Bristol has the genes

Isn’t it amazing how every week Bristol Palin receives the lowest score from the judges on “Dancing With The Stars,” yet her “fans” keep voting her into the next round? How to explain this? She is by all accounts technique-wise an awful dancer, and that pudgy face and ridiculous outfits (excepting the gorilla suit, which was an improvement) can’t explain her “charm.” Perhaps in an election cycle where voters chose Tea Party nonsense over common sense, it can be seen as perfectly “rational.” Or, like in baseball’s all-star game, it could be Sarah Palin fanatics stuffing the ballot box with votes for their favorite player, with that .220 batting average. Whatever; the best we can say about Bristol is that she is not as dangerously inept as her mother with her recent “commentary” on the Feder al Reserve (or on any subject, for that matter).

Time for Obama and the Democrats to pay-up

How did Republican senatorial candidates Ken Buck in Colorado and Sharron Angle in Nevada enter election day with leads in the polls, yet after the day was done had lost to their Democratic opponents? How did Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer score victories by much larger than expected margins in California? Why was Tom Tancredo an easy loser in the Colorado governor’s race? A day after the election, the New York Times was mulling over the question of how the pollsters and the media had blown it so bad. The answer is that they grossly under-estimated the impact of the Latino vote both in numbers and the effect of anti-Latino political and media propaganda on Latino voters. While the Times expressed surprise over the higher percentage of the vote that was Latino in at least four states in the West, elsewhere it was noted that where anti-Latino sentiment and demonizing propaganda was the strongest, Democrats in general received 85-90 percent of the Latino vote; this proved to be the key factor in Harry Reid’s win in Nevada and Michael Bennet’s in Colorado.

If there was a larger Latino presence in the state of Washington, they might have made the Patty Murray/Dino Rossi race less mysterious—especially if there was a sufficiently large demographic that was aware of the Seattle Times’ habit of filling its flimsy pages with stories of violence and mayhem that allegedly is “normal” life in Mexico, rather than the truth that it is focused in three major drug trade urban centers. Mexicans and Mexican immigrants are rarely humanized; journalist Linda Ellerbee, commenting on this saturation of negative news and demonization, observed that during her stays in Mexico “I walk the streets of my Puerto Vallarta neighborhood alone day or night. And I don't live in a gated community, or any other All-Gringo neighborhood. I live in Mexico. Among Mexicans. I go where I want (which does not happen to include bars where prostitution and drugs are the basic products), and take no more precautions than I would at home in New York; which is to say I don't wave money around, I don't act the Ugly American, I do keep my eyes open, I'm aware of my surroundings, and I try not to behave like a fool.” Like the Times and the readers it is trying to “educate” apparently are (as an aside, I also noted that according to her Wiki page, the feminist Ellerbee was married three times for a total of six years).

Although several Latinos in the Republican Party were also winners on Tuesday, it is easy to over-estimate their significance. Marco Rubio, the claimant for the Senate seat from Florida, is a white Cuban-American, a demographic that tends conservative and Republican. Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval won governorships in New Mexico and Nevada, but whatever support they have from their state’s Latino voters is tenuous at best; both received a sizable minority of the Latino vote, but this could quickly change if they follow-through on their anti-Latino immigrant rhetoric in the whiter-than-white manner. Martinez has been accused of “moderating” her stance on immigration in order to attract Latino votes while concealing her true intentions, and Sandoval has already alienated many Latino voters by boasting that his children “look white;” injecting racism and the “I’m not one of THEM” plea into the conversation is bound to have a negative effect. In Washington, Jaime Herrera, a novice without an apparent plan beyond the talking points, defeated a more experienced Democratic opponent for a previously Democratic-held House seat based upon what I could only conjecture is her looks; when asked about her “ethnicity,” Herrera makes certain first and foremost that you know her mother is Anglo-white. The reality is that the majority of Latino voters—especially those who are indigenous and mixed race, that is to say, the “brown ones”—are more sensitive to the racial propaganda of the right, which includes the Tea Party and white (or white wannabe) Latinos. One Latino voter told the Las Vegas Sun that he was motivated to go out and vote for Reid because of Sharron Angle’s anti-Latino campaign ads; a seven-year veteran in the Marine Corps, he took strong exception to being portrayed as a “gang member.”

There is a message here for Democrats, but especially for Barack Obama. Appointing a Latino to the Supreme Court is mere window dressing; it doesn’t address the issues for which two-thirds of Latino voters thought were on his agenda. Immigration raids continue unabated, in fact stronger than ever, without even faint “praise” or acknowledgment from the right. We seem no closer to a reform package that fixes a nonsensical immigration policy. Yet Latino voters in Colorado, Nevada and California ensured that the Democrats retain control of the Senate. The question now is what are Democrats going to do to acknowledge that debt? Or will they throw away their advantage by doing nothing?

