charles blow

Eloquent words from the New York Times' Charles Blow.

And yes, I was one that wept. In a good way.

what could have been...

Reading about Mark Warner's victory in the Virginia Senate race, I saw a photo of Warner, Governor Tim Kaine, and Senator Jim Webb watching the returns. Webb of course defeated George Allen in 2006 largely because Allen called that young volunteer of South Asian descent "macaca". Before his defeat, he had been seen as a possible front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination for 2008.

Probably just as well Allen lost to Webb. Can you imagine him calling Barack Obama "macaca" during a debate?

barack obama wins! some thoughts on the elections

A few observations, mostly of the emotional gut variety. Questions about the challenges facing President-elect Barack Obama and the nation can wait a little while longer.

On election night I had to attend an election watching event with a mixed crowd - Republicans and Democrats and other. Not how I would have liked to watch the results but it was an invitation I couldn't turn down. So I spent the night chatting civilly with different people. When CNN called Ohio for Obama (after calling Pennsylvania with 0% of the vote counted...), I knew that was it - John McCain and Sarah Palin couldn't win without flipping a major Kerry '04 state, and there was no prospect of that. I only allowed myself a smile. When the polls closed on the West Coast and the networks called California and the election for Obama, everybody applauded - nicely. I clapped a few times and allowed myself a smile, hardly able to believe that Barack Obama had pulled it off and that Sarah Palin would not be measuring the White House for moose-fur drapes.

Shortly after, I was able to leave as the party broke up. I went to my car, and in the privacy of my car - finally alone - I really let my guard down and allowed myself to really FEEL the victory for Obama.

I didn't quite weep but it was close.

I allowed myself to hope that with the impending end of the de facto Bush Administration, and the beginning of an Obama Administration (I can finally type that), some of the things that have gone so terribly wrong (state-approved torture in the name of you and me and the rest of the American people, for one) over the past eight years can be reversed.

I'm not black, but yes one of the things that swept over me was the realization that we had elected a black President. That is an awesome thing. I read accounts of old black Americans, old enough to remember literacy tests designed to keep them from voting, realizing that we were on the verge of electing a black American to the highest office of the land. It has happened, and that is a wondrous thing.

Good luck, President-elect Obama.

and the smears roll on

The latest is good. Associated Press picks up from Murdoch's Times of London a story about some aunt of Barack Obama's name of Zeituni Onyango apparnelty living illegally in Boston. Ooh, black Africans in America illegally! Call out the National Guard! No, call out DHS because she is probably the head of the Al Qaeda Boston cell! And the $260 that she donated to Obama PROVES Al Qaeda wants Obama to win! It's all so clear now! (Sorry, temporarily inhaled some Kool Aid powder, temporarily impaired my ability to think clearly. I don't know what sort of legs to expect. I hope it primarily appeals to those who loathe Obama anyway and were already in the McCain camp.)

Over at TPM Zachary Roth draws the lines for us. The Murdoch story links in to Drudge and Fox News and the rest of the US-based right-wing noise machine. And you know, it might be surprising to learn that the source for this last-hour leak is, gasp, somebody in the de facto Bush Administration! Who'd have thunk that the Bushies would stoop so low? (Speaking of Bushies, does Dick Cheney want John McCain to lose? Why else would Mr Radioactive 9% Popularity publicly embrace McCain at this time in the campaign?)

Josh Marshall editorializes about how low down and dirty in a particularly racist way the McCain campaign has been. He hopes an Obama victory is a repudiation of this. I hope so to.

But remember the only reason the GOP has been so overtly racist in this campaign is because the Democrats happened to nominate a black guy; that was the target so they took aim and began blasting away. If it had been Hillary, the sexism would've been out full force, not to mention each and every single Clinton-era smear, each and every bimbo ("Do you want Bill Clinton fucking black prostitutes in the White House AGAIN?" would have been one of their subtle lines), a new and expanded list of the dozens of people the Clintons have (allegedly) had assassinated over the years, Hillarycare (socialism! minus the racial element), the whole nine yards. If the Democrats had nominated Jesus Christ Himself, the Republicans would have charged socialism, immigration, and being soft on crime. Oh, and as a Palestinian, they would have probably come up with multiple connections between Christ and Hamas and Yasser Arafat...

(Meanwhile, I thank the Democrats' lucky stars that MY preferred candidate as of one year ago, white male populist and unfortunately cheater-on-his-cancer-struck-wife John Edwards, did not get the nomination...)

the civil war, 2008

A parallel between the end of the 2008 Presidential campaign and the US Civil War, led (albeit on opposite sides) by a tall, odd-looking, previously not well known gentleman from Illinois called Abraham Barack Lincoln Obama, and a well-known former military guy turned cranky hothead called John Jefferson Davis McCain.

The fighting in the East has been focused largely in two states: Virginia, where Barack Obama has taken his campaign into enemy territory. Despite significant home field advantages (a state that hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Keith Richards was young and the baseball A's still played in Kansas City), the Obama team has forced John McCain on the defensive with its intense forays into the state. If Obama wins in Virginia, McCain is in trouble. To put it mildly.

