reference to the University of North Carolina devised by Mr. Helms when he worked for Willis Smith's 1950 U.S. Senate campaign.

"Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING and MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior."
-- Fund raising mailer, 1996

"All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."
-- After Mexicans protested his visit in 1986

"Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches."
-- 1995 radio broadcast

"She's a damn lesbian. I am not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine."
-- Explaining why he was opposing the appointment of a woman for a cabinet post.

"They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro."
-- In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968

Over at Group News Blog, my homie Lower Manhattanite -- whose parents fled North Carolina because of white men empowered by the likes of Helms -- starkly lays out what Helms did to black America:

Helms' and his fellow travelers racist demagoguery drove more Black folk from North Carolina than GM, Ford and Chrysler vehicles combined. My mother, father and at least eight other uncles and aunts ran like runaway slaves from that intentionally racially backward-ized state during Helms' media heyday of 1960 to his Senate Tenure beginning in 1972 and at least a decade into it.

He giddily meant the million or so African Americans in the state, and the twenty-nine million outside his state in the greater United States nothing but ill will and used his legislative cudgel to beat them down every single chance he got. There is no redeeming feature in my eyes to remember him with. Unlike several undeniably talented bigots who strode the last century like colossi—the likes of a Leni Rifenstahl or a D.W. Griffith—genuinely evil-enabling people who still boasted world and culture changing talents, Helms was not talented. Nor was he particularly smart. What he was, was dogged, and vicious—and he applied that doggedness and viciousness to the task of promoting White Supremacy for the better part of half a century. If he had a talent, it was in the application of his personal racial animus in writing and voting for oppressive legislation that denied people of color their so-called inalienable rights. He damn sure made managed to somehow make them “alienable”, so in that respect alone perhaps—in his blunt-trauma-to-the-skull harshness—he was a “talent”. But then again, Charlie Manson clearly evidenced a proficient “talent” for psychotic murder, so take that for what it's worth.

Back in the early 90s, folk-music satirist Roy Zimmerman predicted that Helms would "die like a hero in the drizzling rain" when "the weight of his skull finally crushed his brain." It didn't happen quite that way -- or quite that soon. But, by the end of his life, Helms was nothing more than a living fossil, a political curiosity -- the last of an era of overt hatemongers that included Strom Thurmond and George Wallace. Together, men like these anchored the far right end of the cultural tug-of-war that defined the entire postwar era.

And they were never ashamed of it, either -- even though many more thoughtful Americans still feel tremendous shame for having shared this country with them. Their names are a stain that doesn't quite wash out, no matter how often we try to cleanse it with light and truth. Even so, we have no choice; we have to keep trying.

Pastor Dan told me that while Helms was, without a doubt, a dirty rat bastard, he believes in a God who is even capable forgiving rat bastards like Helms. Perhaps PD worships a better god than I do. But those of us left here on earth will be left dealing for generations to come with Helms' bitter legacy, and no amount of forgiving -- or media lionizing, which is already tuning up the hagiography machine -- should ever allow us to forget that.

We ought not speak ill of the dead. But we are obligated to speak the truth. And the truth is that Helms was one of the nastier characters of the last century -- and his passing is a Fourth-of-July gift from the gods of liberty that allows us to move into this one with considerably lighter baggage.

Because Racial Profiling Worked Out So Well The Last Time

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

There was a striking story this week in the Colorado Springs Gazette about the children of Japanese-American internees returning to Camp Amache, the place where they were held during World War II.

It talks about the heavy human toll paid by the victims of that episode, as well as the way we’ve managed to dump it all down the national memory hole:

The buildings are gone, sold by the government after the war, but the camp remains, an overgrown, snake-infested patchwork of foundations. A National Historic Landmark, it is accessible to the public but rarely visited, a forgotten, open secret of the past.

"It’s something we don’t necessarily like to talk about," said University of Denver professor Bonnie Clark, overseeing the archaeological survey. "We like to think this isn’t the kind of thing we do."

But it is the kind of thing we do — or at least, are about to do again:

The Justice Department is considering establishing a new policy that would allow the FBI to target Americans for investigation even in the absence of evidence or other compelling indications that the person was breaking a law, according to the Associated Press.

The policy, being considered as part of the attorney general’s guidelines to the FBI, would allow the agency to conduct racial profiling — potentially singling out Muslim- and Arab-Americans — and to open preliminary terrorism investigations against targets simply on the basis of patterns established through data mining public records and other information.

The agency would be allowed to profile targets based on their race and activities, such as travel to the Middle East or any other part of the world associated with terrorism. But race would be only one factor in the decision to open an investigation.

Now, I’m sure this news makes Michelle Malkin all warm and fuzzy. After all, that was the point of her execrable defense of the internment — it showed that racial profiling was a perfectly reasonable enterprise, according to her logic.

