I thought I would share a slice of American life in 2008 with you. My partner and I live in a fairly affluent upscale suburb of New York in northern New Jersey. We're about 22 miles from midtown Manhattan as the crow flies. The population of our town is predominantly white, average age around 45, have beautiful homes complete with maids and landscapers, own two or three cars, are generally professional types, have 2.4 kids, and in general are highly educated people. In other words, very white and very wealthy. They claim to be Republicans but they mean the Rockefeller branch of the GOP, i.e., not very conservative and generally with a strong libertarian streak.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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In an exclusive conversation with anyone who cares to listen, we will be looking at John McCain's controversial connections with Irish extremists.  There are serious questions that John McCain has yet to answer, and since Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly are busy with the Muslims, someone has to raise these serious issues.

The silence of the liberal and conservative media on this subject just tells me that it's too hot for them to handle.  But as a courageous journalist in the spirit of Hannity and O'Reilly, today I will be taking a closer look at McCain's ties to radical Irish extremists.

Welcome to today's edition of the No Spin Zone.

Many of you may be familiar with Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  He's more publicity hound than law enforcement officer, more racist than Tom Tancredo, and he's both loved and hated by the dichotomy that is Arizona.  And he's been racially profiling by pulling over anyone remotely brown, getting his deputies federally deputized so they can enforce controversial immigration laws, and generally acting like an racist bigoted ass.

A few weeks ago, while he was doing a publicity tour in Tucson (way outside of his jurisdiction of Maricopa County) a local immigrants rights groups protest got a little rowdy.

Off with his head after the jump.

So says one Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blues:

As a Capitol Hill chief of staff, I often drank at Bullfeathers and was invited to join the throng at McCain's table one evening. A few minutes listening to the racism, bigotry and homophobia of the Arizona Congressman told me all I needed to know.

McCain loved to tell jokes about lesbians, blacks, Hispanics and the Vietnamese community that occupied a large section of Arlington County, Virginia, just south of the District of Columbia.

Of course, McCain didn't use polite language in the jokes: He used names like "fags" or "queers" or "dykes" or "niggers" or "spics" or "wetbacks" or "gooks."

More below the fold.

The Bush Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost the U.S. $2.4 trillion, but some fiscal conservatives and anti-tax crusaders are still fixated on derailing the billions of dollars requisite to restore a city lost to Bush’s incompetence and hubris – the city of New Orleans.

An old, annoying, yet benign, viral e-mail is being treated to a sinister makeover and finding its way into e-mail boxes across America. The e-mail, in its original form, was disseminated ostensibly to ask the reader to posit the vastness of a $1 billion. While ruminating on this idea, the letter goes on to show how politicians cavalierly bandy about such a hefty sum in conversation whilst doing the nation’s business.

Ralph Nader has apparently joined the ranks of other political candidates in the use of the disingenuous accusation. This is apparently a growing trend this political year...

Brother Nader apparently thinks that this campaign season the more racial metaphors he can use the better...

My heart goes out to the survivors and the families of the survivors and victims of the shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.  I will keep them in my thoughts and prayers, as well as Mr. Jim Adkisson.  I do not understand the depths of despair and derangement that drove him to open fire inside a church, but it had to be the act of a desperate and damaged mind.  There really are no words to describe how terrible I find this event.

Mr. Adkisson heard words of hatred and intolerance from a wide variety of sources inside the ultra-right-wing world.  Congratulations to Fox News, because their broadcast has finally brought about the sort of tough action they have wanted all along.  The world would be a better place without all the vicious talk and hate mongering, but I won't count on any organization in Rupert Murdoch's portfolio working to make that happen.

More after the flip.

In a diary last Friday by thereisnospoon he made the case that affirmative action has been used by the right since the 1960's to win national elections.  The author deftly pointed out that the right has used bigotry , especially in the South, to get people to essentially vote against their interests for decades.

The original post
http://www.dailykos.com/...

I was lampooned by a supposedly "progressive" friend of mine for having a pronounced emotional response to Brokeback Mountain, because apparently, a straight man can't have that for a movie centered on a homosexual love affair.

I'm hoping this is just an isolated incident of ignorance, but does it speak to enduring phobia's and prejudices that still pervade our liberal political diaspora?

I'll briefly examine that question...

