This should answer the question as to WHY the Teabaggers are drawn to Sarah Palin.

And if that was not enough to make you sick to your stomach,  Garry Trudeau also added this snippet from Joe's book:

"Wasilla was so white that there was only one African American in the entire school system. One day when the boy was in junior high school, Todd, then a senior, and two friends waylaid him by the gravel pit adjacent to Wasilla High and beat him up, simply because he was black. 'Sure, Todd was a racist bully, but that just made him one of the guys. Growing up black in Wasilla was hell.'" — from The Rogue, by Joe McGinniss

(Cartoon and text courtesy of  Doonesbury.com)

I have to tell you that this just sickens me. I am so ashamed that this person became the living representative of my state.  And I want all of you to know that not ALL Alaskans are ignorant gun toting racists.

But clearly our half term Governor and her pimp of a husband are.

Perhaps later, when I am not quite so pissed off, I will tell you a story about my brush with racism and how I handled it. I will give you this hint, Todd Palin would have had a VERY different experience if he had gone to my high school!

o'sign - in Alabama

From: lc Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 Subject:  New Sign in Alabama

---

Anti-immigration activist claims that President Obama is trying to end "White America" and suggests violence may be necessary to stop him.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

Is President Obama allowing millions of Central Americans to live in the United States illegally as part of his secret plan to destroy "White America"? According to William Gheen of the group Americans For Legal Immigration, the answer is a resounding "yes." Gheen told a conservative talk radio show earlier this week that if things don't improve under "Dictator Obama," patriotic Americans may resort to possibly violent, "revolutionary means." (Gheen, as Media Matters pointed out, has been a frequent presence on Fox News and at tea party rallies). 

Here's what Gheen told talk show host Janet Mefferd: 

"What Janet Napolitano has spent most of her time doing in the last couple of months has been, one, preparing the new spy network that's available now, the new data-collecting, see everything you do online, beyond the normal terrorist list that they’re creating, they’re creating a much larger list now of people who might be troublesome here in the country. And putting out videos and propaganda telegraphing what I believe to be a conflict with White America they’re preparing for after they get another 10 or 15 million people in the country to back them up... "

"We're no longer referring to him as President Barack Obama, our national organization has made the decision and made the announcement we now refer to him as Dictator Barack Obama. That's what he is. And basically at this point, if you're looking for a peaceful, political recourse there really isn't one that we can think of, and I'm really not sure what to tell people out there than I guess they need to make decisions soon to just accept whatever comes next or some type of extra-political activities that I can't really talk about because they're all illegal and violent."

Gheen has since clarified (sort of) that he doesn't personally support violence as a political tool, but believes President Obama isn't leaving freedom-loving Americans with much a choice. 

As insane as this guy seems to be, we MUST pay attention to this kind of rhetoric. I really believe that once President Obama wins a second term that we are going to see a serious uptick in violence laden hyperbole, naked racism, and increased enlistment in militias and 2nd Amendment groups.

In other words, as bad as things are now, I really fear they could get much worse.

New Jersey Republican lawmaker resigns after his wife sends racist e-mail to Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis.

Courtesy of AP:

Pat Delany stepped down from the state Assembly this month and said he wouldn’t seek a full term in November because of his wife’s missive to Lewis’ campaign, Burlington County Republican Chairman Bill Layton said. Delany originally cited an unspecified family issue as the reason for his abrupt resignation. 

Delany and his wife, Jennifer Delany, are white. Lewis, a political novice who’s among the greatest athletes of all time, is black. 

Jennifer Delany’s email to Lewis’ campaign said, in part, “Imagine having dark skin and name recognition and the nerve to think that equaled knowing something about politics.” 

Layton said Pat Delany decided to leave office to shield his three children from “a hurtful and embarrassing public spectacle involving their mother.” 

“Former Assemblyman Pat Delany’s wife inexplicably sent an offensive and racist email in response to a routine email from Carl Lewis’ campaign; her actions were inexcusable,” Layton said. 

Delany said in a statement that he and his wife don’t share the same racial views. 

He said he was sorry.“On behalf of my family, we sincerely apologize to Mr. Lewis for any pain this caused him,” he said. 

Neither the Delanys nor Lewis could be reached by telephone for comment Monday.

You might think I would be used to it by now, but I STILL find myself shocked by the amount of racism that has bubbled to the surface since the election of Barack Obama. It is like the country was nothing more than a pus filled boil that the election pierced, thereby releasing the rancid infection lying just beneath the surface and allowing it to spill forth onto our airwaves and political landscape.

I want to feel badly for this guy, especially if it is true that "he and his wife don't share the same racial views," however that might NOT be accurate according to this article:

“Three South Jersey Republican lawmakers want to cut off public funding from colleges that enroll illegal immigrants. 

A bill from state Senator Dawn Marie Addiego and Assemblymen Scott Rudder and Pat Delany, all R-Burlington, would take away shares of the state’s $850 million budget for higher education from any school determined to have admitted illegal immigrants to the student body. 

Yeah that sounds like typical Teabagger code for "keep the darkies out of our schools."

I am wondering if both Rep. Delany AND his wife share these same racist views, but only she was careless enough to let the cat out of the bag publicly?

What do you think?

Amen

Sarah Palin complains to Sean Hannity that some Americans consider her and the Teabaggers "terrorists." Truth hurts, don't it?

I CANNOT believe that Hannity would dare to bring up Gabby Giffords' name, only days after her miraculous return to the floor of Congress after the assassination attempt against her, to use as an example of how Sarah Palin has been unfairly treated.  That is absolutely disgusting!

And then in the very next handful of sentences, with no sense of irony whatsoever, Palin brings up the long dead issue of Obama's minor association with Bill Ayers. This of course fires Hannity up and he goes off on how he was virtually the ONLY one who kept bringing up the Obama/Ayers connection. (Gee I wonder why dumbass?)

