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Football Night In America
19 Oct 2009 07:27 am
Conor argues that Rush Limbaugh is not a racist, but the greatest race-baiter of our time. His evidence is pretty undeniable. But this last quote really got me thinking:
Oh, and don't forget the NFL. As of this week, it is "an outpost of racism and liberalism." (Strange that a league that is supposedly racist against white owner candidates has so many white owners.)
There's more. But that last quote says a lot to me. It's fairly clear that the NFL is neither an outpost for racism, nor liberalism. In fact, I'm willing to be that no organization does a better job of bringing black people and conservatives together, and indeed converting some black people to conservatives, than the NFL.
There's a measure of truth in Rush's critique, because conservative, in Rush's mind, is nothing without white populism. There's a difference between being, say, pro-life, and thinking, say, that Barack Obama is "the biggest reverse racist in history." I'd bet there are a lot more NFL owners who are the former, than there are the latter--and then some who qualify as both.
But since the 60s, white populism has been an indispensable plank in political conservatism's foundation. White populism is Ronald Reagan fighting for a tax exemption on behalf Bob Jones University, despite a school-wide ban on interracial dating. White populism is John McCain standing for the Confederate flag in South Carolina while he still could win in 2000. (Props to McCain for reversing field.) White populism is Mike Huckabee, eight years later, insisting, in the same state, that ""if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do."
White populism isn't simply yelling"You Lie!" at a black biracial president, it's yelling "You Lie!" at Strom Thurmond's 78-year old black biracial daughter. White populism is Trent Lott insisting that his state was proud of supporting segregationists and that had they prevailed electorally, "we wouldn't have all these problems over the years." White populism is The Ron Paul Political Report asserting that New York City should be named "Welfaria" or "Lazyopolis," predicting an oncoming race war, and asserting that, in the wake of the Rodney King riots, order was restored "when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began."
And white populism greatest modern exegete is Rush Limbaugh::
Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,' and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white.
It's quite wrong to dismiss the Tea Parties as racist cabals. But when protesters are toting signs like this, and the movement's interlocutors are on national TV claiming that the president of the United States, who's mother was white, is "a racist" with a "deep-seated hatred of the white culture," the specter of white populism hovers.
The NFL may be run by conservatives, but they are, in large measure, Don Draper conservatives. They are not benevolent. They are not enlightened. They are not "friends of the Negro." Their motto is Get Money, and if white populism aids that effort, they will ally with it. If it hurts that effort, they will damn it to hell. The same people who sent Warren Moon to the CFL, gave us the Rooney Rule. There is respectable genius in that kind of shape-shifting.
The GOP, on the other hand, is locked in. There are conservative arguments to be made about climate change, health care, tax policy, abortion, affirmative action and so on. A significant slice of GOP voters are there for the principals. But another significant slice are there because of who they think they are not. Likely it's now an marriage of the two. Lee Atwater knew:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"--that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me--because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
How do you undo an alloy without destroying it? How do you break the GOP down to its root elements, preserving what you believe in, disregarding what you don't, without crippling your party for a generation?
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives...
http://m.www.yahoo.com/
Dr. Marc Lamont Hill Let Go By Fox News!
18 Oct 2009 11:29 pm
The GOP's 2012 Line-Up
Larison has a shrewd take on the bewildering dynamics of a dreadful field:
I have thought for a while that Huckabee’s personality could have some of the appealing all-things-to-all-people quality that Obama had during the election. If the economy remains a major issue in the next election, as it most likely will be, the sheer disgust economic conservatives still have for him could be worn almost as a badge of pride in the general election. An early opponent of the bailout, Huckabee could tap into populist dissatisfaction with the coziness of corporations and government without being pigeonholed as nothing more than an obsessed tax-cutter.
Huckabee isn’t going to have that chance.
Even if it seems irrational, movement activists who are not primarily interested in social issues distrust Huckabee intensely, and they will work to block him and deny him funding just as they did last time. The anti-Huckabee sentiment among movement activists is a useful reminder that all the Republican culture war defenses of Palin during the general election were aimed at mobilizing all the people whose candidate, Huckabee, they had just spent the previous 18 months mocking and ridiculing with all of the same language used against Palin. For turnout purposes, the GOP still finds Huckabee’s people useful, but its leaders and activists will not tolerate Huckabee taking the lead in the party as the nominee.
