]]>Watch out, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Locked in a Republican primary battle for governor of Texas, and unwilling to say women should go to jail for their abortions, she is the next duck in the barefoot and pregnant shooting gallery. All the coverage has been about the conservative attack on the Republican establishment. But Scozzafava's defeat and the mounting campaign against Hutchison reveals a fascinating and underreported problem for the Republicans: They will only run women who will say that women should not control their reproductive fates. Although there are many male Republican candidates who easily embrace this position, politically accomplished women who believe in criminal abortion are rare, even in the Republican Party. And the ones who surface are likely to be, well, rogue.
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
From the 1970 release "Monster"
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
Tichy's premise seems to ring true as we observe how Obama tends to skitter away from the issue of race and takes a less confrontational, less authentically black tack. Yet, as both Carter, Walsh and Tichy conclude, race is something with which Obama will have to grapple if he is ever going to make any progress on the social issues which comprise his political agenda. The question is: is our first multicultural president (as Tichy describes Obama) the right man to handle the dog whistles and the appeals to our history's coarser nature? Is his approach of making white America feel less uncomfortable about race and its unsavory role in American life an honest, courageous means of confronting an issue that won't just go away regardless of how many generations wander in the desert? Or is he just "kicking it down the road" for the first really Black president to finally address? Paraphrasing A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. to Clarence Thomas, is Obama black enough to be not just post-racial, but really anti-racist?
]]>"How many more murderous rampages by enraged rightists--whether executed or merely in the planning stage--are we going to have to endure before the traditional media is willing to acknowledge and address the obvious? How many people are going to die, and how highly placed will the victims have to be, before someone connects the dots and starts calling out the ever more violent, hateful and apocalyptic rhetoric of the likes of Coulter, Malkin, O'Reilly, Hannity and Savage as bearing some responsibility for creating this climate of insanity? "
I'm not certain if we're beginning to see the MSM arouse from its recession-induced navel gazing, but I did find some hopeful signs that at least some quarters are becoming atuned to the ugly reality that is the temperament of current American politics. First, there's this AP story that notes the correspondence between the Holocaust Museum shooting and the upswing in activity among fanatic right wing extremist groups. Second, another AP piece shows that at least the folks in Connecticut are getting serious about bloggers who are inciting violence: apparently Hal Turner has a history of telling folks who read his blog who should live and who should die. Interestingly, he apparently wanted CT Catholics to do the CT legislators in.
I'm wondering if these two pieces are indications that long overdue attention to the dangerous extreme right will finally be pulled out of the deep, dark recesses of the MSM's consciousness, or OTOH they're just temporary blips on the radar. I haven't enough clairvoyance to be able to say for sure, but here's what I'm going to do nonetheless: I'm finally going to make use of RSS technology to follow the CT story to its conclusion. I have no faith in today's media to be able to stay focused on critical issues like these and provide the kind of coverage that shines the bright light of scrutiny needed to keep these very dangerous atavists at bay. Like NCSteve, I hope to be proven wrong.
]]>The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle."
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.
The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself; she doesn't belong up there; she doesn't know what to do while she is up there; and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."
]]>Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire may be circulated, next year, to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
(You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)
1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour', 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise'. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').
3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let M*crosoft know on your behalf. The M*crosoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.
4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.
6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. (Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.)
7. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side, with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric, with immediate effect, and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
8. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.
9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
11. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour, like a bunch of nancies).
13. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
God Save the Queen!
more than 90,000 rural residents;
70,000 low-income residents;
50,000 residents without a high school diploma;
50,000 elderly residents; and
40,000 African Americans.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
According to my source, this is just the tip of the iceberg: 18 other states are planning or are initiating similar action. I am trying to get more information from CBPP on this.
