"... i mean black people"

in a thursday special saturday night live took a chainsaw to romney's "quiet room" comments about the so-called "47%":

romney (jason sudeikis): "... so you have this 47% that don't pay taxes, and these people are never going to vote for me. and when i talk about these people who don't pay taxes, i don't mean senior citizens. alright? and i don't mean members of our armed services. and i don't mean southern whites. okay, what i mean is ... and real quick — no one is recording this, correct? no? okay, it's very important that no one records this. okay, good, 'cause i'm about to say who "these people" [finger quotes] are. now i would prefer not to have that on tape.

[turns to camera] ah, sorry sir, is that a camera on the table pointing right at me?

[brief camera pans right and left, as if signaling "no"] okay, great.

[turning back to guests] alright, now when i say "these people", i mean black people."

snl got it exactly right: this is the elusive "whitey tape". the real one. glad somebody finally aired it.

since the surfacing of romney's "47%" comments, a narrative has settled in that romney has carelessly damaged himself with huge swathes of his own voters. while there is definitely anecdotal evidence of some defections, and while i can certainly see this hurting him badly among any remaining undecideds, anyone who's been following conservatives, especially hardcore conservatives, knows that this tape only validates what wingnuts rich, middle and poor already believe. to them, romney's statements come simply as an extension of his already established coded attacks on welfare.

the american spectator: "when i hear romney's words at this event, my reaction is "say more of this stuff in public, mitt." it's a strong and correct message (other than the use of a number as high as 47 percent) and it will resonate with many americans, including quite a few who don't pay income tax."

"i entirely agree, and this should be the campaign focus. if the truth doesn't get him elected, then the country is gone at this point in history anyway." (pieceofthepuzzle)

as i recently commented on daily kos:

... romney's saying that the OTHER half of the country are freeloaders (colored people).

HIS half of the country, his white base, regardless of class or income level, will always exempt themselves from that description. they rightfully deserve their govt largess (tax cuts, loans, subsidies), which don't count as loathsome handouts (welfare, food stamps, unemployment).

cnn's john king carried the conventional narrative by poignantly making the case for the 47% via his own experience:

"... so, a lot of these voters could be republicans. and ah, i understand your back-and-forth, but alice, i, i make a personal note here: a lot of americans, of all income stripes, have struggled for the last few years and the risk for gov. romney is that it is insulting to them. as a kid, my family was on food stamps for a couple of years when my dad got sick. ah, we didn't feel entitled, and we weren't victms, and my father was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. ah, but in the end my mother was grateful she was able to feed her kids."

meanwhile, hardcore conservatives not only exempt themselves from admissions or accusations of government assistance, they deny their government assistance is a form of government assistance! craig t. nelson on glenn beck's show:

"i've been on food stamps. anybody help me out? no."

just another episode in the GOP's long-running but more and more often flaccid southern strategy:

interviewer: but the fact is, isn't it, that reagan does get to the wallace voter and to the racist side of the wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

lee atwater: 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."

romney-man to the rescue

(story and art by ty templeton)

not reg'lar folks

comment of the day from "yellowdog" @ ed kilgore's blog "political animal":

the attacks on obama's religion, on his birth certificate, on his purported lack of patriotism, and on his associations with folks like ayers all draw water from the same poisoned well. calling obama an affirmative action president is just one more way of taking away his legitimacy as a candidate and as a leader.

if anything, obama and his team should be very familiar with these sorts of attacks by now. all of them are rehashed and reheated from 2008 — and they will need to dent obama's credibility with people now who were not bothered by them four years ago. in tandem with the false welfare attacks, they might sway some voters. romney likes the welfare lies because they are 'new information' about obama.

problem is, though, romney's basic approval ratings are not budging — and he is not an easy person to cast as a savior of ordinary working people, of any race. taking cruises on yachts registered in the caymans tends to undercut the regular-guy appeal ... ann romney is supposed to help — but it is not an easy or natural message for her either. these are not regular folk — and their attempts to play regular folk fall flat because they are not convincing at it.

