White Supremacy Acquits George Zimmerman

By Aura Bogado


Demonstrators outside the Seminole County Courthouse react after hearing the verdict of “not guilty” in the trial of George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

A jury has found George Zimmerman not guilty of all charges in connection to death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But while the verdict came as a surprise to some people, it makes perfect sense to others. This verdict is a crystal-clear illustration of the way white supremacy operates in America.

Throughout the trial, the media repeatedly referred to an “all-woman jury” in that Seminole County courtroom, adding that most of them were mothers. That is true—but so is that five of the six jurors were white, and that is profoundly significant for cases like this one. We also know that the lone juror of color was seen apparently wiping a tear during the prosecution’s rebuttal yesterday. But that tear didn’t ultimately convince her or the white people on that jury that Zimmerman was guilty of anything. Not guilty. Not after stalking, shooting and killing a black child, a child that the defense insultingly argued was “armed with concrete.”

In the last few days, Latinos in particular have spoken up again about Zimmerman’s race, and the “white Hispanic” label especially, largely responding to social media users and mass media pundits who employed the term. Watching Zimmerman in the defense seat, his sister in the courtroom, and his mother on the stand, one can’t deny the skin color that informs their experience. They are not white. Yet Zimmerman’s apparent ideology—one that is suspicious of black men in his neighborhood, the “assholes who always get away—” is one that adheres to white supremacy. It was replicated in the courtroom by his defense, whose team tore away at Rachel Jeantel, questioning the young woman as if she was taking a Jim Crow–era literacy test. A defense that, during closing, cited slave-owning rapist Thomas Jefferson, played an animation for the jury based on erroneous assumptions, made racially coded accusations about Trayvon Martin emerging “out of the darkness,” and had the audacity to compare the case of the killing of an unarmed black teenager to siblings arguing over which one stole a cookie.

When Zimmerman was acquitted today, it wasn’t because he’s a so-called white Hispanic. He’s not.  

It’s because he abides by the logic of white supremacy, and was supported by a defense team—and a swath of society—that supports the lingering idea that some black men must occasionally be killed with impunity in order to keep society-at-large safe.

Media on the left, right and center have been fanning the flames of fear-mongering, speculating that people—and black people especially—will take to the streets. That fear-mongering represents a deep white anxiety about black bodies on the streets, and echoes Zimmerman’s fears: that black bodies on the street pose a public threat. But the real violence in those speculations, regardless of whether they prove to be true, is that it silences black anxiety. The anxiety that black men feel every time they walk outside the door—and the anxiety their loved ones feel for them as well. That white anxiety serves to conceal the real public threat: that a black man is killed every twenty-eight hours by a cop or vigilante.

People will take to the streets, and with good reason. They’ll be there because they know that, yes, some people do always get away—and it tends to be those strapped with guns and the logic of white supremacy at their side.

The NAACP will seek the Department of Justice's intervention in the Zimmerman case. Read John Nichols's report.

Trayvon Martin’s Killer Walks as Killing A Black Kid Who Committed No Crime is A-OK in Florida

By Dennis S

“God’s Plan” as George Zimmerman once described the Trayvon Martin killing apparently also included a not guilty verdict at around 10 PM Eastern time, 7/13/13. The plan was to kill an effing punk and one of those assholes (read black) who always get away. The defense lawyers assured us that describing the victim as one of the posse of those effing punks and a-holes in no way hints of hatred, ill-will and spite. And that’s how you convince a jury of 6 women (4 tied closely to guns) to let your guy walk away from a Murder 2 charge and a lesser-included of manslaughter.

So, Zimmerman is a free “softie” (more about that later). Free to patrol the 3 streets (one of the names escapes him) of Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida.

The two biggest myths in all jurisprudence played out the same way they almost always do at trial.

The witness oath means less than nothing. In virtually every case ever tried, perjury is the staple of any number of witnesses and most certainly, defendants (in this case, Zimmerman did his lying outside the court). It’s just as bad in depositions.

The second myth is the highly abused term “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Do you really think cases are decided yea and nay “beyond a reasonable doubt?” Almost never! A sly shyster (Mark O’Mara comes to mind) attorney can cast doubt no matter the weight of the evidence.  

The O’Mara’s of our world can snake-oil their way to getting virtually any jury to believe virtually anything, and find a manifest human killing machine innocent because the prosecution didn’t prove their case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Notable exceptions are black defendants.

Why do I think O’Mara is a “shyster” attorney? Here’s a stark example (one of many). For closing arguments he brought 2 cardboard cutouts into the courtroom, one representing young Martin, the other Zimmerman. The cutouts were designed to show how much taller the kid was than Mr. Softie. When standing next to the Martin cutout, O’Mara was exactly the same height. O’Mara is 6’2″. Martin is 71″ (5’11″) according to a measurement of the body by an associate medical examiner. The Zimmerman cutout was supposedly 5’7″ (it could have been less). Zimmerman was called to stand next to the phony Martin cutout and it looked like Paul Bunyan vs. Matt Roloff from TLC’s “Little People, Big World.” That’s what a shyster attorney like O’Mara will do. And nobody called him on it.

I repeatedly listened to and timed the now iconic 911 call replete with multiple screams and the sound of the shot that killed Trayvon Martin. Here’s my take on the tape. I timed the intervals between the screams. I’ve concluded that both the victim and the killer screamed, mostly the killer. I’m convinced that Martin was on top fighting for HIS life. I’m equally convinced he was pummeling Zimmerman.

I’m not remotely convinced that Zimmerman’s head struck the concrete more than 3 or 4 times at the most, and lightly at that, his wildly diverse claims of 12, 25 and dozens of times notwithstanding.

But, back to the 911 tape. You can follow along at the AudioBoo site that has the clearest version I’ve been able to find. I started with what I perceived as a Zimmerman scream 32 seconds into the tape. Listen to the tape. Two different voices without a doubt. At the end, I feel that Zimmerman pulled his gun and Martin sat up, not yet shot and exclaimed, as Zimmerman told Sanford police officer, Doris Singleton, “You got me” meaning, you’ve got a gun and I’m through fighting.

I think Zimmerman advanced the gun to Martin’s chest eliciting 2 Martin screams at :41 and :43 into the tape just before the :44 fatal shot. Zimmerman later changed his story to include more Martin verbiage, but I believe the first version fits the timeline seamlessly.

And Zimmerman? Here’s the non-burnished and accurate version of “Mr. Softie” compliments of a well-researched Reuter’s profile. As you’ll see on the Reuter’s site, Zimmerman is not exactly as painted by O’Mara and friendly witnesses. “Mr. Softie” has a nasty temper. He pushed an alcohol control agent checking out Zimmerman’s underage pal in a bar one night. He was charged with resisting arrest, violence and battery of an officer and beat the rap only when agreeing to a diversion program that included ANGER MANAGEMENT!

Then there’s the “calm” Mr. Zimmerman’s relationship with Veronica Zuazo. The one where he and his then-fiancé each filed a restraining order against each other. Zimmerman was accused of domestic violence (gee, more ‘violence’) and there must have been enough bad guy indicia there to make sure he stayed away from the lady. She terminated the relationship. And how ’bout the gun-toting side of “Mr. Softie?” He was packing a fully loaded Kel-Tec PF9 semi-auto while supposedly heading toward his nearest Target store (yet another lie?) on that fateful night. So you go to the store with a holstered pistol?

To me there were four turning points in the trial. One was the abysmal prosecution effort of Bernie de la Rionda. I’ll just describe it as pathetic and let it go at that. Another critical juncture in the trial was the appearance of prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel, a native Haitian teenager who was on the phone with Martin at vital points prior to the confrontation. I’ve covered this territory before. She could have been a star witness, but, in the main was combative, confusing and added nothing to the state’s case.

