Birther Romney adviser in Kansas may remove Obama from ballot in state

The fact that a Romney adviser is considering removing President Obama from the ballot in Kansas should give everyone pause.  Not simply because the reason for removing the President is the racist "birther" theory that Mitt Romney himself gave a push two just a few weeks ago.  But more importantly, the Republicans, and via his adviser, Mitt Romney, are once again considering whether they can steal an election.

What's amazing is that the Republicans talk a good talk about stealing elections, but when it comes down to it, they always seem to be the only ones making a serious effort at doing just that.  It's called a "tell" in poker, and we've talked about it a number of times here on AMERICAblog.  Republicans accuse Democrats of doing what Republicans are already doing.

It's not just a tell, it's also a way to inoculate themselves.  If you're going to attempt to steal an election, what better way to cover yourself than accuse the guy you're stealing it from of being a thief, first.

Of course, this issue is about more than stealing elections.  It's about the rank racism now permeates the upper levels of the GOP.  Even RNC chair Reince Priebus was called out two weeks ago for pushing racist theories about the President.  Not that they can't also be subtle in their extremism.

The extremism, sadly, goes to the highest reaches of the Republican party.  These are not nice people. They lie about the little things, they lie about the big things, and they can't even get their story right when they try to tell the truth about benign facts like the capital of Libya.  And if you call them out on it, they simply amplify the lie with more voices and an even more outrageous story in the hopes of distracting you from their other lies, and the truth.

When will sane Republicans take back their party from the nutjobs running it at the RNC, in the Congress and in the Romney campaign. Read the rest of this post...

Bigoted filmmaker who triggered deaths has shady past

Besides being a hateful bigot, the filmmaker behind the new movie that has triggered riots and the death of a US ambassador is no stranger to trouble. He may have also violated the terms of his probation and is under investigation following the outbreak of violence. NBC News:

A 55-year-old Egypt-born Coptic Christian man living in the Los Angeles area was a key figure behind the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims," blamed for sparking riots and protests in the Middle East, a federal law enforcement official told NBC News Thursday.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is on probation after being convicted of financial crimes, also was twice sentenced to jail on drug charges in the late 1990s, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said.

Court records show that Nakoula was convicted on federal fraud charges in Los Angeles in 2010. Among the conditions of his probation, Nakoula was barred from using "any online service at any location" without the prior approval of his probation officer, according to a copy of court records in the case.

Read the rest of this post...

Did Haley Barbour make an assassination joke about Obama?

Yesterday we reported that former Republican party Chairman Haley Barbour, of Mississippi, made a sick racist comment about phsyically abusing President Obama:

Barbour offered a brief assessment of the Republican National Convention. “While I would love for [Chris] Christie to put a hot poker to Obama’s butt,” said Barbour of the RNC keynote speaker, “I thought he did what he was supposed to do.”

A reader pointed out something far worse than the already-incredible racism that underlies a southerner with a history of racist problems suggesting that a black man be branded. A reader writes:

Politico has completely missed the disgustingly homophobic angle on Haley Barbour's comment to donors that Chris Christie should have "put a hot poker to Obama’s butt."

How obsessively bigoted is this man? A hot poker shoved into the anus and bowels is the reputed method used to assassinate King Edward II of England because he had a male lover.

How does an infamous method of murdering a gay man centuries ago make it's way into that man's working vocabulary?

Not just a notorious method of murdering a gay man, but the method of murdering a head of state, otherwise know as assassination.

Did former GOP Chair Haley Barbour intend to joke about assassinating the President of the United States or was he simply being viciously racist, and following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney's recent birther joke and the current RNC chair Reince Priebus trying to paint the President as "foreign"?

These are the people who want the keys to the national car. Apparently they haven't matured any since the last time they wrecked it.

UPDATE: Barbour apologized for the comment. Damage done.

Read the rest of this post...