the rich are different — isn't that what randians believe after all? the air of natural superiority bleeds through. in rand-world, the wealthy and industrious are superior because their place in the capitalist order has proven them superior. they built it ... they proved their worth, in dollars and cents. the market is a perfect moral arbiter. it's not lake wobegone — every child in rand-world is not above average. the successful are inherently better than the non-successful. if there are winners, there have to be losers. and, wow, what losers now populate our society. what better way to make the case for this moral vision of the world than to point to the distortions of the 'natural' order of things represented in affirmative action? obama stands for all the losers, those who corrupt the natural hierarchy of society. obama is out of his place. he has gotten uppity in the words of one congressman (my own, i regret to say). he has gotten above himself. he is mingling with his betters.

this is the GOP vision right now. we are not all created equal. the capitalist system will sort us out efficiently as to rights and to basic human worth. if you are worthy, you can vote and join the club. if you are not worthy, ashes will be heaped on your head. if you are poor, it is because you deserve to be poor. you did not build it. you did not try. ipso facto — you are a loser. further, you will always be a loser. (and you will try to steal elections, join unions for benefits you did not earn or deserve, and you will always ask government to subsidize your sorriness.)

just think, though, of what this moral view makes of the struggling middle class — what a bleak vision this is for them, for people who are trying harder than ever. is their failure because they are unworthy? is their worth at issue? rand would say yes. of course romney and co. want to blame the problems of the middle class on welfare and affirmative action. if the middle class got a whiff of what the rand-reading yacht-riding class really thinks of them — in randian clarity — it would be pitchforks for mitt. in randworld, you are measured by what you earn. your net worth is your moral worth. if you are not earning enough, it is because you are unworthy. you lack something. your economic problems are your own damn fault.

no wonder mitt wants to talk about welfare ...

from the mouths of babes

(cross-posted at daily kos)

from today's "grim" new unicef report on child welfare in the the top 21 industrialized nations, in which the netherlands and scandinavia came out on top, while the united states and britain sat "roundly bottom":

peter marshall, narrator: in the netherlands, home of liberal views on sex and drugs, their young people rank at the top of unicef's survey for well-being. we went to a school in the heart of amsterdam to talk to sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. laura vos, student: in this country it's very free. you can do what you like, you can smoke when you're sixteen, you can buy pot in the store next to the school — [laughter] because it's not illegal, it's not that interesting for us to just — to provoke our parents with.

are you listening, mr. social conservative, mrs. moral majority, uncle christian coalition and auntie no-child-left-behind?

probably not.

still, miss vos does leave us with an interesting question: just what do dutch kids have to do there, to provoke their parents?

overall rankings from the report:
1. netherlands 2. sweden 3. denmark 4. finland 5. spain 6. switzerland 7. norway 8. italy 9. ireland 10. belgium 11. germany	12. canada 13. greece 14. poland 15. czech republic 16. france 17. portugal 18. austria 19. hungary 20. united states 21. united kingdom

all kidding aside, it is of course simplistic to attribute the success of the dutch solely or even primarily to its liberal attitudes. after all, a number of conservative and strongly religious nations like spain, italy and ireland made it into the top ten.

but what's noteworthy is how the report discredits the long-standing conservative-religious argument that morally permissive societies are dangerous to its children's moral and physical well-being. presumably this is the argument propping up their endless campaigns against hollywood, music, drugs, sex education, birth control, abortion, and the rest of their entire program. it's all about saving the children, don't you see?

and uncle christian coalition and auntie no-child-left-behind would have us all believe that only a strict country devoted to dogma can protect the young, not that a "decadent" country like the netherlands could ever rate such a list, much less come out on top.

na ga ha pen

for those of you going all a-twitter (or for others, going all a-slaver) at the prospect of the stillborn loss of next year's democratic senate majority:

take a deep breath.