Third, was the appearance of prize bullshit artist, John (or Jonathan) Good. This guy claimed to have seen Martin on top raining down blows on Zimmerman, who while having the balls to push a cop and being schooled in MMA for nearly a year, was completely helpless under a boy more than a decade his junior who he outweighed by 46 pounds. In a night variously described as pitch dark and virtually impossible to see even a few feet (remember, Zimmerman had a flashlight), Good, with owl-like night vision, was able to clearly describe the confrontation and exact coloring of the outer clothing of both combatants.

The fourth turning point borders on obscene. I refer to the phony, doctored, fairytale “animation” of the night’s events as seen (“created”) through the eyes of the defense. How Judge Debra Nelson could allow a single pixel of something that even she described as not being evidence into the final argument for the defense defies comprehension and logic.

Nelson said the animation could be used as a “Demonstrative Exhibit.” Even O’Mara allowed that the animation was “Somewhat made up.” What an understatement. To prove Zimmerman was injured on concrete both the victim and defendant were essentially stretched out on just the concrete. The scene was bathed in enough light for the grand opening of an auto dealership and the animation was shot over the shoulder of Good, while O’Mara mouths a running commentary on “ground and pound.”

So, it’s over. The killer walks. Quoting Zimmerman, “These assholes always get away.”

George Zimmerman’s Acquittal Attaches A Face To America’s New Racism

By Jason Easley

George Zimmerman’s acquittal has put the exclamation point on America’s new and much more subtle racism, which is defined by the claims of conservatives that racism is dead.

Even as the jury was deliberating, Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara kept selling his client as the victim, “I believe his life is at risk, and I don’t say that for dramatic effect. There are a lot of people who think George killed Trayvon Martin for racial reasons, even though nothing supports that. And if they feel that anger enough, they could react violently.”

O’Mara was wrong. There has been no violence from African Americans. In fact, the delusion that African Americans would immediately turn to violence is a symptom the racism that conservatives like to claim does not exist.

Much like how the Supreme Court used the success of the Voting Rights Act to argue that racism was on the decline, Zimmerman’s attorney used the fact that his client said that he would have done the same thing if Trayvon Martin was white to simplistically argue that there was no racism motivating his client’s deadly act.

America’s new racism is always hidden by claims that it is not racism. Racists are much more savvy today. The defense of Zimmerman was entirely based on criminalizing Trayvon Martin. An unarmed young African-American man was painted as a threat, because he was not white. No one will come out and say it, but that’s the truth.

Some people have asked what would have happened if Zimmerman was black, but I don’t think that is the correct question. The appropriate question is what would have happened to Zimmerman if he would have shot a blue eyed, blond haired, captain of the football team, suburban white kid? My guess is that the entire perception of the case would have been different.

African Americans are being told that they don’t have the same right to safely walk down the street.

The message here is that an African American who is doing nothing wrong is still a threat, and most dangerously, that white people have a right to shoot a minority if they feel threatened.

The race based attacks that Republicans have been using for years against President Obama have seeped into the national consciousness. America’s new unspoken racism has been empowered by the country’s refusal to openly talk about race. Republicans have mainstreamed unspoken racial attitudes, and the defense used these attitudes to get George Zimmerman acquitted.

This sort of racism calls for a new civil rights movement. Barriers to minority voting are being erected on a daily basis, a young African American man was killed for walking down the street. Even if nobody will come out and say it, conservatives are turning the clock back to an ugly time in our national history.

People don’t want to talk about it, but racism is alive and growing stronger by the day.

Cenk Uygur's reaction to the Zimmerman case

Cenk believes that the verdict will be a huge victory for the gun nuts and jeopardizes public safety.

It’s Not Riots You Need to Worry About, It’s More Zimmermans

By Sarah Jones

On July 13, Jay Smooth, who among many things does a hip-hop radio show in New York and occasional music commentary on NPR and is the son of an African American father and a white mother, got to the real problem of an acquittal for George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Via the Obama Diary, Smooth tweeted, “The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George ZImmermans.”

The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George ZImmermans.

— jay smooth (@jsmooth995) July 13, 2013

Now that the acquittal has happened, the angry whites at Fox News are fear-mongering about the inevitable “riots” of “those people”. Yet there have been no riots, oddly enough, given the magnitude of the injustice.

Let’s not gloss over the inferred wrongness of a “riot” by the angry whites at Fox (also known these days as the Republican Party, or conservatives). They would call any demonstration a “riot” (they just did this in Texas against women). When the people they’re doing wrong speak up, they call it a “riot”. This is supposed to mark the victim as the bad one in the court of public opinion (aka, the mainstream media), which is still run by mostly white men, just like our courts.

But it’s not the victimized minority we need to fear. Nope. It’s the empowered Zimmermans. Finding Zimmerman not guilty is the same thing as rewarding sick aggression without cause. There’s a whole lot more where that came from.

Stalking someone without cause is now “defense” in NRA America, courtesy of the Republican Party. Now that Zimmerman got off, thanks to a terrible job by the prosecution who, let’s face it, seemed to be happy to have lost and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was under some pressure to do so, the next Zimmerman is dusting off his/her short fuse and getting ready to go hunting.

Yes, hunting.

What else do you call chasing down an innocent person, confronting them because you profiled them (I was recently robbed by a white man, do I have the right now to chase every white man with a gun?) because another, unrelated person of the same color allegedly committed a crime in the neighborhood? If that’s all it takes to justify chasing and gunning someone down, then every single person in this country is at risk of being profiled.

But not every single person in this country is at risk of being shot down and having their shooter acquitted.

That’s because our justice system is not color blind, or blind to the sex of the accused and the victim.

White men fare better in our system for obvious reasons- white men run the system, and they tend to sympathize with those they identify with; those who remind them of themselves.

I am ashamed of this country tonight, and horrified that we have let out public policy be hijacked by the NRA to such an extent that we can gun down fellow citizens with no repercussions.

Recently, the Supreme Court killed fundamental aspects of the Voting Rights Act under the premise that Congress should sort it out because things are so much better now. That’s the big, dangerous lie conservatives are using to dismantle protections needed for minorities.

Yes, clearly there’s no prejudice here. No need for laws protecting certain groups from the predatory laws of the powerful.

Be careful out there. The streets are teeming with angry, bitter, impotent men like George Zimmerman – someone just looking for a victim to blame for his crappy life. A dog to kick so he can feel better. A life to take so he can feel powerful. Someone like Zimmerman who wants to play dress up cop. Someone who thinks he’s Dirty Harry, and he just needs an easy target to prove it to himself.

Our courts just gave that person a license to pursue and kill without accountability.

George Zimmerman Verdict: Not Guilty

By Yamiche Alcindor 
USA TODAY 10:01 P.M. EDT July 13, 2013

SANFORD, Fla.--George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, has been found not guilty of second murder and manslaughter.

The verdict is the culmination of a case that captured the nation's attention and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America's history. The not guilty verdict means the jury of six women found that Zimmerman justifiably used deadly force and reasonably believed that such force was "necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm" to himself— Florida's definition of self-defense.

The women decided Zimmerman didn't "intentionally commit an act or acts that caused death" or demonstrate a "depraved mind without regard for human life" --Florida's definitions of manslaughter and second degree murder, respectively.

"Its means there was reasonable doubt," said Susan Constantine, a jury consultant and body language expert who attended Zimmerman's trial regularly. "They just could not put the pieces together."