Buzzfeed on how it became okay for the GOP to be openly racist towards Obama

Interesting analysis. Though in simpler terms, if you give an inch they take a mile. From the first Republicans getting away with calling Obama a socialist four or five years ago, the Republicans were given the clear go-ahead that it was open season on Obama and nobody was going to fight back. And now, even the GOP presidential candidate is making birther comments, while the head of the RNC is insinuating that the President is a socialist, or a foreigner, or something.

Here's an excerpt from Buzzfeed:

The Overton Window, a theory named for the late think tank executive who developed it, postulates that there’s a finite range of policies or statements a politician can put forward, that are considered acceptable to the “mainstream” of that particular zeitgeist. If an idea is deemed politically and publicly acceptable, it is considered within the Window -- and, if it is not, proponents will seek to shift the window so that the statement no longer seems controversial.

Consider the effect of events like these on the Overton Window. In mainstreaming pronouncements of Obama’s otherness and displays of disrespect for his presidential legitimacy, federal and statewide elected officials steadily moved the border of publicly acceptable discourse crosswise. In so doing, they have served to normalize the kinds of messages – Obama isn’t working, Obama is in over his head, Obama is angry – that Romney has personally delivered for much of this campaign. After all, if questioning the president’s very legitimacy is now in bounds, Romney questioning his intelligence or work ethic hardly seems extraordinary in that context.

And it’s this same new climate that regularizes jokes that Obama is so inept he must rely on a teleprompter in order to speak, and which makes us almost immune to shock when a reporter barks at the president during a press conference in the Rose Garden.
Which brings us back to Romney’s remarks on Friday. Four years ago, describing Obama’s election as a risk was met with public disapproval. Today, questioning his very legitimacy has become a mainstream position pushed by some prominent elected officials in the Republican party.

Read the rest of this post...

SMACKDOWN: Chris Matthews accuses RNC chair, Romney of playing race card over birtherism

And if you ever needed to see the face of the Republican party - white, male, arrogant and angry in all of its glory - just watch RNC chair Reince Priebus in this video. NBC's Chris Matthews takes Reince to task for Mitt Romney's birther comments last week.

Of course, it wasn't Romney's first paean to racism.  He did it here and here too.

Watch the entire video, it's only 5 minutes long.  For all the criticism the left has laid on Matthews over the years, he takes no BS from Priebus over the GOP's embrace of racism.  Watch this.  Here's a transcript of the exchange, but it's only one small bit:

RNC chair Reince Priebus: I think Obama's policies have created the sense that for whatever reason he's looking to guidance, as far as health care is concerned, as far as our spending is concerned, as far as the stimulus packages are concerned, he's looking to Europe for guidance.

Matthews: What?

Priebus: I mean that's the problem...

Matthews: Where do you get this from? This is insane....  What's this have to do with Europe? The foreignization of the guy.  You're doing it again now.  He's influenced by foreign influences? You're playing that card again.

What's this European thing of yours?  What are you up to with this constant [unintelligible] that he's not really domestic?

Priebus: I'm not gonna get into a shouting match with Chris, so you guys can move on.

Matthews: Cuz you're losing.... I'm not gonna sit here and listen to cheap shots about Obama being a foreigner - is the thing you're party's been pushing, Sununu pushed it, everybody's pushing it.

Read the rest of this post...

Forbes publishes racist, nativist cover story attacking Obama

UPDATE: Just realized the article is from two years ago, sorry about that.  Still obnoxious.

Ryan Chittum of The Columbia Journalism Review does a great take down of the barely-coded racist and nativist piece, including the fact that the nativist author of the piece is a foreign-born immigrant who only visited America for the first time when he was 17 - but that let that stop him from accusing Obama of spending time outside of America before he was - what age? - 17!

But hey, he's a Republican, and they don't let facts get in the way of some good hate.

It’s all here but the birth certificate!

