NEON GODS

Racism is alive and well in America.

I am still mourning the death of Trayvon Martin.  But I'm mourning my country as well.  Since the election of our first (half) African American President, the racists around the country have become increasingly bold in their expressions of hatred for blacks.  They don't even care if people know they are seething with racial hatred.  Back in February I posted about comments left at the Fox News website in response to Whitney Houston's death.  Whitney Houston! 

Recently I read on Booman Tribune that when Fox News finally decided to cover the Trayvon shooting, some of the comments left at their website were sick (e.g., "The little thug ghetto monkey should have been home doing his homework, not out gang bangin.").  I found it hard to believe, even for Fox, so I went to the Fox News website and sure enough, the sickos were well represented.  Here are some screen captures (click on the image to read the comments):

Two is enough, the rest would just make you sicker.

Fortunately, Charles Pierce got fed up with this shit, too, and went off!  Fortunately he can express himself far better than I.

Well I certainly don't feel calm and measured, and it's not because my kids "could have been Trayvon." No, they could not have. My kids are white. They lived in the suburbs. They could wear their pants anyway they liked...They didn't have to worry about running into some trigger-happy, half-mad wannabe on the way home from the convenience store. And that's what keeps me from being calm and measured.

I am sick to death of people who celebrate "the family" making excuses about why other people's children are expendable. I am sick to death of politicians who are more concerned about protecting zygotes than about the teenagers on whom they seek to balance their budgets and advance their careers...I am sick to death of opportunistic yahoos who can look at this country's unhealthy attachment to firearms and declare that the actions of George Zimmerman, while unfortunate, were pretty much what the Founders had in mind.

What alarms me is not that Zimmerman hasn't yet been arrested, but the awful feeling that the Florida legislature, with the approval of the people of Florida, may have passed a law so idiotic that it prevents local law-enforcement from arresting him at all...And what makes me angry down to my soul is not that my children could have been Trayvon, but that, because of the way we have ordered our politics and our society, only someone like Trayvon could have been Trayvon.

I'm sure I'll be writing more about this, because I'm almost certain Florida will find there's nothing to disprove Zimmerman's insistence that he shot Trayvon in self defense.

--Trakker

The murder of Trayvon Martin, and my response to the NRA and the gun nuts

Back in the good ol' days of America Online and dialup Internet connections I used to argue with gun zealots (aka gun nuts) online.  Two things stood out to me, 1) gun zealots, at least the ones online, were inordinately afraid of black guys, and 2) how much they wished they could use their guns on those black guys when they felt threatened (which was most of the time). 

Obviously, the NRA finally gave them their wish by pushing something called the "Stand Your Ground" law on the states that allow gun owners to use deadly force when they "reasonably" feel that their life is in danger or that they might suffer serious bodily harm. 

If you want to see this law in action, look no further than the murder of Trayvon Martin three weeks ago in Sanford, Florida.  Much has been written already about this murder of an unarmed teenager by an armed police-wannabe, so I won't go into a lot of detail, but the bottom line is that over the years the NRA has successfully made it easier for more and more citizens to carry guns in more and more public places with less and less oversight into who can carry guns in public.  At the same time they have made it easier and easier for people carrying guns in public to kill people who they get to judge as "threatening" and walk free with almost no questions asked.

Granted, the homeowner's association that sponsored the Neighborhood Watch program under which the shooter was operating deserves some of the blame. The Neighborhood Watch program is sponsored by the National Sheriff's Association and they publish a handbook that clearly states, "It should be emphasized to members that they do not possess police powers and they shall not carry weapons..."  The Neighborhood Watch person who shot Trayvon clearly violated that guideline, he was armed with a 9mm handgun which he used to shoot Trayvon.

But the bigger issue here is guns.  The ultimate goal of the NRA appears to be to allow, even encourage, every American to carry a gun in public in all 50 states with no restrictions on who can own guns, who can carry them in public, or where in public they can be carried.  At the same time the NRA wants to make it as easy as possible for gun owners to act as judge, jury, and executioner when they feel threatened, and society must respect their judgement.

What really pisses me off is that gun zealots not only want the right to be judge, jury, and executioner, they want me to recognize them as some kind of exalted protector of society.  I'm supposed to be relived to know they are walking among us, protecting me.  They insist I must acknowledge and be grateful that their presence makes me safer.