But the fact is that racial profiling actually makes us more vulnerable to terrorism because it exposes our anti-terror strategy to being gamed: terrorists can more effectively elude notice by enlisting operatives who do not fit the profile. In other words, it simply doesn’t work.

If there were reasons to believe they were getting desperate, we could at least understand why the FBI wants to indulge in racial profiling in its search for terrorism suspects (since at best it offers the illusion that they’re doing something). But considering that there have been no significant terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, this just doesn’t make sense.

There is also the issue of its effectiveness. As Mike German pointed out last year:

But a quick look at population statistics shows that racial profiling will likely be just as unproductive as random searches. The tragic shooting of a Brazilian electrician who was mistaken for an Arab terrorist by British undercover policemen demonstrates the difficulty of identifying race by merely looking at someone. But even if police here in the United States could be trained to properly identify Arab Americans on sight, only about 1 in 4 would actually turn out to be Muslim. The vast majority — 63 percent, according to a 2002 Zogby poll, are Christian. So much for the clash of civilizations.

If you wanted to stop Muslims here in America you’d have better luck targeting South Asians (such as Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshi and Afghans), who make up the largest percentage (33 percent) of the American Muslim population, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of State. Southeast Asians make up an additional 1.3 percent. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer suggested that by profiling Muslims, we can exempt all East Asians from suspicion, but I have a feeling most police officers would have as much trouble distinguishing East Asians from South Asians as they do Arabs from Brazilians.

Moreover, there is a larger issue at play as well. Peter Siggins, California’s Chief Deputy Attorney General, explained this a few years ago:

Ethnicity alone is not enough. If ethnic profiling of middle eastern men is enough to warrant disparate treatment, we accept that all or most middle eastern men have a proclivity for terrorism, just as during World War II all resident Japanese had a proclivity for espionage.

And as I explained in Strawberry Days, the Japanese American internment episode is actually a vivid historical example of how wrongheaded racial profiling really is:

… [I]t remains inescapable that the model of mass internment that emerges from the historical record of World War II does not, as we have seen, offer the slightest shred of evidence that racial profiling is either effective or wise, especially not when it comes to protecting national security and serving the public interest. The overwhelming weight of the postwar evidence is that the internment prevented very little, if any, sabotage or espionage. Moreover, even beyond its transparent unjustness, the damage to the integrity of the Constitution, and the dangerous precedents it set, the internment of the Japanese Americans was an unfathomable waste. It demonstrably undermined the war effort, and proved not to be worth a penny of the billions of taxpayer dollars it wasted.

In addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars the actual enterprise itself cost—rounding up 120,000 people by rail car and shipping them first to “assembly centers”; building ten “relocation centers” in remote locales, and then shipping the evacuees into them; maintaining and administering the centers for another three years, which included overseeing programs to help internees find work outside the camps; feeding, clothing, and educating the entire population of internees during this time; and then helping them to relocate near their former homes once the camps closed—there were $37 million more in initial reparations costs in 1948, and then $1.2 billion more in the later reparations approved by Congress in 1988.

At the same time, the Japanese on the Pacific Coast, who occupied some 7,000 farms in the “Military Exclusion Zone,” actually were responsible for the production of nearly half of all the fresh produce that was grown for consumption on the Coast (the Japanese also shipped out a great deal of produce to the Midwest and East). Indeed, Nikkei farms held virtual monopolies in a number of crops, including peppers, snap beans, celery and strawberries, and a large portion of the lettuce market.

As we saw in the case of the Bellevue farms, a handful of enterprising whites throughout the coastal communities decided to try running the Japanese farms with the hope of making a killing from the crops. But labor was so short that not one of these enterprises lasted beyond about five weeks, and none of them had a successful harvest. Nearly all of these farms lay fallow for the next four years. This major loss of production of fresh vegetables clearly harmed the war effort on the home front, and played a significant role in triggering the rationing that came during the war years.

So if racial profiling not only doesn’t work, but creates a panoply of problems both at the time and afterward, that raises the question: Why do it, then?

Well, in an administration that has been all about accruing fresh powers over the civilian population, the answer to that may be one with truly ominous overtones.

White Supremacists and the Anti-Immigration Crowd

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

A story out of New Hampshire tells us everything you need to know about the nature of the wingnuts out fomenting against immigration:

Rob O’Donovan of Haverhill says the group, Northeast White Pride, is holding a "Close the Border" demonstration Saturday to protest illegal immigration. He says the group is not based on hate or white supremacy, but on having "pride" in white history.

"We reject the popular use of the term ‘racists’ or ‘supremacists’ as we don’t hate anyone because of their cultural identity," O’Donovan wrote in an e-mail interview with The Nashua Telegraph. "We do, however, seek to protect our own cultural identity and heritage from being obscured by those of others, especially when those customs clash significantly with the morals and ethics of our American cultural heritage."