Playing for pride worth ten playing for selfishness

After the Minnesota Vikings overcame yet another mistake-prone, sloppy performance for three-and-a-half quarters over an offensively-challenged Arizona Cardinal’s team—that scored most of its points on special teams miscues—one might be tempted to say that this was proof that the departure of Randy Moss had hurt the team, as if the fact that the Vikings 1-3 record with him had proven his indispensability. On the other hand, observers might say that they detected the influence of Moss’ habit of giving half-hearted efforts and apparent lack of pride in giving his all for the team. Yet they would be wrong in this conjecture as well as the other. For all the “shock” and “disappointment” that players “close” to Moss who didn’t see or critique his personality and work ethic flaws, the Viking players showed, at least in this game, that they were not like Moss. Would Moss have run 66 yards to catch Cardinals safety Kerry Rhodes and knock the ball out of his hands to prevent a pick-six like Greg Camarillo did? Of course not; he was too “big” for that. He would have just stood and watched. With the team down 14 points with less than five minutes to play, would we expect Moss to run his routes or try to get open to make himself relevant on very play in the face of seemingly insuperable adversity? Since when? The fact is the Vikings proved that they had more pride and more heart than Moss could ever muster; that intangible that Moss lacked made him dispensible.

Brett Favre, whose passed Warren Moon by a month in becoming the oldest quarterback to throw for 400 yards in a game—surprisingly only the second 400-yard game in his career—seems to have had a rebirth of sorts in the past two weeks, after his mistakes and ankle fractures intensified the calls for him to be benched in favor of back-up Tavaris Jackson. Whenever adversity was greatest, somehow he manages to elevate his play, as if he takes this attacks personally, upon which pride takes over and he must prove the critics wrong. In his press conference after the game, he alluded as much; he wasn’t playing for the coach, but for himself. When players look in the mirror, it isn’t the coach they see, but themselves. It is ultimately to themselves they need to answer to; if they don’t have the pride to play to the best of their ability, then they shouldn’t even be in the league. So far, two teams this year decided that Moss mistook selfishness for pride, and shouldn’t be playing on their team.

In any case, the NFL circus that is the Vikings continues; in regard to Brad Childress, I almost have some sympathy for him. He shouldn’t be fired over the Moss debacle, although he should have had a heart-to-heart with owner Zygi Wilf regarding Moss’ erratic and poisonous behavior, and the need to release him sooner rather than later. Childress is fortunate to have Favre on this team, despite the blustering of the anti-Favre contingent; a player motivated by personal pride to play his best is worth ten Randy Mosses.

Hillary in the shadows

I stopped by a 7-Eleven the other when I noticed a tabloid on the magazine rack with a headline that screamed “Hillary’s Running against Me, Obama Rages.” It’s “war.” The implication is that Hillary and Bill Clinton are moving behind the scenes to undermine Obama in 2012 so that she can claim what is rightfully “hers.” Not exactly farfetched, given the Clintons’ surly behavior after Obama secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president. Frankly, Hillary has a lot of backers for a potential challenge to Obama in 2012 from some odd places. Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, claimed that in general people thought Obama was “in over his head, and out of his depth”—which, of course, is the opinion of the right which rabidly opposed his policy initiatives regardless of the fact that they were largely crafted by friends of Wall Street, and should allude to the enormity of the problem the Republicans bequeathed the country. The failure of the economy—meaning continuing unemployment—to turn around more rapidly than previous recessions (that were much less deep than this one does), is according to another WSJ lackey, Pete Du Pont (and right-wing extremist), represent a “big opportunity” for Clinton. Du Pont claims that Clinton is “physically and intellectually” strong enough to take out Obama; Obviously he thinks that Hillary is not a “team player”—especially since he believes that she is an economic “pragmatist,” meaning supporting more tax cuts for the rich that didn’t create jobs when Bush employed it the first time.