The effect this will have, as Stuttaford’s post suggests, is that most Catholic, mainline Protestant and secular Republicans will rally to whichever anti-Huckabee candidate appears strongest. This will most likely mean a coalition of voters arrayed behind Romney, who will then be a far weaker draw in the general election than Huckabee would have been. At first, that sounds implausible. Surely the more “moderate,” less “sectarian” candidate should be able to win more support, right?
No, not really, because the things that make Romney more attractive to non-evangelicals in the GOP also force him to spend more time trying to prove that evangelicals and social conservatives can accept him. Aside from the complication that his religion introduces into this, this means that Romney has to emphasize social issues, on which he has no credibility, and public professions of religious faith, which are some of the things that so many Republicans and independents find viscerally unappealing about what they perceive to be the norm in Republican politics.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily...
18 Oct 2009 06:42 pm
The Return Of Coughlinism
SWOONRobynBeck:AFP:Getty
I was struck by these comments from the recent Carville-Greenberg focus group study of the conservative base:
I just think that Obama was molded and I think that he is being fed what he can and can- not do and what to do next and it seems like he is a puppet in this whole game. I don't know who the people are behind him really but I don't think it is him. I think it is some- body, I think he is just the figurehead... I think it is George Soros... I do too... Is he the guy with money?... Yes... They say follow the money.
I think he has a money person behind him that has planned this long before because he has gotten pushed into a position that is unbelievable for a community organizer ... I come from Chicago so I know how he got there and I don't like his tentacles into ACORN and everything else that are subsidiaries and it all goes back... He couldn't do it by himself.
These people believe there is a hidden plot to destroy America, and it has something to do with black community organizations and Jewish money. There's a powerful, lingering sense - exploited by Beck - that there's some kind of deception behind all this, some shadowy plot that even they don't quite understand, but somehow know it's there:
That is why everything is closed, because he didn't want you to know these things. He has closed his college records. You can't go through there...
The records from the hospital in Kenya and I think there are some areas in Hawaii and also something to do with his involvement in government in Illinois, but in every place that he has gone there have been areas that he has closed files. Every other president has allowed their background and who they are to be exposed, to be investigated except for this president... And why is that?...
Just everything. I mean where you were born, where you went to school, what are your school records... And how dare you ask... I mean it goes on and on and on.
The trouble for the GOP, of course, is that the critical votes they need - those of fiscally conservative independents - worry about Obama's policies and the threat of bigger government, but don't buy the hysteria, conspiracy theories or contempt for the president:
The independent voters expressed clear concerns about Obama - especially that he is doing ‘too much, too fast,’ that he is spending too much, that they do not understand his health care reforms, and that he does not have a clear plan for bringing jobs back to the US – some of which certainly touched on the conservative Republicans’ concerns. But they still fundamentally like and respect him on several levels and are very clearly rooting for him to succeed. 57 percent of these voters believe that Obama is willing to work with both parties, and 45 percent see him as a strong leader.
The GOP base, in other words, has created a wedge for Obama. And the more convinced the Beck-viewers get, the more estranged they become from the sane, independent voters who can bring the GOP back. The greatest emblem of this is - surprise! - Sarah Palin, who is the clear favorite of the base for the next presidential race. Again, the gap between the views of the base and the nearest group of conservative independents is vast:
When it comes to Sarah Palin, there was almost universal agreement that she could never be elected president, with most citing her inexperience and baggage as obstacles too great to overcome. But even more important to them, most felt she was ultimately driven by greed and ambition more than anything else and would rather use her new-found fame to enrich herself than improve the country.
But for the base, she's iconic. If I had to guess, I'd say she'll be the next nominee.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily...
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: October 18, 2009
CLEVELAND — The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom.
The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car.
But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.
“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”
Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.
Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.