The case has gripped the nation since the shooting happened on Feb. 26, 2012. Police initially did not charge Zimmerman with a crime, citing Florida's "stand-your-ground" law, which allows someone who believes they are in imminent danger to take whatever steps are necessary to protect themselves.

Protests ensued in several cities, including New York, by supporters of Trayvon's family. Many protesters voiced the opinion that Trayvon was targeted and killed for racial reasons. Trayvon was black and Zimmerman is Hispanic.

"You have a little black boy who was killed," said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the parents of Trayvon. "It's going to be reported in history books and 50 years from now, our children will talk about Trayvon Martin's case like we talk about Emmett Till."

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black young man, was tortured, murdered and grossly disfigured in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with a white woman.

In Zimmerman's case, State Attorney Angela Corey stepped in and charged Zimmerman with murder on April 11, 2012. Prosecutors however never argued that Zimmerman racially profiled the teen and instead said the teen was profiled as a criminal.

The five-week trial of Zimmerman, held in the same Florida city where Trayvon was killed, brought the facts of the case under a nationally-televised spotlight, with every moment captured on camera.

More than 50 witnesses testified and on the first day of deliberation requested a list of the plethora of evidence that lawyers presented.

Some of the items include several statements Zimmerman gave to police, Trayvon's autopsy report and photos of both Zimmerman's injuries and Trayvon's body. Witnesses included forensic experts who testified about the angle in which Trayvon was shot, the position Zimmerman's gun may have been in, and where DNA and blood was found.

Other witnesses offered conflicting statements about how the fight happened, who had the upper hand when Zimmerman shot and who was screaming for help in a 911 call recording.

Eyewitness Jonathan Good said he saw Trayvon on top of and striking Zimmerman moments before the teen was shot. While Selma Mora, who lived a couple of houses down from Good, said Zimmerman was on top and told her to call the police.

A 911 call recorded screams and the fatal gunshot moments before the shooting. Who was screaming was a critical question before the jury.

The defense called nine people -- including both of Zimmerman's parents -- to testify that the screams belonged to Zimmerman. Both of Trayvon's parents and his brother all said Trayvon was screaming moments before he was shot.

In at times riveting detail, prosecutors tried their best to convince jurors that Zimmerman was a killer who "tracked" Trayvon, an innocent teenager, and murdered him before police arrived.

"That child had every right to be afraid of a strange man following him," prosecutor John Guy told jurors before they began deliberations. "This case isn't about standing your ground. It's about staying in your car."

Fellow prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda focused heavily on the state's theory that Zimmerman, frustrated by recent burglaries in his neighborhood, profiled Trayvon as a criminal and choose to take the law in his own hand.

"A teenager is dead, and he's dead through no fault of his own," de la Rionda said to jurors. "He's dead because another man made an assumption."

The majority of legal experts USA TODAY interviewed however said the prosecution had a weak case based largely on circumstantial evidence. Some said the state could possibly succeed if they appealed to the emotions of jurors. However, sympathy was not supposed to play a part in the verdict and defense attorneys reminded jurors of that fact repeatedly.

Mark O'Mara, an attorney for George Zimmerman cast Trayvon as the aggressor saying the teen may have been charged with aggravated battery had he survived the shooting. Trayvon, instead of going home, likely hid, waited for Zimmerman and confronted him, the lawyer said.

"Trayvon Martin came towards George Zimmerman," O'Mara said. '"That is not an unarmed teenager.'

O'Mara explained saying Trayvon used his fists and a concrete sidewalk to threaten great bodily harm.

He also focused on what he said was the state's failure to prove Zimmerman did anything legally wrong. "Where is one shred of evidence to support the absurdity that they are trying to have you buy?" O'Mara asked pointedly in his closing statement to the jury.

Elizabeth Parker, a former prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney in Palm Beach, Fla., said the defense did a good job of humanizing Zimmerman .

"The defense did a phenomenal job of presenting their case through the state's witnesses," Parker said. "They were able to get George Zimmerman's testimony in through several witnesses --sparing him from having to undergo vigorous cross-examination by these bulldog prosecutors."

One such is example was the testimony of Sanford police officer Christopher Serino, called by the state and later the defense, Parker said. Serino agreed with prosecutors that Zimmerman may have been profiling Trayvon but said no physical evidence or witness statements contradicted Zimmerman's claim of self-defense and that the medical examiner's report supported Zimmerman's version of events.

Still, Valerie Houston, pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church in Sanford, said she hoped Zimmerman was convicted because he followed Trayvon and initiated the events leading up to the shooting. Many meetings in support of Trayvon and his family were held in her church and Houston joined those who early on asked for Zimmerman to be arrested.

"I feel that he's guilty," Houston said. "If he's not found guilty people will be disappointed--the African American community for sure."

Now that the verdict is in, people who share Houston's views will have to accept that the justice system believes Zimmerman is innocent.

However, despite now being a free man, Jose Baez, a Florida criminal defense attorney, said Zimmerman will likely go into hiding and be unable to live a normal life for some time.

"The end is not near for George Zimmerman," he said.

The Grandmaster Trailer - Tony Leung Becomes a Legend

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, THE GRANDMASTER is an epic action feature inspired by the life and times of the legendary kung fu master, Ip Man.

The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of China’s last dynasty, a time of chaos, division and war that was also the golden age of Chinese martial arts.

Filmed in a range of stunning locations that include the snow-swept landscapes of Northeast China and the subtropical South, THE GRANDMASTER features virtuoso performances by some of the greatest stars of contemporary Asian cinema, including Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang.

By Angie Han

It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for Wong Kar Wai‘s The Grandmaster, but next month our patience will finally be rewarded. To prepare us for the martial arts epic’s release, The Weinstein Co. has released a new full-length U.S. trailer.

Tony Leung leads the cast as Ip Man, who’s probably best known in the U.S. as the guy who trained Bruce Lee. In the 1930s, when The Grandmaster begins, he’s a happily married man practicing the Wing Chun kung fu form in southern China. He’s challenged to a fight by a martial arts master from the north (Wang Qingxiang), and then later by the man’s daughter (Zhang Ziyi).

The trailer starts out with the same rain-soaked scene we’ve enjoyed in other trailers, but quickly moves on to other, equally dramatic scenes.



There’s no dialogue at all, lest the appearance of subtitles turn off American moviegoers. At least the voiceover isn’t as annoying this time around. Wong hasn’t done much in the martial arts genre, but he seems to acquit himself nicely. There’s lots of exciting action, choreographed beautifully by the Yuen Woo Ping, but Wong hasn’t lost the moody introspection that marks his other works.

The Grandmaster opens August 23^rd.

GOP - The Party of No

By Eugene Robinson

Self-delusion is a sad spectacle. Watching Republicans convince themselves that killing immigration reform actually helps the GOP is excruciating, and I wish somebody would make it stop.

House Speaker John Boehner’s unruly caucus has been busy persuading itself not to accept or even modify the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate. Rather, it wants to annihilate it. It’s not that these Republicans want a different kind of comprehensive reform; it’s that they don’t want comprehensive reform at all.

The Obama administration “cannot be trusted to deliver on its promises to secure the border and enforce laws as part of a single, massive bill,” Boehner (R-Ohio) and the GOP leadership said in a statement. Instead, the idea is supposedly to deal with the tightly woven knot of immigration issues one at a time.

That’s like sitting down with a piece of cake and saying, “First I’m going to eat the flour, then the sugar, then the eggs.”

House Republicans think they can begin with “border security,” which would be laughable if the need for real immigration reform were not so serious. It is ridiculous to think the nearly 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico can be made impregnable.