Sure, they’re not a hate group. They just want to wipe out brown people. What’s hateful about that?
We’ve known for some time that white supremacists have been promoting immigration as a major recruitment tool, and it has been working. Indeed, the current anti-immigration campaign on the American right is riddled throughout with racists and bigots of various stripes, despite the ongoing and sometimes heated denials by their leaders.

And it attracts them for a specific reason: the campaign is simply a regurgitation and repackaging of their longtime agenda. Which is also why nearly every overt neo-Nazi and white-power rally of recent vintage (see, for instance, the Nazi rally in Olympia a couple of years ago) has been focused on immigration. It has been, after all, their issue for a long time running.

So the recent meeting between leaders of the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and Jim Gilchrist’s Minutemen organization is not exactly a big shocker:

The Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist hate group, publicly announced earlier this week that it was co-hosting an anti-immigration strategy session with Americans4America, the official Las Vegas chapter of Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

Despite the Minuteman Project’s oft-touted anti-racist policies, the meeting took place June 24, offering some of the strongest evidence yet of direct ties between the Minuteman movement and overtly racist organizations.

“There’s a lot of overlapping between our two groups,” Nevada CCC leader Don Wassall told the Intelligence Report. “I met a couple of people from their group who are interested in trying to recruit more and get more people active in both of our groups.”

Not every Minuteman is a white supremacist, of course. But the organization’s claims that it is "weeding out" its racists is really just a sham. After all, there’s a reason that it has to "weed them out" in the first place: they really are just a fresh new mask for a hoary tradition of old-fashioned racist nativism.

Darcy Burner Loses Her Home To Fire

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 Awful news from the Northwest: Darcy Burner’s home burned to the ground this morning. Video here.

Fortunately, no one was hurt (except, perhaps, the family cat). The fire appears to have started near the bedroom of her 5-year-old son.

This disaster has befallen Darcy just as she was gearing up her fight to replace that faux moderate Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert. The Seattle Times reporter also asked her about the campaign:

Burner said she hadn’t yet considered whether the fire would impact her campaign.
"I am today focused on my family and just really grateful that my family is OK," she said. "Tomorrow I’ll wake up and figure out what comes next."

Good for Darcy. (The Times, incidentally, just ran a puff piece describing just how "moderate" her opponent is.)

Goldy has more details about the fire.

Of course, losing one’s home is a staggering loss, and our deepest sympathies go out to Darcy and her family. At this point, there hasn’t been a recovery fund set up. But in the meantime, you can always express your sympathy support by visiting Darcy’s Blue America page, or by donating directly at her site.

Latinos Have Figured Out Two-Face McCain

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

As bad as it has been looking for John McCain’s prospects attracting Latino votes, fear not: He can always do even worse. For instance, the latest polling:

A new national survey of Latino voters shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama with a nearly 3-to-1 advantage over his rival, Republican John McCain.

The survey found that 60 percent of Latinos planned to vote for Obama, compared to 23 percent for McCain, while 16 percent were undecided. Latino Decisions, a collaboration between Pacific Market Research and University of Washington political scientists Matt Barreto and Gary Segura, conducted the poll by telephone June 1–12.

This was even before his two-faced appearance at a closed-door town-hall session in Chicago. And as a sign they intend to make immigration — and McCain’s phony strategy of trying to play both sides of the aisle — a campaign issue, the Obama campaign jumped all over it:

As Dana Goldstein at Tapped observes:

If McCain has any enduring principles on immigration at this juncture, they’re impossible to discern.

Actually, they’re not entirely indiscernible. John McCain’s one enduring principle, across a whole range of issues, is Whatever Benefits John McCain. If that’s his political compass, well, no wonder he talks out both sides of his head.

McCain To Latinos: I’m Your Pal, Just Don’t Tell Anyone

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

A few more details on that late-night, closed-door town-hall session John McCain held with Hispanic community members in Chicago the other night are finally becoming available — thanks to one of the wingnuts in attendance.

It seems the McCain camp, in their zeal to keep out the more vocally liberal members of the Latino community (who were excluded from the session) decided to include on the list of invitees one Rosanna Pulido, apparently because of her association with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (despite the fact that the latter has been designated a hate group by the SPLC).

She is also, as it happens, the founder of the Illinois Minutemen, and the Illinois spokesperson for the anti-immigrant group You Don’t Speak For Me. She also was a vocal supporter of the virulently anti-immigrant Republican candidate Jim Oberweis in the IL-14 race against Bill Foster to replace Denny Hastert — a guy McCain endorsed and stumped for.

So Pulido filed a scathing report at Free Republic about the meeting with "Juan McCain":

John Mc Cain’s favorite words of the evening were Comprehensive Immigration Reform. But he started out first of all saying if he is gonna win the Presidential election he will need the support of the Latino community.

He said " My state has been enriched by the Hispanic culture in Arizona."

Then John MC Cain asked a question "Did you know this? I bet some of you did not know that Spanish was spoken in Arizona before English" …Loud cheers from the audience. (Ok John Mc Cain What is your AZATLAN POINT?)

