5 Right-Wing Lunacies This Week: The Nonstop Comedy Show of CPAC

By Janet Allon / AlterNet

 

CPAC is like a nonstop comedy show. One hit after another. Scott Walker tried to steal the show by comparing ISIS to those vicious union members he battled in his state, and he was rightfully and roundly ridiculed for that. It'll take some serious backtracking and spinning to undo the damage to the Republican darling. But he was far from the only standup comedian on the roster.

1. Duck Dynasty star to CPAC: Bring your Bible to the Oval Office, and your woman, 'cause the hippies are coming to get you.

Phil Robertson issued the above piece of advice to the CPAC audience, and no one is exactly clear what it means, honestly. Nor did the rest of his speech make a whole lot of sense. His biggest concern seems to be that Republicans not get sexually transmitted diseases.

“There is a penalty to be paid from what the beatniks, who morphed into the hippies (did)!” the Duck Commander rambled, rather incoherently. “What do you call the 110 million people who have sexually transmitted illnesses? It’s the revenge of the hippies! Sex, drugs and rock & roll have come back to haunt us!”

Head for the hills, people! With your Bible under one arm, and your woman under the other! "You lose your religion," Duck Commander bellowed. "And you lose your morality."

Robertson actually claimed, though he "hated to admit it," that he had done some research on the CDC website and found out that only one encounter was necessary to contract a sexually transmitted illness. “How many seconds does it take to get genital herpes?” he asked the CPAC audience, rhetorically. “It said 30 seconds. I’m like, whoa, that’s pretty quick.”

Well, thanks Phil. This has all been terribly enlightening.

Here's the video in case you'd like to enjoy it yourself:
 

 

2. Sarah Palin says a bunch of nonsense at CPAC, then inadvertently says something extremely true.

It’s a bit disorienting, really. In her speech at CPAC, Sarah Palin stayed in her usual history-mangling character when she suggested that the U.S. killed all the Nazis in WWII, when a passing acquaintance with the subject shows is laughably far from the truth. She said we should do the same to ISIS, just kill all of them—both impossible and plain old stupid and dangerous. So far, so good. Palin doing Palin.

Then she did something totally off brand, and wandered into the thickets of truth. It was a mistake, we’re sure. She said: “It’s said that old men declare wars, and then they send the young ones to fight ‘em. So it’s the duty of he who sends them to actually make sure that we can win those wars. And it’s our duty to elect an honorable commander-in-chief who is willing to make the same sacrifices he sends others away to make.”

So, as Raw Story figures, Palin is essentially saying that neither she, nor any other Republican hopeful is qualified to be president, since none has been willing to make such a sacrifice. Governors Jeb Bush of Florida, Chris Christie of New Jersey, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin have not served, nor have Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida. Nor, of course, Sarah Palin herself, although her son Track, who served in Iraq for a year.

So, basically, everybody out of the pool!

Except Track. Track Palin for President! Woohoo!

3. Jim Inhofe reduces climate change debate to a snowball.

There has been some snow this winter, in case you have not heard. And to Senator Jim Inhofe, that can only mean one thing. It’s cold out! Also, snowball fight! Oh yeah, and obviously climate change must be a hoax.

To drive his point home, darned if the Senate’s chief climate change denier didn’t bring a snowball to the Senate floor and toss it. Oh! Feel the burn, all you science believers!

"In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, 'You know what this is?'" Inhofe said, holding up his secret weapon. "It's a snowball, from outside here. So it's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable."

Yes it is. Very very cold.

Never mind that despite some record low temperatures in various parts of the country, 2014 remains the warmest year on record, and the nation overall has been experiencing a warmer-than-average winter. It’s cold where Inhofe is—he has to bundle up—and he’d rather just throw a snowball than deal with all that pesky data.

4. Stupid Giuliana Rancic makes racist comment about black hair and Solange Knowles has a great response.

Joan Rivers’ replacement, Giuliana Rancic, may have apologized for her idiotic and racist snark about 18-year-old actress and singer Zendaya’s dreadlocks at the Oscars, but the comments spoke volumes about Hollywood’s inability to regard African Americans as equals and creative forces to be reckoned with. In her “Fashion Police” roundup, Rancic ventured away from talking about Zendaya’s Vivienne Westwood gown, to suggest that her hair probably smells of “patchouli oil” and “weed.”

Really? Why?

Twitter erupted in understandable outrage over the fact that black women's hair just keeps being an obnoxious topic of discussion and object of bewilderment and scrutiny by white powers that be. As HuffPo says, “From TSA agents patting down Afros, a woman having to cut her locks to keep her job, and the Army's discriminatory ban on particular African American hairstyles—the list goes on and on.”

It’s not a random comment, and Rancic’s “I’m sorry if I offended you” apology really does not wash. Zendaya’s eloquent outrage put the “Fashion Police” to shame, as did Solange Knowles’ nifty response.

just shut up, white people. Shut up.

5. Fox News doctor: Crack babies come from women who smoke weed!

Fox News Medical A-Team (ha!) doctor David Samadi is not one for scientific reports. Or science, or, like, facts. So he certainly was not going to admit that a recent study published in Scientific Reports found that pot is quite possibly the least harmful drug humans ingest, including alcohol and cigarettes.

“I think it’s a very dangerous study,” Samadi argued. “People need to be very careful about not getting the wrong message from this study. They’re using a lethal dose as a comparison. For example, they’re putting pot against or weed against cocaine or alcohol. We know you need less amount of alcohol to die. So, they’re using death to see what’s dangerous and what’s not.”

Wait, what?

He went on to make various hysterical claims, such as that pot causes heart attacks and psychosis.

Then this bit of nonsense: “Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.”

They are smoking the whole marijuana business.

Looks like his brain is misfiring, and the dangerous drug he is on appears to be a combination anti-science pathology, anti-pot hysteria and just not having done his homework about the fact that the whole crack baby scare was a myth. Not to mention the fact that the mythological crack babies were not born to mothers who smoked pot.

Walker unscripted falls flat

Gov. Scott Walker proudly touts his ability to survive a recall election and his union busting ways, but a poorly planned analogy at CPAC fails to impress. Ed Schultz, John Nichols, and Jean Ross discuss.

Erased: ISIS and the Destruction of Ancient Artifacts

The smashing of priceless sculptures is part of a tradition of iconoclasm that goes back to Abraham.

By David A. Graham Feb 26 2015, 4:05 PM ET

AP/The Atlantic

New videos released on Thursday apparently show ISIS militants destroying Assyrian and Akkadian artifacts in Mosul—smashing statues and scraping through a winged bull from the 7th century B.C.

This is only the latest episode in a spree of iconoclasm ISIS has unleashed across the areas under its control in Iraq and Syria. In May 2014, there were reports of separate Assyrian artifacts being excavated and destroyed. In July 2014, fighters destroyed the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah in Nineveh.

Earlier this week, reports said the group had burned 100,000 books and manuscripts from the Mosul library.

One way to think about this is as part of a concerted attack on civilization itself. "I'm totally shocked," a professor at the University of Mosul's college of archeology told the AP. "It's a catastrophe. With the destruction of these artifacts, we can no longer be proud of Mosul's civilization."