At one point Palin even says: “if we were real domestic terrorists, I don’t think President Obama would have a problem with us.”

Okay so is she saying that it is open season on condemning people for their associations?


Well thanks for the opportunity Sister Sarah.  I guess that means it is perfectly reasonable to remind Americans that you aggressively defended a talk show host who repeatedly screamed racial epithets at an African American woman on her radio show? Or that you were once the team manager of convicted murderer Jeremy Morlock's hockey team? Or that both you and Joe Miller have increasingly strong ties to Schaeffer Cox and his radical militia group?

Since Obama's tenuous connection to a man who was a radical over forty years ago, can be used to condemn him, than what do we make of Sarah Palin's multiple associations with known racists, murderers, and terrorists, whose crimes have happened in the very recent past?

After all Sarah, you do remember this guy don't you?

Eddie Burke, Palin-bot, racist, Teabagger, and ex-radio host.

One has to wonder if Palin is even remotely aware of how fragile her glass house is, while searching the ground for the next rock to throw?

(H/T to Mediaite.)

Have you wondered lately if racism is alive and well in Arkansas? This should answer you question.

H/T for photo to The Blaze

Courtesy of Think Progress:

A high school student in Arkansas was blocked from receiving sole valedictorian honors this summer, despite earning the highest G.P.A. in her class and receiving only a single B in her four years at McGehee Secondary School. Kymberly Wimberly’s offense? She’s black. School administrators worried that Wimberly’s accomplishment would result in a “big mess” at the majority-white school, so Principal Darrell Thompson told the student’s mother “that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian,” even though the white student had a lower G.P.A. The matter is currently pending in federal court.

Let me remind you that today's date is July 29, 2011, NOT July 29, 1965.

Today we also have a black man in the White House, a female Secretary of State, and a personal computer in virtually every one of our homes.  Yet in Arkansas a black female CANNOT take her place as valedictorian of her high school without having a white person assigned to share in her moment.

If certain people get into positions of power in this country, this is but a hint of the things to come.

Finally we have a little Teabagger truth in advertising!

Just in case you cannot read the proprietor's t-shirt here is a close up.

Here is more from Wonkette:

Yes, the brown “INFIDEL” t-shirts read, “Everything I Need to Know About Islam I Learned on 9/11,” which is why they are calling themselves “infidels,” for irony.

Well at least I am glad to finally see a Teabagger own up to the racism which is the true source of his anger toward our President, and which has inspired him to get off his lazy ass to finally get involved in the political process. The only thing left to decide is whether to support Sarah Palin, or Michele Bachmnn, which most likely depends on which one gets the flag waving on his little flagpole faster.

But hey the ditsy duo better watch out, because it looks like there is a new player on the field and he is perfectly cast to be the new Teabagger political darling.

A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is considering a Republican presidential nomination, it has been reported.

David Duke, arguably America's most infamous white-power advocate, is planning a 25-state tour this month to gauge interest in a potential run for the White House, according to the Daily Beast.

Duke denies that he is a racist. Instead he likes to think of himself as a 'racial realist.'

'I understand that there are intrinsic differences between peoples and that those differences have profound effects on society,' he wrote on his website.

'I also believe all people have a basic human right to preserve their own heritage.'

All over the country Teabaggers are sitting straight up in their La-Z-Boy's, turning to the second cousins they married, and saying "Didja feel that Ethel? I think the teabagging Messiah, might have finally arrived."

Give it up Sarah, you are going to need something much more substantial than just trotting out the girls to seduce the Teabaggers away from David Duke.

Maybe if you put little KKK hoods on them?

How the Birthers See Obama's Birth Certificate

Yup...

* * *
B-I-N-G-O!

(click to enlarge)

In Remembrance

¡Hola! Everybody...
The exploitation of King’s name, the distortion of his teachings by conservatives, is one of the uglier developments in contemporary American life. I agree with Michael Eric Dyson that the “I have a Dream Speech” should be put to rest for at least ten years...

The audio (after the jump) clip is Robert F. Kennedy's eulogy on the day of MLK's assassination. The words are chilling in light of the direction our nation has taken and the fact that RFK was also cut down by an assassin two months later.

* * *

-=[ Misquoting the Dream ]=-

A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.,Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, mainstream society viewed him mostly with fear and contempt. In response to King’s anti-war stance (as expressed in a 1967 speech), TIME magazine called King a “demagogue for Radio Hanoi.” Years later, Reagan the Great damned King as a near communist.

Today, however, a miracle has taken place in America: Dr. King, it’s now been discovered, was a conservative! By taking a snippet from one 1963 address Dr. King has been co-opted by the right as the most quoted opponent of affirmative action in America today.

While the transformation of King from communist to conservative is almost complete, it deserves an explanation.

It should come as no surprise that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have his words taken out of context. After all, King’s status today effectively ensures that conservative writers, academics, pundits, and politicians will feel compelled to borrow King’s words to advance an agenda. What better political plum than claiming the ideological support of an iconic figure such as King? Nowhere is the tendency to “play the King card” more evident than in the claim by dozens of contemporary conservative writers, academics, pundits, and politicians that King’s basic goal was “color-blindness” and that he viewed such visual impairment as the road by which racism would best be addressed.

Typically, conservatives rely on one line from one speech. Of course it’s only the most famous line delivered by King, one of the few most folks have probably heard: the one from the 1963 March on Washington, the “I Have a Dream” speech in which he expressed the hope that one day persons “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” For conservatives, this is proof that King would oppose race-conscious policies such as affirmative action, since, after all, such efforts require an acknowledgment of race.

