The Teabaggers hold a 'we're not racist, really' rally, hilarity ensues

TPMDC:

Apparently, Uni-Tea wasn't only bridging the racial gap. Brendan Kissam and Matt Hissey wandered into the event carrying signs that said "proud gay conservative" and "freedom is fabulous." They said they were "the Gayborhood's envoy to the tea party."

The pair said the tea party is welcoming to their minority group, too. "The Tea Party is accepting of everybody," said Hissey, adding that "Skin color diversity -- that's not real diversity. Everyone here has a different life experience." Hissey recognized that the tea party "might be against gay marriage," but that's ok, he said, because he is too.

Uni-Tea reached out the hand of tea party acceptance to young people, too -- in the form of white conservative rapper Hi-Caliber and a band of veterans called The Bangers. "This reaches out to the 18-34 year-olds," organizer Jeffrey Weingarten said. It should be noted that Weingarten was successful in getting at least one 18-34 year-old to join him for the day: his son, Freedom Weingarten.

David Webb, an African American top official with Tea Party Federation and the man who shamed Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express for being racist a couple weeks ago, emceed the event and told the tea party crowd that it didn't matter if only a few minorities joined the cause.

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The news arrives at the Washington Post — the unspoken word in the Sherrod affair

Sometimes, even the Post prints the news, at least in the Personal Finance column. Via Ken Silverstein, we get this from "Color of Money" columnist Michelle Singletary:

Sherrod said that while working with the white farmer, she realized that the social war we’ve been having isn’t about race but economic inequity.

“Y’all, it’s about poor versus those who have,” Sherrod said in her speech. “It’s really about those who have versus those who don’t, you know. And they could be black; and they could be white; they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people — those who don’t have access the way others have.”

The title of Ken's column on this is "Class: The unspoken word of the Shirley Sherrod affair." America's secret war.

John wrote a stunning article about the shrinking middle class, and included some frightening details. One example:

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

If reporters were paid like secretaries, that news would be on the front page, for a change.

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GOP Tennessee Lt. Gov calls Islam a 'cult,' says religious freedom may not count for Muslims

Who needs Osama bin Laden to stoke the hate of the world's Muslims when we have Republicans.

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, currently running third in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary race, says he's not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to the followers of the world's second-largest faith, Islam.

At a recent event in Hamilton County, Ramsey was asked by a man in the audience about the "threat that's invading our country from the Muslims." Ramsey proclaimed his support for the Constitution and the whole "Congress shall make no law" thing when it comes to religion. But he also said that Islam, arguably, is less a faith than it is a "cult."

"Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it," Ramsey said. "Now certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time this is something we are going to have to face."

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Howard Dean calls FOX News 'absolutely racist' for handling of Shirley Sherrod affair

HuffPo:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean took direct aim at Fox News for its involvement in the Shirley Sherrod racism flap, calling their coverage "absolutely racist."

Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, offered his candid assessment in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" in which he criticized the cable network for being complicit in the controversy.

"Fox News did something that was absolutely racist," Dean said. "They had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and this Sotomayor and all this other stuff."

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Shirley Sherrod's background in civil rights

This turned up as a reference in a story John did earlier, but I wanted to expand on it. The Atlanta Journal Constitution had a nice piece this week on Shirley Sherrod's background in the fight for justice. Patricia Harris-Lacewell alluded to it in her comments on Countdown this week — saying basically that the NAACP only needed to look at her last name to know who she and her family were.

The whole piece is important for the information it provides, and a great read. A taste:

Shirley Sherrod shaped by father's slaying

Shirley Sherrod’s 17th year probably did more to mold her personality and set her on a path that traveled through the dangerous, volatile world of race.

That year, 1965, her father was shot and killed by a white man in a dispute over cows, the family says.

That year, she was one of the first black students to integrate the high school in Baker County in rural southwest Georgia.

That year, she decided to become involved in the civil rights movement in that area of the state.

And in later years, like some of the farmers she helped when she worked for a non-profit, Sherrod and her husband lost a group farm to bankruptcy.

The expanded story of her father's death, told later in the article, is especially striking. She's been on quite a trajectory, partly intentional and partly due to forces outside herself. Looks like she's still on that mixed path.

She's another fighter, and a considered one. It will be interesting to see what her next move is.

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Shirley Sherrod

Jena McGregor in the Washington Post:

There appears to have been little careful examination. In her telling, she was pushed to resign immediately--so immediate, she says, that she was told to pull off to the side of the road and do it because the story was going to be on Glenn Beck that evening. (Sherrod also says the White House was involved in her dismissal; Vilsack has said it wasn't.)

If what she says is true, it's an extraordinary rush to judgment that could tarnish not only the reputation of Vilsack's leadership, but also of the NAACP, which was also quick to condemn Sherrod before later admitting it was "snookered."