Du Pont clearly has a poor memory; Hillary, who was the presumptive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and her husband proved incapable of handling adversity without going over the edge. Besides Bill’s egregious South Carolina primary behavior, there was Hillary’s “Hard-working Americans—white people” and RFK assassination head-scratchers. Clinton’s over-reliance on sycophants and groveling disciples who only wanted to please her ruined her campaign in the 2008 presidential primaries, and her frequent temper tantrums (at least behind the scenes), her habit of over-dramatization and self-victimization that led to those rather bizarre statements and observations, and the sense of “entitlement” that she and husband Bill seemed to possess—these turned-off many voters. Besides, opined the fawning Canadian journalist Bogdan Kipling, “Anyone who knows the Clintons well knows they have no love lost for either Barack or Michelle Obama. Both believe they were outmaneuvered by the Illinois upstart in the Democratic primaries because they received terrible advice from top campaign aides, including several they now believe were moles for Obama.” For Clinton fanatics like this, conspiracy theories and other such paranormal paranoia is all too typical, as revealed the book “Game Change.” Kipling goes on to say that “There is every reason to believe that the Clintons will deliver a comeuppance to the Obamas in 2012. By that time, both will look like eminence grises after the amateurish performance of Obama and his buffoonish advisers during his first term.” Quoting a “friend” of the family, “The constant travel and the never-ending demands of the secretary of state's office are taking a devastating toll on her,” she said. “She turns 63 this month, but she's starting to look more like 70 although she's in excellent physical health.” But didn’t Du Pont claim that she is “physically strong?” Any ways, Kipling ends his frothing by declaring “Here's betting Hillary will look years younger and be all smiles when she delivers her inaugural address from the west steps of the capitol in early 2013.”

Can these people possibly be serious? Well, to people who make the ridiculous claim that Obama’s policies have been “deadly left-liberal,” anything is possible. Although Bill is playing good soldier for now, I don’t put anything past the Clintons and their groupies with vengeance on their minds. Another argument that Du Pont claims is in Hillary’s favor is that “she is one of the most experienced prospective candidates the Democratic Party has had in a long while: wife of a governor, U.S. first lady, senator and now secretary of state…This is a good record to run on as someone who knows how the government works…she is an experienced foreign-policy adviser who understands the threats to our national security: unresolved conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, rising threats of nuclear capability in Iran and North Korea, and uncertainties in Pakistan.” Again, this is Clinton groupie talk. Hillary was a rarely seen figure during Bill Clinton’s governorship in Arkansas; polls showed that he lost his first re-election bid partly because voters had a negative opinion of Hillary. After the Hillary-led health care debacle in 1993 that led to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, she was nowhere to be seen for the next six years, much less allowed to formulate policy. As far as her foreign policy “successes” since she became Secretary of State, that is a matter of opinion; “understanding” threats is not the same as resolving them, especially when resolving them is supposed to be your job. The problems in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran and North Korea have advanced no further toward resolution since Clinton took over. We may also recall that North Korea refused to deal with a diplomatic novice like Hillary during the hostage episode involving two American journalists; the North Koreans thought that Bill would be more suitable, and he was used by them as a domestic propaganda prop.

There is, of course, the question of whether Hillary was cut-out to be a diplomat, given past experience. On a trip to Africa, a very undiplomatic Hillary scolded a Congolese student for having the temerity to bruise her ego. The student, who said afterwards that he was referring to what Obama thought about China’s increasing influence in Africa—which should be of concern to the U.S.—was mistranslated (French is hard) as a referring to what Bill thought. Hillary burst out “You want me to tell you what my husband thinks? If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Clinton used the trip to promote a gender rights crusade; many African observers criticized the focus on “cultural” issues over economic issues, and especially the kind of “aid” the U.S. typically provided; aid that merely averted humanitarian disasters tended to promise that such disasters will continue. China, meanwhile, is promising to help build roads, schools, hospitals and electrical grids in exchange for access to Africa’s rich resources.

Although Clinton advanced the idea of a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which supposedly sought mechanisms to utilize “diplomatic, defense and development” to advance “smart power,” Clinton is apparently unwilling to “share” power herself, blocking attempts to integrate the US Agency for International Development into the Cabinet as an autonomous entity; she also blocked the creation of an agency in the NCS which would oversee development and relief projects. At the same time, Clinton has been criticized for resisting the utilization of more State Department resources in “nation-building” efforts, forcing the Defense Department to divert its priorities and resources into that area—and in fact has failed to create any “team” within the State Department to deal in any substantive manner “nation-building” efforts. So much for Hillary’s “prowess” in foreign affairs; it might be suggested that her real “mission” is to make Obama look incompetent in foreign policy by doing as little as possible except to give an occasional speech.