BULLSHIT!  To them I say, "I don't know who you are, I don't know what kind of training you've had, I don't know how sane you are, I don't know how you handle fear and anger, and I don't know why you feel the need to carry a gun, so fuck off!   Don't I have the right to live my life and manage my safety without you bringing your gun into it?  People should be allowed to prohibit people from carrying guns into their school, their neighborhood, their towns, their counties, or even their states if they choose.  Your right to own a gun isn't a right to bring it wherever you damn well please. 

Do you think the parents of Trayvon Martin and other parents of black kids feel safer with armed assholes who may also be flaming bigots running around knowing they have the right to blow away people who make them scared?  Should we arm all black teens and tell them they have the right to shoot any white guy who starts following them, challenges them, or makes them scared?  Because that's the next logical step if Trayvon's killer goes free.

--Trakker

Using their own words as an anchor to sink them in 2012

The lady in this video might have been Vice President today if the Republicans had won in 2008.  And if anything happened to John McCain she would become our President.  Think about that.  This ignorant, alarmist, extreme, partisan, who - like most of the radical right today - believes its fine to lie abut Democrats if it helps the Republican party gain and hold power. 

ALL politicians bend the truth and spin things to show their side of truth in the best light, but Palin covers her ignorance with attack accusations ('Barack Obama is a radical who wants to take America back to before the Civil War and enslave whites this time.').

I'm encouraged by this video because it shows that the Obama campaign plans to use the right's very words as anchors to sink them in the coming election.

 

"Why are we allowing our country to move backwards?"  That's been my question ever since Ronald Reagan took office.  Why?

--Trakker

It was bound to happen.

We knew the Republicans would eventually overreach.  We know what the base REALLY wants, a return to the 1870s or earlier, and eventually a return to Biblical law. 

Over the years and months the right has been pushing, pushing, pushing to end abortions, end access to contraception, humiliating the poor - especially if they are minorities or single women, encouraging a wild west gun culture, busting unions, eliminating minimum wage laws, and letting the rich run the country.

Every month the right proposes crazier and crazier ideas and laws, and we know at some point there would be a proposal or set of proposals/issues that would finally make the uninvolved American public sit up and take notice that the Republicans are actually batshit insane.   Thank you, transvaginal ultrasounds, thank you Susan Koman Foundation, thank you Rush.

From the NYTimes:

As baby showers go, the party Mary Russell attended to celebrate her niece’s first child was sweet, with about a dozen women offering congratulations over ice cream and cake.

But somewhere between the baby name game and the gifts, what had been light conversation took a sharp turn toward the personal and political — specifically, the battle over access to birth control and other women’s health issues that have sprung to life on the Republican campaign trail in recent weeks.

“We all agreed that this seemed like a throwback to 40 years ago,” said Ms. Russell, 57, a retired teacher from Iowa City who describes herself as an evangelical Christian and “old school” Republican of the moderate mold.

Until the baby shower, just two weeks ago, she had favored Mitt Romney for president.

Not anymore. She said she might vote for President Obama now. “I didn’t realize I had a strong viewpoint on this until these conversations,” Ms. Russell said. As for the Republican presidential candidates, she added: “If they’re going to decide on women’s reproductive issues, I’m not going to vote for any of them. Women’s reproduction is our own business.”

The article has a number of similar examples.  It isn't just women either.  I've heard from politicians that almost as many men have contacted them in opposition to this "War on Women" as women have.

The Democrats are going to run with this, they'd be stupid not to, but they will also almost certainly couple it with a lot of the other crazy stuff the Republicans have been pushing as well, instead of jobs.  Rep. Gohmert (R-TX) just submitted a bill (H.R. 4182) that would require the Architect of the Capitol to place a historical plaque in the National Statuary Hall recognizing the seven decades of Christian church services held in the Capitol Building from 1800 to 1868.  27 Representatives, all of them Republicans, have signed on as co-sponsors.  THIS is the kind of stuff the Republicans are wasting our time with.

--Trakker

I'm feeling MUCH better about the November elections.

Here is the trailer for the 17 minute video the Obama administration will release next week.

It's just one more bit of evidence that this administration has got its grove back.  I'm becoming more confident that the Obama team has finally figured out how to deal with the radicals that now drive the Republican party, a party that believes that the only qualification for office is how well you can sell lies to stupid people. 

The Obama team has finally realized that the seemingly invincible power of the right is built entirely upon lies, lies that hide the Republican's real agenda: to do the bidding of the corporations and the very wealthy.