We pay our leaders to think clearly. To examine all the facts before they make decisions. To act quickly and decisively, but not so much that fairness goes out the window. In the Sherrod affair, Vilsack--and the NAACP--should have issued statements that they were investigating the matter, and only made a decision after gathering all information possible and considering the full weight of the issues. Instead, the review is coming now, when it may be too late.

The reporter takes a small slap at the blogosphere in her essay. She fails to note "conservative blogosphere." I challenge her to find that kind of false reporting from the top liberal blogs.

Note from Joe: The full video and transcript of Sherrod's speech can be found here. Read it. Watch it. It's an amazing discussion about race in America. Here's an excerpt:

But where am I going with this? You know, I couldn't say 45 years ago -- I couldn't stand here and say what I'm saying -- what I will say to you tonight. Like I told you, God helped me to see that it's not just about black people -- it's about poor people. And I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate, you know. As my mother has said to so many, "If we had tried to live with hate in our hearts, we'd probably be dead now."

But I've come to realize that we have to work together and -- you know, it's sad that we don't have a room full of white and blacks here tonight, 'cause we have to overcome the divisions that we have. We have to get to the point where, as Tony Morrison said, "Race exists but it doesn't matter." We have to work just as hard. I know it's -- you know, that division is still here, but our communities are not going to thrive -- you know, our children won't have the -- the communities that they need to be able to stay in and live in and -- and have a good life if we can't figure this out, you all. White people, black people, Hispanic people, we all have to do our part to make our communities a safe place, a healthy place, a good environment.

Sherrod did the rounds on the morning shows today. She's got an amazing story. I don't think we've heard the last of her. And, that's a very good thing. Read More......

Teabagger racism

From Eugene Robinson at the Wash Post:

Have the rest of the movement's leaders never noticed Williams's rhetoric before now? His most recent obsession, before the NAACP flap, has been a crusade to halt construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero. He has called the proposed structure a place where Muslims would honor the al-Qaeda hijackers and "worship the terrorists' monkey-god." He has called President Obama an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug."

If Williams is now a pariah in Tea Party circles, that's progress. But this episode should prompt the national leadership to look inward and acknowledge -- not just to the rest of us, but also to themselves -- that ugly, racially charged rhetoric has been part of the movement's stock in trade all along. If the Tea Party groundswell is to mature into something important and lasting, it needs to purge itself of this poison.

And if the Republican Party is going to try to harness the Tea Party's passion on behalf of GOP candidates, responsible leaders need to make clear that racism will not be tolerated. Yet Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to talk about the NAACP flap when asked about it Sunday, and Sen. John Cornyn volunteered that accusing the Tea Party of racism is "slanderous."

It's not slander if it's the truth, senator.

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The Willie Hortonization of Barack Obama

From Ari Rabin-Havt of Media Matters Action:

A long line of inmates solemnly enters and exits a prison yard through a revolving door. As the lone black inmate reenters society, he peers into the camera with a menacing glance. He is the only inmate to do so.

The ad described above was created by George H.W. Bush's campaign as part of a broad strategy to terrify America by, as psychologist and political consultant Drew Westen explains, playing on "fears of the dangerous, lawless, violent, dark black male."

While the most infamous Willie Horton ads were created by an independent organization, it was Bush's media consultant Roger Ailes who "gleefully" told Time Magazine in August of 1988, "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

1988 wasn't Ailes' first experience dividing Americans along racial lines. During a taping of the "Man in the Arena" series in 1968, the Nixon campaign stumbled on a problem when a panelist they thought was a physician turned out to be a psychiatrist. Ailes quickly figured out a solution. According to Rick Pearlstein's Nixonland, Ailes would substitute a "good, mean, Wallaceite cab-driver. Wouldn't that be great? Some guy to sit in there and say, 'Awright, Mac, what about these n***ers?'" Pearlstein added that "Nixon then could abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a 'moderate' version of the opinion."

Given his history, it should be no surprise Ailes' minions at Fox News have obsessed over the discredited 18 month-old story of alleged voter intimidation by New Black Panther Party members on the day of the 2008 election. Since June 30, Fox News has spent over 8 hours of airtime and 95 segments on the story.

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Does the White House not understand that a black president cannot institute a policy of segregation? Apparently they don't.

Joe and I have friends who don't understand why we get so upset with President Obama, who we supported in the primaries. This post is an excellent example of why we do.

The Pentagon confirmed on Friday that it is considering segregating gay troops, specifically with regards to creating separate showers and/or barracks for straight and gay troops.

