Soon as it's done once, suddenly it's everywhere

I wasn't aware of this:

Remember how white students at Jena High placed nooses in a tree last year to communicate antipathy toward their African-American classmates? Now it's happening all over.

A noose is left for a black workman at a construction site in the Chicago area. In Queens, a woman brandishes a noose to threaten her black neighbors. A noose is left on the door of a black professor at Columbia University. And that's just last week. Go back a little further and you have similar incidents at the University of Maryland in College Park, at a police department on Long Island, on a Coast Guard cutter, in a bus maintenance garage in Pittsburgh.

Mark Potok, the director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center told USA Today, "For a dozen incidents to come to the public's attention is a lot. I don't generally see noose incidents in a typical month. We might hear about a handful in a year."

Huh. That's pretty horrible.
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"Yes, it's the Apocalypse all right. I always thought I'd have a hand in it."

Or so says Glenn Beck.

BECK: Let me ask you one of the most -- you were on, I don't know, four or five days ago on the show for a quick segment, and you had mentioned that America's not in the Bible in the End Days.

HAGEE: Yes.

BECK: It doesn't play a significant role. E-mail went crazy on this. Why is America not in the Bible? Then it can't be the End Times. How could we possibly not play a role in the End Days?

A fair question, really. I certainly can't foresee the world coming to an end without America doing its share.

Via Atrios via LG&M.
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"This issue should be left to the branch of government least likely to let it go through!"

After all the right-wing talking points about how gay marriage should be left to the legislature and not decided by "judicial activists" (read: judges whose rulings we don't like), I'm amused by Schwarzenegger's take. Well, amused and infuriated. California's legislature passed a bill that would legalize gay marriage, so naturally he'd be all over that, wouldn't he?

Well, yeah. But not in the right way:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed another gay marriage bill Friday, saying voters and the state Supreme Court, not lawmakers, should decide the issue.

'Cause Republicans have always placed their trust in the impartial courts to decide on gay marriage, right?

Schwarzenegger said in his veto message that Californians "should not be discriminated against based upon their sexual orientation." He said he supports state laws that give domestic partners many of the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a gay rights group, said the veto was "hypocrisy at its worst."

"We find it shocking for the governor to say he opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation and then veto a bill that would have ended discrimination based on sexual orientation," Kors said.

What he said.
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Suffer the children

Nothing says you're "pro-family" like keeping children in an orphanage rather than letting them get adopted by fit parents:

Socially conservative groups behind Tennessee's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage are looking at launching a new push to bar gays and lesbians from adopting children.

The move follows a legal opinion issued Thursday by Attorney General Bob Cooper that there is nothing in the Tennessee constitution or in state law to prevent same-sex couples from becoming adoptive parents.

...

Cooper in his legal opinion said that under current state law anyone 18 years of age or older may adopt, assuming the adoption is found to be in the best interest of the child."

"There is no prohibition in Tennessee statutes against adoption by a same sex couple,"he said.

He also noted that before a judge grants an adoption there must be a finding that the adoptive parents "are fit persons to have the care and custody of the child."

Yeah, it may be in the best interests of the child, and the people may be fit and all, but discriminating against gay people takes precedence over the interests of children. That's the family way!

A similar measure failed in 2005, and "Supporters of the measure said the children would be better off remaining in orphanages than being with a gay parent." Of course.
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Special Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Presidential Edition

My thesis is this: virtually every American President, including those we glorify most, has been a racist.

—Melvin Steinfield, Our Racist Presidents, p. vii

This is the 1-year anniversary of my Friday Dead Racist Blogging series, started 52 posts ago on Friday, October 13. Therefore today's is a special post, four months in the making.

Modern racists (and even less-modern racists) like to point to the racist attitudes of men who are held in high esteem—partly to provide justification for their views; partly as an appeal to authority; and partly to make them feel better about their own racism. For example, a troll over at David Neiwert's Orcinus with the original handle "Whiteman" recently posted a comment on a post:

Most White men in history have been White nationalists -- Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, even Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson.

...

If you want to say that White people throughout history have been "pathological" well then I guess I'm in good company... .

Simply bolstering his own ego by comparing himself to Lindbergh, Edison, Jefferson, and Lincoln—because, I suppose, their racism is what made them great. It's not as though they're remembered for anything else.