In some of the arguments from the New Yorker apologists, I get the sense that there is a disconnect in how the representation that was satirized is not just an attack on Michelle Obama, but an attack on black women in general.  Much in the way that Hillary Clinton throughout her career has been a feminist symbol because of the way and the why behind how she was attacked, Michelle Obama is attacked in ways related to what she represents.  This is why the imagery is so offensive to so many people, regardless of the fact it's satire.

Republicans have been in a lather since Barack Obama commented that American children should learn a foreign language in school. It demonstrates the extent to which they've become the party of ignorance.

Responding to a voter in GA who'd like more bilingual education, Obama said:

"Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], ‘Merci beaucoup.’ Right? You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me."

Hard to argue with that. It's obvious too that learning a foreign language helps you to understand your own language better. It also brings perspective on how to think, speak, and write. While thinking critically about ideas you learn to communicate them more precisely.

Predictably, right-wingers flew into a rage at Obama's un-American call for better language skills. For example, John McCormack at the Weakly Standard labeled language education as snobbery and elitism. John Derbyshire called Obama's suggestion "idiotic" because "not many human beings can learn another language", as his own failures prove. He combines that with characteristic condescension:

In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time.

Many right-wingers just skipped what Obama actually said and declared that he wants to forcibly indoctrinate their children in Spanish, or make Spanish the official language of the US. Fox News knew what Republicans wanted to hear. Neil Cavuto brought on the Philly-cheese-steak bigot Joey Vento to denounce Obama: "This man is a sick man. He is a scary man."

Even before it embraced creationism and made attacks on science a guiding principle, the Republican Party had proudly turned itself into the party of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. But Obama's call for children to learn more languages (which he stands by) has given the GOP an opportunity to link two of its favorite cudgels, ignorance and bigotry against immigrants. Truly the modern heir to the Know-Nothing Party.

This is a light hearted comment on a video that has been going around the internet.

Hat tip to Friendly Atheist.

Video and poll below the fold.

The urge to speak no ill of the dead is a powerful one.  And it was on full display this week as former Senator Jesse Helms was laid to rest.  

The media glossed over almost all of Helms' ugly history as the last unapologetically racist politician of the segregation era.  Largely ignored was how Helms stirred the pot of bigotry and hatred to win elections and further his political goals.  The people Helms hurt throughout his career deserve better.

More after the jump.

Jesse Helms’ death comes as no surprise, since his health had rapidly declined after he retired from the U.S. Senate in 2002. Yet it’s fitting that he died on the Fourth of July.

Helms was a disgrace to North Carolina and the nation, and what better time to celebrate our independence from the bigoted, hate-filled politics he stood for.

During Helms’ heyday, the question on many people’s minds about North Carolina was how could its citizens keep re-electing an extreme right wing, unrepentant segregationist, self-proclaimed "redneck" like Helms? The perception was that the state was filled with racists, or that Helms’ voters were ignorant and uneducated. The reality is more complex.

More below the fold.

I can't decide whether that's a good thing or not.  On one hand, it seems so smug that you'd pick a patriotic holiday to kick the bucket, but on the other hand it's annoying that I had to stomach hearing your name while enjoying a perfectly grilled burger.  I'm sure the media narrative will be to paint you as a southern hero who did lots of things in the Senate.

Last month, California gave its stamp of approval to same-sex marriage, becoming only the second state after Massachusetts to do so.  Fear of gay marriage has long been exploited by right-wingers as the ultimate homophobic weapon to scare up bigotry and votes. Predictably, a parade of anti-gay idiots came out of the woodwork, howling in protest.

But they're on the wrong side of history. And to fully understand recent events, it's important to remember a tragedy that happened thirty-five years ago, and how much things have changed for gay Americans since then.

On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed. The resulting blaze killed 32 people. The death toll was the worst in New Orleans history up to that time. It was almost assuredly the largest mass murder of gays and lesbians to ever occur in the United States.

More below the fold.

Call this one a misadventure in framing.

If you're like me, a little piece of you dies every time a Republican or even a self-styled Independent Democrat engages in a framing device such as substituting "Democrat Congress" for the correct "Democratic Congress." The goal of this wordplay is to both emphasize the "rat" in Democrat in the hopes of tarnishing a political party as untrustworthy and, more sinisterly, to try to lessen the usage of the word "democratic" in political discourse.

But sometimes framing has some unexpected results.