Conservatives of all colors and stripes have clung to this line as a rallying cry in their war against “reverse discrimination.” Shelby Steele, for example, in The Content of Our Character (the title obviously used in order to evoke the famous King line) is harsh critique of affirmative action policies, claiming they have “done more harm than good” and implying that King would agree. Steele seeks to prove this not only with reference to the “Dream” speech, but also by recounting a 1964 presentation in which King implored black youth to get ahead: the implication being that King was an apostle of the myth of rugged individualism and hostile to special efforts to provide full opportunities for people of color.

In similar fashion, many other conservatives have misrepresented King. If you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time, I am sure you have run up against the now ubiquitous practice of the cutting-and-pasting of the Kool-Aid King. See if you notice any of the following...

Clint Bolick, a leading critic of affirmative action, wrote in 1996 that King did not seek “special treatment” for blacks, and cites the “content of their character” remark as justification for his position. Tamar Jacoby wrote in 1998 that King’s “dream” was color-blindness. The Thernstroms, in the social science bible, America in Black and White, make the same claim. Paul Sniderman wrote, “The civil rights movement... took as its ideal a truly colorblind society, where, as Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied, our children would be judged... ” by, yup, you guessed it, you know what.

Some have gone further and have advanced the notion that the modern civil rights movement’s support of affirmative action is a betrayal of King. Dinesh D'Souza, in End of Racism, states authoritatively that affirmative action is a “... repudiation of King’s vision, in that it involves a celebration and affirmation of group identity.” He makes the bold assertion that Black leaders are the antithesis of Martin Luther King's principles, which he defines as the ideology that “race should be ignored and we should be judged on our merits as persons.” Strangely, D'Souza calls for the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, arguably the greatest legislative achievement of the movement King led.

Yet, despite the overwhelming noise by the right that Dr. King principally sought color-blindness and would have opposed affirmative action, even a cursory examination of his writings makes such a position extremely difficult to defend. King never said he believed that the best way to achieve the dream of racial and economic equality was to pretend racism had vanished. Nothing could be further from his principles. In fact, contrary to the popular modern fiction advanced by conservatives, King favored quotas, affirmative action, reparations, and race-based hiring as immediate relief from systemic racism. This is an unpleasant bit of history to those who have tried to turn him into a (safely dead) black conservative with which to bash liberals. But it was his actual views.

From the outset, King placed responsibility for the nation’s racial inequality squarely on whites. In an article written in 1956 and included in James Washington’s edited collection, Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., King wrote that whites had “rejected the very center of their own ethical professions... and so they rationalized” the conditions under which they had forced blacks to live. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in 1963, King specifically criticized white ministers and white moderates, who he condemned for being “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” and whom he said were perhaps more of a barrier to true freedom for blacks than the Klan. This is the letter in which he famously wrote that an unjust law was no law at all. In short, King was hardly color-blind. He was clear as to who the victims and who the chief perpetrators of racism were -- and he said so in clear and forceful language.

It is true that King called for universal programs of economic and educational opportunity for all the poor, regardless of race. However, he also saw the need for programs targeted at the victims of American racial apartheid. King was even clearer on affirmative action. In a 1963 article in Newsweek (published the very month of the “I Have a Dream” speech), King suggested it might be necessary to have something similar to “discrimination in reverse” as a form of national atonement for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.

The most direct articulation of his views on the subject is found in 1963, in Why We Can't Wait, King noted:

“Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”

In a 1965 Playboy interview, King spelled out what that something special might entail, and it was far more substantive than affirmative action. In fact, King stated his support for an aid package for black America for $50 billion.

I am not saying that King's thoughts on this issue should be the determining factor on how people should feel about affirmative action or other race-conscious efforts. How they feel and think about the legacy and abiding problem of discrimination is up to them. No one should assume that simply because Dr. King appears to have supported such efforts that this necessarily makes King, and those who support affirmative action today, correct.

I am trying to point out how conservatives are compelled to link their views to King (and misrepresent and warp King’s message in the process) in an attempt to dismantle or disparage such programs. I find it the height of dishonesty and hypocrisy to claim the mantle of King's moral authority. Regardless of the debate over the effectiveness or legitimacy of affirmative action, it is only fair and just to insist that we present King’s views honestly and completely and not attempt to use his words for purposes he would have found unacceptable.

Love,

Eddie

Update #1: Came across this excellent piece via an online friend. If any of this even remotely consevative, please contact me ASAP!

White Supremacists' Distortion of Immigration

¡Hola! Everybody...
As usual, the white supremacist "chatter tank," FAIR, spews put yet another report riddled with methodological errors. This is nothing new, I've written previously about the "studies" churned by FAIR, its sister organization CIS, and other like-minded organizations. Most of these documented hate groups are basically cover for white racism. They get plenty of airplay on the mainstream media, hence lending these extremist hate groups a veneer of respectability. If you ever find yourself debating an anti-immigrant goober from Hooterville, chances are that he or she will sooner or later cite FAIR, CIS, or Vdare propaganda.
I call this crap, "bigotry dressed as research."

Here, another FAIR "study" gets taken apart... You be the judge.

FAIR's Distorted Fiscal Snapshot of Unauthorized Immigrants

New Report Ignores Economic Contributions of Unauthorized Workers and Consumers; Views the Education of Their U.S.-Citizen Children as Nothing More Than a "Cost"

Released by the Immigration Policy Center on Tuesday, Jul 06, 2010

Washington D.C. - Today, Fox News is reporting on data provided to them by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which amounts to a highly misleading fiscal snapshot of the costs allegedly imposed on U.S. taxpayers by unauthorized immigrants. However, in its rush to portray unauthorized immigrants as nothing more than a drain on the public treasury, FAIR completely discounts the economic contributions of unauthorized workers and consumers. Moreover, FAIR inflates their cost estimate by indiscriminately lumping together native-born, U.S.-citizen children with their unauthorized parents.