The border, after all, was judged 84 percent secure last year by the Government Accountability Office — meaning that only 16 percent of attempts to enter the country illegally from Mexico were successful. Any improvement, at this point, would necessarily be fairly modest. Perhaps Republicans know of a border somewhere in the world that is 100 percent secure. I don’t.

And never mind that the flow of undocumented migrants is way down from its peak, while apprehensions of would-be migrants are way up. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill, if enacted, could slash illegal immigration in half. No realistic increase in border security would do as much.

So the House Republicans’ intransigence isn’t really about the border. It’s about avoiding the central question, which is what to do about the 11 million undocumented migrants who are here already.

In the view that has become far-right dogma, giving these people a path to citizenship “rewards bad behavior” and puts them ahead of presumably well-behaved foreigners who are waiting “in line” for admittance. For the most adamant House Republicans, giving the undocumented any legal status and permission to stay would amount to “amnesty.”

No legal status, of course, means no solution. Opponents of comprehensive reform should just come out and say what they mean: Rather than accept measures that studies say would not only reduce illegal immigration but also boost economic growth, House Republicans would prefer to do nothing.

This makes no sense as policy or as politics. Amazingly, however, some conservatives who should know better — magazine editors Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and Rich Lowry of National Review — contend that the GOP would actually help itself politically by killing the Senate immigration bill.

This line of argument — I can’t call it reasoning — holds that the Senate bill must be killed because it does not end illegal immigration for all time, it does not fix the legal immigration system for all time and it is really long. The GOP should not waste time and effort chasing after Latino and Asian American votes, according to this view, and instead should concentrate on winning working-class whites with an economic message for the striving middle class.

As for the Senate bill, Kristol and Lowry wrote in a joint editorial that “House Republicans can do the country a service by putting a stake through its heart.”

Some House Republicans worry openly that giving undocumented residents a path to citizenship would eventually add millions of Democratic voters to the rolls. But they should be more concerned about the millions of Latino citizens who are unregistered or do not bother to vote. Democrats are making a concerted play for these people. Republicans are telling them they’d like to deport their relatives and friends.

Most House Republicans have nothing to worry about for the time being; their districts are safe. But the GOP’s fortunes in national contests — and eventually in statewide races — will be increasingly dim. Maybe they’ll wake up when Texas begins to change from red to blue.

In the meantime, it’s sad to see a once great political party carry on as if whistling past the graveyard were a plan.

 
Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

8 Stupid Lies Fox News Keeps Telling About Food Stamps

By Elisabeth Parker

Way to go, Congress! Three weeks ago, the GOP-led House of Representatives approved a bill providing millions in farm subsidies, while removing food stamps from the farm bill package entirely.  Then, on July 11th, they actually went ahead and passed this travesty of a bill even though it disproportionately penalizes people in their own states!

Believe it or not, “red” states are the real welfare states, and the states most dependent on food stamps are all run by Republicans. As those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” in France might murmur in their cafés over glasses of wine and acrid Gitanes cigarettes, “quel ironie.”

Meanwhile, here in “blue” America, we’re covering our ears against a heavy, clangorous din as millions of jaws drop to the floor. How do these conservatives keep getting away with this crap? Maybe it has something to do with all the vile myths and outright lies churned out by the right wing propaganda machine — oops, I mean, ‘media’ — on a daily basis. As is generally the case with legislation and sausages, right-wing propaganda is a messy and unappetizing business, and most of us really don’t want to watch it being made.

That’s why this video from Media Matters for America is such an eye-opener. After watching this montage of casually callous, ignorant, and appalling statements from Rush Limbaugh and the talking heads at Fox News, you’ll have a better idea of why folks from high-poverty states — like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Maine, and Arkansas — keep voting for these conservative meanies.

Here’s the video:



The quotes from this lovely video cliptage all center around eight tired, inaccurate, and mean old myths about food stamps and poverty in general:
(1) If you need food stamps, you’re a loser and it’s your fault;
(2) Liberal politicians promote food stamps so people will become dependent on welfare, and vote for them;
 (3) People on food stamps aren’t really poor, and don’t really need help;
(4) We can’t possibly have hunger in America, because so many Americans are clinically obese;
(5) Speaking of which … maybe some of these food stamps recipients should go on a diet;
(6) People on food stamps are welfare cheats;
(7) Who needs food stamps when we can go dumpster diving?; and
(8) Having a social safety net is bad, because it creates a culture of dependency.

1. If you need food stamps, you’re a loser and it’s your fault.

“The image we have of poor people as starving and living in squalor really is not accurate.  Many of them have things, what they lack is the richness of spirit.”
– Stuart Varney

Not only does this sort of thinking promote the idea that people are poor for lack of a work ethic and good morals, it also catches those of us who do need help in a vicious cycle of self-hatred,  self-blame, and secret shame that encourages us to hate food stamp recipients and vote against welfare programs even while we’re being helped by them. We’re not the ones who should feel ashamed. People who think it’s okay for people to starve and go without basic necessities in a land of wealth and plenty are the ones who should feel ashamed.

2. Liberal politicians promote food stamps so people will become dependent on welfare, and vote for them.

“Re-elect Obama, food stamps for everyone.”
– Laura Ingraham

Obviously, this is not true … otherwise the folks living in the Republican-dominated states listed above would stop voting for these jerks!

3. People on food stamps aren’t really poor, and don’t really need help.

“They’re all gonna have a phone, a TV set, a car, and 120 free minutes, and food stamps.”
– Rush Limbaugh

First of all, having a cell phone, television, a car, and food stamps does not make you well-off. We are only able to afford cheap consumer electronics because they’re produced in countries with low wages, unsafe working conditions, and few regulations. Meanwhile, many of us don’t have secure employment any more because globalization’s incessant race to the bottom has unfairly forced us to compete against these workers. Instead of promoting fairness, safety, and higher living standards amongst our trading partners, we’re lowering our own standards. Thanks to Walmart, we can afford to buy lots of cheap, plastic crap. But life’s necessities — like food, housing, healthcare, and gas or transportation remain impossibly expensive for many of us.

4. We don’t have hunger in America, because so many Americans are clinically obese.

“Sixteen MILLION children face a summer of hunger. Now, Michelle Obama told us they’re all so fat and out of shape and overweight that a summer off from government eating might be just the ticket.”
– Rush Limbaugh
“Poor people in America have an obesity problem. And yet, we give more people food stamps.”
– Geraldo Rivera

I can barely even get past the spectacle of a disgustingly obese, cigar-chomping, mean-spirited slob like Rush Limbaugh giving health advice to the less economically fortunate amongst us … but here goes. Believe it or not, it is possible — and increasingly common in America, according to Elaine Watson’s recent article in a trade publication for nutritionists — for us to be obese and malnourished at the same time. That’s because there’s a vast gulf between getting enough — or too many — calories, and getting enough nutrition and exercise. Calories and junk food are cheap. More nutritious foods, like fresh produce, are often more expensive and inaccessible to low-income people living in isolated rural or inner city areas (and who often don’t have cars). Exercise opportunities are also challenging in unsafe and isolated neighborhoods, especially if you have chronic health problems from obesity and malnutrition.

5. Maybe some of these food stamps recipients need to go on a diet.

“I should try it, because, do you know how fabulous I’d look? I’d be SO SKINNY!”
– Andrea Tantaros’s giddy thoughts on taking the food stamps challenge and spending only $130 per month on food.

Squeeeeee! She can look caring AND lose weight! Sounds like a win-win for Tantaros, who is already such a slender wisp of a thing — both physically and mentally — she might flat-out disappear. Which could also be a win-win for the rest of us. What’s not to like?