Granted, the Obama team has been lucky.  The overreach of the Susan Komen Foundation and the stupidity of Rep. Issa to deny Sandra Fluke a chance to testify, relying instead on an all-male panel to discuss access to female contraception, which eventually resulted in Rush's ugly attack on Fluke and awakened women to the fact that the GOP is full of ugly misogynists. 

But I've been impressed with how deft the Obama team has used these missteps to their advantage without injecting the administration too deeply into the controversy.  Add to that Obama's pitch-perfect speech at AIPAC, his warning to Israel that we must rely first on sanctions and negotiations with Iran before rushing to war, and his scolding of the Republican candidates running for President, telling them they are being dangerously irresponsible for pushing for war with Iran.

For most of Obama's three years in office I've been bitterly disappointed in how he has let the Republicans play him, and for turning his back on his base which led to the disastrous 2010 mid-term losses.  I have to admit the last few months have given me hope that either Obama's new advisers are more savvy or the administration has learned from past mistakes, and I'm beginning to feel hope again.

Bottom line is this: because, 1) the Republicans have no one in their party that has the balls to say, "Enough! We've gone too far," and 2) the Obama team is learning how to shine a spotlight on the Republican's lies and overreach, the November elections have the potential to be a blowout of epic proportions.

--Trakker

An Irish politician is outraged that the radical right in America hates Obama and cares little about the uninsured here.

I just became aware of this 2010 Michael D Higgins exchange with a right wing talk show host/Tea Partier, Michael Graham (Higgins was elected President of Ireland last year).  It is nice to hear a politician show some moral outrage about what the right is doing to our poor (and middle class), and their warmongering.  Wow!

 

 

--Trakker

Health care costs in America are killing our economy and making us less competitive.

Ezra Klein makes a solid case for a single-payer health care system in the U.S., and in the process shows why either the radical right is doomed or our country's middle class is doomed.

In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978.

Why does our health care cost so much more than everyone else?

“The United States spends more on health care than any of the other OECD countries spend, without providing more services than the other countries do,” they concluded. “This suggests that the difference in spending is mostly attributable to higher prices of goods and services.”

Why is this?

“Other countries negotiate very aggressively with the providers and set rates that are much lower than we do,” Anderson says. They do this in one of two ways. In countries such as Canada and Britain, prices are set by the government. In others, such as Germany and Japan, they’re set by providers and insurers sitting in a room and coming to an agreement, with the government stepping in to set prices if they fail.

What is the solution?

But as simple an explanation as “the prices are higher” is, it is a devilishly difficult problem to fix. Those prices, for one thing, mean profits for a large number of powerful — and popular — industries.

In other words, we're screwed because these industries can buy enough politicians to insure the government does nothing that would reduce their profits.

But this disparity cannot continue or at some point only the wealthy will be able to afford health insurance and Medicare will become a huge drain on our budget.

As Ezra pointed out:

If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries [Canada, Germany, France], America’s deficits would vanish. Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive.

So we have to do something or our middle class will vanish (or only the very healthy or very lucky will retain their middle class standard of living) and our country will become a sweat shop for the world.  

The only solution is to adopt a single-payer health-care system similar to the countries cited above.  That will be considered "socialized medicine" and the radical right will fight it tooth and nail, but the American people are beginning to catch on to the fact that the looney right is all about enriching the wealthy and impoverishing the middle class.  I believe a single payer health care system in the U.S. is inevitable, or eventually we will become the world's newest, and largest, third world nation.

--Trakker

The radical right is already self-destructing and it's only March!

So Slut is the new word for liberals?  How will that win elections?  Yes, that may be the kind of language radical conservatives use all the time to describe woman who use birth control but the vast majority of Americans were aghast at Rush's use of the word to describe a woman who dared speak out - and who never once mentioned her own sex life in her testimony!  For all we know Sandra Fluke is celibate.

I think John Cole at Balloon Juice described my feelings about this issue pretty well.

The craziest thing to me about this whole Rush flare-up and the lunatic fringe of the right doubling down on the slut issue is how politically incompetent it all is. ... I’m really not used to this kind of political incompetence from Republicans- usually they are horribly wrong on the issues, but win the political battles.

Some of this may stem from the hubris you develop when you almost always win despite how loony your argument is.

What they should have done is simple. They should have claimed victory when Obama made the modification to the mandate. ...But instead of seizing upon it, they instead shit the bed and decided to double down, and now we have near 70% of the country looking at the Republicans like they are some kind of freak show, with their leaders introducing the Blunt and Rubio amendments and their spiritual leaders calling all women who use contraceptives sluts and prostitutes and the base doubling down and following their lead.