Then he said " I want to have some straight talk about our relationship with Mexico,our closest neighbor and dearest friend" He talked about the Mexican President fighting the drug cartels.

Then John McCain aid the exact thing I came to hear, he said "I was proud to work for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and If I am elected President I assure you that in 2009 I will ask Congress to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform." (The crowd goes wild)"It is a Federal Responsibility" he said and continued " we also need a temporary guest worker program"

He then told a story about a day laborer who got picked up this morning, worked all day and then never got paid…We have no Federal Policy, we cannot allow this to happen, he said, He repeated I assure you that I will work for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

John McCain talked about a debate he was in about enforcing the law and he says that the "other side had a lot of "Rhetoric" "you know what I am talking about!" he said.

Funny. When McCain was onstage with his fellow Republican presidential candidates earlier this year (see the video above), he told the audience that he would not even vote for his own immigration-reform bill now, because he was changing to a "secure the borders first" stance.





Then there was the time he appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program, and the exchange went like this:

Bill O’Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we’ve got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don’t need so many.

[crosstalk]

O’Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don’t know, I don’t know. We’ve got to cap it.
McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.

I guess it depends on who McCain is talking to on a given day. Or at a given moment.

But given the way the anti-Latino faction is frothing over his secretive little "I’m your friend just don’t tell anyone" meetings with Latinos, it’s not really any wonder this town hall wasn’t open to the press. His problem is that the same faction is the Republican base. So of course he has to keep it quiet.

After all, how else can he reassure Latinos he’ll do the right thing on immigration despite being at the mercy of a party full of raging nativists? Heaven forfend he should do it in broad daylight. Someone might get the wrong idea.

That might be the problem

-- by Dave

I'm not sure he intended it to come out like that, but Crazy Joe Arpaio -- the Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff who has been on a rampage locking up every Latino in sight -- was quoted thus in yet another feature on "the toughest sheriff in America", this time from Agencie France-Presse:

He's been described as Hitler and a Klu Klux Klansman by Hispanic critics and immigrant rights groups, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio prefers to see himself as an equal opportunities advocate.

"We lock everybody up," he says.

Yeah, Joe, that's kind of what we're afraid of.

Why Did McCain Have A Late-Night, Closed-Door Town Hall With Latinos?

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 John McCain just loves him those town-hall meetings — so much so that it’s becoming his chief way of campaigning: "[I]t not only gives you a chance to hear from me … but it gives me an opportunity to hear from you," he waxes rhapsodic about them.


Yeah, unless you bus in a pre-selected crowd of Latinos in the dead of night and hold your "town hall" meeting. Then, maybe you’re just trying to play both sides of the immigration coin in a bid to two-facedly appeal to Latinos while not letting on that you’re doing so to the nativist base.

Because that’s what McCain did last night in Chicago. In contrast to all of his other town-hall gatherings, this one was invitation-only and generally kept quiet and held late at night. According to news reports, some Latino community leaders were specifically excluded. Instead, they gathered at
the plaza outside the gathering and expressed their disgust.

From Hoy Internet [English translation below]:

"(Latinos) we must begin to respond to the effect that the Republican administration in Washington has had, which has only destroy the U.S. economy and eliminate services to the working people of this country over the past eight years," said Eluid Medina, executive director of Near Northwest Neighborhood Network (NNNN) Humboldt Park and whose name figured in the list of participants of the conference.

Medina, in a telephone interview after the meeting at Federal Plaza, expressed his dissatisfaction with the meeting convened by McCain. "Because if you are going to talk about the problems of Latinos, one cannot be partisan — the problems affect all of us as a community and the meeting had to be open," he said.

But then McCain couldn’t keep making that simultaneous reacharound play for the Republican nativist base, could he?

The Obama Smear Merchants Keep On Smearin’

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]
Here comes the torrent of bullshit.


Yesterday morning Floyd Brown and Co. sent out a press release and e-mail announcing the Barack Obama’s brother had acknowledged he was raised Muslim — something that Obama himself has denied.

According to Floyd Brown, of ExposeObama.com, “Malik Obama, Barack’s half brother, confirms that Barack grew up Muslim.”

Except, of course, that the half-brother never said any such thing. The quote upon which they rely for the claim was a reporter’s not-very-accurate paraphrase; the actual quotes make clear the brother in question converted to Islam well into his adulthood, and never hinted that they’d had a Muslim upbringing (they hadn’t).

Yet like flies to shit, the wingnutosphere sure-enough pounced on it with glee, from Crazy Pam Atlas to LGF to, well, you don’t want to go creeping around some of the corners of the blogosphere where you could find this. But there was also Brit Hume on Fox spreading it:

Throughout his campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has assured his supporters that he is a Christian. He has been battling what his campaign calls an online "smear campaign," which contends, among other things, that Obama was raised as a Muslim. There is even a statement on his official campaign Web site reading, "Obama has never been a Muslim and is a committed Christian."