But another way to think about it is as squarely in a tradition of iconoclasm. Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, himself destroyed idols, according to tradition. There's a strong tradition of icon-destruction in Christianity. And in pre-Islamic Mecca, the Kaaba was the site of multiple idols, which Muhammad cleared out before rededicating the site to God. This is certainly the tradition to which ISIS wishes to claim a connection. The Taliban, another group that claimed fidelity to the principles of early Islam, also spent a great deal of time destroying images of people—most notably the massive Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afghanistan. The tomb of Muhammad in Mecca was itself destroyed by Ibn Saud, the first monarch of Saudi Arabia, early in the 20th century.

 

The fog of war makes it tough to tell when genuine artifacts are missing or in danger.

In reality, the relationship with icons in all three Abrahamic religions is rather more elaborate than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would want us to believe—but the tradition is there. Destroying traces of forebears, and even robbing and destroying tombs, has perhaps a longer tradition in civilization than preservation.

ISIS can't claim total purity on the matter itself, either. The group has widely been reported to be profiting by selling plundered artifacts on the black market. In fact, there's speculation among archeologists that some of the destruction in the new videos is a sham. While the winged-bull sculpture was most likely original, the other statues appear to be replicas. Some of the artifacts have been removed to Baghdad, while others may have been sold off. "You can see iron bars inside," Mark Altaweel of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London told Channel 4. "The originals don't have iron bars." Other reports, such as the AP's, quoted experts familiar with the museum saying most of the pieces are genuine.

The Daily News has a video of the event:

Even in the scope of the destruction wrought by ISIS and the Syrian civil war, the damage to irreplaceable pieces of history is enormous. That's especially true since the region's archaeological history is so rich—stretching from the beginnings to civilization through the biblical period and on into the history of Islam—and because it follows on the American invasion of Iraq, which was itself a huge blow to museums and preservation. Not all of the damage results from religious zealotry or plain malice; in many cases, civilians dig for artifacts to sell simply for subsistence in the midst of war. Even when items aren't destroyed, they may be scattered to private collections through the black market and never recovered.

In September, Secretary of State John Kerry and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova spoke at an event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about preserving heritage. "How shocking and historically shameful it would be if we did nothing while the forces of chaos rob the very cradle of our civilization," Kerry said. "So many different traditions trace their roots back to this part of the world, as we all know. Our heritage is literally in peril in this moment, and we believe it is imperative that we act now."

Those are strong words. But as the fighting drags on and the U.S. and its allies struggle to find effective ways to reckon with ISIS, the futility of the words becomes clearer, and priceless objects disappear into dust.

3D Printer Shop 'Pixelwizard' Recreates Missing Retro Computer Covers & Parts

By Cauterize

When you lose the cover for your Amiga 1200's expansion port, or even worse damage the front door to your Commodore 1702 monitor's control panel, what do you do? Similar to the Nintendo Game Boy's battery cover, replacing these individual parts is a difficult task requiring you to rely on eBay users to lists spares, as and when they find them. That's all about to change though as a 3D printing enthusiast has set up shop selling those easily lost parts from retro computers and consoles.

Starting out with a selection of Commodore based replacements, online shop Pixelwizard has begun providing retro gamers with the all important parts needed to fix up their kit. All printed from scratch using accurate 3D models of the originals as reference, all sales come in white nylon plastic with a matte finish and slight grainy feel. Looking through each product's page, you'll soon notice how each and every one of these newly printed pieces fits into place perfectly, at what also appears to be a reasonable price too.

As of speaking here's what's currently available thanks to the wonders of 3D printing:

• Expansion Slot Cover DVI compatible to Amiga 1200
• 3,5" Floppy Rails compatible to Amiga 3000
• Expansion Slot Cover compatible to Amiga 1000
• Interlock Knobs for SX-64
• Front Cover compatible to Commodore Monitor 1702

While all of these products may be for Commodore systems, Pixelwizard does leave things open for consoles and handhelds too. Although there are no products currently in the category, there is a section marked for Nintendo hardware - one we can only assume will soon be flooded with Game Boy battery covers and Nintendo 64 expansion port flaps. That said, should you be looking for a specific part, this might be the one shop you want to drop a line.

Link: Pixelwizard's 3D Printed Retro Replacements

Purina sued over claims it killed 4,000 dogs with 'toxic' food

By James Joiner 

A class action lawsuit alleges a mold byproduct used in kibble is leading pets to agonizing deaths.

Despite years of online allegations that one of the most popular dog food brands has been poisoning pets, it wasn’t until just weeks ago that the cat was let out of the bag in a court filing. A class action lawsuit was filed that blames the deaths of thousands of dogs on one of Purina’s most popular brands of chow.

Googling Nestle Purina Petcare’s Beneful brand will get you the pet food manufacturer’s website, a Facebook page with over a million likes, and, in stark contrast, a Consumer Affairs page with 708 one-star ratings supported with page after grim page detailing dogs suffering slow, agonizing deaths from mysterious causes.

Internal bleeding. Diarrhea. Seizures. Liver malfunction. It reads like something from a horror movie or a plague documentary, but a suit brought in California federal court by plaintiff Frank Lucido alleges that this is all too real—and too frequent to be a coincidence.

But it all relies upon finding a chemical that may be in the food—and has been a staple in dog food recalls in the past—with an experiment that neither Lucido, his lawyers, or even independent scientists have even begun to conduct.

Lucido said it began last month when his beloved German shepherd began losing an alarming amount of hair, smelled strange, and wound up at the vet with symptoms “consistent with poisoning.” A week later, his wife found one of their other dogs, an English Bulldog, dead. An autopsy showed signs of internal bleeding in the stomach and lesions on the liver, symptoms eerily similar to the shepherd’s, according to the complaint. Then their third dog also became ill.

“All these dogs are eating Beneful,” explained Jeff Cereghino, one of the attorneys representing Lucido in the action. “And the dogs are all, for a variety of reasons, not in the same house. So you take away the automatic assumption that the neighbor didn’t like the dogs or whatever. He was feeding them Beneful at the start of this, and one got sick and died, the other two were very ill. And then he started doing a little research, and he realized the causal link, at least in his mind, was the food.”

It doesn’t take much digging to uncover what appears to be a pattern of allegations, Cereghino said. Lots and lots of allegations. After hearing Lucido’s story, Cereghino checked it out for himself.

“We found a significant number of folks who were trying to draw exactly the same causal link.

Thousands,” he said.

The sheer volume is what made the seasoned lawyer—one who said “a good part of our business is class action work”—realize something may be fishy.

“But when I look at 4,000? Holy hell, there’s a lot of people out here.”

“If it’s a hundred or so, it’s like, ‘Okay, a lot of dogs eat Beneful; things happen.’ But when you start getting into the thousands… The long and short of it is the complaint pyramid is such that even with the Internet–easy access to complain about things– there’s still a very large percentage of folks who simply don’t complain, or whose vet tells ‘em, ‘We don’t know what happened,’ and they’re not drawing conclusions or leaping to assumptions, “ he said.

“But when I look at 4,000? Holy hell, there’s a lot of people out here.”

So Cereghino and his partners started talking to those people, comparing more and more of the stories of heartbreak.

“There seems to be somewhat of a singular event. [The dogs] are vomiting. They’re having liver problems, failures,” he said. “I’m not a vet, but you look at some of this stuff and say, ‘OK, we’re starting to have similar symptoms across the board, and we’re starting to have causation.’”

When these dire accusations first started appearing online years ago, the initial accusation was that one of the additives in the food, propylene glycol, was the culprit.

Purina maintains the type of propylene it uses is perfectly safe for consumption, saying on its website: “Propylene glycol is an FDA-approved food additive that’s also in human foods like salad dressing and cake mix.”