In the Midwest, foreclosure played a role for 15 percent of newly homeless people, according to the survey, reflecting soaring rates of unemployment — Ohio’s reached 10.8 percent in August — and aggressive lending to people with damaged credit.
At a shelter for women and children run by the West Side Catholic Center in Cleveland, where Ms. West now lives, foreclosure accounted for zero arrivals in 2007, the center’s executive director, Gerald Skoch, said. Last year, two cases emerged. This year, the number has already reached four.
Similar increases have been reported at shelters in California, Michigan and Florida, where a combination of joblessness and the real estate bust have generated unusually severe rates of foreclosure.
Most people who become homeless because of foreclosure had been low-income renters whose landlords stopped making their mortgage payments, leaving them scrambling for new housing with little notice and scant savings, according to the survey and interviews with shelters.
But in recent months, there has been a visible increase in the number of former homeowners showing up in shelters. Like Ms. West, most have landed there after months trying to stave off that fate.
“These families never needed help before,” said Larry Haynes, executive director of Mercy House in Santa Ana, Calif. “They haven’t a clue about where to go, and they have all sorts of humiliation issues. They don’t even know what to say, what to ask for.”
Many start off camping out in cars, particularly in warmer places.
“We’ve seen a rise in people sleeping in their cars,” said Rick Cole, city manager in Ventura, Calif., which recently allowed car-camping in designated areas. “Some are foreclosed former homeowners, and some couldn’t afford their rent. People will give up their house before they give up their car.”
Those with means try to rent homes or apartments, though tainted credit often makes that impossible. Growing numbers are landing in motels that rent by the week, cramming whole families into single rooms and using hot plates as kitchens. But as unemployment expands, many are losing the wherewithal to remain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/business/econ...
by BooMan
Mon Oct 19th, 2009 at 01:06:03 AM EST
Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog thinks that the White House sent Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, and Rahm Emanuel out on the Sunday morning talk shows to demonstrate their lack of support for a public option. I think his reaction to their comments is a natural and understandable one, but it isn't necessarily the correct one. Let's start with the fact that all three of them stated their preference for a public option. The reason that fact is automatically discounted is because they all followed up their assertion of support for a public option by saying that they could accept a bill that didn't contain one. So, the logic goes, they aren't really supporting the public option if they aren't fighting for it. Instead, they are showing weakness and inviting Congress to send them a bill without a public option.
This logic is close to unassailable, but not quite. Let me go back to what I've been saying all along. There has always been enough opposition to the public option among Senate Democrats to assure that one could not pass the sixty-vote threshold. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has identified somewhere between fifty-two and fifty-five votes. If the Obama administration had taken the position that the public option had to be in any bill they would sign, there could have been no progress in passing a bill through the Finance Committee and no credible negotiations with any Republican senators.
That is still the case. As the White House and Senate work to meld the HELP and Finance bills into something that can win 60 votes for cloture, it has to find some middle ground between the two. I don't think the administration would facilitate that process by suddenly taking a hard-line and insisting they will veto any bill without a robust public option. It is more likely that the effort to pass a bill in the Senate would stall, as senators would lose their ability to negotiate and win concessions for their support.
For this reason, I think the administration feels constrained against making a hard stand right now. I don't think they were sent out to signal they are soft on the public option. I think they sent that signal because they don't want to take a final stand prematurely and are therefore unwilling to answer the question in any other way. The message they wanted to send was that health care reform is on track and moving forward. That they sent another message, of weakness, was probably unintentional and unavoidable in the face of good questioning.
But, you probably want to know, when is the administration going to make a stand? Honestly, I don't know if they will. But, if they do, they will probably do it once both the House and the Senate have passed their own versions of the bill.
If you want to identify a sign of capitulation, look to the House, not the Senate. There is no reason to make the Democrats in the House take a tough vote on a robust public option if the whole thing is going to be jettisoned in Conference. As long as Pelosi is standing firm, you should maintain your optimism. If the House passes a robust public option and the Senate passes something less (perhaps a state opt-out provision, for example) then the time for the White House to come down hard in favor of the House version is in the Conference Committee.