Whiteman's stupidity aside, he ably demonstrates that pointing out that former U.S. presidents were racist is common, as though it somehow makes racism legitimate. For instance, in the '50s and '60s groups dedicated to segregation such as the Citizens' Councils of America took out ads in numerous newspapers (see for one the New York Times, 11 February 1964, p. 32) with the title "Lincoln's Hope for the Negro in His Own Words"; this ad was nothing but racist quotes from Abraham Lincoln. I also have a small pamphlet from a Christian Identity group with the title "God and Lincoln on Negro-White Marriages", which is basically the same as the Lincoln ad except that it also includes a quote from Thomas Jefferson, and has a horrible sermon by Sheldon Emry wrapped around it. That they put Lincoln and God side-by-side as if the two were equal authorities always amuses me.

Aside from the blatant appeal to authority, some people take a slightly different tack. After quoting numerous widely-respected Americans, Jared Taylor in "The Racial Revolution" wrote that "views that are considered unacceptable by today's standards were so widespread that virtually anyone who said anything about race reflected those views" and concludes that such views were simply "common sense." Hence, it is those who decry such views who aren't using their common sense. Of course, he doesn't stray too far from the appeal to authority, as a few paragraphs later he writes "Whatever Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt thought about other races, they would have been insulted to be told it was prejudice, that is to say, unreasonable preconceived judgment." The implication is clear: Roosevelt and Lincoln are heralded as thoughtful men, therefore they couldn't have "unreasonable preconceived judgment[s]." Surely they came to their conclusions after long deliberations, and hey, who are you to disagree with Abraham Lincoln's conclusions?

As thoughtful as they may have been, though, they couldn't escape the culture in which they lived. Melvin Steinfield writes "virtually every American President has been infected by racism." Simply living in a country that since before its founding has set up white supremacist institutions to subjugate black slaves, and to kill Native Americans and rob them of their land, is enough to be "infected by racism"; it doesn't matter whether the people so infected would later grow up to be heralded as near demi-gods, as with our founding fathers. And so I have gathered as many racist quotes as I could from all the presidents of the United States: to show that even great men were still products of their environments, and these men's environments were invariably racist; to show exactly how racist our country has been since its founding, if we accept the presidents as representatives of the countries they led; and just to show that no-one will one-up me on dead racists. And who knows, maybe I'll get some sort of award for "longest blog post ever—no, really, what the hell is wrong with you?"

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If you own anything more than the clothes on your back, you're not poor

Following up on my previous post on the subject, Amanda at Pandagon and Digby at Hullabaloo have some more to say on the difference between conservative and liberal views towards the poor.
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Just when I think my estimation of them couldn't get any lower

Um... shit:

The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest.

The documents indicate that likely would have been at the heart of former CEO Joe Nacchio's so-called "classified information" defense at his insider trading trial, had he been allowed to present it.

...

Prosecutors have said they were prepared to poke holes in Nacchio's classified defense.

Nacchio was convicted last spring on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million of stock sales in April and May 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison. He's free pending appeal.

The partially redacted documents were filed under seal before, during and after Nacchio's trial. They were released Wednesday.

Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.

The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.

The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.

USA Today reported in May 2006 that Qwest, unlike AT&T and Verizon, balked at helping the NSA track phone calling patterns that may have indicated terrorist organizational activities. Nacchio's attorney, Herbert Stern, confirmed that Nacchio refused to turn over customer telephone records because he didn't think the NSA program had legal standing.

So... was the NSA gearing up to spy on people months before 9/11?

Via Atrios.
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I'm not an economist. Does it show?

There was a GOP debate the other day, and the Boston Globe has a piece about it. I found this interesting: Romney apparently believes that the line-item veto is constitutional. I don't know whether he meant that he thought the Supreme Court was wrong, or if he really doesn't consider their opinion to the contrary to be meaningful. Giuliani at least stuck up for them:

They swapped their strongest words over the may or's successful lawsuit challenging the Clinton administration's use of the line-item veto. Romney said he believed that presidential power was not only constitutional, but also necessary to control government spending.

"You have to be honest with people," Giuliani responded to his rival. "And you can't fool all of the people all of the time. The line-item veto is unconstitutional. You don't get to 'believe' about it; the Supreme Court has ruled on it."