FAIR's report suffers from three fatal flaws:

• The report notes that the single biggest "expense" it attributes to unauthorized immigrants is the education of their children, yet most of these children are native-born, U.S. citizens who will grow up to be tax-paying adults. It is disingenuous to count the cost of investing in the education of these children, so that they will earn higher incomes and pay more in taxes when they are adults, as if it were nothing more than a cost incurred by their parents.
  
• The report fails to account for the purchasing power of unauthorized consumers, which supports U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs.
  
• The report ignores the value added to the U.S. economy by unauthorized workers, particularly in the service sector.

In contrast to FAIR's report, the Perryman Group estimated that if all unauthorized workers and consumers were somehow removed from the U.S. economy, the United States would lose $552 billion in total economic activity ("expenditures"), $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 2.8 million jobs.

FAIR's data is meant only to reinforce their vision of "attrition through enforcement." It is not rooted in an effort to move the immigration debate forward. The public and the President have made it clear that deporting 11-12 million immigrants isn't reasonable or feasible. Therefore, passing comprehensive immigration reform - which would yield a cumulative $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years - is the only sound economic decision the United States can make.

View Release

Bigotry Dressed as Research

¡Hola! Everybody…
This is the goober redneck muthafuckas (yeah that reads correctly) attempting to disguise their xenophobia as concern for “the rule of law,” or passing out propaganda dressed as “research.”

* * *

-=[ Bigotry Dressed as Research ]=

The anti-immigrant faction hide their bigotry mostly as “concern” for the largely fabricated crises attributed to immigration. In effect, they’re demanding that my rights (or the rights of any person of color) be abridged in the name of “national security.” In this way, they hypocritically hide behind the racism of the “show me you papers” Arizona immigration law (AZ SB1070) and other such measures.

Never mind that a large body of research on undocumented immigrants from a broad range of institutions show the allegations of the anti-immigrant crowd are groundless. Disregard that the most vocal anti-immigrant organizations are hate groups -- documented nativists and white supremacists. No! Don’t look at that! The anti-immigrant bigots assure us that all they want is to make us all safe from the feces-smearing, disease-ridden, promiscuous, lazy, shiftless messakins, and their third world ways, who come here to live off welfare and (paradoxically) take away all the good jobs.

Two organizations, FAIR and CIS (actually, they are one organization, both founded, funded, and run by documented eugenicists, nativists, and white supremacists) are often cited by the goobers as viable, credible supportive evidence for their claims. (I will have more to say about the historical connection between immigration and white supremacists, xenophobes, and racists at a later date.)

Anti-immigrant hate groups' studies make the wildest claims and if you're debating a goober anti-immigrant bigot, you can be sure they will try to slip by a FAIR or CIS-backed study. The problem is the studies are hugely flawed.

Notice that a broad range of credible research organizations, using well-known and accredited social scientists, largely dispute the findings of CIS, FAIR (and also NumbersUSA). Notice also these organizations have documented ties with white supremacists, or actually have these cretins in positions of power. This should make anyone looking to honestly inform themselves about immigration think twice. But conservatives have never been known for their moral reasoning or honesty (though they love to pontificate on morality).

Take, for example the following FAIR “study,” which makes the claim regarding the economic impact of immigration:

“The fiscal costs of illegal immigration do not end with these three major cost areas. The total costs of illegal immigration to the state’s taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas such as special English instruction, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers were also calculated.”

Yet, when a credible researcher looked at the FAIR study on the economic impact of the children of undocumented immigrants, he found it made many unsupported claims and that its numbers crunching just don’t add up:

“... the report’s own statistics do not support this claim. Even if the report is correct in its assertion that the cost to states was $7.4 billion in 1999-2000, this represents only 1.9 percent of the $381.8 billion spent nationwide on public elementary and secondary education and a minuscule fraction of the roughly $1 trillion in total spending by state governments. Moreover, the report neglects to mention the estimated 1.1 million undocumented K-12 students in 2000 comprised a mere 2 percent of the total student population and that many state governments -- including California’s -- were running budget surpluses at that time. [emphasis added] It is no more plausible to claim that undocumented students are somehow largely to blame for current budget deficits than it is to claim they deserve most of the credit for the budget surpluses of three years ago.”

“... the FAIR report argue[s] that ‘communities’ limited tax dollars are being diverted to accommodate mass illegal immigration.’ This conveniently ignores the fact that immigrants are part of the taxpaying community. The report attempts to get around the issue by saying that while it ‘is reasonable to ask whether the costs of educating illegal alien students is offset by the taxes paid by their parents…study after study shows that immigrants cost taxpayers more in public services use than they pay in to the system via taxes.’”

Notice that last sentence. The FAIR study makes the factual claim (without documentation) that undocumented immigration has a negative impact on the US economy. Not only is this a false claim, the exact opposite is true:

“However, this simply is not true. In the most authoritative study to date on the economic costs and benefits of immigration, 1997’s The New Americans, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that ‘the average immigrant pays nearly $1,800 more in taxes than he or she costs in benefits’ and that immigrants make a net contribution of “as much as $10 billion a year” to the U.S. economy.”

But here’s the kick in the ass:

“It also is worth noting that The New Americans emphasizes a key fact overlooked in any analysis, such as FAIR’s, which tries to estimate the net “costs” of immigration by taking a single-year snapshot of the economy: ‘Children who consume services and pay no taxes today become contributing taxpayers tomorrow.’” (click here for the brief take-down of FAIR's shoddy research practices)

In short, FAIR and CIS are not so much “research” organizations, but a part of a loud and hysterical anti-immigrant movement given free reign on mainstream media though they are thinly veiled racist organizations spewing hate propaganda.