It’s also the same substance that caused the spiced whiskey Fireball to be recalled in Europe, which found excessive amounts of the chemical, also used in antifreeze, in the cinnamon swill last fall. The tainted liquor was from the North American batch because, in the U.S., much higher volumes of antifreeze additives are OK for human—or canine—consumption.

“It’s horrible. That is something that you don’t want in dog food,” noted veterinarian and author Karen "Doc" Halligan when reached by phone. “It’s controversial. Why do you want to take a risk if there’s any kind of chance that that could be bad for them?”

But whether it’s good for dogs or not, food grade propylene glycol has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It also hasn’t been linked to toxicity, especially the type being alleged against Beneful.

Cereghino thinks there’s another culprit in the mix, and he’s named it in the lawsuit. They’re called mycotoxins.

Translated directly from the Greek words for “fungus poison,” mycotoxins are, essentially, a toxic byproduct of mold. When it comes to ducking discovery, they’re an especially crafty brand mold byproduct, and one found in all types of grains.

If you read the ingredients label of Beneful, it sounds an awful lot like breakfast cereal: ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, whole wheat flour, rice flour, soy flour. Sure, there’s some “chicken byproduct meal” and “animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols,” but the food is certainly more grain than meat.

“In the channels of trade, grain is quite a lot like hamburger these days. As in ‘There’s multiple cows in a hamburger,’ if you will,” explained Dr. Gregory Möller, professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology at the University of Idaho and Washington State University joint School of Food Science. “It’s a mixed and blended commodity. So one farmer, one granary, or one mill, may have not stored their product well, which allowed for mold growth in storage.”

Even if a scientist were to stumble upon a load of grain rife with mycotoxins, Möller added, he or she could test it and still miss them.

“You can go into a sample that is known contaminated,” Möller noted. “But the particular sub sample you pull may not have enough on it to actually see. There is that challenge.”

This can be exacerbated when the host grain is earmarked for non-human use.

“Commodities that are targeted towards pet foods are managed a little bit differently, in terms of the regulatory criteria they have to pass,” he continued. “It is a very large industry. There is attention and concern about quality, but there is a difference in how the concern is managed.”

In layman’s terms?

“I think what’s put forth here is a plausible scenario,” Möller said.

When asked about the alleged symptoms described in the class action suit and online, especially the repeated liver failure, Halligan was clear in her potential diagnosis, especially as it pertained to animals of a variety of ages.

“Toxins would be real high on my list. If an animal ingests some type of toxin, that can lead to liver disease because the liver has to process it,” said Halligan.

But there have not yet been any tests to determine if mycotoxins are in Beneful at all—or any other dog food, for that matter.

Cereghino said he’s determined to find that out.

“As soon as we are able to, and the federal courts move at a fairly rapid rate, we will get discovery,” said Cereghino.

That’s when Cereghino will get to find out where Beneful’s products come from, how they’re stored, whether there’s a “connecting piece in the storage or the grain, the sourcing of it all, that sort of make sense.” He plans on running tests on the food both he and other members of the class action suit have saved to send over to a lab in the next few weeks.

That’s when they’ll know if those potentially dangerous chemicals are in the formula. And, if they are, they’ll still have to fight to prove that the mycotoxins are dangerous enough to make thousands of dogs sick.

As for Purina, when approached for comment, Keith Schopp, vice president of corporate public relations, read this statement to The Daily Beast:

“We believe the lawsuit is without merit and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves. Beneful is a high-quality nutritious food enjoyed by millions of dogs each year and there are no product quality issues with Beneful.”

MSNBC Not All In with Chris Hayes Anymore

By Joe Concha

When reporting on a TV personality possibly getting the boot from their network, it’s par for the course to request for official comment on the matter. When you do this long enough, you begin to notice some patterns as it pertains to certain networks. In the case of MSNBC (and NBC News in general), I think I’ve found — as they say in poker — their tell.

A tell, of course, is that trait or sign in regard to the poker hand they hold. Is that person bluffing? Doesn’t he have a straight flush? A tell — as seen in the classic Rounders with Matt Damon and John Malkovich as the great Teddy KGB — can make or break who wins the pot. With MSNBC, I first noticed its tell following my original exclusive about the demise of Ronan Farrow’s daytime show.

To review, when asking if the network was planning on cancelling the ill-fated program for the 26 year old Cronkite Award Winner, the answer was the following: “No. We’re fully committed to Ronan.”

So, I took that as a standard denial without reading between the lines too much. But in retrospect, the tell is obvious: Being fully committed to Ronan is one thing, being fully committed to his program is quite another. Network spokespeople are meticulously trained in this stuff and, in this case, thought of that response very carefully before replying. The language specifically engineered so that if I went back to them now and called them out, they can always say, “Hey, we never said we were committed to the show, just committed to the host staying on at the network in a different capacity,” or something to that effect.

Fast forward to last week and the announcement around the aforementioned Farrow and Joy Reid‘s respective 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. ET programs being cancelled. Not a big surprise given the anemic numbers — even by MSNBC standards. But the bigger story to emerge was that the network is eying Chris Hayes as well, who isn’t exactly killing it at 8 p.m. (the most important time slot out there), falling to third and sometimes fourth place behind HLN’s Forensic Files repeats.

Any objective media critic or fan will tell you Hayes isn’t a prime-time host (he was great on weekend mornings in his old Up spot, where his style, pace and topic selection was and would be a better fit) — and that reportedly includes Griffin, who made the big bet (at the reported behest of Rachel Maddow) on Hayes and is seeing very little return on investment.

All of that said, when asked if the network planned to cancel Hayes following the report in The Daily Beast, here was the response below from an MSNBC spokesperson: “Contrary to the rumors from unnamed sources, we have no plans take Chris Hayes’ show off the air or move Rachel Maddow’s show.”

Given the Farrow example, you see the tell, right? No plans to take Chris Hayes’ show off the air will likely mean not taking it off entirely, but instead moving it to a different home out of prime time. Or no plans could be flackese for no finalized plans at this exact moment in time.

This isn’t the first time NBC has gone this route either. Just think back to the time the network denied that Ed Schultz was being removed from weekday primetime to a weekend slot (Hint: It happened, despite denials). Or the times NBC News repeatedly denied the ousting of David Gregory from his moderator spot on Meet the Press (Hint: He did). Or Ann Curry being safe on the Today Show (Yeah, you get the idea).

Of course, this just doesn’t pertain to MSNBC, but all networks trying to hang on and control the narrative after word is leaked of a program’s or personality’s impending doom.

But given his network’s track record, if I’m Chris Hayes, I see the tell and start looking forward to getting my weekday dinner time back with the wife and kid again soon.

>> Follow Joe Concha on Twitter @JoeConchaTV

Rahm Emanuel's Moment of Fucking Truth

The Chicago mayor hopes voters will allow him to avoid an April runoff despite school closures and outbreaks of violent crime.

By David A. Graham

Larry Downing/Reuters

Too often, candidates run for office promising one thing and deliver another, alienating or simply disaffecting voters, and ultimately losing their offices. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces a different sort of challenge: For the most part, he's given voters what he said he would. Now, do they want to keep it?

He'll find out Tuesday, when Windy City voters go to the polls in a mayoral election. Emanuel has mounted an extremely expensive, high-powered push to get past 50 percent of the vote—the threshold he needs to win reelection outright and avoid an April 7 runoff. The X-factor in the race seems to be black voters, so Emanuel has rolled out endorsements from high-profile African American politicians, including his former boss President Obama and Representative Bobby Rush, the only man to ever beat Obama in an election.