it ain't that easy, according to jonathan singer @ mydd:

little to no precedent for forcibly unseating incapacitated senators: the only way the senate can remove a member is by a vote to expel, and there has never been any desire to do that for a health-related cause. sen. karl mundt (r-s.d.) suffered a debilitating stroke in 1969 but refused to resign and stayed in office until his term expired in january 1973 — although he never showed up for work following his infirmity. republicans pressured mundt to step down shortly before the 1970 elections, when it appeared the gop was going to lose the governorship, and with it their ability to appoint a senate successor. there was never talk of a motion to expel, though the republican conference eventually did strip him of his committee assignments. in november of that year, a democrat was elected governor, so the republicans who were urging mundt's resignation turned to hoping he would serve until his term expired. there were other, similar situations. rep. john grotberg (r-ill.) lapsed into a coma in january 1986 after participation in an experimental program for his colon cancer caused him to have a heart seizure. his family and staff refused to consider resignation, and the house took no action. he even won re-nomination to the house in the march gop primary that year, but his family finally relented and announced he would not run again. he remained a member of the house until his death in november 1986. in the spring of 1964, sen. clair engle (d-calif.) was dying of brain cancer, but refused democratic entreaties to resign. in june, when the senate voted to break the filibuster that had stymied the civil rights bill, the dying engle was wheeled onto the senate floor to vote for cloture by motioning with his hand. he died a month later. in the spring of 1943, sen. carter glass (d-va.) was 85 years old, in poor health and simply stopped coming to work. he died in may of 1946, still a senator but no longer a visitor to capitol hill. and according to sen. robert byrd's (d-w.va.) invaluable book of senate historical statistics, sen. james grimes (r-iowa) suffered a stroke in 1869 and remained in office as an invalid until his death in february of 1872. but there was no move in the senate to declare any of the aforementioned seats vacant. the only instance i can think of where lawmakers took action involved gladys spellman of maryland. the democratic house member suffered a massive heart attack in october of 1980 while campaigning that left her in a semi-conscious, coma-like state from which she never emerged. she won re-election with ease, but once it was determined that there was no prospect for recovery, the house voted to declare the seat vacant in february 1981.

still, what this inquiring mind wants to know is: if johnson should fall into a "persistent vegetative state" (though, according to his most recent diagnoses, johnson is thankfully "recovering without complications", making this outcome increasingly unlikely), like the now-famous terry schiavo, for whom the republicans brought congress to a standstill, should we expect the republicans to agree to allow him to take his seat?

shaft's final solution

kamau rashidi kambon wants to kill white people.

not just some white people. not just any white people. kambon wants to "exterminate white people off the face of the planet."

who is kamau rashidi kambon? according to wikipedia, kambon is a multi-degreed educator, author and spokesman on issues of concern to african americans.

on october 14, 2005, at the "hurricane katrina & issues facing african americans" symposium hosted at washington, d.c.'s howard university and broadcast live on c-span, kambon made the following remarks, transcribed in their entirety:

i want to say a couple of things, and i really don't want you all to miss me before we get ready to go. my wife was here and she was the president of the association of black psychologists a couple of years ago and she was responsible for taking about five hundred people including about three hundred black psychologists to ghana, west africa for their national conference. the reason i point that out is because i want to say a couple of things and i'm gonna go out of bounds with what i have to say, relative to what we've been talking about. first of all, i grew up in brooklyn, and i saw, looking back on my life, i saw about thirty of my friends die. y'know, getting shot, overdosing on drugs, any number of things that took them off the planet, y'know, beautiful brothers. so as i started to become more conscious, i looked around, i started asking this very important question, i think the most important question that i asked myself and that you can ask yourself is "why?" and i wanted to find out what was going on. so i began to change. i began to examine everything, i don't like to use the word "critically", but i started to really check things out. so i went through a very very serious change. i mean serious change. and what my wife and i did, we decided that we were going to drop out from this system. we delivered two of three of our children at home using midwives. she didn't take any medication, we didn't go to a doctor. she talked me into doing that, but it was a beautiful experience for me to be there to help deliver our children. they were born, by the way, two years apart on the same day, and our oldest daughter helped us deliver our children. we also changed our diets. we saw the hospital system was killing our people, so we changed our diets. we have been vegan for about thirty years. that means no meat ... [applause] no meat at all in any form, no dairy products, no sugar, no white flour, the same thing that dr. whittaker talked about. because we understood that we were in a war. i want to emphasize that to you. we are in a war. we left new york and went to north carolina and we, and really, it's on her again, we decided that we were not going to go in debt because the new form of slavery was economic slavery. and we got some land, we were very fortunate, and we built our own house. we built a log house. took us sixteen months, we worked night and day, every day, for the sixteen months, and she was out there with a chain saw, in the cold, in the rain, and we worked and we built the house so we would not have to give white people any money. i taught on the college level for a number of years at a so-called "black college", and i'm down against "black colleges", i'm'a tell you straight up, 'cause of some of the madness that's going on in these schools. but what i want to say is that there are two things going on on the planet now. one is that when white people came to us and said we're going to free you, we're going to emancipate you from the plantation, what they did was extended the boundaries of the plantation and made it a international plantation. made us think that we were free. in addition to that they made every white person on earth a plantation master or owner. so there are two things in operation. we are in an international prison. not just in america but everywhere we go our people are dying. so the things that are in operation on this planet is that white people want to kill us. i want you to understand that. they want to kill you. and it has nothing to do with what kind of degree you have, what kind of car you have, what kind of title you have, what fraternity you belong to, what religion you belong to, they want to kill you because that is part of their plan. there are any number of reasons why they want to do that but i'm not gonna waste my time trying to figure out why they want to kill us. but i know that's what they want to do. and they want to do it in many different ways — psychological, economic, cultural, spiritual, social, biological, chemical, electromagnetic — they want to kill you. but they also want to make money in the process of your death. now i saw a brother when i was coming in and he was smoking a cigarette. so now he going to kill himself but they're going to make money off of his death process. the other thing is that they want us to — if they don't kill us, like they tried to kill the brother by beating him up in new orleans, they don't kill us that way, or shooting like they killed the brother in cincinatti, or like they killed malice green in detroit, or like they killed gammage up in pittsburgh, if they don't come out, right, and kill us straight, they want to get us to kill ourselves. now these are the only two operations on the planet. the other thing is that there's only one nigger on the planet — i never use that word. this is the first time i've used, i don't even think that word — but there's only one nigger on the planet. and the nigger that's on the planet is the one that is destroying the water, the one that's polluting the air, the one that is exploiting people and resources, and the only nigger on the planet is the white man and the white woman. and that our people are not niggers, we are imitation niggers. now what we have to do is we have to devise a system or a plan for ourselves, and i said earlier that each one of you is a system. and everything that you do, every thought that you think, either you are supporting white world terror domination, by your actions, what you buy, what you wear, where you go, what you eat, how you use your time, you are either supporting the white people in their process of death, or you're for african liberation, it's one or the other. and if we don't use our time wisely, then we are engaging in a form of subtle suicide, because as i said earlier their system is still going on. they still have these images on t.v. that are going on, they're still warehousing our children in the special ed, giving them ritalin, there're no jobs, we filling the hospitals, so their system is not stopping. and then finally, i want to say that we need one idea. and we're not thinking about a solution to the problem. we're dealing with all these other things but these are diversions from the solution to the problem. and we have to start to think about a solution to the problem so that these young brothers and sisters who are here now, who are fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, are not here twenty-five years later talking about these same problems. now how do i know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem? i know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call "racial profiling", dna banks, and they are monitoring our people, to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. and the one idea is how we are going to exterminate white people, because that in my estimation is the only conclusion that i have come to. we have to exterminate white people off of the face of the planet to solve this problem. [sparse applause] now i don't care whether you clap or not, but i'm saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. and i will leave on that. so we have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem, and the problem on the planet is white people. [sparse applause]