Most of the public knows nothing about this, because for the most part, Hillary has been invisible save for an occasional sound bite on the Clinton News Network; she also conspicuously sat on the bench during the mid-term campaign season. While Obama was being shelled from all sides for either being a “racist,” “communist” and “socialist” on one hand, he was attacked for being a closet right-winger on the other, Hillary and her supporters watched in silence, if not in open glee. The attacks by the right on Obama could be seen by their constituency as rationalizations of why a black man as president is dangerous, especially if he isn’t a pliable puppet like black Republicans tend to be. Not just race but racism factored in the attacks on Obama, in order to demonize and marginalize him, and the groundwork for this attack began as soon as the primary season ended. Obama wanted to be everyone’s friend, but the right only saw an opportunity to regain lost “credibility” by appealing to their racist base. Yet the media, outside what was left of the so-called “liberal” media, never addressed the reason why many whites judged Obama with almost insane harshness for crimes that could be traced to Republican polices, and for an agenda that exists only in Rush Limbaugh’s and Fox News’ paranoid fantasies.

Obama failed to make friends with Republicans not from want of trying; they just didn’t want to be friends with him, for cynical political reasons. Hillary, on the other hand, tends to seek division, especially when she is crossed. She, like her personal constituency, tends to personalize disagreements into slights, usually along gender lines. One can imagine CNN talking heads pounce on every criticism of Clinton as “sexist,” just as they did during the 2008 primaries; thus Clinton would be protected by at least some segments of media in a way that Obama is not, despite the ugly, evil and downright fraudulent nature of many of those attacks. One should not ignore the fact that white female voters—who represent the largest voting demographic—would be far more sensitive to accusations of “sexism” than they would be to racism, especially when the latter is couched in terms of white paranoia and fear. If Clinton were president, even Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity would refrain from using terms like “Nazi,” “terrorist,” “Communist,” “anti-American” and the like to describe her, for fear of alienating a large segment of their “fan” base.

At any rate, it remains an open question whether Hillary still wants to be president. In a recent interview on a New Zealand television station, Clinton claims that she is not interested in a future run for the presidency, that she is “happy” serving in the State Department, apparently because she can run it like a personal fiefdom. You can’t blame her for that, given all the grief that Obama has had to endure from the right in these economically-challenging times. But Clinton’s fanatical followers are apparently chomping at the bit to “change” her mind.

George W.: Kanye's right--You don't care.

What was the most the unsettling event of George W. Bush’s presidency? 9-11? Yearly massive budget deficits? The financial meltdown? The lies about weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda links that led to the death of over 4,000 U.S. service personnel? The 2,000 people that died from the impact of Hurricane Katrina? Come now, we know George better than that: "Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust. I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low." Bush, in his new “memoir,” is referring to musician Kanye West’s declaration that his response to Hurricane Katrina suggested that he "doesn't care about black people." West wasn’t the only person to hold that opinion, it was just that he said it on national television during a Katrina relief fundraiser. How embarrassing to be called-out in public like that, perhaps to be obliged to explain the administration’s initially indifferent (and largely subsequent) response while those 2,000 people were dead or dying—seemingly because the faces on TV were of New Orleans’ black population—and the white public was largely indifferent to them while Rush Limbaugh was denigrating them as mindless, savage beasts.

But beyond Katrina, Bush never felt compelled to explain the actions of his subordinates or his policies and legislative priorities that harmed minorities. Bush defends himself by asserting he let dark-skinned sycophants like Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales follow him to the White House. Didn’t he give them important jobs? After all, were not their views in line with the “majority” of Americans—meaning, in Republican jargon, white America? Are not the few hard-core right minorities elevated far beyond their actual relevance in their own communities?

George W. Bush is not a racist. But his cry for understanding in his memoir has that foul aroma of self-service and ignorance of how the other side lives. He doesn’t realize that whites as well as minorities should be judged by their actions, and not merely based on the admittedly token number of minorities he calls friends—who don’t mind that a barely-literate rich white kid who partied through college can attain the highest office in the land not due to any competence he might possess, but on the family name and politically-connected friends of his father. Perhaps they do not mind as well that he used his offices to weaken equal opportunity and educational advancement for minorities. As governor of Texas, Bush signed an anti-affirmative action law, opposed parity in school funding, and fought the passage of a hate crime law after the grotesque murder of James Byrd by white supremacists. Later, the Bush administration repeatedly supported anti-affirmative action lawsuits before the Supreme Court, while its Justice Department’s civil rights and Department of Labor’s employment discrimination divisions remained dormant, at least insofar as racial discrimination was concerned. The Bush administration also harmed minorities in more “subtle” ways, such as gutting HUD’s affordable housing program and nudging banks to offer toxic home loans in its place. Later, the indifferent response to the plight of New Orleans' black residents after Katrina was underlined when the head of HUD—Alphonso Jackson, another right-wing black deemed “relevant” by the Republican establishment—boasted of how the city would now become majority white. And, of course, there was the Bush administration’s tacit support for the toxic atmosphere of hate that scapegoated Latino immigrants for mostly imagined ills.