A Chicago Tribune poll last week showed that Emanuel was within striking distance of an outright majority, with 45 percent of voters backing him, and nearly 20 percent undecided. Emanuel's top opponent is Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia; other challengers include Alderman Bob Fioretti and businessman Willie Wilson.

It's been a rambunctious four years for Emanuel. After an election campaign in which he was nearly disqualified under residency requirements, the former U.S. representative and White House chief of staff cruised to victory. Since then, Emanuel has closed almost 50 schools; dealt with a strike by public-school teachers; passed an austerity budget for the city; and faced a significant murder rate.

The bruising term has turned some voters off, especially after 22 years in which the city was led by the same man, Richard Daley. But in many ways, Emanuel has done just what he said he would, bringing his brusque, no-nonsense approach to the mayorship.

Long a pragmatic moderate who reveled in muscling his preferred strategies through—often with the aid of a generous helping of profanity—that's just what he's done, on issues ranging from the budget to education. Emanuel has exercised a control over the levers of power that exceeds even his long-tenured predecessor, bending the City Council and even the state legislature to his will. But that focus seems to have come at a cost: retaining support among voters themselves, who have grown chilly on Emanuel after giving him 55 percent of the vote four years ago.

Reaching the 45 percent mark is an accomplishment in its own right. Not long ago, Emanuel's polling was in the tank, and his reelection seemed in doubt. His rebound has been helped by two big factors: good luck, and piles and piles of money. First, two of his most formidable potential opponents bowed out. Two black candidates decided not to run—Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County Board, passed, and Karen Lewis, a major Emanuel antagonist as head of the teachers' union, opted against running when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Meanwhile, Emanuel has raised $15 million in the race, pouring much of it into television ads. His enormous war chest has allowed him to far outspend Garcia on the airwaves, who was unable to get TV time until the final two-week stretch of the race. In moving early to get on TV and bury his opponent, Emanuel is taking a page out of Obama's playbook in the 2012 presidential election, when he and allies spent early to "define" Mitt Romney for voters.

Still, black voters—who came out in force for Emanuel four years ago, in part because of Obama's backing—remain cool. In the Tribune poll, only 42 percent backed him this time around, with a quarter still undecided. That's in large part because minority neighborhoods have borne the brunt of Chicago's recent troubles. Most of the schools that closed are in those neighborhoods. Emanuel says that was actually for the better: The schools that were shuttered were underused and under-performing, and the closures should lead to students getting better educations. He also boasts of improvements like longer school days and more extensive pre-K programs. Horrific violence is also a major factor. Even as other cities saw big drops, there were 500 murders in Chicago in 2013, many of them concentrated in minority neighborhoods. (The number was down to 407 in 2014, a 40-year record low.)

If Emanuel has ridden Obama's coattails, his challengers have tried to emulate New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's example. As a technocratic, moderate Democrat who used a top-down style and has won plaudits from neoliberal pundits on issues like education, he seems to invite just the sort of left-wing campaign de Blasio used in his come-from-behind victory in 2013. They've even co-opted de Blasio's leitmotif, accusing Emanuel of overseeing a city divided into "two Chicagos."

Emanuel essentially admitted that was true in an interview with The New York Times. “‘The city that works’ has to work for everybody,” he said, alluding to a nickname for Chicago. “Have we made progress in areas that had developed for years? Yes. Is our work done? Absolutely not.” (Skeptics might note that he's been saying the same since his term started, and apparently hasn't finished the job yet. In a profile in The Atlantic in 2012, Emanuel told Jonathan Alter almost exactly the same thing: "We are known as ‘the city that works.’ You gotta make sure it works for everybody and not just a few.”)

The irony is that even as Emanuel risks losing voters, his hold on the city has been extremely strong—stronger even than Daley, by some measures. The mayor has managed to turn the city council into a "rubber stamp" for his policies, with aldermen backing him more than they did Daley or his father, who was mayor for 21 years.

If Emanuel can win on Tuesday, it might set him up for a tenure comparable to Daley pere or fils, perhaps even with more power. But most analysts are calling the contest too close to predict at this point, and if Emanuel wins only a strong plurality matters get murkier. Emanuel would retain the advantage of incumbency, fundraising, and backing from the national Democratic establishment. Yet Dick Simpson, an oft-quoted political scientist and former alderman, thinks Emanuel would be in trouble in a runoff: He'd suddenly look far more vulnerable, and national liberals would flock in to aid Garcia. (For the record, Simpson has contributed to Garcia's campaign.)

Hence the race to the finish for the mayor, as he spent aggressively and shook as many hands as possible in the last few days before balloting. Not that glad-handing is a pleasant task right now—as of writing, it feels like -14º F in Chicago. Tuesday won't be great either, with the high barely reaching freezing and a forecast of gusty winds that should live up to Chicago's nickname. Bad weather tends to be a boon to incumbents. For a candidate who's already gotten very lucky, the forecast is one last stroke of fortune.

Final Judgment: MSNBC Moving Away From "Left-Wing TV"

Cenk Uygur host of The Young Turks addresses the recent programming shift at MSNBC. A source at MSNBC said the goal of the changes was to "move away from left wing TV". Cenk has a unique opinion as someone who was once inside the MSNBC bubble.

What Rudy Giuliani knows about love — a response to his 'doesn't love America' critique of Obama

By Wayne Barrett

Rudy Giuliani knows a lot about love.

Ask Regina Peruggi, the second cousin he grew up with and married, who was "offended" when Rudy later engineered an annulment from the priest who was his best man on the grounds, strangely enough, that she was his cousin.

Or ask Donna Hanover, the mother of his two children, who found out he wanted a separation when he left Gracie Mansion one morning and announced it at a televised press conference.

Or ask Judi Nathan, his third wife, whom he started dating while still married to Hanover and New York mayor. In two SUVs, he and an entourage of six or seven cops traveled 11 times to Judi's Hamptons getaway at a taxpayer cost of $3,000 a trip. That's love.

Rudy knows so much about love that he declared the other day that President Obama "doesn't love you" and "doesn't love me" at a private party of GOP fat cats. 

 

EDITORIAL: RUDY GIULIANI'S DISGUSTING ATTACK ON OBAMA

 

 TANNEN MAURY/EPA 

 Obama was not 'brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country,' Giuliani went as far as to say.

The onetime presidential candidate also revealed at the party that Obama "doesn't love America," an echo of a speech he'd delivered to delirious cheers in Arizona a week earlier when he declared: "I would go anywhere, any place, anytime, and I wouldn't give a damn what the President of the United States said, to defend my country. That's a patriot. That's a man who loves his people. That's a man who fights for his people. Unlike our President."

Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption for him. And remember Bernie Kerik? He's the Giulaini police commissioner, business partner and sidekick whose nomination as homeland security secretary narrowly preceded indictments. He then did his national service in prison.

 

Colter Hettich/ New York Daily News Photo Illustration 

  Giuliani's rampage against Obama questioned the President's love for America. 'I do hear him criticize America much more often than other American Presidents.'

Giuliani went so far as to rebuke the President for not being "brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country," a bow no doubt to the parenting prowess of Harold Giuliani, who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy's uncle.

Though Rudy cited Harold throughout his public life as his model (without revealing any of his history), he and five Rudy uncles found ways to avoid service in World War II. Harold, whose robbery conviction was in the name of an alias, made sure the draft board knew he was a felon. On the other hand, Obama's grandfather and uncle served. His uncle helped liberate Buchenwald, which apparently affected him so deeply he stayed in the family attic for six months when he returned home.