Let’s unpack that stuff a little bit. First of all, D’Souza perpetuates the Cokie Roberts idiocy—that Hawaii is somehow less American than the rest of the U.S. But hey—no problems with Alaska, which came into the Union the same year. Somehow, Sarah Palin always seem to be an examplar of “Real America.” Hmmm.

But D’Souza has some real nerve here: Obama is a native-born American and D’Souza is not. When he says “Here is a man who spent his formative years—the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland,” he could be referring to himself. According to Wikipedia, anyway, he was born in India in 1961 and never came to the States until 1978. That adds up to about “the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland.” Somehow the first-seventeen years thing raises questions about Obama’s Americanness but not about D’Souza’s qualifications to question somebody’s degree of native-born Americanness.

This is loathsome stuff. And, again, it’s the cover story of one of the three big mainstream financial magazines.

Of course, don't forget Romney's ongoing pitch to the nativist crowd and to racists as well - leading up to Romney's embrace of birtherism this past Friday (which is both racist and nativist). Read the rest of this post...

GOP Texas judge predicts civil war if Obama wins

Don't tempt us. Nothing would make my day like watching Texas join Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and any other racists they can find and try to form a new country. Be my guest. Texas will be so busy subsidizing all the other backwards poverty cases it won't know what hit it.

[Obama] is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN. Okay, what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst case scenario here. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington-Concord take up arms and get rid of the guy.

Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops — with the little blue beanies. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. Okay. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’. “And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said ‘you gonna back me’ he said, ‘yeah, I’ll back you.’”

And I was able to confirm that he is in fact a Republican judge.

It's amazing how much Republicans hate our country. After all, they're the only one who keep talking about leaving? Hell, Mr. Romney's family did leave. They hate our system of government (they can't stand the separation of powers, especially an independent judiciary). They can't stand gays, women, blacks, Latinos. Other than the Second Amendment, they don't seem to like the Constitution much either.

They do like the flag, but that's only when they don't have to think very hard about what it actually stands for.

They claim to like the military, but they don't - just look at the way they treated John Kerry for winning a medal for saving his fellow service members. And the way they use our service members without much thought given to the lives they're putting at risk (Iraq comes to mind, and don't forget Bush's unwillingness to give our troops the body armor they needed). And they mock the commander in chief for having caught bin Laden.

So it figures Texans keep talking about leaving the US.  They and their party left America behind a long time ago. Read the rest of this post...

Unchain discussions of race

I noticed something about Obama during the 2008 campaign. Unlike McCain, Palin, or even to a degree Hillary Clinton, Obama never showed anger. He never got indignant. He had to understand that at the first flash of the feared and loathed "angry black man" it would all be over. So he essentially ran for President with one arm tied behind his back.

In response he was called aloof, weak, and ineffectual. His family was attacked. FOX and Limbaugh feverishly worked to define Michelle as "an angry black woman". But he kept his cool, and he won. Had I been in his shoes there's no way I could have done it. I'm pretty sure precious few among us could've.

Of course, we should note, honest discussions about race and politics are forbidden. Disregard all you've learned about the Southern Strategy, voter suppression, etc. The GOP somehow struck a fabulous deal with the media where despite how racist their words, actions, or policies are we mustn't discuss it. WE MUSTN'T!

When I think about the GOP & media's relationship I picture the GOP in the role of an abusive alcoholic father p*ssing on the Christmas tree. Playing the role of the hysterical shell shocked wife is the media, desperately trying to ignore the dysfunction and pull off THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!

I for one am done with the charade and think it's wearing thin with many of us- including Joe Biden. The titanic power struggle between working people and monied interests is a zero-sum game, so when Romney said he wanted to "unchain Wall Street" it begged the question "Where are the chains going?"

In the wake of the Citizens United decision that corporations are people, decades of failed trickle-down policies, the countless laws limiting women's rights- some of which have resulted in women being forced to carry a dead fetus to term, predatory lending, voter suppression efforts, "papers please" laws, it's well past time to begin questioning our freedom.