Advocate reporter Kerry Eleveld just transcribed the following quote from Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell at Friday's briefing about the new "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" survey:

"We think it would be irresponsible to conduct a survey that didn’t try to address these types of things. Because when DADT is repealed, we will have to determine if there are any challenges in those particular areas, any adjustments that need to be made in terms of how we educate the force to handle those situations, or perhaps even facility adjustments that need to be made to deal with those scenarios."

Segregation, folks. Separate but equal. In the year 2010. And from a black president, no less.



How do you feel about the segregation of blacks in the first half of the 1900s? Did you think it was disgusting that African-Americans weren't permitted to drink out of our fountains, swim in our pools, sit at the front of the bus, share the same bleachers at a game, as the rest of us? Then why is it okay to even talk about segregating gays and lesbians? What would have happened to an Obama administration spokesman who talked about segregating blacks?



They're talking about the possibility of segregation, people. Of instituting a policy of separate-but-equal in the year 2010, under a Democratic president.

It's what they did to Barack Obama's father. Does no one in the White House get the irony here? And does no one understand the political danger here? Does Jim Messina really want to see people showing up at Obama 2012 campaign rallies with the word "Colored" written in ink on their foreheads? With signs saying "Barack, would you segregate your own father?" and "George Wallace Obama"? Or how about simply a crowd of protesters at every event - and every fundraiser the President does for congressional races - wearing signs saying "I am a man"?



A Pentagon spokesman had the audacity to suggest that segregation was an option, and mind you this wasn't the first time that someone at DOD has suggested it. President Obama is the commander in chief. He's also the President of the United States. If one of his own administration spokesmen says segregation is an option, and President Obama doesn't shut that conversation down immediately, and fire the bigot who had the audacity to even suggest such a thing - and he clearly hasn't, as this segregation talking point keeps coming out of this Obama administration - then President Obama is to blame.

Still wonder why people are so pissed off? Ask a black person how they feel about segregated drinking fountains, then get back to us.

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Limbaugh thinks Obama created the recession as payback for racism

Yes, he's nuts. But he's also one of the most influential voices on the right. The fact that he's comfortable making these kind of racists remarks is troubling.

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First they came for the segregated swimming pools, and I did nothing...

John Boehner is worried that Democrats are "snuffing out" the America he grew up in. You know, the America where we had different drinking fountains for white folks and black folks. The America in which women were expected to be nurses and stewardesses instead of doctors and pilots. The America in which gay people shut up, hid themselves, and silently committed suicide when they became too old to hide it. This is what's underlying the ongoing GOP assault on Thurgood Marshall at Kagan's confirmation hearings. They long for an America that was once racist, sexist and homophobic. We already knew this, but it's rather remarkable to hear them admit it. Read More......

GOP Rep. Steve King now says illegal immigrants can be spotted by their shoes, or a 'sixth sense'

I see Latin people.

PoliticalCorrection.org:

KING: Some claim that the Arizona law will bring about racial discrimination profiling. First let me say, Mr. Speaker, that profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement. If you can't profile someone, you can't use those common sense indicators that are before your very eyes. Now, I think it's wrong to use racial profiling for the reasons of discriminating against people, but it's not wrong to use race or other indicators for the sake of identifying that are violating the law. [...]

It's just a common sense thing. Law enforcement needs to use common sense indicators. Those common sense indicators are all kinds of things, from what kind of clothes people wear - my suit in my case - what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accident [sic] they have, um, the, the type of grooming they might have, there're, there're all kinds of indicators there and sometimes it's just a sixth sense and they can't put their finger on it. But these law enforcement officers, if they were going to be discriminating against people on the sole basis of race, singling people out, that'd be going on already.

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Time for Pat Buchanan to retire too

From Media Matters:

Just days after making grossly inappropriate comments about Jews in Israel, Hearst columnist Helen Thomas has retired.

It’s time for Pat Buchanan to retire, too.

Despite a decades-long track record of offensive comments about … well, nearly everybody, Buchanan continues to write columns and appear as a commentator on MSNBC.

During his time in public life, Buchanan has defended Adolf Hitler -- repeatedly. He has peddled Holocaust denial claims and compared suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk to Jesus Christ.

Buchanan has reminisced fondly about his childhood in segregated Washington, DC, and complained that “Old heroes like ... Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King." He wrote that “integration of blacks and whites” was likely to result in “perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed … side by side with the capable.” Buchanan's anti-integration views were so hard-core, even Richard Nixon characterized Buchanan’s them as “segregation forever.” When 67 blacks were shot to death by South African police, Buchanan dismissed the massacre as “a few South African whites mistreating a couple of blacks.” In 1989, Buchanan defended Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial dating. 1989!

In 1983, Buchanan wrote that "homosexuals ... have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." (During his 1992 presidential campaign, he stood by that view, insisting "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature.") He has compared gays to alcoholics.