Handout A Department of Correction receiving blotter from Sing Sing prison shows the name of Harold Giuliani (aka Joseph Starrett), Rudy's father.

Rudy also said Obama is "more of a critic than he is a supporter of America," an odd admonition coming from a security salesman who told a Tijuana audience of consulting clients in October: "America needs to stop lecturing other countries and start working on how to stop drug use in its citizens," shifting the onus for the Mexican drug trade on to us. He's a consultant in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the very countries where right-wing governments, traffickers and/or gangs are driving children and teenagers across the U.S. border.

DE BLASIO, DNC CHAIR SLAM GIULIANI'S COMMENTS

 

MARK LENNIHAN/AP Actress Donna Hanover is the mother of Giuliani's two children. 

D Dipasupil/FilmMagic
Giuliani and his third wife, Judith Giuliani, attend the 'Saturday Night Live' 40th Anniversary Celebration on Sunday at Rockefeller Plaza.

He was a consultant for the government of Qatar, the country his friend and FBI director Louis Freeh accused of hiding 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed before the attack. That's the ultimate triumph of money over memory, since he's still talking, as recently as a week ago, about the 10 friends and 343 firefighters he lost on 9/11.

While Giuliani finds Obama's rhetoric insufficiently pro-American, his 2012 RNC speech was filled with catchphrases like Obama's "a complete and absolute failure," and he just branded the President "a moron" in his Arizona invocation of Neville Chamberlain at Munich, all of it presumably a new form of nationalist celebration. In 2012, Rudy even blasted Obama, without a glance in the mirror, for "attempting to exploit" the killing of Osama Bin Laden, calling it "disgusting."

Rudy contends that his not-like-us Obama insights have nothing to do with race, adding in day-after doubling down that the President "was taught to be a critic of America," while pointing out that his mother and grandparents were white. There are few in New York now, after 12 years of Mike Bloomberg and a year of Bill de Blasio, who doubt that Rudy was a conscious, almost energetic, polarizer. He never acknowledged his dark side then and he's not about to now.
 
Barrett is author of "Rudy: An Investigative Biography."

Liberal Racism: 25 Things I Learned After I Wrote About ISIS and White Racism at the Daily Kos

By chaunceydevega

Racism is not an opinion. It is a fact.

White supremacy is one of the most powerful social forces and ideologies in the United States (and the West). As such, it is reflected in our political discourse, and both intentionally (through active racism) and unintentionally (implicit bias) reproduced by individuals.

Online spaces are a great lens into white supremacy because they are a type of public arena where individuals can drop the mask of social conformity and desirability, revealing their private thoughts and true selves.

Thus, comment sections are transformed into a space where “backstage racism” can be transformed into direct and public acts.

I have shared my essays here on the Daily Kos for several years. There are some good and sincere folks here who I have talked to via email and through other mediums. There are likely many “lurkers” who read, give “recs”, and share work they find valuable and useful with their friends, family, colleagues, and others in their personal networks.

By definition, those individuals who frequently comment on and read political websites are outliers relative to the general population. And while the Daily Kos is a “liberal” or “progressive” website, it still reflects the biases, habits, and beliefs of the individuals who frequent it.

For example, if a given society is racist, sexist, and homophobic, then its members and culture, to varying degrees, will be a reflection of those values. Some will resist them; others will actively reproduce and support them; most will go about their quotidian lives, a herd or mass public to be directed one way or another as their personal whims and desires pull, and cues from elites direct them.

White liberals love to point out the racism of conservatives and republicans. This is an easy task in the post civil rights era because the Tea Party GOP is the United States’ de facto White identity party.

It is far more difficult for white liberals and progressives to look in the proverbial mirror and to take a personal inventory of their own possessive investment in whiteness, and how they reproduce white supremacy as a lived ideology.

Liberal or “aversive” racism is the counterpart to the “symbolic” and “old fashioned” racism practiced by conservatives and the White Right.

My most recent posts on the Daily Kos (an essay on Dr. Martin Luther King and White memory; a new piece on ISIS’s barbarism and the lynching of black Americans by white people) have been met with many hundreds of comments. Those essays were also shared many thousands of times on Facebook and other social media.

Collectively, the comments on my essay on ISIS, as well as white historical memory and Dr. King, are a lesson in the enduring power of liberal racism. I have learned much from them.

As I have done in the past, what follows are some helpful guidelines and observations for people of color (and white folks of conscience) who dare to speak some “truth to power” about race or racism at the Daily Kos.

1.    White people are very sensitive. Many of them get very upset and angry when you tell the truth about racism, white supremacy, or white privilege. Never speak plainly and directly to liberal racists. They may wilt.

2.    Liberal racists and their allies believe that it is “unnecessary” to comment on the plain on the face fact that black Americans were burned alive in much the same as ISIS did to the captured Jordanian, Muadh al Kasasbeh.

3.    Addendum to the above. The spectacular lynchings of black Americans by white people were “a long time ago” so it should not be discussed anymore lest white people be made uncomfortable. For the White Gaze a long time ago is compressed to 50 years.

4.    Be prepared for the deflection and dismissive comment that, “everyone knows this stuff! Why are you bringing it up!”

5.    If you want to talk about racism and how black folks were subjected to horrific violence by white people—much of it worse than what ISIS visited upon Muadh al Kasasbeh—during Black History Month, one must get permission from white people first. This is especially true during Black History Month because black folks tend to get too confident and back sass white folks during those 28 days.

6.    The idea that white people who benefit in the present from systems of material advantage and other unearned privileges, outcomes that are the direct result of racial terrorism against non-whites, should “own” their history, is very upsetting and provocative to white folks. Never forget that White America and White Americans are a people and a country without a history.

7.    If you talk to white people about racism you should speak in the same tone and manner as Bill Moyers.

8.    Second Bill Moyers rule. White folks, especially liberal racists here on the Daily Kos and elsewhere, will only believe something is true and appropriate to discuss if a white man like Bill Moyers says it is.

9.    Third Bill Moyers rule. Well-documented events, such as horrific violence against black Americans as committed by whites, only occurred if a white person says they did. The white speaker effect is very real in America’s racial discourse.

10.    “Class issues” and “real progressive politics” trump any concern about race and racial justice.

11.    Daring to talk about the burning to death murder of Muadh al Kasasbeh by ISIS and how it resonates with the burning to death murder of thousands of black people by white Americans is a type of “black racial narcissism”.

12.    White supremacists and liberal racists have much in common with their rage at the premise that a black person would dare to talk about white on black lynchings in the United States and ISIS.

13.    White supremacists and liberal racists at the Daily Kos channel much the same animus and rage at black folks who tell them things they do not want not want to hear. The former are just more honest; the latter pretty up their racial ugliness just a bit more.

14.    Liberal racists—like their Right-wing compatriots—will derail, distract, and obfuscate your claims.

15.    Liberal racists—like their Right-wing compatriots—also use standard troll tactics such as picking on one word in a title or other questions of grammar and emphasis to avoid dealing with the facts you have presented.

16.    White supremacy’s reflection is very ugly to most white folks—especially those who have not disowned Whiteness.

17.    These people are especially upset by the premise that someone like them, in their own immediate family, neighborhood, or other relation could/would have participated in a lynching, owned slaves, or benefitted from an act of inter-personal or institutional white supremacy.