6. People on food stamps are welfare cheats.

“Remember that lottery guy? Still getting food stamps! Come on!”
– Gerry Willis

This old and tiresome trope started when Ronald Reagan conjured up images of welfare queens driving pink Cadillacs. Funny, I always thought those were Mary Kay saleswomen. But it makes absolutely no sense that this hypothetically undeserving thief would risk felony charges just to scam $130 in food stamps per month. If you’re going to game the system, why not just throw on a suit, work for a bank, and cheat investors and mortgage holders? It’s easier and better paid, plus Wall Street’s white collar criminals almost never do jail time.

7. Who needs food stamps when you can go dumpster diving?

“There’s always the neighborhood dumpster. Now you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos produced to show you how to healthfully dive and survive until school starts back up in August.”
– Rush Limbaugh

Yikes! If our local homeless population here in San Jose, CA saw Rush Limbaugh’s plumber-butt sticking out of a dumpster, they’d run screaming for the hills. I don’t even know where to begin, because the image of desperate parents digging around in dumpsters to feed their children scraps of moldy food until free school lunches resume is downright Dickensian. Do we seriously want to live in the squalid world of “Oliver Twist“? I’m seriously starting to think our Republicans actually do. I don’t know how Limbaugh caught wind of the Freegan movement (the practice of … um … “reclaiming and eating discarded food”), but this is hardly how we should expect citizens of a supposedly first-world democracy to live.

8. Having a social safety net is bad, and creates a culture of … um … Depends™ency.

“Well, it’s like we’re wearing one, gigantic Depends undergarment. It’s like, hey, we’re America, don’t worry about it. Now, pretty soon we won’t have to go to the bathroom for ourselves.”
– Kimberly Guilfoyle

Is this some new and even more vile version of what “All In The Family‘s” Archie Bunker hilariously malapropped as “tinkle down theory?” Like, if we come together as citizens and build a safety net that catches us when we fall into hard times, we’re literally shitting on each other? Like, ew. Thanks for the lovely image, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Why do we think it’s so horrible for people to take care of each other? Families and human societies have done exactly that since long before civilization began. Having a social safety net to help in times of misfortune — especially when so many people’s fates are determined by huge, global, multi-national corporations and rich people who keep not creating jobs — is a crucial hallmark of civilization. In fact, our ability to form emotional bonds, work together cooperatively, communicate, and form mutually supportive communities is a big part of what supposedly sets humans above other life forms (though the opposable thumbs and more complex/proportionally larger brains certainly help).

Since conservatives claim to love Jesus Christ so much, you’d think they’d want us to love and take care of one another the way Jesus so famously taught. Instead, they envision a dark, dystopian world dominated by a sociopathic elite that either uses or crushes everyone in their path. I’d call it “social Darwinism,” if these religious zealots actually believed in Darwin.

Author: Elisabeth Parker Elisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, "like" her on facebook, "friend" her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.

Is VA Gov. Bob McDonnell Negotiating Resignation Over Felonies?

By Susie Madrak

Turns out that VA's wingnut Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who's running to replace O'Donnell, is also involved in this same scandal. Oops!

Even though he denies it, there are numerous rumors that outgoing VA Gov. Bob McDonnell, the man who wanted to be Mitt Romney's vice president, has a different kind of future in store -- namely, agreeing to resign in exchange for avoiding charges. I guess we'll know soon!

RICHMOND — A prominent political donor gave $70,000 to a corporation owned by Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his sister last year, and the governor did not disclose the money as a gift or loan, according to people with knowledge of the payments.

The donor, wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., also gave a previously unknown $50,000 check to the governor’s wife, Maureen, in 2011, the people said.

The money to the corporation and Maureen McDonnell brings to $145,000 the amount Williams gave to assist the McDonnell family in 2011 and 2012 — funds that are now at the center of federal and state investigations.

Williams, the chief executive of dietary supplement manufacturer Star Scientific Inc., also provided a $10,000 check in December as a present to McDonnell’s eldest daughter, Jeanine, intended to help defray costs at her May 2013 wedding, the people said.

Virginia’s first family already is under intense scrutiny for accepting $15,000 from the same chief executive to pay for the catering at the June 2011 wedding of Cailin McDonnell at the Executive Mansion.

All the payments came as McDonnell and his wife took steps to promote the donor’s company and its products.

The payments to the corporation, confirmed by people familiar with the transactions, offer the first public example of money provided by Williams that would directly benefit the governor and not just his family.

The money went from a trust, controlled by Williams, to MoBo Real Estate Partners, a limited-liability corporation formed in 2005 by McDonnell and his sister, the sources said.

More here from the Maddow blog.

Rand Paul's Aide: A Dunce on the Confederacy

By Conor Friedersdorf

This week, Alana Goodman, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, broke a story about Senator Rand Paul's 39-year-old social-media director, Jack Hunter, who "spent years working as a pro-secessionist radio pundit and neo-Confederate activist" under the name "Southern Avenger." "He has weighed in on issues such as racial pride and Hispanic immigration, and stated his support for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln," Goodman reported. "During public appearances, Hunter often wore a mask on which was printed a Confederate flag."

In a follow-up article, Goodman reported that "controversial radio-pundit-turned-Senate-aide Jack Hunter's work caught the eye of the Paul family years before he was hired as Sen. Rand Paul's (R., Ky.) social media director," and that "it remains unclear whether Rand Paul was familiar with Hunter's inflammatory radio punditry when he hired him." Interviewed by the Free Beacon, "Hunter renounced most of his comments," and his article archive at The American Conservative, which dates back to July 2008, suggests that his thinking changed prior to this controversy. I wish every neo-Confederate would read these lines in his April 1, 2013 column:

The 20-something me would consider the 30-something me a bleeding-heart liberal. Though I still hate political correctness, I no longer find it valuable to attack PC by charging off in the opposite direction, making insensitive remarks that even if right in fact were so wrong in form. I'm not the first political pundit to use excessive hyperbole. I might be one of the few to admit being embarrassed about it. This embarrassment is particularly true concerning my own region, the South, where slavery, segregation, and institutional racism left a heavy mark. 

I still detest those on the left and right who exploit racial tension for their own purposes. But I detest even more the inhumanity suffered by African-Americans in our early and later history. T.S. Eliot said, "humankind cannot bear too much reality," and it is impossible for those of us living in the new millennium to comprehend that absolute horror of being treated like chattel by your fellow man, or being terrorized by your neighbors, because of the color of your skin. Books, memorials, and museums will never be able to adequately convey such tragedy, at least not in any manner remotely comparable to the pain of those who lived it.

A bit farther back in his archive at The American Conservative, however, he displays all the cluelessness of nostalgists for the Confederacy, writing, "My entire adult life I have defended the Old South and the Southern cause in America's bloodiest war. Not because I support slavery or racism, but despite it. The positive parallels between what the Confederacy was fighting for in 1861 and what the American colonists fought for in 1776 are many and obvious -- republican democracy, political and economic freedom, national independence, defense of one's homeland."

He has yet to renounce his secessionism.

In an effort to understand his views as fully as possible, I read all his columns from The American Conservative, bearing in mind Daniel McCarthy's claim that "anyone who reads them, while finding plenty to disagree with -- he's an independent thinker -- will not find hate. Naïveté, yes, and a certain obtuseness about minorities that's long been characteristic of the right."

That characterization is accurate. An April 14, 2011, column best captures the maddening way he thinks about secession:

If a liberal like Maddow's primary reason for denouncing nullification or secession is these concepts' popular association with the Old South and slavery, would Maddow have respected the Fugitive Slave Act -- or nullified it? Would the liberal host have agreed with Lincoln that runaway slaves should be returned to their masters? Would Maddow have opposed abolitionists' Northern secession? If she is opposed to nullification and secession in each and every instance -- as her rhetoric heavily implies -- would liberals like Maddow have occasionally found themselves in the strange position of supporting slavery?