The debate was mostly over economic matters, so of course the candidates had to masturbate using Bigby's Invisible Hand of the Free Market:

The debate, hosted by CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and the Michigan Republican Party, was designed to focus on economic issues, and the top contenders appeared to find consensus on major policy matters. They alternated in delivering largely undifferentiated paeans to low taxes, free trade, restrained government spending, and the power of the free market.

Uh-huh. And yet, despite their calls for "restrained government spending", they all seemed pretty willing to suck up to Bush's economic genius:

Dissent from Bush economic policy came almost exclusively from the candidates lagging in the polls, who took issue with most favored nation status for China (Representative Duncan Hunter of California), presidential "fast-track" authority for trade negotiations (Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado), and the country's historical departure from the gold standard (Representative Ron Paul of Texas).

That kinda surprised me. I thought they'd all be trying to show just how much un-like Bush they were. Oh, well; no, they still think that Bush's economy is doing great. And if mere peasants are struggling... well, that's the state's fault.

Really:

The debate was held in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb that has stood at the intersection of the major currents in Bush-era foreign and domestic policy. It was in the streets of the country's largest Arab-American enclave that Iraqi refugees celebrated the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in the spring of 2003, and at the headquarters of Ford Motor Co. that the effects of global trade on American manufacturing have been most acutely felt.

In an interview before the debate, Saul Azunis, Michigan Republican Party chairman, was pessimistic about his state's future, citing a six-year job-loss streak and foreclosure rates among the country's highest. "Michigan is all about the economy," he said. "The jobs issue is really affecting us."

Yet, the candidates remained largely cheerful about the nature of the American economy, as they attempted to divorce local fortunes from national ones. The leading candidates stood by the Bush administration's policies on taxes and trade, blaming state government for the area's troubles. Romney quipped that he feared that Michigan's Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, "was going to put a tax on this debate."

Ahahahahaha! Democrats want taxes so that the government can pay for things, therefore they're fiscally irresponsible! And so are all the states whose economies are in the toilets. But America as a whole--as opposed to any individual part--is doing great! Why, we're even up to 0.98% of the Canadian dollar! Can't beat that.

And this quip from McCain was just bizarre:

"By the way, a dollar-a-pack increase for cigarettes?" said McCain, a leader on efforts in the mid-1990s to regulate the tobacco industry. "So we want to take care of children's health and we want everybody to smoke? I don't get it."

Uh, no, you flaming imbecile. People are going to smoke, despite our efforts to stop them. We can use this fact to our advantage by increasing the prices on cigarettes and using the profits to fund health insurance for children in a pique of delicious irony. People are going to smoke--so we might as well make some good come of it.

Or we could just blame their parents for making poor choices, a la Michelle Malkin.
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At least the NYT gets it

Following up on the emetic attacks on 12-year old children with medical problems, the New York Times apparently picked up the story, and actually didn't take the right-wing assholes' arguments at face-value. But what really struck me was Michelle "Japanese internment was a good idea" Malkin's argument:

Michelle Malkin, one of the bloggers who have strongly criticized the Frosts, insisted Republicans should hold their ground and not pull punches.

"The bottom line here is that this family has considerable assets," Ms. Malkin wrote in an e-mail message. "Maryland's S-chip program does not means-test. The refusal to do assets tests on federal health insurance programs is why federal entitlements are exploding and government keeps expanding. If Republicans don't have the guts to hold the line, they deserve to lose their seats."

These assets include the Graemes' home and another property that they rent.

So, yeah. Malkin wants them to have to choose between keeping their home or paying their children's medical bills. Classy!
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Her arguments are also nothing more than catfights. Can't forget that.

Does this strike anyone else as more sexist tripe aimed at Clinton?

Five Democratic candidates have withdrawn from Michigan's Jan. 15 presidential primary, leaving what amounts to a beauty contest for front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and a handful of lesser-knowns.

The article never returns to that phrase, so it's not clear what makes it a "beauty contest." Perhaps because it's all for show, as the DNC won't recognize any primary before February 5 except for a handful of states. Or perhaps because Clinton is an ickle girl and therefore her political actions are only a "beauty contest." Would the media, despite their raging erections for such virile exemplars of manliness as the GOP candidates, describe a Republican primary as a "beauty contest"? I somehow doubt it.
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