There are two reasons for this. First, in working out the compromises needed to pass a bill in the Senate, most of the work will be done and the contours of the battlefield will be totally defined. Second, once a bill passes both houses of Congress, it will have so much momentum that it will be really difficult for any member of the Democratic caucus to block a vote on final passage.
So, to summarize, there are different ways to read tea leaves. But those who have been waiting for the administration to make a veto-threat on the public option are probably reading the wrong leaves. The outcome is uncertain, but the place to look is actually in the House.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/10/19/1...
imagine for a moment, that we're talking about Civil Rights legislation instead of Health Access. And the public option is really the voting option. Would we be as blase about phrases like "compromise" and "middle ground" and "bipartisanship"? Would Democrats who represent Black and Brown constituencies be so ardently against a voting option because it represents "big government" or "an expanded deficit"?
That's what we ought to consider when our leaders try to convince us that there's something almost as good as a voting option.
isn't the point of sending people out to show the flag to show the flag, the public option? Isn't the point of having a communication department to go over HOW TO ANSWER QUESTIONS, isn't it to avoid unintentional answers(do you know who Andy Reid is?)? Isn't it possible to explain that you are negotiating in conference to achieve the the public option? Isn't it possible to act like its a done deal?
Examples of the products offered online for home delivery include:
* Cough and Cold Medicines:
o Children’s Sudafed, Equate Cold and Flu Relief, Ricola Throat Drops, Theraflu
* Pain Relievers:
o Bengay cream, Hylands Teething Tablets
o Note that Tylenol, Advil and aspirin products are not available for online purchase and home delivery.
Walmart Starts Home Delivery Program
Walmart seeking to entice its missing customers?
The practice of using DNA waivers began several years ago as a response to the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, which allowed federal inmates to seek post-conviction DNA tests to prove their innocence. More than 240 wrongly convicted people have been exonerated by such tests, including 17 on death row.
The waivers are filed only in guilty pleas and bar defendants from ever requesting DNA testing, even if new evidence emerges. Prosecutors who use them, including some of the nation's most prominent U.S. attorneys, say people who have admitted guilt should not be able to file frivolous petitions for testing. They say the wave of DNA exonerations has little impact in federal court because all those found to be innocent were state prisoners, and the waivers apply only to federal charges. DNA evidence is used far more frequently in state courts.
But DNA experts say that's about to change because more sophisticated testing will soon bring biological evidence into federal courtrooms for a wider variety of crimes. Defense lawyers who have worked on DNA appeals strongly oppose the waivers, saying that innocent people sometimes plead guilty -- mainly to get lighter sentences -- and that denying them the ability to prove their innocence violates a fundamental right. One quarter of the 243 people exonerated by DNA had falsely confessed to crimes they didn't commit, and 16 of them pleaded guilty.
"It's a mean-spirited policy. Truth, ascertained by science, should trump the finality of a conviction," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project. He said the waivers are effectively "gutting the impact" of the 2004 law because 97 percent of federal convictions result from guilty pleas.
Justice Dept. to Review Bush Policy on DNA Test Waivers
The evils of the past administration is endless.
Normally, scientists regard Internet hysteria with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. But a few scientists have become so concerned at the level of fear they are seeing that they decided not to remain on the sidelines this time.
"Two years ago, I got a question a week about it," said NASA scientist David Morrison, who hosts a website called Ask an Astrobiologist. "Now I'm getting a dozen a day. Two teenagers said they didn't want to see the end of the world so they were thinking of ending their lives."
Scientists try to calm '2012' hysteria
Top 25 Trailblazers Who Define the Modern Black Woman.
Really, we have to get better at celebrating our own achievements and telling our story.
It is just a movie made by Spike Jonze after all.
by BooMan
Mon Oct 19th, 2009 at 03:28:55 PM EST
Support for the Republican Party remains stuck below support for chlamydia and is trending toward the public approval rating for gonorrhea. However, with a seven percent approval rating from women, John Boehner is in a heated competition with cervical cancer. So, why do we care what these people think again?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/10/19/1...