18.    Remember that being a victim of white racial terrorism is the present lived experience for non-whites in the United States and elsewhere. These are living memories. And yes, many of the victims of white racial terrorism are still alive.

19.    Whiteness is ahistorical: one of the primary advantages of being white in America is the luxury of being an individual unmoored from the past, history, and perpetually living in a bubble of white innocence.

20.    If the word “thug” is the new “nigger” then when white folks call a black person “angry”, “combative”, “bitter”, “unhinged”,  or “disrespectful” they are channeling the new “uppity”…the latter being a crime that not too long ago could be punished by the lynching tree.

21.    Right-wing racists are much more honest, and thus easier to deal with, than liberal racists.

22.    At some point in the conversation, white privilege deems that white folks who are unhappy with how a person of color dares to talk about racism will somehow be magically transformed into the real “victims”.

23.    The rules for how white supremacy and white racism should be discussed must always be set by white folks so that they can be told what they want to hear, their assumptions about their goodness and innocence validated, and their egos stroked.

24.    Racist River Dancing. At some point, a liberal racist, will call you a “nigger” in everything but name. Liberal racists are very good at calling blacks who make them upset “niggers” by using many more than just one efficient word. I grant liberal racists the permission to call me a "nigger" if they are sufficiently aroused to anger. It is much more efficient than the racial river dance--it will also keep their teeth white.

25.    Liberal racists at the Daily Kos get very upset when you write an essay that—gasp!—gets attention, goes viral, has many comments, or “hits”. Because of course, the only reason someone writes something online at the Daily Kos is to work in obscurity. Moreover, never be a black or brown person who writes something “popular” and critical about white racism at the Daily Kos.

Remember that haters are always gonna hate.

A wise person told me that “the ultimate disrespect is to look at someone and lie to them”. I have, however reluctantly, come to the conclusion that liberal racists prefer lies to the truth. Consequently, they are not worthy of any respect.

If the Daily Kos is indeed a cathedral, many of its members will condemn you, calling thee a heretic if you dare to talk critically about whiteness and white privilege. In many ways, white liberals are of the same faith as white conservatives on matters of justice and the color line—separated in belief from one another only by virtue of their membership in a different denomination.

Chris Matthews has a warning Democrats better heed for 2016

By Egberto Willies



Chris Matthews made a point about the candidates that Democrats are putting up in 2016. He made a comment that is rather prescient.

"Democrats think they can win back the US Senate in 2016. And to do that they are trying to lure back names back into the political arena for comeback bids," Chris Matthews said. "The thinking is that strong Democratic candidates who lost in the GOP wave elections of 2010 and 2014 when turnout was exceedingly low and bad for Democrats, they have a chance of winning in a Presidential year when voter turnout is usually high."

Chris Matthews then displayed a parade of Democratic election losers including Former Senators Mark Begich (D-AK), Kay Hagan (D-NC), & Russ Feingold (D-WI), Former Representative Joe Sestak (D-PA), and Former Governors Charlie Crist (D-FL) & Ted Strickland (D-OH).

The prominent list consists of one White woman and five White men. They are all over fifty. Hillary Clinton's potential candidacy has stifled the development of any real debate for a candidate to move past their past.

The Democratic Party has mostly the correct values. It has mostly the correct policies. What it is lacking is a broad bench for Americans to see.

The Republican Primary may turn out to be another exercise of free comedic entertainment. But their candidates look like America even as they articulate lunacy. They have the young and Latino in Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. They have the Black man in Ben Carson. They have the woman in Carly Fiorina. They have the establishment middle-aged White guys in Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker. And they have the religious fanatic in Mike Huckabee. Now that is diversity, not the one America needs philosophically, but visually.

Democrats should fear two things. The first is that the predictable Presidential surge will fail to materialize when all Democrats see are retreads. Secondly, a well defined narrative for Hillary Clinton could set in, a narrative that she could have problems shaking. There are many narratives that could come back and bite her as the Republicans jump on the income inequality train. Republicans know how to do that well especially for a flawed candidate.

So here is the question. Where is the Democratic bench? Are there any fresh candidates with great ideas ready to fill it? In today's politics the optics and semblance of what one will do is much more effective than a party's articulated platform.

Joy Reid’s MSNBC Show Canceled

By Andrew Kirell

According to two internal sources, MSNBC has canceled The Reid Report. The daytime show, airing weekdays at 2 p.m. ET and hosted by Joy Reid, has long been rumored to be on the chopping block.

Our sources at the network say Reid was informed of her show’s cancellation on Thursday. It is unclear when the show will go off-air.

Media watchers have long speculated whether the “Lean Forward” network will shake up its struggling daytime lineup, especially after 1 p.m. ET host Ronan Farrow‘s eponymous show fell to a stunning 11k viewers in the ages 25-54 demo just a few weeks ago. While Farrow has been the subject of most cancellation rumors, The Reid Report has frequently been named as well.

To that end, one of our tipsters — who has worked at MSNBC for just under a decade — complained to Mediaite that the decision to cancel Reid but seemingly keep Farrow in the lineup is “a slap in the face of a woman of color,” especially because Reid’s ratings have been consistently higher than Farrow’s, and yet “she’s been given no support and no promotion.”

MSNBC declined to comment for this story.

UPDATE — 5:24 p.m. ET: It’s confirmed. Reid is out; and so is Ronan Farrow, contrary to our source’s initial complaint.

MSNBC Gets One Right By Canceling Ronan Farrow

By Jason Easley

It is a day of change at MSNBC as the network has canceled the extremely low rated Ronan Farrow show. The cancellation of Farrow comes on the same day that the network also canceled Joy Reid.

Via The Wrap:

MSNBC’s daytime changes continued Thursday with the cancellation of “Ronan Farrow Daily,” an MSNBC spokesperson confirmed to TheWrap.
….
The network will move “Way Too Early” host Thomas Roberts to the 1 p.m . to 3 p.m. timeslot, where he’ll host a news show.

It’s about time.

Farrow’s program was the lowest rated show on any of the three cable networks. As I wrote, when the news of Reid’s cancelation was announced, “Ronan Farrow’s ratings are so bad that he is finishing behind a newscast on Al-Jazeera America. On February 4, 2014, Farrow had 22,000 total viewers compared to 44,000 for Al Jazeera America (AJAM). The former Current TV is available in fewer homes than MSNBC, so a smaller network is doubling Farrow’s viewership. Joy Reid was also struggling in the ratings, but her show was not performing as badly as Farrow’s. Plus, any chance that she had to be successful was destroyed by the fact that Farrow was her lead in.”

Joy Reid didn’t deserve to get the axe. Ronan Farrow’s cancellation was long overdue. Farrow’s show never worked. He was almost painful at times to watch. Farrow wasn’t a television person, and it showed. It got to the point where putting Farrow’s show out of its misery was the humane thing to do.

Thomas Roberts is MSNBC’s utility player, and he will almost certainly generate higher ratings than Farrow. Moving Roberts to 5 AM ahead of the slumping Morning Joe always felt like a waste of talent. MSNBC might have been better served to have Roberts take Farrow’s spot and leave Joy Reid at 2 PM, but apparently Reid has to pay for Phil Griffin’s terrible decision to hire the untested Farrow.

The good news for viewers is that it looks like Phil Griffin’s wonk obsession might be coming to an end. The other long-rumored move to be coming is that Chris Hayes will be moved out of 8 PM. Once Hayes is moved to a timeslot that better fits his talents, MSNBC will finally be on a path towards righting the ship.