But, Obama’s half-brother is not so sure. Malik Obama tells the Jerusalem Post that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people — despite his Muslim background.

This one doesn’t come close to passing the sniff test. Even Jake Tapper, who sometimes turns a blind eye to this crap, noticed that the claim was completely bogus:

This interpretation spreading throughout the blogosphere and cable news is just not supported by the facts. The paraphrase was sloppy, for such a sensitive subject, and Malik’s quotes don’t even come close to supporting any assertion that Obama himself has a Muslim background.

Just remember: These stories originate from the very same folks who brought you Willie Horton, the "Clinton conspiracies," the Swift Boaters, and whatever package of lies and bullshit was up for circulating in any given election year of the past two decades. And they’re being run by far-right crackpots — including an "executive director" who was disbarred for selling right-wing tax-fraud conspiracy scams.

Good enough for Fox and the wingnutosphere, obviously.

Where The Wild Things Are Harmed

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]


Remind me never to go on any kind of wilderness expedition with Jonah Goldberg. OK, that’s not the kind of thing I actually need to be reminded about, but still.

After reading his latest columnar epic on the non-virtues of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, I know exactly what kind of campmate he’d be: the one who spills the washwater into everyone’s sleeping bags and burns a big hole in the tent while he’s at it. And then fires off a gun just for fun in bear country (note: gunfire attracts grizzlies, who assume a carcass or guts may be found in the vicinity thereof).

He’s the kind of doofus who thinks that you can just take a bite out of one chunk of an ecosystem and it doesn’t have ripple effects that harm many more creatures than just those found in his immediate view. Which is why he thinks drilling in ANWR — which, incidentally, would neither increase our "energy security" nor do anything about prices at the pump — is harmless, which we’ve known for some time is simply untrue. [The Natural Resources Defense Council has lots more on ANWR.]

There is an illustrative example of this closer to home here in Seattle that involves our resident population of killer whales in the Puget Sound region. An article I wrote last year for Seattle Magazine explored to what extent they’re being harmed, somewhat unthinkingly, by the thousands of people who come out annually to see them in whale-watching boats — tours that, for the most part, tend to be about enhancing the habitat of the Sound’s wildlife:

The problem is self-evident on a typical summer day off the western coast of San Juan Island. When orcas arrive on the scene, they are accompanied by a massive flotilla of boats: whale-watching tour craft intermingled with private recreational boaters, kayakers and regular users of these waters. The boats zoom in and out and around, creating a frenetic scene. At times during the summer, whale observers say the orcas are accompanied by boats from nearly sunup to sundown.

It’s even more apparent to anyone who drops a hydrophone beneath the surface of Haro Strait and listens to the whales’ conversations, which come in the form of whistles, chirps, calls and clicks. Along with those sounds is the cacophony of engine noise, ranging from the high squeals of small outboards to the overpowering thrum created by large vessels en route to Vancouver and points north through the strait. In recent years, scientists have been studying the effects of these boats and the noise they create on the whales; the data they’ve collected indicates that, at least in years when the supply of chinook salmon that comprise the bulk of their diet is low, the boats are amplifying the harm to the whales.

David Bain, a marine biologist who specializes in killer whales (who was with the University of Washington until recently), has been painstakingly collecting acoustic and behavioral data on the southern residents for over 15 years now. Tall, balding and bearded, he’s the epitome of the careful scientist as he explains in a quiet voice that he’s found two things of concern.

Whales do less foraging when the boats are around, he says. “That probably means that they’re eating less, and acquiring less energy. There is an energy balance in whales, and whale watching has an effect on that.” And the sheer number of vessels creates a critical mass of obstacles that whales then have to maneuver around, causing them to expend more energy than they would otherwise, he says.

He notes that even kayaks can be a problem, especially if they dart into the whales’ path or invade their space, and fail to warn the whales of their presence. Still, a kayak that observes the preferred whale-watching guideline of 100 yards’ distance will have almost no effect on the whales because of its silence, while any power boat within audible range is creating at least some level of disturbance.

You get a little sense of this in the video I made that is atop this post, comprised of photos I mostly took from my kayak of San Juan killer whales, and the recordings I made of them with my hydrophone. At one point, you can hear the whales peacefully communicating — and then a boat engine from a private boat that had been watching the whales kicked on and sped off, but the noise they created lingers on (I actually edited down the noise by several minutes, but you get the idea).

In any event, it all stands as a reminder of how easy it is for humans to harm entire ecosystems, and all the creatures within it, unthinkingly — even when we think that we’re appreciating them, let alone when we’re "harmlessly" building roads and pipelines and drilling operations in the midst of a wilderness.

Would that buffoons like Jonah Goldberg could figure that out. In the meantime, could someone keep him away from my tent?