Categories:
* 2009,
* Hillary Clinton ,
* Newspapers,
* Secretary of State,
* State Department
Official writes in to defend HRC
A U.S. official writes to push back against an Al Kamen piece on Hillary Clinton and her "gatekeeper" chief of staff Cheryl Mills today. The latter "has made entry to Clinton's suite something like penetrating the Green Zone in Baghdad," Kamen writes. Though the official doesn't want to be identified, it's fair to say that he's a policy staffer who was aligned with Obama's campaign and is not part of HRC's inner circle.
"I trust you saw the piece this morning on complaints about Secretary Clinton maintaining a closed circle and the fingerpointing at Cheryl Mills. I wanted to push back on that. Secretary Clinton has gone out of her way to interact and engage with career State Department staff at every turn. She regularly takes turns to congratulate and praise staff on jobs well done -- in late September, she spoke to the many Department staffers who helped out with the preparations for the UN General Assembly meetings, including the President's chairmanship of an unprecedented UN Security Council session. Today, she is stopping by at an awards ceremony for staff in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs."
"More broadly, this Secretary has maintained an open door when it comes to soliciting outside advice. She regularly holds roundtables in her 7th floor offices with Department staff to hash through issues. She enjoys hosting dinners at her home where she can engage with outside experts and get a reality check."
"There are other, valid criticisms of the Secretary. Contending that she is a remote figure who has walled off the people working for her at State is unfounded and absurd."
More from Ben, who previously reported that "Mills been a hard-liner during the Clinton campaign, pushing for sharper-edged attacks on Obama. She brought some of that stance to State, where she fought tooth and nail in the early days of the administration to control mid-level staff jobs, like the agency's White House liaison, and to ensure that those jobs went to 'Hillary people' rather than 'Obama people.'"
http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/1009/O...
By ALEXANDER BURNS
President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the Sidwell Friends schools Monday morning, stopping at both ...
... Sidwell Bethesda and Sidwell D.C. to join the first lady for parent-teacher meetings.
He returned to the White House just after 9 a.m.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/1009/su...
By LISA LERER & MICHAEL CALDERONE | 10/19/09 11:38 AM EDT
Updated: 10/19/09 2:44 PM EDT
n a dramatic shift, the Chamber of Commerce announced Monday that it is throwing its support behind climate change legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate.
Only it didn’t.
An email press release announcing the change is a hoax, say Chamber officials.
Several media organizations fell for it.
A CNBC anchor interrupted herself mid-sentence Monday morning to announce that the network had “breaking news,” then cut away to reporter Hampton Pearson, who read from the fake press release.
Pearson quickly followed up with a second report saying the “so-called bulletin” was an “absolute hoax.” Smelling a rat, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow demanded to know whether the White House had been involved.
In a story posted Monday morning, Reuters declared: “The Chamber of Commerce said on Monday it will no longer opposes climate change legislation, but wants the bill to include a carbon tax.”
Reuters updated the story to acknowledge the hoax, but it was too late: The Washington Post and the New York Times had already posted the fake story on their Web sites.
"Reuters has an obligation to its clients to publish news and information that could move financial markets, and this story had the potential to do that,” said a Thomson Reuters spokesperson. “Once we had confirmed the release was a hoax, we immediately issued a correction, and in keeping with Reuters policy, the story was subsequently withdrawn and an advisory sent to readers."
The Yes Men, a left-leaning activist group that often impersonates officials from organizations they oppose, took responsibility for the hoax.
Andy Bichlbaum—an alias the activist uses for Yes Men demonstrations—told POLITICO that his group is targeting the Chamber for what he considers “retrograde” positions on climate change.
“Clearly, there is a question of who is hoaxing who,” Bichlbaum said. “I think the Chamber is hoaxing the American public at this point.”
Bichlbaum said that activists will continue targeting the organization. Bichlbaum said the Yes Men got help with their prank from members of the AVAAZ Action Factory, an activist group, and BeyondTalk.net, an environmental website.
AVAAZ has not returned calls for comment. But a post on the group’s Web site said it had plans to “make this the worst Monday ever for the anti-climate PR machine at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28456...
Just wondering.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33384395/ns/enterta...