Not all minorities have “friends” like George W. Bush, who eases his conscience by allowing in his house a few who don’t make annoying demands on the white privilege establishment. Yet at the same time he supported divisive policies that insured that the Republican Party remains the party of white, because not everyone in his party and their constituency are as “open-minded” as he pretends to be. Not everyone in his party will “volunteer” to support equal opportunity. Not everyone in his party wants minorities in their neighborhoods, or in their schools, or in their workplaces. Bush’s policies on civil rights issues recognize this fact—and rather than oppose the bigots, supports them. That is why it is true that he “doesn’t care.”

What I learned the past two years about this country

Remember two years ago when we thought “change” was coming to America? Of course, Barack Obama’s idea of “change” was somewhat different from what many of us thought it should be. Obama wanted to be another Lincoln, to bring the county together in a time of crisis, to forgo partisanship. He wanted to be friends with the opposition party, and even invited a few into his cabinet. But it didn’t work out. Why not? Because in a “friendship,” you need someone willing to be friends. If anything, Obama’s biggest weakness was his failure to use his mandate for change more forcefully opposed to previous Republican policies. It should have clear from the outset that the Republicans were not going to be his “friend.” Led by Rush Limbaugh, who claimed to be “proud” of “his” country for about thirty seconds after Obama’s election, immediately afterward join the rest of the right-wing hounds baying for Obama’s blood. In Congress, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina said the Republicans were going to “break” the uppity black man, and Rep. Geoff Davis of Kentucky talked about how they were going to handle “that boy.” Republicans claimed that they were listening to the “American People”; the problem, of course, was that the “people” they heard were whites with “issues,” like being paranoid and racist, and who called themselves the "Tea Party Movement." Their mission: Destroy Obama at any and all costs, just as they had tried to destroy Bill Clinton. This what I learned about America these past two years. Did the rest of the country recognize this reality?

Apparently not. On the morning after the disastrous mid-term elections, the History channel aired a two-hour program on Nazism in American, which I found rather appropriate for the occasion. Neo-Nazi William Pierce, author of the “The Turner Diaries”—basically the “blueprint” for an anti-government, race-cleansing “revolution” that Timothy McVeigh used—remarked that if you control the media and its message, you control who is in public office, and who sets policy. While the Tea Party movement claims a desire to avoid “violence” despite the usefulness of “Second Amendment solutions,” it shares much the same level of paranoia. There is also no doubt that most of the “mainstream” media, like CNN, not only failed to expose not just the extremism of the so-called Tea Party movement, but the true basis of its existence. We were not told of how the “movement” was bankrolled—and its anti-government, anti-healthcare reform “message” scripted—by the billionaire Koch brothers until a few days ago. We were not told that the design of the movement is basically the same as the neo-Nazis: secure the world exclusively for white people and their white children. The “mainstream” media did not go out onto the streets and report what Tea Party people were really saying in unscripted moments outside of assembly halls—the very same things they have been saying since before Obama even took office: that he was a “foreigner,” that he was an anti-white “racist,” that he was a “terrorist,” and like other “terrorists” he should “die.” He had to be stopped at any and all costs; there was no talk of working with him.

If this was really about the budget deficit and bail-outs, why were the Tea Party foot soldiers not concerned about it when it was soaring during the Bush years? Why only when a black man is president? Anti-Latino fanatic Tom Tancredo, during his failed run for the Senate on a third-party ticket, was entirely unselfconscious when he relayed the mantra of Tea Party extremists: “Obama is a bigger threat to the United States than al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.”At a Tea Party convention, he railed "People who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama." Tancredo blamed Obama's election on the fact that "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country,” to “uproarious” cheers—and Tea Party leaders refused to distance themselves from his comments.

Last week, George Monbiot of the UK’s The Guardian expressed the fear that Tea Party-like extremism may also be imported to Britain; he observed that “The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related…An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests.” Monbiot noted that the remarkable coincidence that on the day that CNBC’s Rick Santelli suggested in his “subsidize the losers” rant in February 2009—less than a month into Obama’s administration—that traders have a “tea party,” the Koch brothers, through their front group Americans for Prosperity, set-up a Facebook page that organized Tea Party rallies all over the country, with a scripted anti-Obama message that people were easily led to follow because of their inherent paranoia toward a black man “calling the shots.” Thus the “official” Tea Party movement did not begin as a “grass roots” populist movement—it began as a Wall Street revolt against financial reform and help for people conned by financial gamblers. Right-wing extremists like Dick Armey, Mark Williams and the Fox News crew saw an opportunity to exploit white racist paranoia about a black man allegedly seizing their “privileges” and “rights,” while masking the true agenda of billionaire bankrollers like the Koch brothers with anti-government harangues and conspiracy mythology.