Slavery happened and economic slavery is real. We're all adults and clutching our collective pearls when it comes up is ridiculous.

The issue of race has never been off limits for Republicans. Let's unchain ourselves and speak freely.

@EmperorAndoe



Read the rest of this post...

Did Fox cause Olympian Gabrielle Douglas to stumble

We wrote yesterday about Fox News' subtly racist attack on Olympian Gabrielle Douglas.  Other media decided to go after her mother.  And some folks decided to criticize her hair.

Well, she spoke out about all of this, as it was clearly getting to her.  Not something an Olympian needs before a competition.

Click image to see larger version.

So what happened next?  She stumbled and lost what might have been her next medal.  Was it because her country was rooting for him, but rather was criticizing her, incessantly, in her moment of glory?

More on this from Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post:

It took just four days to suck all the energy out of Douglas.First, she awoke after the achievement of a lifetime to a ludicrous, racially loaded conversation about the neatness of her coif, started by a bunch of Twitter critics. To be frank, anyone who eyed Douglas’s ponytail was looking for a reason to criticize. Her performances were so entrancing that you could only notice her hair if you dragged your eye there with a malicious purpose. So instead of reveling in her victory, Douglas found herself addressing her coif.

Fox is worried about black Olympians' patriotism.  Perhaps it should examine its own. Read the rest of this post...

Louisiana using pro-Klan books in public schools

And GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal is helping to facilitate the entire thing.  (I'm guessing someone just got dropped of the VP short list.)

Deanna Pan at MoJo quotes from a few of the books Louisiana is now using to educate children.

1. Dinosaurs and humans lived side by side:

"Bible-believing Christians cannot accept any evolutionary interpretation. Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time and may have even lived side by side within the past few thousand years."—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007

2. Fire-breathing dragons may actually have existed (the Bible includes numerous references to dragons, thus the need to prove that they're real):

"[Is] it possible that a fire-breathing animal really existed? Today some scientists are saying yes. They have found large chambers in certain dinosaur skulls…The large skull chambers could have contained special chemical-producing glands. When the animal forced the chemicals out of its mouth or nose, these substances may have combined and produced fire and smoke."—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007

3. Majority of slaves in the old south were treated well: "

A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well."—United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 1991

4. The Ku Klux Klan was a force for good:

"[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

"Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies." Hmm... aren't we missing someone?

This is why I keep harping about the South's lingering racism and bigotry.  It's a real problem, and it's affecting real people's lives, still.  Especially when southern bigots run for national office and try to impose their hate on the rest of us.

The Klan was a force for good?  Seriously, Jindal? Read the rest of this post...

Tea Party groups jokes about beating Obama, who of course is a socialist and Muslim

From Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

Read the rest of this post...

One in three conservatives now think Obama is Muslim

The stupid, it breeds.

Most of the growth in Obama-Muslim theorizing has occured among Republicans. One in six of them used to think Obama was Muslim; one in three of them now do. There's no follow-up, but you can count off the things that conservative Republicans haven't liked about Obama. The Cairo speech. "Apologizing for America." Wanting to close Gitmo. Afghanistan timetable. Siding with rebels in the "Arab Spring," and watching the Muslim Brotherhood take the lead from the rebels in classic Bolshevik/Menshevik tradition. Then, most recently, you've got theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infilitrating the government. The people who don't like Obama start with policy, then make assumptions about religion.

This is what happens when you have a political party that subsists off of its own false version of reality. The lies spread, and the populace becomes even less informed than it was before. Read the rest of this post...

Top Romney foreign policy adviser endorses Bachmann's anti-Muslim witchhunt

I wonder how Team Romney would feel about an anti-Mormon witch hunt?  Would that be okay too?  Or is religious bigotry acceptable in the Romney campaign only when it's focused on religions the Mormons don't like?