Update: An MSNBC spokesperson tells PoliticusUSA that MSNBC is moving towards a more news driven lineup between 11 AM-3PM ET. It looks like the wonk experiment is over at MSNBC.

HEAVY METAL

Posted by the man of twists and turns

The Science of Cast Iron Cooking. The Truth About Cast Iron. How To Season A Cast Iron Skillet:

The skillet you want is at least fifty years old, and right now it is probably sitting on a thrift store shelf or a yard sale table. Your first task is to locate it. Until the 1960's, the final stage in manufacturing cast iron was to machine-polish each pan until the cooking surface was as smooth as glass. New cast iron is sold unpolished, that is, fresh out of the mold, with a texture like pitted Formica. The cast iron companies claim that the new, unpolished skillets are as easy to season and as non-stick as the old, polished ones—but then they would say that. You can polish new cast iron yourself with an orbital sander and some 80 grit, followed by hand sanding with 220 grit wet-dry, then 320, then 400, then 600 for good measure, but let’s face it, you’d rather have those five hours of your life and the ridges on your fingernails intact. The skillet you want is polished already.

How To Season A Cast Iron Pan. 5 Myths Of Cast Iron Cookware.

Cast Iron: A Love Story leads to
The Cast Iron Chronicles {1} - "As you can guess from pretty much every post on this blog, I am deeply devoted to cast iron. "
The Cast Iron Chronicles {2} - " My plan is to continue with the steel wool and then transition to the coarse sand paper as needed."
The Cast Iron Chronicles {3} - "I trust that it’s an important step but the science is a mystery to me!"
The Cast Iron Chronicles {4} - " I promise that when we did this portion of the restoration we had a fire extinguisher on hand and that the pan was not close to anything that could catch on fire."
The Cast Iron Chronicles {5} - "It took me a few minutes to accept it, seeing as how I’ve been cracking at this beast for weeks I didn’t think I’d ever get to the point where I’d be ready to fry an egg in it."
The Cast Iron Chronicles {6} - "I’ve always been taught that to season a pan you coat it in animal or vegetable fat (or a combination), and put it in a warm oven for an hour. Then you let it cool, rinse, and repeat."

The Best Cast Iron Recipies
Iron-clad goodness
What We Can Learn From A Cast Iron Pan.
How to season, use and love cast iron skillets (with recipes)
The Cast-Iron Secret to Serious Pizza: Recipe: Vaughn's Perfect Skillet Pizza

The Pizza Lab: Foolproof Pan Pizza

The way I see it, there are three basic difficulties most folks have with pizza:

Problem 1: Kneading. How long is enough? What motion do I use? And is it really worth the doggone effort?
Problem 2: Stretching. Once I've got that disk of dough, how do I get it into the shape of an actual pizza, ready to be topped?
Problem 3: Transferring. Ok, let's say I've got my dough made and perfectly stretched onto my pizza peel. How do I get it onto that stone in the oven without disturbing the toppings or having it turn into a misshapen blob?
This recipe avoids all three of those common pitfalls, making it pretty much foolproof. To be perfectly honest, every single one of these steps has been done before, and none of it is rocket science. All I'm doing is combining them all into a single recipe.

You can jump straight into a full step-by-step slideshow of the process or find the exact measurements and instructions in the recipe here, or read on for a few more details on what to expect and how we got there.

Jane Lazarre, On the Problems of Breathing in America

By Jane Lazarre

It will come as no surprise to you that we’re top-notch when it comes to denouncing barbarism -- as long as it’s theirs.  So the responses here to the horrific burning to death of a Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State -- the definition of an act of barbarism -- were suitably indignant and horrified. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to our own barbarism, we turn out to be a tad weaker, whether you’re talking about torture, horrific abuses, the killing of prisoners and of innocents, or the deaths of children by drone (“collateral damage”) across the Greater Middle East.

So I have to admit with some embarrassment that, when I heard of the fate of that Jordanian pilot, my mind ran first to Medieval Europe, to the burning of Joan of Arc, as our president’s thoughts evidently ran to barbaric acts involved in the Crusades.  He made mention of this at a recent National Prayer Breakfast, for which he was savaged by his critics.  As Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal put it, “We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the radical Islamic threat today.”

Let’s admit that Jindal has a point about such ancient history.  When it comes to a commitment to death-by-fire, the Islamic State is hardly alone and you don’t have to reach back to medieval Europe for examples.  After all, we live in the country that, in World War II, developed and first used napalm, an incendiary whose special “anti-personnel” advantage is that it sticks to human skin while burning. 
But that, too, is ancient history.  (So Korea, so Vietnam!)  In Iraq, the U.S. military used far more powerful bombs that were meant to burn up enemy troops en masse, not to speak of the incendiary capabilities of white phosphorus shells sent into urban areas where civilians were still living.  In Pakistan and Yemen, we might well be discussing the inflammatory properties of the aptly named Hellfire missile that the CIA’s drones often use in their assassination campaigns.

Nor historically is there any need to reach back to Medieval Europe when it comes to the celebratory burning to death of prisoners.  Such events -- sometimes at fairgrounds, often made into postcards (the videos of their day) to spread the news (“This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe”), and with onlookers gathering bits of ash and bone to keep as souvenirs -- are an integral part of far more recent American history.  From the nineteenth century well into the twentieth, black Americans were regularly publicly burned to death in this fashion.  Not that I can claim this came instantly to my mind either, but it did to Bill Moyers’s -- in the middle of the night after the Jordanian news arrived -- and he wrote an eloquent piece about one such case in Texas in 1916.

It’s important to remember that if there is a world of Middle Eastern barbarism, there is an American one, too, which, as we know from recent events, has by no means ended, even if trial and death by fire is no longer part of it in this country. Today, in a distinct change of pace at TomDispatch, novelist and memoirist Jane Lazarre offers an intimate, lyrical, post-Ferguson look at what it’s meant to her to raise her two black sons in the afterlife of such a world. Tom

Once White in America
Raising Black Sons in a White Country
By Jane Lazarre
For Adam and Khary

Black bodiesswingin' inthe summerbreezestrange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

It was 1969 and 1973, both times in early fall, when I first saw your small bodies, rose and tan, and fell in love for the second and third time with a black body, as it is named, for my first love was for your father. Always a word lover, I loved his words, trustworthy, often not expansive, sometimes even sparse, but always reliable and clear.

How I -- a first-generation Russian-Jewish girl -- loved clarity! Reliable words -- true words, measured words, filled with fascinating new life stories, drawing me down and in. The second and third times I fell in love with black bodies I became a black body, not Black, but black in a way I’d say without shame and some humor, for mine is dark tan called white. But I am the carrier, I am the body who carried them, released on a river of blood.

Am I black in a cop’s hands when he is pushing, pressing hard for dope or a gun or a rope or a knife or a fist?  I am not a black body, yet my body is somehow, somewhere, theirs -- Trayvon’s, Emmett’s, thousands more at the end of a rope’s tight murderous swing, black as a night stick splits my head, shatters my chest, black as a boy not yet a man walking toward a man with a gun, suddenly shot dead, a just-become man walking down the stairs toward a gun, black as a tall man, a big man, looking strong but pleading for his breath, killed by choking arms and bodies piled on top of his head.