What about today, where a de facto nullification remains in effect in California which continues to openly flout federal drug laws? Does Maddow believe residents in that state who are stricken with cancer or glaucoma deserve to be arrested for alleviating their pain with medicinal marijuana? Or does Maddow support nullification? Liberals do not want to be confronted with these uncomfortable philosophical contradictions concerning centralization vs. decentralization -- the debate that raged in 1776, 1861 and still rages today -- because any such intellectual exploration toward this end threatens the very heart of the Left's collectivist historical narrative. For progressives, the ever-increasing power of the federal government represents human liberation and political liberalization--period.

This has been the Left's clarion call from FDR to Barack Obama, and any talk of devolving centralized power -- even in the name of what would typically be considered liberal causes -- is heresy.

Hunter gets one thing right: Secession and nullification aren't inherently wrong. The judges who tried to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act were doing God's work. If the federal government started rounding up all Muslim Americans, and liberal California tried to secede and offer them safe harbor, I'd proudly fly the banner of the Bear Flag Republic. And I believe that state governments are the rightful deciders when it comes to issues like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and assisted suicide. Want to nullify the War on Drugs by refusing to cooperate with federal efforts to prosecute marijuana? Go for it, Colorado! Cite the Tenth Amendment. I'll back you.

What the author fails to realize is that secession and nullification have bad names because, historically, in practice rather than theory, their use has overwhelmingly led to the subjugation of minorities and diminished liberty; and because, a few Vermonters aside, the maneuvers are almost always paired -- as Hunter pairs them! -- with a myopic Confederate nostalgia that poisons intellectual consideration of the concepts more than any central government-loving liberal.

Centralization is often bad for liberty. Prohibition and the federal government's War on Drugs are examples. But the Union's victory in the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment, and the incorporation doctrine were huge advances for liberty that every American ought to celebrate.

And the form of government favored by Jefferson Davis' Confederacy? I'd like to associate myself with almost every characterization of it made by the Cato Institute's Jason Kuznicki:

Whatever others may say on the subject, I can't understand how anyone might admire the Confederacy and also call themselves a libertarian. Any affinity for the Confederacy marks one very clearly as an enemy of liberty.*

The Confederate Constitution says all that needs to be said on the subject, and it answers all possible arguments to the contrary. Yes, the antebellum U.S. Constitution was clearly quite soft on slavery, and this is not at all to its credit. The best that can be said for it was that it was embarrassed about being quite soft on slavery -- amid all the other liberties it granted and all the other progress it made. Products of committees, do note, can be as schizophrenic as the committees that draft them. Our first attempt at a constitutional order was one such schizophrenic product, and in this respect, the antebellum U.S. Constitution was terrible.

But the Confederate Constitution was vastly worse. What it lacked in schizophrenia, it more than made up for in pure, unadulterated, wholly consistent evil. Consider the following passages:

No law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor may be due.

The Confederate States may acquire new territory... In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

It would be a sick joke to stop merely at calling these provisions unlibertarian -- as if all but the exceptionally punctilious members of my little tribe might maybe tolerate them after all.

These provisions are unlibertarian, but they are far worse than that. There is only one legal term that seems quite to do them justice. That term is hostis humani generis: The founders of Confederacy were the enemies of all mankind, as admiralty law holds slave-takers to be. War against slave-takers is always permitted, by anyone, without pretext or need for justification. The practice of slavery is to be crushed, so that mere humanity might live. Anyone who cares about human liberty -- to whatever degree -- ought to despise the Confederacy, ought to mock and desecrate its symbols, and ought never to let Confederate apologists pass unchallenged.

Want to go even deeper in the weeds? See Jonathan Blanks. "Because Confederate-secession defenders will not typically make arguments in favor of chattel slavery, they rely instead on the assumption that secession is an unbounded right and thus a state may leave a country for whatever reason it chooses," he writes. "To accept this premise, one has to bypass moral judgment on the cause of secession, yet affirmatively assign a morality to secession as a matter of preferred political procedure -- in common parlance as 'states' rights.' This turns the assumption of individual rights on its head, if the federalist procedure is to supersede the right of exit of any group or individual within that state, as the Confederacy's slave economy unquestionably did."

Perhaps this critique has already persuaded, or will one day persuade, Hunter to renounce more of his past positions. "In radio, sometimes you're encouraged to be provocative and inflammatory," he told the Free Beacon. "I've been guilty of both, and am embarrassed by some of the comments I made precisely because they do not represent me today. I was embarrassed by some of them even then." It is a discredit to his character that he said things he didn't believe on the radio; just as I do not excuse Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh for spewing false, provocative nonsense for the sake of ego and/or lucre, I don't regard I misrepresented my opinions because I was in a dishonest medium to be any kind of excuse.

I do respect Hunter's renunciations and rethinking, and the increased empathy that preceded this controversy. Within the world of commentary, I am disinclined to shun anyone earnestly seeking redemption from a past of talk-radio hackery -- talk about getting the incentives all wrong.

That doesn't change the fact that Hunter should resign his post immediately, because his continued presence can only undermine the effectiveness of his employer. Paul shouldn't have ever hired him, because even if -- to be overly charitable -- Paul wasn't aware of his objectionable views, or disagreed with all of them but didn't regard them as pertinent to the job, a Senate staffer's role is to help his boss govern, and any fool should've been able to see that having an avowed secessionist and Confederate nostalgist on staff would end in distraction, controversy, and many assuming (whether rightly or wrongly) an antagonism to blacks -- just as many Americans assumed, during the Jeremiah Wright scandal, that Obama harbored antagonism toward America. The political best practice "don't hire extremist former talk-radio hosts who spewed years of nonsense even they won't defend" didn't guide Paul's hiring when Hunter joined.

Why? Dave Weigel has thoughts. Lots of them. Other hypotheses:

1. Paul sympathizes with Confederate nostalgia and secessionism.
2. Just as it made sense for Obama to associate himself with Jeremiah Wright to win over a certain sort of liberal Chicago voter, and made sense for him to disassociate himself with Wright to win over Americans generally, Rand Paul is constantly trying, on one hand, to retain the base of his father, and on the other, to increase his appeal to Americans generally. Insofar as he associates with secessionists and Confederate nostalgists, it is calculated, a bone he throws to the fringe of America that is disproportionately likely to bankroll money bombs; but the fringe stuff doesn't reflect his actual beliefs or governing agenda.
3. He just liked the good things about Jack Hunter, has a higher tolerance than most for fringe beliefs, and a distaste for shunning people just because they have views that are offensive to many.
4. Paul, like many pols, is strangely blind to the dumbest excesses or mistakes within his own ideology.

My bet would be on No. 2, which is neither the most nor least charitable explanation. But since I'm betting and not asserting, be assured that this is a question Paul will need to address directly. Perhaps not now, or ever, if he just wants to remain in the Senate; but sometime, if he runs for president in 2016.

This whole episode is vexing to me. This week as much as last, I believe that Paul, like Ron Wyden, is one of several indispensable members of his chamber, where one voice can make a significant difference in policy.