And then McCain has to hope his one major raid into enemy territory held by John Kerry in 2004 succeeds. McCain would have to win Pennsylvania. So he's been sending in an invasion force of out of state volunteers to see whether his side can pull out a surprise victory in (Gettysburg) Pennsylvania that would force England and France to recognize the Confederacy, I mean would (assuming he can hold most of the other states that de facto President George W. Bush, even more incompetent than Franklin Pierce or James Buchanan, won in 2004) let McCain eke out an electoral college victory.

And you thought I was going to say something nasty about McCain and race-baiting, didn't you? Well, he and Sarah Palin and the rest of the GOP campaign have been pretty egregious in their resort to nasty name calling, implications that we don't know "who Barack Obama is". Assertions that he is "disrespectful," which David Gergin, a Southerner, said was a well understood code word for being "uppity" - I'm sure Jefferson Davis would have understood that well. Repeatedly alleging thru surrogates Obama is a Muslim (and what's wrong with that anyway, asks Colin Powell correctly?) and all the rest of it. Oh, and he's a Socialist. And he isn't a plumber. And he probably lusts after white women in his heart. And he eats babies, alive.

complaining about being called racist

Charles Krauthammer slams the Obama campaign and the media for all the attention they are paying to "a couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands (who) yell something offensive and incendiary". He complains that not enough attention is being paid to Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and ACORN (yes, Krauthammer knows how to use his RNC/Fox News talking points). He complains that if you raise these issues, the Democrats all shout "racist" and point the finger.

I see. Well, let's forget the fact (as Krauthammer did) that some of these people are shouting things like "kill him" and are carrying huge monkey dolls with "Obama" on them. And that it is happening quite often. And let's also forget that some Republican organizations like the one in California are engaged in overt racist propaganda, depicting Obama on food stamps with watermelons and fried chicken. And let's forget things like GOP Congressman Lynn Westmoreland calling Obama "uppity" (a word frequently followed in the South by the n-word), or all those idiots introducing McCain and Palin and being sure to use Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

So laying aside all of that, what do you call it, "evidence" of racism, I wonder how Krauthammer would react if say John McCain were Jewish (or DINO Joe Lieberman were on the McCain ticket) and "a couple of agitated yahoos" in Obama or Biden crowds made offensive remarks about Jews or denied the Holocaust?

I think we know. He would be appalled, as we ALL should be. But actually the important thing in this to ensure Krauthammer's disapproval isn't that the mythical McCain be Jewish. It's that he be Republican. That would earn him Krauthammer's no-doubt impassioned condemnation of racism or anti-semitism or whatever.

And of course Krauthammer skips over the entire issue of the candidates' inflammatory rhetoric, particularly Palin's but McCain too with his nasty little lines about not really knowing who Barack Obama is. As if he expects the Obama from that infamous New Yorker magazine cover to reveal himself and start going around burning flags and letting terrorists come to America.

facts about "acorn"

Lately the McCain campaign has been bleating about something called ACORN, alleging that it is out there stealing votes and registering people in Chicago graveyards as Democrats. And of course, alleging that evil community organizers - hey, wasn't Barack Obama a community organizer? - are behind this.

A good article by Tom Matzzie at HuffPo describes what ACORN really does, and why the Republicans are crying about it - without justification. Matzzie doesn't, however, note that this is another example of dog-whistle racism, since the unspoken word is that these people being registered are all minorities. You know, not real Americans like Sarah I-got-a-free-house-and-tried-to-fire-my-no-good-brother-in-law-and-my-daughter's-knocked-up Palin. Or like John I-got-everything-in-the-Navy-because-my-daddy-and-granddaddy-were-admirals-even-though-I-wrecked-a-bunch-of-planes-and-serially-cheated-on-my-wife McCain.

the mortgage crisis is NOT because of the end of redlining

There have been nasty little comments and whispers by some - Republicans, naturally, so much for the Party of Lincoln - about how the whole financial crisis was caused by the Government telling banks they had to loan money to minorities.

That is a vicious rumor. And it is false. Michelle Singletary has a good column about the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which "seeks to ensure the provision of credit to all parts of a community, regardless of the relative wealth or poverty of a neighborhood."

The CRA didn't require lenders to give money to disqualified people - but it meant that just because Joe Blow lived in Neighborhood X you couldn't automatically refuse to lend him money. You had to look at Joe Blow's finances and credit history instead. And you had to give him terms the same as somebody else with his financial qualifications.

The CRA and other acts made it harder to be simply racist in refusing to lend to certain neighborhoods or people with certain kinds of names.

It did NOT, as a letter writer to Singletary mistakenly believes, "legalized the idea that lending institutions could not make loan decisions based solely on criteria such as income and ability to pay the loan back".

Singletary: No sir, it wasn't lending under CRA rules that took down the mortgage industry. It was greedy, reckless banking executives, lending officers and mortgage brokers who were supposed to properly screen borrowers and apply prudent loan underwriting standards. It was lax and inadequate federal and state regulation that allowed exotic and predatory mortgages to be sold to borrowers.

