Political Racism in the Age of Obama

But while that cross-racial and ethnic coalition figured significantly in Mr. Obama’s re-election last week, it has frayed over time — and may in fact have been weaker than we imagined to begin with. For close to the surface lies a political racism that harks back 150 years to the time of Reconstruction, when African-Americans won citizenship rights. Black men also won the right to vote and contested for power where they had previously been enslaved.
How is this so? The “birther” challenge, which galvanized so many Republican voters, expresses a deep unease with black claims to political inclusion and leadership that can be traced as far back as the 1860s. Then, white Southerners (and a fair share of white Northerners) questioned the legitimacy of black suffrage, viciously lampooned the behavior of new black officeholders and mobilized to murder and drive off local black leaders. (read more  By STEVEN HAHN)

The election

Though Romney, like every Republican contender since Nixon, is counting on white nationalism—even if this isn’t what courting the blue-collar white ethnic vote has been called—it won’t work for him anymore either. The Republican Party cannot revive the old atmosphere of the Solid South, and postmodern Yellow Peril hasn’t brought greater cohesiveness of US citizenry. Romney warned his frustrated Florida dinner companions that undecided voters like the president; Republicans were allowed to talk freely in their own company, but had to be careful how they spoke of Obama before independents. White nationalism is seen as retro and is distasteful, especially to white students.

Dangerous stuff

Republican rhetoric over the top

Not all overheated political rhetoric is alike. Delusional right-wing crazy talk — the kind of ranting we’ve heard recently from washed-up rock star Ted Nugent and Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) — is a special kind of poison that cannot be safely ignored.Let me be clear: I’m saying that the extreme language we hear from the far right is qualitatively different from the extreme language we hear from the far left — and far more damaging to the ties that bind us as a nation. Tut-tutting that both sides should tone it down is meaningless. For all intents and purposes, one side is the problem. (...)

By Eugene Robinson, Published: April 20 Read the complete article

The Crisis of Zionism

How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

By Stephen M. Walt 

Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.

I heard a different take on this subject at a recent conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. "If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world," he said, "it should stop killing Muslims."

Now I don't think the issue is quite that simple, but the comment got me thinking: How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims? Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible, but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly lopsided.

Here's my back-of-the-envelope analysis, based on estimates deliberately chosen to favor the United States. Specifically, I have taken the low estimates of Muslim fatalities, along with much more reliable figures for U.S. deaths. 

The caging of America

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.  

Why do we lock up so many people? by Adam Gopnik Read more 

The Palestein case

Read more

Did you know?

1 - THAT, when the Palestine Problem was created by Britain in 1917, more than 90% of the population of Palestine were Arabs, and that there were at that time no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine?

 

2 - THAT, more than half of the Jews living in Palestine at that time were recent immigrants, who had come to Palestine in the preceding decades in order to escape persecution in Europe?... And that less than 5% of the population of Palestine were native Palestinian Jews?

 

3 - THAT, the Arabs of Palestine at that time owned 97.5% of the land, while Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only 2.5% of the land?

 

4 - THAT, during the thirty years of British occupation and rule, the Zionists were able to purchase only 3.5% of the land of Palestine, in spite of the encouragement of the British Government?... And that much of this land was transferred to Zionist bodies by the British Government directly, and was not sold by Arab owners?

 

5 - THAT, therefore, when British passed the Palestine Problem to the United Nations in 1947, Zionists owned no more than 6% of the total land area of Palestine? ... Read more

Is the American way of life preferred over all other cultures?

http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-the-american-way-of-life-preferred-over-all-other-cultures

Although the American way of life may seem luxurious to many, it is not the same across the socioeconomic board. Many Americans live in poverty and do not have access to proper education, housing or food. We irresponsibly spend money on larger and larger houses and spend until we get into debt. Instead of growing our own food we also support exploitative business practices by supporting factory farming and the unsupervised labor of illegal immigrants. Our culture is not superior to other cultures at all because it encourages superficiality, waste and indulgence. Although it's true than many cultures are worse or the same, our culture is not better than the British, Australians or Germans, etc.

Conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment.

Excerpt from When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

Some of my Republican friends ask if I’ve gone crazy. I say: Look in the mirror.

• 324 Comments Add Yours

• By David Frum 
• Published Nov 20, 2011 

3. Fox News and Talk Radio
Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment—and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy ­errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action ­phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”

How hard is it to find a smart conservative leader?

by LOUIS PEITZMAN

At the bigotry-laden Values Voters Summit, former Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum inadvertently characterized conservative values as something smart people do not have.
We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.
Yes, damn the media and the elites and anyone who has bothered reading a book that isn't the Bible. Those smarts with their logic will never understand Santorum's staunchly anti-gay perspective.
Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan also made an appearance at the Values Voters Summit, reminding attendees that a vote for Mitt Romney is a vote against marriage equality.
[Romney] is a solid and trustworthy, faithful and honorable man. Not only a defender of marriage, he offers an example of marriage at its best.
And why is it so important to "defend" marriage? Let House Majority Leader Eric Cantor break it down for you.
That is why we believe in traditional marriage, because marriage, more than any government program ever has or ever will, has lifted up people out of poverty, even those who felt there was no hope. Marriage has proven to be that formula which has been more successful at allowing for that pursuit of happiness. And that is why we stand tall and stand proud for traditional marriage.
Exactly. Who needs government assistance when you can just get married? It's the best cure-all for what ails you — and somehow if gay people were allowed to get married, it would stop working.
If that doesn't make sense to you, take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror. You might be one of those smart people Santorum has heard so much about.