And I have found the same methodologically flawed tendency in most of the studies done by anti-immigrant organizations. For example, there was the one study claiming that Mexicans were responsible for a spike in rates of leprosy. That study’s “findings,” repeated for weeks on the now defunct Lou Dobbs program on CNN, and done by someone with no real social science, or epidemiological training, was later found to be totally false. When Dobbs was confronted by this on a 60 Minutes segment, he refused to acknowledge the mistake and continued airing segments connecting undocumented immigrants with fabricated “disease plagues.” The same was found to be true of studies blaming immigrants from everything to crime to the theory that undocumented immigrants are part of a conspiracy to retake the southwest (click here for a full expose of the hate groups featured on mainstream media as credible organizations)

Whatever your position on immigration, the one criteria for a sane public discourse should be a discussion based on the facts, not the hysteria of bigoted goobers masquerading as legitimate organizations.

Fuckin’ redneck muthafuckas dressed in labcoats. SMH

-- Eddie

Arizona: Failed State

¡Hola! Everybody…
I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I get caught cruising porn while at work, I will most likely be at the unemployment office the next day, being informed I don’t qualify for gross negligence or something like that.

Enter republican Florida state senator Mike Bennett, captured on video Thursday morning looking at pornographic material on his state-issued computer while on the Senate floor. (click here to watch).

Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a colleague’s voice in the background debating a controversial right-wing-sponsored abortion bill. “I’m against this bill,” said the colleague, “because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.”

I can’t make this shit up, folks…

* * *

-=[ Blaming Messakins ]=-

SB1070: Symbol of Arizona’s Failed Economy and Right-Wing Politics

[Note: While doing some research for a post I had in mind, I came across the following. I can’t improve on it, and I feel it’s too important. It offers a brief highlight of the failed economic policies that have brought Arizona to its knees. I am re-posting it in the hopes that it gets the attention it deserves. Links are in italics]

If other state leaders, even conservative ones from border states like Texas, are not rushing to copy SB1070, it's because whatever their partisan politics, they don't share the peculiar brand of pathological right-wing politics and the hollow economy that has left Arizona such a political and economic basket case.

Other states have grappled with a range of programs to reform their economies and budgets during the current economic crisis. That Arizona's claim to fame in this crisis is immigrant bashing in the form of SB1070 is symbolic of years, even decades of failed political and economic policies. That Arizona politics has promoted low-wage jobs that have left state residents with falling individual incomes relative to the rest of the nation and conditions for the state's children that rank at the bottom of the nation. Since the current economic recession began in December 2007, Arizona has lost 265,000 jobs, or 9.9 percent of the state’s employment . And with little else to offer the unemployed, scapegoating immigrants has become a substitute in Arizona for having a real solution to solving the economic needs of its residents.

Individual Incomes Fall Behind the Nation: For decades, Arizona's average wages and income have been falling behind other states. A University of Arizona business school study from 2005 noted that “over the long term, the real income of the average Arizonan has lagged behind the rest of the nation... Arizona slipped from 94 percent of the U.S. level in 1970 to 86 percent in 2003.” While the bubble economy in the state of the mid-decade gave a slight bump to individual incomes in the state, per capita income fell 4 percent from 2008 to 2009 after having been stagnant for the previous two years, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported. Arizona was tied for fourth place with Idaho in having the highest drop in personal incomes per capita. Nationally, the decline last year was 2.6 percent.

An Economy Built on a Construction Bubble: The Urban Land Institute has referred to Phoenix as the “poster child” for the housing downturn and bad mortgages. The average price paid for office space in the Phoenix metro area tumbled more than 50 percent one year in 2009. Back in 2006, when growth peaked, about 30 percent of the Phoenix area’s economic output was tied to real estate and construction; subtract that bubble economic engine and even the nominal job growth in the state during the last decade collapsed into unemployment and foreclosures.

Part of the problem is that state leaders encouraged a low-wage, bubble-based economic strategy that added a mirage of job and population growth during the last decade, but left the state with poor fundamentals for long-term growth when the financial bubble collapsed nationally. Highlighting the weak economic underpinnings of the state economy, the Arizona Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metropolitan area ranked near the bottom, 192nd of 200 metro areas, for growth in high-tech gross domestic product from 2003 through 2008, according to the Milken Institute.

Fiscal Solutions More Irresponsible Than Any in Nation: Arizona's fiscal crisis is considered one of the worst in the country by the Pew Center on the States. Since 1992, the state has approved 42 tax cuts to its three major revenue sources -- personal and corporate income, and sales -- and eliminated statewide property taxes that accrued to the general fund-- and despite promises of right-wing economic nirvana, the results have been low personal income growth and a generally low-level of resources for human needs.

Arizona has some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, 18.9 percent of the state lacks health insurance, and 276,500 Arizona children do not have coverage. In the most recent Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual “Kids Count” report, Arizona ranked 40th in the nation in child well-being, one of the worst in the nation for its teen birth rate (46th), high-school dropout rate (46th) and percentage of children not attending school and not working (44th).

But what truly distinguishes Arizona is its right-wing, inhumane and short-sighted approaches to addressing its current fiscal problems:

• State leaders passed a law to abolish the state’s KidCare program providing children's health care to 40,000 kids, the only state in the country to take such a step, and only reversed themselves when they discovered they would forfeit billions in federal dollars if they did so.
• Wide-ranging cuts in programs across the state, from eliminating full-day kindergarten to cutting state employee salaries to removing 10,000 families from TANF cash assistance.
• Two-thirds of Arizona state parks will be closed.

And this has been combined with a whole range of other right-wing and just plain kooky laws promoted by the Arizona's legislature.

SB1070 Will Make Arizona's Economic Problems Worse: Passing SB1070 will simply deepen the state's economic crisis. As the National Employment Law Project points out, smaller-scale anti-immigrant ordinances have cost individual localities millions of dollars. And other studies estimate SB1070 will further decimate Arizona’s economy by driving immigrant families, undocumented and legal residents alike, from the state, further depressing demands for goods and already vacant housing tracts.

The Arizona Republic detailed, “More than 100,000 undocumented immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years because of the bad economy and earlier enforcement crackdowns. Now, a new wave of Latinos is preparing to leave.”