Paul is constantly speaking out against needless American involvement in foreign wars, most recently in Syria; so long as a vote on Iran could conceivably be the difference between a catastrophic war that could "haunt us for generations," as Robert Gates put it, every non-interventionist is indispensable. He favors reforming mandatory minimum sentencing and forcing transparency on the surveillance state, and he's critical of a secretive drone campaign that has killed so many innocents. If Paul left the Senate tomorrow, it is vanishingly unlikely that anyone in Kentucky or anywhere else would start taking these and other stands, many of which speak directly to some of the most illiberal, unjust actions America carries out. In all these fights, Paul faces long odds.

Every association with neo-Confederates, or bit of evidence that he hasn't learned the lessons of his father's poisonous newsletters, doesn't just corrode his standing as a champion of liberty; nor is it just destructive of any presidential ambitions he harbors. It undermines his ability to achieve vital reforms, to avert foreign wars, to protect civil liberties or critique the War on Terror in any way. It strengthens the hands of his opponents on those issues, however illogically.

And for what? What is gained by these associations?

Paul is perhaps thinking, as he's expressed before, that he wants to be judged on his actions in the Senate -- on the votes that he takes and the questions that he raises. He may say that his aide's opinions are irrelevant, given that neither he nor even the aide himself share most of them. He may argue, as I have done, that there is a double-standard in the way that Republicans, especially libertarian-leaning ones, are treated on the issue: that Paul is called a racist based on newsletters written by his father and talk-radio monologues delivered by his aide, while Michael Bloomberg remains unscathed, even as he himself presides over and defends racially profiling and secretly spying on innocent New York-area Muslim Americans, as well as the deeply-racist-in-practice Stop and Frisk. But even granting all of that, every word I've written above stands.

So what should we think about Paul now?

Chris Hayes says that he very much likes some of the positions that Paul has taken, but that "in the final analysis, there are certain things, certain views, that just put you outside of the boundaries that get you listened to on anything. I'd say white supremacy is one of those. And association with people who hold those views, they render you unfit." ** I predict that if Paul makes a cogent point on drone policy, or surveillance policy, or a particularly compelling anti-war argument, Hayes will, in fact, listen to him, and even broadcast his words to others.

I sure will.

And while there are many differences between the Obama-Wright controversy (which did not at all dissuade me from supporting Obama in 2008) and the current controversy over Hunter's remarks, there is this similarity: Both deal with how we ought to react to indefensible remarks made by someone a prominent politician chose to associate with, even after the remarks.

In that instance, Hayes had this reaction:

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to "particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media" who were members of the list. The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, "It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country." Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. "All this hand wringing about just how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going."

"Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians -- men, women, children, the infirmed -- on its hands. You'll forgive me if I just can't quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama's pastor," Hayes wrote. "I'm not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don't think he's worthy of defense, don't defend him! What I'm saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable."

He later clarified, "My argument was that Wright's views and Obama's relationship to him simply weren't at all predictive of how Obama would govern or fundamentally revealing about the kind of president he would make."

He was certainly right about that.

As a whole, his take has many parallels to today's unapologetic Paul defenders: They say this is a distraction dredged up by neo-cons to maintain control of the Republican Party, that the hand-wringing just keeps the hustle going, and that considering the horrific policies that the U.S. implements and Paul opposes, being outraged about an associate's offensive comments is bizarre.

What do I say?

• Paul deserves much of the criticism he's getting, including what I've heaped on him above. If he can't see how this undermines his goals he should ask Will Wilkinson to explain it to him.

• Judging from Paul's time in the Senate, nothing about Hunter's controversial views have been at all predictive of how Paul has governed, and there is no credible case that they ever will be predictive.

• If you'd never vote for Paul because he employs an aide who said lots of offensive stuff on talk radio but you did vote to reelect George W. Bush or Obama, who've both retained aides at the highest levels who were complicit in torturing other human beings, perhaps you should rethink what it is that you make into a litmus test -- more on that point here.

Consider all that a tentative take, pending new facts and further reflection.
__
* Here's the one line I want to parse: "Any affinity for the Confederacy marks one very clearly as an enemy of liberty." That feels true to me. It would be true, if people were rational creatures. But I've encountered a lot of people whose affinity for the Confederacy is characterized by staggering historical ignorance, stubborn, irrational, myopic tribalism, pathological, selective over-intellectualization, and cognitive dissonance. Their commitments don't make any kind of sense when juxtaposed, which doesn't mean they don't believe them. It's a lot like the college students who have hammer-and-sickle flags on their wall, Che tees on their bodies, and ready defenses of Fidel Castro, but who also champion civil liberties and like capitalism.

Weirdly, they exist.

** Hayes goes on:

Even if you take the most charitable view possible, that, say, you get three white supremacist strikes, Rand Paul is in trouble. Strike one was in 2009 when Rand Paul's Senate campaign spokesperson was forced to resign over a horribly racist comment and historical image of a lynching -- I am not making that up -- posted by a friend on his MySpace wall on Martin Luther King Weekend. It had been allowed to remain for almost two years. Rand Paul then went on the Rachel Maddow show, saying he didn't much like the Civil Rights Act, that was strike two. And now this, the Southern Avenger on the Senator's staff. That's three racist strikes. You're out.

Seriously? Assigning Rand Paul a "white supremacist strike" because he employed a spokesman whose friend posted something offensive on the spokesman's MySpace page? And really, a "white supremacist strike" for taking the position that the Civil Rights Act did a lot of good things, but that he had some principled objections to the private business provision? I've criticized Paul's answer as wrongheaded, but it certainly isn't a white supremacist position.

I wonder how many strikes would result if Hayes applied these same standards to, say, Bill Clinton. Who was it that he cited as his mentor? Ah, yes, a former segregationist. Strike one? We'd do well to reserve white supremacist strikes for people who actually believe in or advocate white supremacy.

Why Senate reform is needed

By Jonathan Bernstein

Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell engaged in a long argument on the Senate floor this morning over Republican obstruction and Democratic plans to do something about it.

In practical terms, there’s really just a game of chicken here. Republicans — remember, the minority in the Senate — want to block as many presidential nominees as possible. The rules allow that. The only real weapon Democrats have is to threaten to change Senate rules so that simple majorities can confirm those nominations, but it’s a weapon that Democrats are reluctant to use. That means that the line at which Democrats will act (because there is too much obstruction) is going to remain unclear.

And so Republicans will keep pushing right up to where they think the line is, while Democrats are going to threaten that they’ll go nuclear any minute now.

That’s what’s happening, and that’s okay, as far as it goes.

But on the merits, look, McConnell gave away the game twice during the debate. At one point he referred to a “60-vote hurdle” and at another point he talked about how few nominees are “likely to have problems getting cloture” (both my transcriptions from C-SPAN2, so I may have the wording slightly wrong).

That’s the problem, right there. McConnell, ever since January 2009, has treated filibusters as routine and universal. That’s brand new. There have been filibusters of executive branch nominees before, but only in rare cases. Almost all the time, under all previous presidents, the Senate had a simple majority hurdle, not a 60 vote hurdle, for executive branch appointments. Nominees didn’t have to get cloture; they only needed to get a simple majority.

Which is how it should be. There are reasonable justifications, agree with them or not, for super majority requirements on at least some legislation and on at least some lifetime-appointment judges. There are no reasonable justifications for needing 60 for executive branch positions. Really, I’m not aware of any good arguments for needing 60 on any exec branch nominations, let alone having it as the standard for all of those selections. For years, everyone has always believed that presidents should basically be entitled to the personnel they want, and that the confirmation process was basically an opportunity for senators to have some leverage over what happens in the departments and agencies, after which nominees would normally be confirmed. It’s a system that  worked reasonably well, and there’s no reason at all it shouldn’t be the system now, even if Democrats have to change the formal rules in order to restore how things used to work.