To analyze EastWest’s argument’s validity, you would have to poll every AA voter who voted for Obama and categorize his/her reason for such a vote as racist or not. Since such a poll hasn’t been conducted, you could either accept the argument at face value or dismiss it as unproven. In either case, its validity is undetermined. Nonetheless, it would be imprudent to dismiss it outright since it seems to have some resonance among various political thinkers this campaign season, and among a fair number of Clinton supporters in particular. I wonder why that is. Prior to this year’s primaries, you usually heard this type of argument coming from Republican mouths: “AA’s vote as a [monolithic] block for the Democrat.” “Democrats practice group politics -- look at AA’s and how they consistently vote in such high numbers for Democrats.” These statements are pretty much true, and the reasons are fairly simple: the Democrat party was the party that championed civil rights in the 1960’s. When AA’s finally got the practical right to vote (nearly 100 years after getting the legal right), they returned the favor by supporting those who supported them. The Democrat party has since embraced AA interests in most policy agenda, and has actively sought to include and empower AA’s within the party ranks.
Given the history, it’s not surprising that Clinton felt that she could count on the AA vote, what with her and her husband’s past support of AA interests, and the friendships and alliances that she’s cultivated with AA’s. So when AA voters abandoned Clinton after they perceived that her camp “played the race card,” Clinton supporters felt betrayed and attributed the migration to the Obama camp to racial/racist motives. But was the migration indeed race-based?
As with all of the hot button topics, the question is much more nuanced than one would presume. I suspect that it would be easier to understand current AA voting behavior if one thinks not in terms of race, but rather ethnicity. Race is a very simplistic, broad brush that glosses over and hides the subtleties that comprise and differentiate American social groups. Mainstream politics and the MSM would have us think in terms of black and white, which do no justice to describing the complex of communities and their varying interests that live in this country. If one thinks in terms of ethnicity, then a more granular, albeit complicated, model emerges. However, it is a model that better serves our understanding of why so many AA’s are breaking for Obama right now.
Most ethnic groups that have come to America have assimilated fairly easily in a relatively short period of time. Of all of these ethnic groups however, AA’s were the one that were brought here specifically because they could not easily assimilate into mainstream European society. Keep in mind, the first slaves in America were Native Americans, but because escapees were able to blend in with the larger Native American populations, it became impractical to enslave them. The next slave group was poor Europeans, the indentured “servant”; when these people escaped, they easily blended into the freemen population. It wasn’t long before dark skinned Africans became the population of choice for enslavement. When they ran away, it was pretty easy to pick them out in a lineup, so to speak. Assimilation into the larger society remained prohibitive even after emancipation. Even free AA’s before emancipation were forced to live together whether they want to or not. “Separate & Unequal” was not a postbellum invention of Jim Crow. So, what is the natural reaction of a minority group facing hostility, repression, and intolerance from the majority group? They band together for mutual support, comfort, and protection. They take care of each other; they promote each other.
African Americans have had this psychology beaten into them for well over 300 years. It is a mindset of any minority group, one that isn’t outgrown in 40 years. While AA’s are able to enter the mainstream more easily, racism (that 18th century pseudo-scientific construct) clearly remains active, and trust doesn’t come easily to those who can still be harmed. So when the Clintons were perceived as having played the race card (and I’m not here to confirm or deny that allegation) by AA voters, many of them apparently did what 300 years of abuse and exclusion taught them to do: they formed ranks behind one of their own. They saw the political game being played and their ethnicity being devalued. In response, they coalesced in solidarity to promote someone who is like them, who won’t use their ethnicity as a boogeyman (to drive unenlightened voters into his camp), someone who has a keener understanding of their condition and their history, and who can imbue in them a sense of pride and hope that they won’t be taken for granted in the usual political paradigm.
Now, clearly not all AA’s believe in Obama. Some still support Clinton, and even a few are supporting McCain for reasons that only they can explain. It is also true that many AA Obama supporters were in his camp long before the SC primary; their reasons for supporting him were often the same as any EA supporter’s reasons. However, it is ridiculous to describe an ethnic voting pattern as “racist.” When an ethnic group votes to support someone who may or may not be of the same ethnicity, but who has historically benefitted that group, it is not a racially based decision (one made out of hatred or superiority). When AA support was heavily in favor of Clinton, only the Republicans thought anything racial was involved. AA’s left the Clinton camp when they perceived that they were being taken for granted and thought of as expendable. It was only natural that those so alienated would seek to support another candidate. This time, they had an option to support one of their own ethnic kinsmen.
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