This has done some real long-term damage to Republicans and Rush's lame apology isn't going to stem it.

I’m not sure what is motivating this insanity. Part of it, of course, is the fact that they just hate you. Part of it is they are just opposed to anything liberals support. Part of it is that they are beholden to religious nuts. Part of it is an attempt to simply gut ACA. And I’m sure part of it is that they are so in their own bubble that they honestly don’t believe anything but their own bullshit.

I think a lot of radical righties live in their own bubbles where everyone they know watches Fox and is convinced Obama is the most evil, dangerous President ever, and nothing is too vile to describe him and those who support him.  I still see lots of comments to WaPost articles that express certainty that any of the four remaining Republican candidates can beat Obama in November without breaking a sweat!

Regardless, it is crazy, and at the same time, I am cheering them on.

Yes, I'm cheering too, but at the same time marveling at how self-destructive the radical right has become, and it's only March!

--Trakker

Rick Santorum's ideological statements make him appear "disconnected from the present tense."

Reading the pundits in the WaPost is like eating toast without butter, pretty dry stuff.  That's why I was delighted to read Kathleen Parker today

Politicians say the darnedest things, especially when their lips are moving.

Perhaps it is on account of such a long primary season, but the more they talk, the tastier their feet. While Mitt Romney is merely guilty of saying things that make him seem disconnected from the lives of most Americans, Rick Santorum makes ideological statements that make him appear to be disconnected from the present tense.

Parker is a conservative whose writing is sometimes superb even when I don't agree with her (Richard Cohen is another whose writing I enjoy).  Parker gets annoyed at the extremism in the current Republican party and sometimes calls them out on it.  Her columns about Democrats are about what you would expect from a fairly sane rightwinger, and, let's admit it, we need more of them.  I spend a lot of time on lefty blogs and they make great points and are quite good at pointing out wingnuttery, but the spin can get annoying.  The truth is, the left is not always right and the sane righties are sometimes right.  It's hard to know when you're wrong if you only read the stuff you agree with.

--Trakker

Why Romney won't be our next President

Look no further than the debacle last week of Mitt speaking to a small crowd in the cavernous Ford Stadium tat seat 65,000 people.  The news pictures of 1,200 people sitting at one end of the football field with 65,000 empty seats clearly visible was devastating, and was used by his detractors to imply that Romney is failing to generate any excitement among Republican voters.  A Daily Kos post showed a picture of empty Ford Stadium versus a picture of a large stadium in Denver almost completely filled to hear Barack Obama speak in 2008, along with some mocking Twitters.

But that's not really fair.  Here are the facts:

The Detroit Economic Club arranged the event and sold tickets for it ($45 for members; $75 for non-members), and when two indoor venues sold out quickly, club officials moved the speech to Ford Field.

So a crowd of 1,200 club members who paid to hear Romney speak was actually a pretty good turnout. So why do I think this event shows why Romney can't win the Presidency?  Because, 1) to win you need a staff that is smart enough to know that a crowd of 1,200 people in a huge stadium is going to look tiny and news pictures will give the impression that the event was a bust (that was my first reaction to the pictures).  Romney's staff should have rejected the venue, but didn't. That picture will be used against him again and again in the future.  2) Romney's speech.

“You know, the trees are the right height,” he said. “The streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.” 

[Ann Romney drives a Cadillac SRX - two actually.  They are designed in Detroit but made in Mexico]

The trees are the right height, the streets are just right?  Romney has said a lot of stupid stuff that has gotten him in a lot of trouble ("I don't worry about poor people"), but his speeches are also full of weird stuff like this.  It makes people stop and scratch their heads in confusion.  People don't want their Presidents to say weird stuff.

Besides an inept staff and saying stupid things that make people groan and weird stuff that no one understands, Mitt is also - a poor debater, - he will take any stance he feels he has to to get the votes, and - he has no rapport with white blue-collar voters so important to the Republican Party.  No, Mitt will not be our next President (unless the SuperPACS can buy the office).

Update: As if to reinforce what I wrote above, here's Maureen Dowd's column today in the NYTimes:

[The GOP's] jitters increased exponentially as they watched Mitt belly-flop in his hometown on Friday, giving a dreadful rehash of his economic ideas in a virtually empty Ford Field in Detroit, babbling again about the “right height” of Michigan trees and blurting out that Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs.”

--Trakker