Why didn’t the American media uncover and discuss this charade months ago, or even a year ago? Because telling the truth about the Tea Party movement would have killed it as a legitimate movement a long time ago. Keeping its “credibility” alive while at the same time refusing to debate what was the clear agenda of the Republicans from the beginning, so succinctly stated by Sen. Mitch McConnell ("The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.") was seen as a ratings “winner.” Furthermore, the media repeatedly failed to point out that the “movement” at best could be seen as an expression of radicalism among an extreme right core of white voters, who do not in fact represent the majority opinion; most Americans still support government programs like Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection entities and consumer safety agencies. The Tea Party movement would destroy these programs if they had their way, which of course plays into the greedy hands of their billionaire backers. The Tea Party movement has no program of governing beyond the destructive; either it will destroy itself as has other fringe movements of the past, or it will simply become the empty shell most of us know it is, peopled by bigots with nothing but their empty rhetoric. We observed this first hand in Sharron Angle’s failed bid to unseat Harry Reid (who now says he wants to work with the people who would not work with him before); she refused to talk to reporters because they were “unprofessional” for asking her to clarify her extremist positions. I’m not sure what she was talking about, at least concerning the national news media—which didn’t ask her about her “plans” to kill Medicare and Social Security, abolish the Energy and Education departments, among many other mindlessly destructive intentions.

Of course, as we saw last week the massive effort by tea partiers to suppress the votes of racial minorities, a black president isn’t the only “threat.” As might be expected in an atmosphere of hate they and the right-wing media concocted, Republican candidates used the anti-Latino fear factor ad nauseam; ads featuring fearsome-looking brown-skinned people abounded, such as that circulated by Angle and David Vitter. The fact is that anti-immigrant rhetoric used as a political weapon has been around for as long as this nation existed; Ben Franklin opposed the presence of German immigrants because he believed they could not “assimilate.” Today, white people of the right think that dark-skinned people cannot “assimilate” merely because they don’t look like themselves, and they don’t want to “assimilate” with non-whites anyways. The reality is that throughout its history, in order to grow economically the U.S. has relied on immigration to fill labor shortages. The airport where I work at employs hundreds of African and Eastern European immigrants; if unemployment was such a problem for the “natives,” you would perhaps think that “real Americans” would get first digs, but it is not that simple. One of the problems for blacks, who suffer relatively large disparities in unemployment rates, is that manufacturing jobs have largely moved out of urban areas, or disappeared altogether. One problem then is that they need to move to where the jobs are, and those out of work are often unable (or unwilling) to do so due to lack of resources. Another problem is that in an increasingly service-oriented workplace, employers prefer pretty white faces. Other jobs that are seasonal, like farm and forestry work, are not particularly favorable to long-term career goals, and Latino and Asian immigrants (legal or not) have often filled those jobs. Yet Americans are uncomfortable with Latinos, because Americans, particularly white, fear a change in the “character” of the country, that is to say becoming a “Latino” rather than Anglo-Aryan country. That fear is preposterous, but even if something like that did “threaten,” in their extremity white America will turn to a de facto semi-Apartheid system to keep things in “balance.” It doesn’t, of course, make sense to spend millions of dollars to import people from Africa and Asia to replace illegal Latino immigrant farm labor as occurred here in the state of Washington recently—especially when Latino immigrants tend to be more self-sufficient when it comes to travel and housing arrangements; but then again, there is little sense to this country’s current immigration policy.

Naturally, you hear many an anti-government fanatic complain about the “cost” to the public welfare system that Latino immigrants are allegedly responsible for (and not the 2.5 million illegal aliens of Asian extraction); these numbers are usually “guestimations” based on nothing more than delusion. But the “cost” of illegal immigration is only one of the myths perpetrated to inspire fear and paranoia among voters; conservative commentator Michael Medved, who apparently does not like being associated with the extremist fringe of the right, recently commented on CNN his surprise that Lou Dobbs didn’t receive more criticism for his “irresponsible” claims against illegal immigrants, based on faked statistics usually provided to him by members of hate groups. Many legitimate studies have shown that illegal immigrants, because they have fewer avenues to “cheat” on taxes, not only pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than legal residents, but actually provide a net surplus on public service funding. Amusingly, even when anti-Latino immigrant fanatics admit that most pay taxes, they find a way to get around that quandary. For example, I dug-up a post written by someone named Marti Dinerstein on a website called ”Center for Immigration Studies.” Since employers are required by law to pay taxes on each employee they hire, if an employee does not have a Social Security number, the IRS requires a tax ID number—thus an employee does have at least some taxes deducted from his or her check, regardless of legal status. But this is still very bad, says Dinerstein, because providing illegal aliens with a TIN makes it “easier for them to meld unnoticed into our society,” allows “terrorists” to receive tax benefits they are not “entitled” to, and allows the IRS to “withhold from public review data that is relevant to determining the economic contribution of illegal aliens to U.S. society.” The latter was probably a slip of the tongue from frothing at the mouth. But beyond the myths, Obama has alienated many Latinos with even more aggressive ICE operations and the “Secure Communities” program, which many cities have found they cannot “opt-out” of. Immigration reform seems as far away as ever, and the 9th Circuit Court seems poised to permit the most egregious portion of the Arizona immigration law—that which permits de facto racial profiling—to stand.