Further, a new study by the Bank for International Settlements, a very boring and sober group of people in Switzerland who are important to the global financial system, found that "the vast majority of the toxic loans stinking up mortgage-backed securities had nothing to do with CRA compliance."

So don't blame the bogus idea that banks were forced to make loans to unqualified minorities for the banking crisis.

Update: Another good article by Daniel Gross at Slate about the right's false demonization of the poor and minorities for what is a financial crisis provoked by the greed and recklessness of the rich.

stop dog whistle racism!

That's the name of a newish blog that is highlighting those subtle (and some not-so-subtle) racist hints, digs, and allegations so favored by the right wing noise machine and it's Republican Party subsidiary...

Check it out here if you want to see reports on things like Jonah Goldberg accusing the pro-Obama media of playing the race card, or stories like how the National Review made a link between the collapse of Washington Mutual and the fact that it touted its highly diverse workforce.

the real reason mccain links obama to raines

The Washington Post in its ongoing series assesses the McCain campaign claim that former Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines is a key economic adviser to Barack Obama. The Post points out this is a lie - somebody on Obama's campaign called Raines once to ask something about mortgages and securities.

But the Post delicately avoided the REAL reason McCain linked the disgraced Raines (who deserves a big part of the blame for the Fannie Mae problems, to be sure) to Obama.

Because Franklin Raines is black.

Yep. And we all know of course that all black Americans know each other and hang with each other and collude with each other, right*? Just like all American Jews do, and all American Asian-Americans, right? Wait for the McCain advertisement that links Obama to OJ Simpson and marrying and murdering white women. And the McCain advertisement that links Obama to Michael Jackson and creepy pedophilia. And the McCain piece that will link Obama to Barry Bonds, and will claim that Obama advocates mandatory steroid use for American teens.

It's a straight-out racist dog-whistle advertisement. The one phone call provides the flimsiest excuse but the color of Raines' skin is all the McCain maggots needed to make this link to scare the same kind of white voter who still believes that Obama is a Muslim AND that he agrees with everything that his CHRISTIAN ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright says at the pulpit.

And of course, John McCain, that once-honorable man whose REAL economic advisers Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina have been responsible in part for the current economic turmoil and have acted dubiously in charge of corporations, approved of the ad.

*Except Clarence Thomas.

barack obama, good for business

It's always interesting to see what kind of organization benefits from the nomination or election of a presidential candidate. For example, Big Oil was obviously boosted when de facto president George Bush and de facto king Dick Cheney were selected to be president back in 2000. And McDonalds did very well by Bill Clinton.

And there are a group of organizations who are seeing a rapid increase in hits at their websites since Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee earlier this month.

They are hate groups. White supremacists. Klansmen. Neo-Nazis. David Duke. The "Michigan militia" types.

It's sick but true that websites for groups like White Revolution and Stormfront have seen a surge in interest - and increased enrollments - from racists who see in the nomination of Obama some sort of plot to bring an end to "white America" and impose "multiculturalism" on us all.

Ooh scary.

But the sort of crap these people come up with IS scary. It's scary to me that people with such irrational, hate-filled attitudes exist.

defending imus by defaming king

Last week Washington Post columnist Colbert King had a column about Don Imus's frequent resorts to racist commentary; King decried politicians and media figures for appearing on Imus' show despite his habit and for not standing up to him by calling a racist a racist.

This week, at the end of a column about Hillary Clinton accepting $800,000 from a fundraiser hosted by rapper Timbaland, who uses the word "ho" once or twice in his lyrics ... per line, King shares some of the emails he received after his Imus piece.

You can read King's entire column here, but copied below is a sample of the sort of crap he copped from Imus supporters.

"These two [yours truly, and another African American Post columnist] are the dumbest of the current black race-mongers at the Washington Post." -- J.S.

On (King's) reference to attending Francis Junior High School: "You never did matriculate, did you?" -- B.W.

Regarding (King's) membership in the National Association of Black Journalists: "Why don't you work for a paper owned and run by Blacks?" -- Angry White Chick.

"Clearly, seeking out and writing about (White) discrimination and stoking up racism is your job. Discrimination-hunting pays for your nice house, your late model cars . . . In fact, it's the only reason you have a job. Nobody would read your articles if you wrote about anything else." -- J.K.

"I am fed up with Imus but I am even more fed up with black people . . . Yes, all African Americans. As a whole. [Imus] was a piddling story to be making such hoopla over." -- R.S.

"Imus was the fall guy for a culture of rap and hate radio that, unfortunately, will never change." -- P.M.

"Get a life. Or maybe instead try dealing with where Imus learned to talk that way. Hip Hop and Rap, ohh but you wouldn't get the play you get by jumping on the bandwagon to silence someone who is white and rich." -- D.B.

"IMUS MADE A MISTAKE! BUT HE HAS DONE MORE GOOD IN THE LAST 10 YEAR THAN YOU WILL IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE." -- Bob.

King said he loves his job. When he gets emails like that, you suspect he's being a bit ironic.