"out of bounds" did he say? let's try "out to lunch".

i could enumerate the many ways in which kambon's remarks are absurd, but i would be belaboring the obvious, and that sort of accounting is not the reason why i chose to post this article and not why i find his remarks so fascinating.

i've often heard that racism is rooted in ignorance, but clearly there are many racists like kambon who are intelligent and well-educated. in fact, kambon himself invites us along on his intellectual journey, which he describes as the result of a search for answers to deeply compelling questions about black mortality in america. what most people, and most evidently kambon, do not recognize is how the vehicle we choose for the journey drives us towards the conclusions we reach at the end.

kambon's choice of vehicle was probably the most fateful choice in his search: he decided to withdraw from society.

and what my wife and i did, we decided that we were going to drop out from this system.

like ted kaczynski, the so-called "unabomber", kambon decided to go meditate in a cabin.

one profound effect of this type of isolation is a loss of perspective. on a very basic level everyone believes that they are right in what they think. we have to, because otherwise we could not justify the things that we do. but social contact provides other voices as yardsticks against which we may measure our beliefs.

another profound effect of isolation is the emergence of misanthropic tendencies. most people have some level of antisocial impulses and our belief in our own correctness keeps us in conflict with everyone who does not think as we do. they must be wrong. they are either stupid or blind or brainwashed or misguided. they have to be — for how can i be right if they are not wrong?

when a person becomes isolated, whether by choice or circumstance, the misanthopic voices, no longer required to rebut the opinions of others, begin to sound more and more convincing, and are free to roam, grow louder and dominate, especially if the person listening is not particularly stable or equanimous or mature. it is also worth noting that whatever siren song these misanthopic voices might be singing, it might not always be pleasant, but it is usually personally gratifying for the listener.

but isolation in itself probably did not drive kambon to his final solution, or at least drive him to take his solution on tour. since there are no prior records of his making public charges like these, presumably he had been quietly nursing his ideas in his log cabin for a number of years, until some catalyzing event finally compelled him to openly proselytize genocide.

which brings us to hurricane katrina.

the catastrophic failure of government at every level that doomed a historic hub of african american culture must have come as the ultimate vindication of the most horrific schemes whispered to kambon in his nightmares. of course white people are trying to kill black people. all black people. white people obviously no longer felt the need for either subtlety or patience. if there remained any chance of saving his people, kambon could no longer afford to remain silent. one cannot miss the hints of messianism in his voice:

and then finally, i want to say that we need one idea. ... they are monitoring our people, to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea.

kambon is not alone in his feelings. indeed, the aftermath of katrina made it impossible for anyone, white or black or lime-green, not to question the commitment of the bush administration to the well-being — even survival — of minority citizenry. no one can forget grammy-winning rapper kanye west's spontaneous on-air indictment during the september 2nd nationally broadcast nbc "concert for hurricane relief" telethon:

i hate the way they portray us in the media. if you see a black family, it says they're looting. see a white family, it says they're looking for food. and you know that it's been five days, because most of the people are black. and even for me to complain about it, i would be a hypocrite because i’ve tried to turn away from the tv, because it's too hard to watch. we already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way, and they have given them permission to go down and shoot us. ... george bush doesn’t care about black people.

after the 9/11 attacks, bush enjoyed a robust 51% approval rating among blacks, but it had dropped to 19% by the time katrina hit. after the disaster an nbc/wall street journal poll pegged his approval rating at an unheard-of 2%, "one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling". given its statistical margin of error of ±3.4%, it might as well have been zero.

in his 2000 run for the white house george bush made a famous pledge: "i'm a uniter, not a divider." six years later, race relations have never been more strained, and now we can add one more genocidal voice to the mix. never more hollow does that pledge ring.