Beyond the racial (and racist) element that is backed by big money, what exactly does presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Tea Party people intend to do to“right” the ship of state? Gut government programs and agencies? Repeal health care and financial reform? Keep in place tax cuts for the rich? And then what? Where will that leave the country? As past experience has shown, it takes years for employment to rebound; it does not happen overnight, it never did. Maybe fanatical Tea Partiers with absolutely no sense whatever of reality believe that destruction of the government is “good,” but again, as the media has repeatedly failed to perceive, they are a vocal minority which does not represent the true wishes of the majority. Most of their ideas, to put it bluntly, are insane. So what to do? In his book “Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire,” Niall Ferguson addresses the matter of the effect of an aging baby-boomer population has on Social Security and Medicare balances of account, and a shortage of labor to provide adequate taxation (and the rich who don’t pay taxes). In order to achieve a “generational balance” in lieu of additional immigrant labor, we must either increase federal income taxes 69 percent, or increase payroll taxes 95 percent, or cut federal purchases 100 percent, or cut Social Security and Medicare by 56 percent. It is clear what the Republicans and the Tea Party people nipping at their heals want to do. The question is if what they want to do is line with what the majority of the public wants; Republicans claim they “heard” the American people, but I don’t think they hear as well as they think. Yes, everyone wants more jobs and a lower budget deficit, but those two agendas are not necessarily compatible in this environment, thanks to prior Republican policies. But the Republican and Tea Party party will be short-lived if they think that gutting government safety-net programs in hard times is the “answer.” What are we supposed to think? That their “alternative” to government programs is “work till you die”—which may come sooner than you like if you don’t have health care insurance?

But what do Republicans care—they have their tax-payer funded pensions, tax-payer funded health care benefits to go along with their independent wealth.

Ferguson also had this to say about this country: “Consuming on credit, reluctant to go to the front line, inclined to lose interest in protracted undertakings: if all this conjures up an image of America as a sedentary colossus—to put it bluntly, a kind of strategic couch potato—then the image is worth pondering.” Americans don’t really want to face reality if it requires work. The Democrats put together a stimulus package and especially a health care reform bill that required immense labor; the Republicans chose to sit back and whine, complain and deceive—and the media let them do it. Cut taxes and regulations, and everything will turn better by magic. What we did see—and the intensely hypocritical and blind Tea Party lemmings apparently did not—was the real un-American, anti-American element destroy the economy of this country for the sake of simple greed. In response to this, we get “discussions” from the right of the following nature: “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery” or “Comrade Obama: The Enemy Within.” If you want to discuss the issue beyond that, you receive the new presidential “salute”: the middle finger.

Not that discussions of the issues are much more intelligent in "blue" regions than in red. The Seattle Times applauded the defeat of a very modest state income tax initiative on the wealthy, while never acknowledging the inherent regressiveness of the current tax system that hits the low-income bracket far more than the upper income bracket. Perhaps this is because the Blethens are trying to squeeze every drop of blood out of its failing newspaper, and its employees are following that lead for their own sakes. I voted for 1098 and against repeal of the junk food sales tax increase because I'm not blind to the realities that face this state: Even before the current economic downturn, this state was facing a funding crisis for education and health care, not to mention infrastructure. Because of the massive income discrepancies in this state, the lower income bracket tends to be hurt to a far greater degree. The Times editorial board, of course, has no idea of what to do now, except not raise taxes. When Bill Gates Sr. had the guts to offer 1098, the Times should have applauded him; instead it attacked the measure as an assault on all tax payers, when everyone knows that the legislature wouldn't have the guts to expand the tax. Thanks to the Times and the right-wing well-off it really represents, foolish voters who were conned will pay a price even more so than they already have been.