Again: this isn’t really going to be settled on the merits; it’s simply about how far Democrats are willing to go to accommodate what is absolutely unprecedented obstruction of executive branch nominations without invoking their right to impose a rules change.

On the merits, however, McConnell is dead wrong. He talked about whether Reid would ruin the Senate by going nuclear; the ones who are actually threatening to ruin the Senate are Republicans who insist on a 60-vote Senate, and more generally Republicans who constantly defy Senate norms in order to gain short-term advantage. That’s the real story here, and it’s a real disgrace.

Smithfield CEO Tells Lawmakers Shuanghui Deal Won’t Impact Food Safety

By Helena Bottemiller

American consumers will not be impacted and the safety of pork products will not diminish if Smithfield Foods is acquired by Shuanghui International, Smithfield’s CEO Larry Pope told the Senate Agriculture Committee at a hearing Wednesday.

The assurances come as the proposed $4.7 billion sale, which would be the largest ever Chinese acquisition of an American company, is facing an interagency government review and increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Fielding tough questions from lawmakers about the potential downsides of the deal, Pope, who will remain CEO, was upbeat about the acquisition. He said the deal would deliver more American jobs and increase exports.

“It will be the same old Smithfield, only better,” he said, noting that pork producers and industry groups are supportive. “There should be no noticeable impact in how we do business operationally in America…except we plan to do more of it.”

Pope’s view was backed up by the testimony of Matthew Slaughter, an associate dean at the Tuck School of Business who served on the Council of Economic Advisors to President Bush. Slaughter said the investment and the increased trade with China is exactly what the sluggish economic needs, adding that a smooth transaction would signal that the U.S. is ripe for foreign investment.

On the whole, however, the hearing was extremely divided. Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) raised concerns about the Chinese meat company gaining access to valuable pork industry technologies that were heavily supported by taxpayer-funded research and seriously questioned the federal government’s process for reviewing such acquisitions.

Stabenow and more than a dozen senators from the committee recently asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), headed by the Treasury Department, to include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its review of the proposed deal because of the potential threats to food security and public health, but it’s not clear whether that will happen. In a letter to the committee this week, the Treasury did not respond to that request, but noted that its review process is confidential.

During the hearing, lawmakers echoed the concerns many consumers have: that the deal will ultimately result in the U.S. importing more food from China in the wake of multiple unsavory and dangerous food scandals.

Pope told the committee that the acquisition “will not result in any imports of food into the U.S. from China” and said specifically that China has “no plans” and “no applications in place” seeking permission from the USDA to sell its meat products to U.S. consumers. He also reminded the committee that regardless of who owns the company, it will be under strict scrutiny by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which oversees the safety of all meat, poultry, and processed egg products in the U.S.

“We’re going to protect these brands and products and if we don’t the U.S. government will,” he said. “You know how tight those inspection processes are.”

Daniel Slane, Commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told the committee he thinks the long-term implications of the deal are wholly negative.

“This is all about control,” said Slane, who argued that giving Shuangui access to technology and intellectual property could end up disadvantaging American producers. Eventually, he said, China can use that knowledge to achieve the same efficiency in their production and undercut U.S. pork exports to the Pacific Rim. “Their endgame is to dominate our markets.”

Dr. Usha Haley, a professor for the Robbins Center for Global Business and Strategy at West Virginia Univeristy, was equally critical in her testimony before the committee.

“I don’t think shanghai is buying Smithfield for its pork,” said Haley. She believes the deal is about Shuanghui’s access to intellectual property and technology and assuaging local consumers’ food safety concerns by using an American brand. Even if China gobbled up Smithfield’s entire production, she said, it would only account for about 3 percent of the country’s total pork consumption.

“China is not seeing this as one acquisition,” she said. “China sees this as a foot in the door.”

Haley said she also believes the deal will ultimately impact food safety. In June, she penned an Op-Ed for USA Today arguing against the Smithfield sale.

“Shuanghui’s culture exudes outrageous food-safety violations and a history of food adulteration. For example, the company finally shut down a plant after numerous reports that it fed pigs a chemical that sickened humans but enhanced leanness in pork,” she wrote. “Over the past five years, U.S. pork purchases in China rose 155%, one of the few areas in which a trade surplus with China exists. China’s history of forced technology transfer to access markets indicates that other Chinese demands will follow.”

Stabenow said she remains concerned about the adequacy of the government’s review process.

“I really believe this is a precedent-setting case,” she said. “We need to be thoughtful on behalf of consumers and producers and the broader economy.”

How Romney Finally Got Black People To Like Him

By Elisabeth Parker

Mitt Romney’s supporters may not be able to send President Barack Obama “back to” Kenya, but left-over Romney T-shirts from the 2012 campaign are fair game. Benny Johnson from BuzzFeed gleefully reports that “the Romney campaign is still strong in Africa,” thanks to a serendipitous donation to the Orbit Village project, an orphanage and K-12 school located in Nairobi, Kenya. The Founder of the Tennessee-based charity, Cyndy Waters, told BuzzFeed that the T-shirts came from her nephew, who served as a county director for Romney’s presidential campaign. She then added:

“A T-shirt might seem a small thing to an American teen with a drawer full of many T-shirts, but we work all year collecting clothing, school supplies, and gifts for our students. The gift of several hundred T-shirts and hats from the Romney campaign was a real blessing to us.”

Photo from Orbit Village Project, a Baptist-run orphanage, K-12 school, and evangelical church in Nairobi, Kenya: “Send a child to school, lead a child to Christ.”

This is probably the largest group of young black people we’ll ever see wearing Romney T-shirts and smiling while doing it. Unfortunately for the GOP, these kids are in Africa. It remains highly unlikely that Romney will ever enjoy wide appeal to blacks in the good old US of A,. After all, his Republican party promotes policies that hurt people of color, and his Mormon church only recently granted equal status to black people. Although the gushing BuzzFeed article insists that Waters “will accept any donation of any campaign swag,” we can make a fairly educated guess as to where her political sympathies lie … and not just based on her nephew’s occupation. A quick visit to the Orbit Village Project’s web site reveals that the charity is affiliated with an evangelical Christian group that has “planted” a Baptist church on the site. It is no secret that American evangelical Christian groups have taken hold in Africa, spreading their vile message of ignorance, homophobia, and hate.

 

Waters burbles about how the kids love America:

“Kenyan students love to talk about politics and very much admire the way Americans handle elections [...] We thought it would be a great way to celebrate the 4th of July and the political system by giving the shirts out on that day.”

But of course she doesn’t mention how Romney’s party has been manipulating our elections and doing everything possible to keep American blacks and other people of color from voting.

Waters then snidely works in a dig against Obama:

“President Obama was not on the best of terms with many Kenyans for choosing to visit Tanzania instead of Kenya in his recent visit to Africa, and that made many of the kids even more excited to receive the shirts.”

So … let’s send her a few hundred Obama, Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren T-shirts and see what happens. Their mailing address is:

The Orbit Village Project
118 Cedar Hills Road
Sevierville, TN 37862-3809

And in case you’re curious about what these kids are learning in this orphanage/school/church, here’s the video:



Ironically, while these kids are enjoying this bonanza, it turns out that Romney’s supporters in Virginia couldn’t seem to get their hands on any Romney T-shirts or lawn signs during the 2012 election, according to Christopher Bedford’s disgusted post-mortem in his “What the hell is the point of the Virginia GOP?” op-ed piece for the Daily Caller.

Author: Elisabeth Parker Elisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, "like" her on facebook, "friend" her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.

Government Makes $51 Billion A Year Off Student Loan Interest

Author: Occupy Democrats  

July 11, 2013 5:06 P.M.