The GOP Recipe: ‘Tear Him Down’

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Republicans are already getting lots of advice in the media on how they can win in November. And the surprise winner? Go negative, go personal, go nasty.

Gosh, like they’ve never done that before.

Gosh, like they weren’t going to do that anyway.

Anyway, there was CNN "senior analyst" Jeffrey Toobin, on Wolf Blitzer’s "Situation Room" Tuesday:

Well, I think there’s a paradox here, which is that McCain has always been a politician who really has been about the issues, about his stands on campaign finance, immigration, whatever he happens to be identified with at that moment. But the way to beat Barack Obama is not on the issues, because the issues support him. He’s the one who has the majority support for the issues he cares about.

The way to attack Obama is to attack him personally, to tear him down, make him seem risky, different, just too unusual a person to be president.

That’s McCain’s challenge if he wants to do it. It’s not something he’s done before. We’ll see if he takes it on this time.

Yeah, because it’s his duty as a Republican, you know. (And for what it’s worth, McCain has run the McNasty style of campaign on more than a few occasions already in his career; but Toobin has a Maverick Man narrative to sell here, and annoying facts have no place at such times.)

BLITZER: If he doesn’t do it, there will be plenty of groups out there, unaffiliated with the campaign, that will be more than happy to do it, right, Jack?

CAFFERTY: Well, yes, I would assume that they will. But you have to be a little careful with some of this stuff, because Barack Obama is a very popular fellow among the average middle class folks in this country. And, again, I go back to that 84 percent who think the country is on the wrong track. McCain is identified as part of the Washington establishment. He’s been there for 26 years. And the way he flip-flops around on the issues, I’m not sure up you can even talk about him being a maverick anymore. It seems that he’s much more politically expedient than maybe used to be.

So I think you’ve got to be a little careful about just coming out and just bashing Barack Obama for the sake of doing it. It could backfire.

TOOBIN: I’m not sure. You know, we often think it’s going to backfire. But going into the last election, who would have thought that John Kerry, the war hero, the Bronze Star winner, could have been attacked on his military record?

That seemed like the one area he was completely bullet-proof. But of course we know about the swift boat attacks. Negative attacks work and it’s something that I think if the Republicans want to win, that’s what they’re going to have to do.

I think the little photoshop job above — which is everywhere on wingnut blogs and websites, a very popular little item — pretty much encapsulates the GOP campaign this fall. No, that’s not a parody.

But it’s a joke to think that McCain is going to have to get his hair mussed. As Cafferty and Blitzer suggest, guys like Floyd Brown and his crew of wack jobs are going to be setting the tone, letting McCain keep his deniability plausible.

And it’ll be "mainstream" pundits like Toobin who will look on approvingly as they do, maintaining their own deniability. Because, you know, they’re just disinterested observers who want to see the most vicious, nasty, ratings-friendly campaign possible — especially if it helps keep those increasingly crumbly Village walls intact.

You know, it’s too bad we can’t vote our pundits out of office at election time too.

Talking down violent rhetoric

-- by Dave

I'm taking part in a roundtable authors' discussion this week at the newly launched Progressive Book Club.

The discussion is about Jeffrey Feldman's excellent new book, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons Our Democracy, which as you can imagine is right up my alley topic-wise.

We're talking with Feldman; Susan Gardner, the executive editor of Daily Kos; and Joe Bodell, a reporter at the Minnesota Monitor.

Here's my first contribution:

I’ve been rereading Jeffrey’s book because it covers so many points so well and so accurately. I think the essential point is one that simply can’t be stressed enough – not just for progressives, but for every citizen who considers himself a member of a civil society: Violent rhetoric (and particularly its eliminationist variant) is not a form of discourse at all, but rather represents the very death of it.

You can see this simply in the effect of the rhetoric itself. Last week Michael Reagan, the right-wing radio talk-show host, went on the air and said this:

There is a group that's sending letters to our troops in Iraq ... claiming 9/11 was an inside job -- oh, yeah, yeah -- and that they should rethink why they're fighting. Who -- we ought to -- excuse me, folks, I'm going to say this: We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them.

Really. Just find the people who are sending those letters to our troops to demoralize our troops and do what they are doing, you take them out, they are traitors to our country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that, deal with it. But anyone who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors -- that's what they are -- and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet.

This kind of talk isn’t about the exchange of opposing ideas – it’s about simply wishing one’s opponents dead. And as much as the rest of us might wish the 9/11 Troofers would stick a sock in it when it comes to their cockamamie conspiracy theories, the idea of taking people out and shooting them is rhetoric that’s not merely anti-democratic, it’s flatly fascist.

So it was with some grim amusement that I read Michael Gerson’s Washington Post column today wringing its ink-stained hands over a Playboy humor piece penned by Al Franken that Gerson found much too much for his tastes. And he concluded:

At the very least, politics should not actively push our culture toward vulgarity and viciousness. This is not prudery; it is a practical concern for the cooperation and mutual respect necessary in a functioning democracy.