The past two years have been both highly dispiriting and highly instructive concerning the true nature of this country. Forward thinking goes hand-in-hand with backward thinking. In 2008 we took a step forward; in 2010 we took two steps back. My fear is that unless the media decides it wants to communicate reality and truth to the public (that is to say, leaving Fox News in its sewer) we will continue to take steps backward right into that right-wing cesspool.

Anti-Favre commentators once more get it wrong

In a game where all the naysayers like Jimmy Johnson and Mike Ditka were blasting Brett Favre for “putting himself above the team”—and not vice-versa—by playing with two fractures in his ankle, Brett Favre performed like we (at least we who are not consumed with a feeling of “betrayal”) have seen him play for 16 years in Green Bay. When he was at his lowest ebb, when “knowledgeable” commentators left him for dead, he arose from the grave and put forth an inspired performance, as if he had to “prove” himself all over again to the doubters; not surprisingly, the naysayers had very little of substance to say after the game—or avoided discussing the ignorance of their prior views altogether. Of course, everything is relative; Favre did—thanks to the best pass protection he’s had all year—have the best game of the season, but in a losing effort on the road against arguably the best team in the NFL this year, the New England Patriots. The Vikings were able to move the ball against the Patriot defense, but a failed fourth down run from the goal line, and a pass that went in-and-out of Percy Harvin’s usually dependable hands and into a Patriot defender’s, proved to be the eventual difference between a win and a loss. Adrian Peterson started out well, but he was mostly a non-factor in the second half, and glass-half empty Randy Moss was a non-factor the entire game—despite claiming he had all the “inside” info on the Patriots. Favre kept within coach Brad Childress’ “system” throughout the game, and largely due to his consistency kept the Patriot offense off the field for the greater part of the game. Unfortunately, the Vikings’ defense broke down at key moments, and failed to record a quarterback sack for the third straight game—after leading the NFL with 72 sacks last year.

Favre also recorded another item to his ever lengthening injury résumé: stitches to his jaw which knocked him out the game late, and a probable concussion. This did not occur, however, before he passed yet another career milestone—becoming the first quarterback to throw 10,000 career pass attempts, to go along with becoming the first to 70,000 career yards and 500 TD passes. With or without the instituting of an 18-game schedule, Peyton Manning will no doubt pass those numbers if he remains healthy; nevertheless, it is interesting to note that in 39 games after the Packers’ management tried to force Favre into permanent retirement, he has thrown for more than 9,000 yards and 62 TD passes, which are pretty good numbers for most quarterbacks.

Minnesota still has nine “winnable” games left to play, and when Sydney Rice returns, the Vikings may not need the perpetually discontented Moss—who was apparently waived for his most recent inflammatory remarks—and whose only useful “contribution” had been to be a decoy for opening up opportunities for the play-making Harvin. It was surprising how many Moss apologists there are out there, but the fact is that Moss is not a player you can depend upon; he might wow people with a big play when he is “engaged,” but when he isn’t—which is more often than not—he is his own worst enemy.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Comcast decided to pull the plug on Jenn Sterger’s show on Versus, “The Daily Line,” due to “anemic ratings.” Admittedly, the shows’ ratings were not as bad as Chad Ochocinco’s “reality” show, but then again, its producers had to pay four people to host the “Line.” It is obvious that Sterger and her manager felt they needed to raise her “profile” to improve ratings for the show, but wanted to test the waters by going through a “third party” to see the reaction to the allegations against Favre. Although a majority of the media predictably portrayed Sterger as a victim of “sexual harassment,” a few in the sports’ media declined to play moral paladin—particularly given the basis upon which Sterger had attained her notoriety; the general public, meanwhile, was less sanguine about assessing the relative “merits” of Sterger’s case against Favre. Furthermore, Sterger’s failure to resolve the issue quickly (she wanted a “proper” resolution) eventually undermined her case, since in order to appear desirous of attaining the all the “facts,” the NFL was forced to talk to Sterger’s former friend, Allison Torres, who as I mentioned in a post last week, gave investigators “context” which could only be interpreted as making Sterger appear to be the tawdry tramp; Favre wasn’t the only “celebrity” and “star athlete” who for some reason fell under the “spell” of Sterger’s particular “charms.” Sterger will attempt to mitigate the damage her “friend” did to her “reputation,” and try to portray herself as a “victim,” but she can only come-off as self-serving; indeed, if anything it was her avarice that undermined her case. Even a media constantly in search of white female “victims” cannot bail her out of this reality.

As much as Favre’s reputation may be tainted from all the on-field, off-field activities we’ve seen this year, the one undeniable fact is that no player in the history of the game has been the subject of fascination as has Favre. When his career is finally over, that will be a biography I can’t wait to read.