Walking the sidewalks of my city in the morning, I dodge white dads’ bikes daily, their little toddlers strapped into a back seat, and I don’t mind as riding in the street or wide, traffic-filled avenues does seem a dangerous way to get to nursery school. Later in the morning, when I am still walking, the white fathers or mothers bike by me again, now with the back seats empty. I look around for police, wondering if there will be a ticketing for riding on the sidewalk, since no child’s safety is at stake.  No cops in sight. My great-nephew, young and black and not fully grown, was stopped and handcuffed by police a month ago for riding his bike on the sidewalk,  his often glazed eyes glazing more deeply now.

On Writing/Being White

Once I wrote a story -- a black man named Samuel, enslaved in Maryland’s western shore, 1863 -- I drew him in words.  His death was terrible and vicious, his body dismembered by the man who called him property, the crime -- impregnating the man’s daughter --  a woman I called Louisa. I named her in part for a strong friend I wanted to conjure by my side as I wrote, but she was based on a real-life young woman who lived in actual history, a woman named Jane, the same name as my own.

Samuel’s death was so brutal I had trouble reading my own words out loud, or even to myself at times, though I had written them: a slow dismemberment, piece by precious human piece, this nearly unspeakable violence also taken from reality, a horrific reality I had read about in books on torture during slavery, an image that refused to leave my mind, especially in the dark or when I closed my eyes.

I watched him die with Louisa, and with Ruth, Samuel’s mother, a character based in part on my mother-in-law, granddaughter of an enslaved American, and my close friend for more than 40 years now, and I tried not to hide my eyes from the brutal human dismemberment -- the belief that they could erase his memory, his life as a man, yet thinking in this way to preserve the memory of his crime: a black man, enslaved, fathering the child of a young white woman who loved him. I called the novel Inheritance. I wanted to claim the terrible history of my country, to honor the necessity of collective memory. I want to assert the power and capacity, the necessity, for human empathy and the deeper-than-skin-deep identification that comes with love.

My words telling Samuel’s story in 1861 are almost as close to myself as my body-carrying boys, my sons, whose keys, in 1985, or in 1991, finally in the door at night assuaged my panic, waiting, waiting, trying to contain the fears, not only of muggers but, yes, of police, fears I had learned about most specifically as I listened, as they did, to their father talking what is now known as The Talk: never run on the street, not even on your own block to catch the bus. Always show your hands. Never fail to be respectful even if police are insulting and disrespecting you. They have sticks, and guns, and your job is to come home safe.

My son’s best friend in college, proud of his new car stopped in front of our building in Manhattan, was thrown up against a car and searched or frisked, years before this assault had become a legitimized method with a frightening name. Once white in America, I watched and listened as I had learned to do in more creative, soul-expanding ways -- learning from my new family about African American history and culture -- witnessing my older son, always a lover of music, his face filled with mixed emotions as he listened in a high school classroom to Louis Armstrong singing the searing lyrics and haunting melody of “Black and Blue.”
My younger son loved poetry and has almost the same name as one of the falsely convicted boys in the Central Park Jogger case, so he wrote poems about them -- the animal names they were called, the possibility, later proven, of their innocence. Searching for healing, I introduced him to African American poetry, a centuries-long tradition of various and elegant forms, poems of lamentation, and of the grace of memory and of love.

Once white in America, I searched for space within myself to absorb new meanings; now, years later, meanings so deeply absorbed they are entwined inseparably with my sense of the world as it is, the self that I am. I watch the television film again, and again, of Trayvon’s sweet face, of Michael Brown gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri, of Eric Garner, a man in my own city screaming, “I can’t breathe.” I hear my husband’s voice, after nearly 50 years of living in New York City, his tones and even some pronunciations returning to the Southern sounds of his youth and childhood: "I remember Emmett Till. When he was killed, he was the same age as I was. I still remember it, how it felt to me then."

Strange Fruit

I want to reverse the meanings of the song I heard sung last month, after hundreds of listenings to old records, then CD's, this time by Audra McDonald who sounded so like Billie whose songs she was singing, whose gardenia she played with, on and off, on and off her thick black hair, whose drink she drank, put down, sipped again, whose graceful walk she walked, but sometimes wobbled, nearly falling, whose pain and anger she spoke in shouts and whispers about nightclubs and shameful insults, haunting memories and whites-only bathrooms when you very badly need to pee, of desertions and abandonments of many kinds, Audra singing such perfect Billie you could swear you were in the club hearing Billie Holiday’s tones, soft and low to contrast with the terrible words echoing through time, from mind to body to mind.

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth...
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Their newborn silken flesh, the deep sea eyes, the graceful mouth; the first time I saw their faces, rose and tan, wide-staring eyes, one, then a few years later the other, hearing their father’s sigh of relief and cry of joy, the long, hard labors over, once, then twice, and me smiling and alive.

Skin darkened slowly as they grew into men. Are you half-black? someone asked when one of them was a child. He looked down. Which half?

What color am I, Daddy?

I captured and preserved these words in another story:

I mean, you know, what color am I? Really? Am I black like you?
Yes, son, you are Black, like me.

Black men, body and mind, in this white, white country I write and rewrite.
It is 1863 and 1965 and 2008 and still we wait
for the bodies
to stop
falling, for our minds
to slow like rivers
after a storm,
waters
darkened to rich
olive brown by moist soil
lifted,
surfacing, warm.
It was Mississippi, he was just my age and I was scared, and angry...
It is Staten Island, New York...
It is Ferguson, Missouri...
No one indicted, no one held to blame.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14

We chanted loud, Women in Black, United Nations Plaza, 1999, calling out slowly the times Amadou Diallo was shot for pulling out his wallet. His mother’s voice in the vestibule where he was murdered, crying out his name -- Amadou, Amadou -- again and again and again.

Emmett Till’s mother insisting on an open coffin. Mothers and fathers of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, calling for justice but also for peace.

It is 2015 and I could list so many names. I would pray, but I am not a believer, as people call us now, but I do believe in action, in what has always been called struggle, in what I insist on calling faith in the human capacity and responsibility to know and feel another human story. I witness my son, now a man of 40, marching from Washington Square Park up Fifth Avenue, across 34th Street, downtown on Sixth, long renamed Avenue of the Americas, to One Police Plaza. He marches and shouts with colleagues and friends: I can’t breathe! Black lives matter!

I believe in words. I am a mother/grandmother/writer/teacher/wife of a black man for 46 years/friend/Jewish-American woman who loves color and still knows words can sometimes, might somehow be, could be a part of the way, to everything. I am the tan woman whose sons are tawny amber autumn leaf and almond brown cedar umber spring earth brown, whose sons are black men now, the woman whose young nephew walks dangerous streets and rides on dangerous sidewalks, whose young granddaughter is “mixed,” but clearly not white, slowly discovering and naming her inheritance.

And right now, as I write in the early winter days of 2015, I want courage here, a collective call, a shared claim -- I am the mothers and fathers of black sons shot down on Northern streets and stairwells and highways. Whiteness is a social and political category created to embed in the mind a false description of the body, its purpose to confirm privilege and superiority, to deny solidarity. It is not me. I reject it. It is not you.

We can’t breathe.

Jane Lazarre is a prize-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her most recent novel is Inheritance. Other novels include Some Place Quite Unknown, The Powers of Charlotte, and Worlds Beyond My Control. Her memoirs include The Mother Knot, On Loving Men, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons, Wet Earth, and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery. She is currently working on a memoir about her father, The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter. For more, go to JaneLazarre.com.

[Note: This essay will appear in the forthcoming book, Mothers Of Black Sons: Fears, Sorrows, and Hopes, edited by George Yancy and Maria Davidson.]

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Copyright 2015 Jane Lazarre