You have to wonder where Gerson has been for the past 10 years as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and a host of other right-wing nabobs has been filling our airwaves and polluting our discourse with a real viciousness that goes beyond potty-mouth talk about porn, but open advocates the violent oppression and ultimate elimination of whole sectors of American society – particularly liberals.

Politely applauding, I would guess.

Come join in the fun.

Welcome California!

-- by Sara

...to the roster of civilized places that (starting right this very minute!!) allow people of the same gender to marry.

Up here in Canada, where gay marriage has been a national fait accompli for just over three years now, we straight folk have been keeping a close eye on each other, looking for the smallest sign that all those new legal gay couples we're minting are taking a toll on Marriage As We Know It.

So far, though...nothing. Not a single sign of social decay in sight. Divorces and spousal abuse are at about the same rates. Porn sales, as always. I'm waiting to catch my hubby checking out foxy guys on the street, but so far, he seems as resolutely girl-oriented as ever.

Kinda disappointing, really. Three years, and it's all just as boring as it was before. They'd had us so convinced that we were storming the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah -- and frankly, we were rather looking forward to getting started.

Maybe California will have better luck. Who knows?

It's a damn fine day to be a native Californian. I'm so proud of Gavin Newsom, and the courageous gay rights activists, and the judges who backed them all the way up to very end in the aftermath of what had to be the happiest act of civil disobedience ever. We're here because of them. Remember them and smile next time someone tries to tell you liberals don't have great big brass ones.

Massachusetts -- and now, California. That's not quite one-seventh of the US that's now on board with same-sex marriage. (If New York joins the club, which could happen soon, it'll be closer to one-fifth.) From here on out, the rest of you are going to have to catch up -- or come up with a far, far better excuse as to why you think the words "full faith and credit" no longer apply to you.

Updated with corrections 12:10 am

McCain and Latinos: Ol’ Two-Face Can’t Shed The ‘R’ Brand

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

John McCain would love probably love dearly to shed the nativist dead weight that is the rest of the Republican Party. But he can’t — most of all because it’s not in his nature. Mr. "Straight Talk" can’t help but pander to whoever his audience is.

So when he’s surrounded by nativists, he talks like them, getting all tough on "border security." When he’s in a more thoughtful setting, he gets all fuzzy about "comprehensive reform."

It’s already gotten him into trouble with the nativist wing — which ranges from the Malkinite and Tancredoan wingnuts to the Ron Paulian wingnuts, who actually hate each other but are united in their loathing of the GOP nominee, referring to him as "Juan" McCain. He keeps making gestures in their direction, but so far it is not working very well.

And it’s selling even worse with Latinos, who already suspect McCain of opportunism simply because he’s a Republican in the mold of Bush (lots of nice talk but an ugly reality). When he openly panders to his party’s wingnuts, as he’s been doing, the suspicions turn to a big fat thumbs down.

According to the most recent NBC poll, Barack Obama leads McCain among Hispanic voters by a 62-28 percentage margin. That’s much worse than even the 44 percent of the Latino vote that Bush reportedly managed to get in 2004 (at least according to some exit polls, though other polls showed him faring much worse).

McCain believes he can do better, but it sounds like wishful thinking. A sympathetic piece at Real Clear Politics (which gives a generous accounting of his flip-flopping on immigration) quotes an optimistic campaign spokesman:

Nationally, McCain will have work to do in convincing Latinos to join him. "Do [Hispanics] know John McCain? The answer is, well, not yet," said Lionel Sosa, a Republican ad maker who has already cut advertisements for McCain in advance of the general election.

Actually, they may be getting to know him all too well. McCain, after all, plays the same pander-to-the-audience schtick on other issues: torture, wiretapping, the Iraq war, on and on.

Still, his biggest problem with Latinos, as the WaPo notes, is the Republican brand in general, especially on immigration, where the debate has turned into an outright Latino-bashing frenzy:

McCain’s problem will be the tarnished reputation of his party. Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, points out that nothing may affect him among Latinos as much as the "R" beside his name. While McCain will remain sufficiently moderate on immigration, despite some politically expedient tips of the hat to certain segments of the conservative base, the GOP’s association with hard-line measures is a galvanizing force among Latino voters. While only half of them are immigrants, most have come to see the anti-illegal immigrant crusade of the last three years as an anti-Latino movement.

… But it may turn out that Obama’s best allies for getting out the Latino vote will be Bush’s Homeland Security Department and media personalities that live to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment. While the immigration issue has faded from the presidential campaign, the increase in raids throughout the country — the number of undocumented immigrants arrested at workplaces rose more than sevenfold between 2002 and 2006 — and the continued pounding of the issue in primetime by Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck will keep it very much alive for Latino voters. And that will only benefit the Democrats.