“So, rather than massive deportations, we are basically going to encourage them to leave on their own,” said State Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who is also a criminal-justice professor at Scottsdale Community College. But even he admits that the law will likely drive legal residents and their families out of the state.

The Texas-based Perryman Group found if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and other local leaders anticipate a drop in new business creation in the state because of the new hostile environment. Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski observed: “We’re the laughing stock of the country because of these crazy laws.”

(From the Progressive States Network. H/T to the antiracismdsa blog)

Love,

Eddie

Police State

¡Hola! Everybody...
The following is anecdotal and due to time limitations, I cannot document the points I am making. However, as someone who regularly holds community justice workshops teaching youth of color how to “protect” themselves in the event of a “police confrontation,” I can tell you that my experiences are more common than many of you believe. I post this because I fear the irrational wave of anti-immigrant sentiment (really: racism) and laws such as the draconian Arizona Immigration Law will make what is de facto (in practice) racial profiling, de jure (“the law”).

* * *

-=[ The Five-0 ]=-

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin

More than 40 years later, I can still remember the incident as if it happened yesterday. It was my first contact with a NYC police officer. A few of us were headed home after being let out of school, waiting for the “M” train on the elevated Wyckoff & Myrtle platform. It was a rainy, drizzly early spring day. My friends and I were all “A” students -- the talented tenth -- at the (even then) notorious Bushwick High School. We were just standing around cracking jokes on one another (playing the dozens), talking about girls -- the usual fare of masculine adolescence. We weren’t being loud, weren’t breaking any laws. We were, well, breathing while Latino (we were all of Puerto Rican descent).

As we stood there joking, a police officer approached us and demanded to know what we were doing. I had never had any bad experiences with the police; maybe it was because I looked white. My friends would always tease me that I often got a free pass. This time, however, everyone immediately became quiet and the tension was palpable.

I informed the officer that were all going home, that we had just left school. I wasn’t being confrontational, just merely stating a fact as I would if I had commented on the weather. He then asked for ID, or our “program cards.” I remember he was rude and abrupt.

We all showed him our school IDs and then he looked at me and said, “Get the fuck off this platform.”

We were all taken aback since we had to be on the platform in order to catch out train home. When we didn’t react, he looked straight at me but said to everyone, “Didn’t you hear what I said you little spics. Get the FUCK off this platform.” Now, the “spic” part was uncalled for, I felt. In a nice way, I informed the officer that we were all headed home and we had to take the train. Up to that point, I wasn’t arguing with him, I was trying to reason, even though he had used profanity and a racial slur. We were standing by the stairs leading down to the street.

“If you don’t get the fuck off of this platform now you little prick, I will kick your spic ass down those stairs.”

That’s when I became argumentative. I stated that we all had a right to stand on the platform and that we hadn’t done anything wrong to provoke him. I asked him by what authority could he speak to us in that manner and violate our basic rights.

I’ll never forget his response. He said, in a low, threatening growl, “If you don’t get off this station by the time I count to three, I will kick you down those stairs.”

I stood there, staring at him defiantly, determined not to move. My friends told me, “C’mon, Eddie, let’s go, don’t get into any trouble, man, it’s not worth it.” I said I wasn’t moving.

The police officer counted:

One...

Two...

And I don’t know why, perhaps it was the look of pure hatred in the man’s face, but I decided to move right before he counted to three. I turned around and started walking down the steps, when I felt his foot slam into my back. I don’t know how I did it, maybe it was instinct, but somehow, as my body began its propulsion head first down the metal stairs, I reached out and grabbed on to the only thing available -- the officer's foot.

And in that way we tumbled down those long, cement-and-metal stairs, tangled in a ball, for I was holding on to dear life. After what seemed like an eternity, we landed and I immediately noted the unnatural position of the officer’s leg and his banshee howls of pain. At that very moment, taking in everything, I realized I was fucked...

and I ran.

After, my friends told me that the police officer rounded them up and tried to get them to tell him who I was. To their credit never ratted on me. For over two years, I was unable to take the train to school; I had to walk to school (a 45-minute walk each way) rain, cold, snow, or shine.

I was a 14-year-old honors student who never did anything wrong and my life could’ve have easily been destroyed by that one chance encounter.

Growing up, experience wasn’t outside the norm. My close friend, Michael, had his dick almost shot off by a police officer. I'll never forget: It was a Friday night, one of our acquaintances was running from the police, passed by us, and when we heard gunshots, we all ran. Michael was shot and the bullet passed through his thigh and into his penis. When we picked him up, we saw the blood flowing from his groin area. He was lucky, the main “dick vein” (as Michael explained it) wasn't destroyed, and the doctors were able to stitch it all back together again. He did have the ugliest dick I ever saw. We used to kid him and call his penis the Frankenstein Dick.

My friend Shadow, one of the blackest Puerto Ricans I ever met (hence the nickname), was a Golden Gloves champion with a promising boxing career. He was going to box for the Air Force after high school. He was “accidentally” shot dead in the flower of his youth by a stray police bullet. Another stray police bullet left a friend paralyzed at 17 -- for life. And those were only the most egregious infractions. I can’t even begin to tell of all the little infractions, the little humiliations, at the hands of the police. I can’t even begin to enumerate the countless times parents, grandmothers even, were rounded up like common criminals during drug “sweeps” -- periodic lockdowns of whole city blocks in which the police ran roughshod, with total disregard for all basic human rights.

This is not to say all police are brutal or even corrupt. I am, however, trying to offer the insight that the relationship between communities of color and the police are strained at best. Oftentimes, structural racism is expressed through the vehicle of law enforcement. It isn’t that there are a few bad apples; the true issue is that the barrel itself is rotten.