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GOP South Carolina state rep calls GOP governor candidate (and Obama?) a 'f'g raghead'

Free Times:

With a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his face outside a Columbia bar, Republican S.C. Sen. Jake Knotts called Lexington Rep. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American Republican woman running for governor, a “raghead” several times while explaining how he believed she was hiding her true religion from voters.

“She’s a f#!king raghead,” Knotts said.

He later clarified his statement. He did not mean to use the F-word.

Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. He claims she is hiding her religion and he wants the voters to know about it.

“We got a raghead in Washington; we don’t need one in South Carolina,” Knotts said more than once.

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Should racists be fined for their remarks?

It's something that I used to be more opposed to but increasingly I'm less against it. The added stigma of being found guilty of saying something racist should carry some extra weight. The amount is irrelevant, but the fact that the courts have found the comments out of order says a lot. Of course, George Allen's "macaca" moment was the end of his political career and no fine or ruling was needed.

In this case, a French minister has been fined for making an obvious racist remark. BBC:

Mr Hortefeux was joking with a small group of activists from the ruling UMP party in south-west France.

Immediately before Mr Hortefeux's controversial remark, one activist is heard saying: "Amin is a Catholic. He eats pork and drinks alcohol."

Mr Hortefeux then says: "Ah, well that won't do at all. He doesn't match the prototype."

A woman is then heard to say: "He is one of us... he is our little Arab."

The interior minister then says: "We always need one. It's when there are lots of them that there are problems."

The court ruled that his remark was "incontestably offensive, if not contemptuous".

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Steele 'can't condemn' Rand Paul's view that the Civil Rights Act shouldn't have stopped businesses from banning blacks

I'll bet Michael Steele wouldn't be so equivocal if he were black. From ThinkProgress:

STEELE: That’s a direct quote, and it’s a philosophical position held by a lot of libertarians, which Rand Paul is. They have a very, very strong view about the limitations of government intrusion into the private sector. That is a philosophical perspective. We have had a lot of members go to the United States Senate with a lot of different philosophies, but when they get to the body, how they work to move the country forward matters. [...]

TAPPER: But do you condemn that view?

STEELE: I can’t condemn a person’s view. That’s like, you know, you believe something and I’m going to say, well, you know, I’m going to condemn your view of it. It’s the people of Kentucky will judge whether or not that’s a view that they would like to send–

TAPPER: Are you comfortable with that?

STEELE: I am not comfortable with a lot of things, but it doesn’t matter what I’m comfortable with and not comfortable with. I don’t vote in that election. The people of Kentucky will. As a national chairman, I’m here to say that our party will move forward in fighting for the civil rights and liberties of the American people, especially minorities in this country, and we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that everyone who’s going to come to the United States Congress or go to state capitals with a Republican label are in that fight with us.

TAPPER: It sounds like you’re not comfortable with it.

STEELE: I just said I wasn’t comfortable.

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Arizona businesses miss their illegal workers

Racism is a bitch.

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GOP teabagger candidate Rand Paul also believes 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin'

He's not a racist. He just believes people should be free to discriminate against black people. And the difference in practice is?

In a May 30, 2002, letter to the Bowling Green Daily News, Paul's hometown newspaper, he criticized the paper for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, and explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin."

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Rand Paul backtracks on opposition to Civil Rights Act - but what about the ADA?

GOP teabagger candidate, Rand Paul (the son of Rep. Ron Paul), is now backing off of his earlier statement that he opposes the Civil Rights Act.

“As I have said in previous statements, sections of the Civil Rights Act were debated on Constitutional grounds when the legislation was passed. Those issues have been settled by federal courts in the intervening years.”

Actually, the creep refused to respond to a direct question about whether he thinks the government had the right to force the integration of lunch counters:

Hours after the NPR interview, [Rachel] Maddow pressed Paul about whether lunch counters should have been desegregated, as activists campaigned for in the 1960s in the South. Paul declined to give a yes or no answer. Instead, he said he doesn't believe in discrimination, suggested the issue was abstract and raised the idea of who decides whether customers can bring weapons into restaurants.

Abstract? It's the documented history of the American civil rights movement. It's not abstract at all.

And note that in a separate interview Paul again refuses to answer the question:

INTERVIEWER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

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Rand Paul opposes Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act

Rand Paul, the superstar of the teabaggers, was on NPR yesterday talking about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disability Act. He's not supportive of those federal laws, thinking discrimination should be a "local" issue.

Then, Rand went on Rachel. This is a long piece, but worth watching. Remember, this guy is the great hope for the Tea Party.

Paul's opponent in the Kentucky Senate race is Jack Conway. Read More......