There was some concern, however, heading out of the primaries that Obama might have trouble attracting Latino votes, since a substantial majority of Hispanics preferred Hillary Clinton in a number of large states. But that concern hasn’t panned out, and it has a lot to do with what the two candidates are offering.

A piece by Maribel Hastings of the Spanish-language La Opinion newspaper examined some of the reasoning that’s taking place among voters:

Upon closer scrutiny of both candidate positions, there are differences. For example, McCain opposes the Dream Act that benefits undocumented students and Obama supports it; McCain opposes giving driving licenses to illegal immigrants; Obama supports it.

Nevertheless, both would vote in favor of building a wall on the southern border.
"But the most important differences are less obvious and have to do with what type of reform they’ll propose and try to pass," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

According to Munoz, McCain’s talk on immigration changes "depending on his audience."

"We had George Bush’s heart behind immigration reform and that wasn’t enough. I think John McCain’s heart is behind the legislation but we don’t know if he wants or would be able to really push through the type of reform he wants," she added.

"Not only is he trying to placate Latino voters, but the anti-immigrant side of his party as well, and this will constrain him in an important way" said Munoz.

… But, according to Munoz, the fact that Obama promises to advance immigration reform in the beginning of his possible administration not only is a message to the immigrant community but also to Congress.

"It’s the type of difference with [John McCain] that is less obvious but equally important: the quality of the compromise," she concluded.

There’s also the quality of the candidate. One panders, the other leads.  If Obama continues on that path, and makes that distinction clear to voters, he has a chance now to secure the Latino vote by a substantial margin. But it isn’t an opportunity that can wait.

Meanwhile, be sure to read Roberto Lovato’s thoughts on Obama and McCain.

Some Stay-At-Home Father’s Day Thoughts

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 It’s now been a full school year since I officially ended my stint as a full-time stay-at-home dad. I was Fiona’s primary caregiver from the day her mom returned to work (about three months after her birth) until she enrolled full time in first grade in the fall of last year. The ensuing near-year has given me enough distance and time to think about the meaning of that six-year stint.


I haven’t yet managed to seriously organize my thoughts, but the distance has led me to a number of random observations:

– There is, of course, the whole masculinity issue involved in such an undertaking. I’ve written previously a little about this. Mostly, as I said then, it can be a struggle at times, particularly if you’ve been culturally hard-wired with the whole man-as-breadwinner thing; but the real rewards dwarfed any of those insecurities into insignificance.

– People’s assumptions told me a lot about the stereotypes people have about fathers. I was assumed to be a divorcee enjoying my custody days with Fiona; a grandfather (comes with being an older parent); a husband taking days off to give Mom a break; and a dirty fucking hippie. Guilty on the last count.

– There is a profound realization you have about the meaning of love that comes with being a parent; I know this is all a cliche, but it’s something that smacks you over the head no matter how much you hear about it in advance.

Now, some people are smug about parenthood because of this and conclude that they have a special insight into the nature of love and meaning. But I for one am not so certain. Love comes in so many shapes and forms so many different kinds of meaning for different people that it’s impossible to make an adequate comparison to anyone else’s life experience.

But fear, I can talk about. You never really know the meaning of fear until you are a parent. Really.
– I’m still flabbergasted by men who don’t want to be involved fathers. Dudes, you have no fricking idea what you are missing. A deep bond with your child is a treasure beyond any material object on
the planet; that’s not sentiment, it’s fact.

– There is a certain amount of resistance on the part of some women to stay-at-home dads. Some of this felt like simple old territoriality to me, but there was also a comfort zone attached to the all-female state of my child play areas (after all, who wants some guy hanging about while you discuss breastfeeding issues with your fellow moms?). On the other hand, there were always women who were openly envious of my wife. I managed to mostly navigate these waters by playing the part of a clueless dopey male. (I’m really really good at this.)

But I couldn’t help feeling that many of these mothers, as I noted before, saw child care as drudgery, whereas for me it was an intriguing adventure. And it occurred to me that if stay-at-home dads were more common it would be less intriguing for men but also a lot less drudgery for women. It would be a sign that the work of raising children was being given the value it deserved.

– It’s probably not an easy role reversal for women, either. Who wants to come home to a frumpy mate covered in baby food and reeking of changed diapers? Though it can’t be easy taking on the role and responsibility of chief breadwinner, either (especially when you work for a famous software company most famous for wringing 70-hour workweeks out of its employees). I was very fortunate that way — especially since along the way my wife, Lisa D., wound up subsidizing and almost wholly sponsoring my blogging and book-writing career. Even on Father’s Day, I owe her a world of thanks.

– A simple summation: Best job I ever had. Or ever will have.

Happy Father’s Day to my fellow dads. And for those of you thinking about staying home and taking the role of primary caregiver, and wondering if they really want to do all those diaper and feeding and stroller things … well, all I can say is: You will not regret it. Because in the long run, those memories just fade away. And the good ones, the ones the matter, they remain.