Today, when I hold workshops teaching children how to protect themselves from those who are supposed to protect us, I hear the same stories. So, when I hear that redneck states are fighting to make this legal, I am not surprised, for I know the drill. However, it doesn’t mean that I am not outraged.

You should be too.

-- Eddie

Race, Conservatives, and Arizona

¡Hola! Everybody...
As my friend Will commented regarding the Arizona Nazi Immigration Law, “It’s time to quit with the nuance -- I don’t give a rat’s ass about how many political-angels can dance on the head of a pin. Wrong is wrong. This is wrong. Either fight it, or become part of the larger problem of racism in America.” I couldn’t say it better myself.

* * *

-=[ Rage Politics ]=-

From Wallace to Newt to Arizona

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock somewhere, by now you probably know Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, recently enacted an immigration law written by a known white supremacist sympathizer with financial support from anti-immigrant organizations and think tanks such as the Pioneer Foundation -- a “think tank” supporting the modern eugenics movement dedicated to proving the superiority of the white race. The law essentially criminalizes being brown, giving law enforcement officers the right to ask for “your papers” if they have “reasonable suspicion” that you’re an illegal immigrant. In any other country, this is called apartheid. Unless you’re in deep denial or a total racist, we all know who will be most impacted by this law.

Meanwhile, in Disney Land... Jan Brewer really stepped in it (H/T FireDogLake):

A spreading call for an economic boycott of Arizona after its adoption of a tough immigration law that opponents consider racially discriminatory worried business leaders on Monday and angered the governor.

Several immigrant advocates and civil rights groups, joined by members of the San Francisco government, said the state should pay economic consequences for the new law, which gives the police broad power to detain people they reasonably suspect are illegal immigrants and arrest them on state charges if they do not have legal status.

Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the bill on Friday, calling it an important step toward public safety that would help control immigration and give the police a tool to root out criminals.

She criticized opponents for not offering more solutions to problems related to illegal immigration and called the idea of a boycott “disappointing and unfortunate” at a time when the state is reeling from the recession and suffering from border-related crime that “continues to harm our economy and stifle trade.”

Translation? At a time of recession, how dare people not financially support our racist xenophobic laws!

If you think I am overreaching by likening Law SB 1070 to apartheid or “Nazism,” think again. Here’s Rachel Maddow digging into the political and racial motivation of this law:

For more in-depth reporting on the connection between white supremacy groups and the Arizona immigration law click here .

Please consider boycotting Arizona and joining a growing number of Americans from across the land who oppose Arizona’s racist immigration law. Click here to go to a list of Arizona-based corporations.

-- Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Apartheid]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I recently posted a summary of a pair of peer-reviewed studies finding that at the core of political conservatism is resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include: Fear and aggression; Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; Uncertainty avoidance; Need for cognitive closure; Terror management.
Never the party to disappoint our worst expectations, the ultra-conservative Arizona GOP-dominated legislature unleashed a law so reprehensible, so anti-American in nature, that it could justifiably be compared to the pogroms of Nazi Germany and South African apartheid. It prompted an online participant to joke that a new sign has appeared when you cross the border into Arizona reading, “Welcome to Arizona where being a prejudiced, racist imbecile isn't just a way of life. It's the law!”

* * *

-=[ Arizona Apartheid ]=-

E. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, WITHOUT A WARRANT, MAY ARREST A PERSON
IF THE OFFICER HAS PROBABLE CAUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THE PERSON HAS COMMITTED ANY PUBLIC OFFENSE THAT MAKES THE PERSON REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES.
-- Provision in Arizona Immigration Law, SB 1070

I have heard all kinds of justifications for this law, all coming mostly from whites who just don’t give a fuck because they don’t see how this will affect their rights. Most supporters of the law, in fact, are basing their justifications on immigration myths. The usual, knee-jerk (bigoted), justifications range from the mild (“immigrants don’t bother to learn the language”). To the disgusting (“immigrants are raping babies”). More insidiously, these defenders of racism frame immigration in terms of “illegal,” “drug cartels,” and “gangs.” Set aside the facts that immigrants learn the language, work hard under often deplorable conditions, commit crime at lesser rates than native borns (even whites), and actually contribute positively to the U.S. economy. The rednecks in Arizona spat on the facts and snuggled comfortably with what is the worst of our shared American tradition: bigotry.

The law’s intended consequences (to target people based on the color of their skin or assumed ethnicity) are easy enough to predict, but the new law will also have unintended detrimental effects on Arizona’s economy.

First, the law essentially legalizes racial profiling, an enforcement policy that has been shown to be ineffective. It specifically targets communities of color by requiring state and local government workers to determine if a person is illegally in the United States based on a “reasonable suspicion.”

Arizona governor Brewer’s “sartorial profiling” remarks notwithstanding (in which she suggested identifying illegal immigrants by their shoes -- I am not making this up), the law will result in racial profiling, as it does not prohibit police officers from relying on race or ethnicity in deciding who to investigate. Of course, not all Latino/as look alike. I am of Puerto Rican descent and I have light skin and blue eyes. Similarly, Mexico’s population has the full range of human phenotypic expression. If you don’t believe me, just watch Telemundo for a hot fuckin second. Moreover, what if I am in Arizona and I’m dating a white woman (as I have been known to do)?

What these goobers fail to understand is that the law undermines the Constitution and empowers local police with federal authority. This isn’t an immigrant issue, you blockheads -- it is a civil rights issue! Your civil rights. The measure does not require the local police to have a search warrant or even suspect that some illegal action has occurred.

What really takes the cake is that these bigots don’t even understand they’re shooting themselves in the foot. One of the unintended consequences of the law is that it will devastate state and local economies. The National Employment Law Project, for example, pointed out that smaller-scale anti-immigrant laws have cost individual localities millions of dollars. The Texas-based Perryman Group calculated that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. The Immigration Policy Center noted that, “with Arizona facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion, the new law will “further imperil the state’s economic future.”

Observed Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski, “We’re the laughing stock of the country because of these crazy laws.” Duh... You think?

Ironically, the law hasn’t been well received by the law enforcement community. The costs of arresting, detaining, processing, and transporting undocumented human beings out of Arizona will drain local government treasuries, prompting the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police to oppose the law. There were an estimated 460,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona as of January 2009, making up 4 percent of the state’s population. If the federal government were to handle the entire undocumented population, the cost would be approximately $23,482 per person, based on a recent study by the Center for American Progress.

But let’s be sure here: this law isn't about reason or good social policy. Many of the defenders of this law and those reporting on it note that immigration is an "emotional" issue. Let's stop and reflect on these emotions for a moment, the heart of this law: pure, naked, fear and hatred. Fear of an America whose face is changing and race/ ethnicity-based hatred.

Love,

Eddie

Hate as Heritage

¡Hola! Everybody...
Throughout our history, the advancement of equality and attempts at creating a more just society has been met with white resistance using the symbolism of the Confederacy. Today, neo-confederates everywhere are trying to white wash the Confederacy as a celebration of “Southern Culture.” My response is, how about a little hypocrisy to go with that irony...

* * *

-=[ Disguising Hate as Heritage ]=-

Our new government's foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition.

-- Alexander Stephens, Vice President, The Confederate States of America

During the height of the Japanese occupation of the Pacific during WW II, there were tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers scattered over literally thousands of tiny islands. Eventually, the war would end. But since these survivors had no way of knowing, they continued living as if the war was still being fought, maintaining military protocol, totally isolated, yearning for the day when they would be reunited with their command.

This situation reminds me of the neo-Confederates of today, clamoring for a celebration of the Confederacy and evoking its symbolism. Well, not really. After all, the poor lost Japanese soldiers had a legitimate excuse for their ignorance: forces beyond their control isolated them from civilization. It seems that our neo-confederate bigots have managed to isolate themselves...

Think celebrating the Confederacy is just about Southern pride? Think again.

In an editorial for the New York Times about Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell’s decision to proclaim April “Confederate History Month,” Jon Meacham makes a compelling case that inextricably links the celebration of the Confederacy to racism.

McDonnell’s proclamation doesn’t seem problematic at first glance. In it, McDonnell recognizes individuals “who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth” and “the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” Okay... sounds good... but what about slavery?

Mentions of the “peculiar institution” were nowhere to be found in the proclamation until complaints from the public caused McDonnell to make some reference to it. The governor explained his omission by arguing that in the proclamation he focused on the aspects of the Civil War he thought “most significant for Virginia.”

Meacham wrote of McDonnell’s reasoning, “It seems to follow that, at least for Mr. McDonnell, the plight of Virginia’s slaves does not rank among the most significant aspects of the war.” This was later reinforced by another neo-confederate southern politician, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who shamelessly asserted that slavery was “just a nit” in history and shouldn’t prevent us from honoring the many men who fought for slavery.

But that’s not Meacham’s sole objection to the idea of Confederate History Month. He argues persuasively that historical patterns indicate that the Confederacy is most often celebrated during times of racial tension.

It is informative that the right’s neo-Confederates, like the poor lost Japanese soldiers of WWII, are still “fighting the Civil War in 2010,” Meacham asserts. Whitewashing the war is one way for the warped right -- alienated and angry about the president, health care reform, and all manner of imaginary threats -- to express its discomfort with an African American President and a multicultural society, disguising hate as heritage.

If you need more convincing, Meacham points to how white supremacists managed to gain support for legalized segregation in the late 1800s by using Confederate symbols. During this period, Mississippi went so far as to include the Confederate battle emblem on its flag. After the Supreme Court legitimized segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Confederate imagery was no longer used to rally Southerners, as the cause had been won: Jim Crow was legal.

After that, Meacham explains, only the most extreme white supremacists used Confederate symbols -- the Ku Klux Klan. I would add that the Confederate flag is the symbol of choice for almost all white militia groups (with the Nazi flag running a close second).

When the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s, however, use of the rebel flag and other Confederate symbolism spread among the general public once again. In 1948, for example, supporters of staunch segregationist Strom Thurmond waved the battle flag at campaign stops. Furthermore, during the movement to racially integrate schools in the 1950s and '60s, Georgia changed its flag to include the battle emblem, and South Carolina hoisted the colors over its Capitol as part of its centennial celebrations of the war.

Overall, these points convincingly support Meacham’s contention that “Confederate symbols have tended to be more about white resistance to black advances than about commemoration.” That said, Meacham argues that it is impossible to claim that celebration of the Confederacy is simply about states’ rights and not about slavery. Excluding slavery from the discussion is an egregious error because it misleads the public about the reality of the Civil War.

“If the slaves are erased from the picture, then what took place between Sumter and Appomattox is not about the fate of human chattel, or a battle between good and evil,” Meacham states. “We cannot allow the story of the emancipation of a people and the expiation of America's original sin to become fodder for conservative politicians playing to their right-wing base.”

As far as I’m concerned, the legitimacy of the argument that celebrating the Confederacy is about states’ rights, Southern pride, and nothing more, is revisionism at its worst. Considering the authoritarian tone of the right wing, as exemplified by the teabaggers and their leaders, the renewed interest in celebrating Confederate history has it roots in large part in the racial anxiety arising from the fact that America is now led by a black president as well as the rise of a multicultural America.

Southern pride my ass

Eddie

**UPDATE: Almost immediately after posting today, a friend sent a link to an Associated Press report about a group of Oklahoma tea party leaders, “frustrated by recent political setbacks,” working with right-wing Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature to create a new “volunteer militia” to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty. This is the same motivation behind the call for the “celebration of the Confederacy.” Meet the new Boss Hawg/ Same as the old Boss Hawg...