From Think Progress:

Today on Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney’s radio show, Mitt Romney foreign policy adviser John Bolton defended Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) call for the U.S. government to investigate suggestions that government employees — including a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — are affiliated with a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government.

[Romney foreign policy adviser John] BOLTON: What I think these members of Congress have done is simply raise the question, to a variety of inspectors general in key agencies, are your departments following their own security clearance guidelines, are they adhering to the standards that presumably everybody who seeks a security clearance should have to go through, are they making special exemptions? What is wrong with raising the question? Why is even asking whether we are living up to our standards a legitimate area of congressional oversight, why has that generated this criticism? I’m just mystified by it.

Here's the problem. Some have expressed the concern that Romney will toe the Mormon line and do what his faith wants if he wins the presidency. That would be the same thing Romney adviser Bolton, and Bachmmann (and Limbaugh and Beck) are accusing Muslims of.

So, if Romney adviser Bolton thinks it's okay to ask government agencies to make sure that Muslims in government aren't secretly following the orders of Islam-central, wherever that may be, does Team Romney think it's okay to ask government agencies to do the same with Mormon federal employees? Read the rest of this post...

Standing up to GOP extremism

Check out what happens when a Republican stands up to the crazies in their party's midst. Read the comments below this post from Matt Lewis criticizing Michele Bachmann's racist attack on a top Hillary staffer simply because the woman is Muslim-American.

Here are two samples of the comments - welcome to the modern Republican party:

InRussetShadows
The DC needs to fire Matt Lewis NOW. His head is so far up his anus he can't see the sun. You will rue the day you excreted the words "if there were such a thing" because we'll bring it up in every article you post.
Of course, maybe it's just survival talking. You don't want to get death threats at 2 am like Robert Spencer does, do you? And you sure don't want to meet Theo Van Gogh's fate. Even being escorted by cops and living in safe houses (like Gert Wilders has to do) is unappealing.
So, how to keep your own skin safe? Deny creeping Sharia. There's a good little dhimmi. The Muslims will kill you last, but kill you they will.
You think that there is no such thing as "creeping Sharia" law?

Wow.

CAIR may want to know about that.
Whomever is pushing all food to be halal-certified would want to know, too.
Whomever got Christians stoned up in Dearborn, MI, should know that, too.
And oh, don't forget the taxi drivers who refuse to transport blind people or people with alcohol.
Then don't forget whomever is railing for Muslim prayer accomodations in airports, when there are no such accomodations for Jews or Christians or anyone else.
And let's not forget the textbook wars, that expunge the truth about Islam to whitewash it instead, or the public school systems, where children are being indoctrinated as Muslims in role-playing sessions.
And don't forget about Sharia courts which are already in place in Canada and the UK.
And didn't Obama allow a whole host of Muslims to immigrate here a year or so ago? Wonder what that was about.
Then you have Muslim judges that refuse to punish people who attack those expressing their first amendment rights.
Then you have the army of lawyers who are busy carving out special exemptions for Muslims whenever they can.

But I'm sure there's nothing going on.

I mean, it's not like lawfare has any evidence, for it, you know?

It's like you've never read Pamela Geller's blog or something, and you have never heard of Nonie Darwish, Gert Wilders, Theo Van Gogh, or Robert Spencer.

Please educate yourself.

Read the rest of this post...

Boehner calls Bachmann's racist attacks "dangerous"

When John Boehner has to criticize you as being too far out there, you're know you're really in trouble.

This is really pretty abominable, even for Bachmann.

At a press conference Thursday, Boehner (R-Ohio) defended Huma Abedin, the deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

Boehner said he did not know Abedin well, but that “from everything that I know of her she has a sterling character. I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.”

Boehner is the latest high-profile GOP official to criticize the charges by Bachmann and four other GOP lawmakers that Abedin could be using her position at the State Department to aid the Muslim Brotherhood.

You see, Huma is Muslim-American, so that means she must be working with the terrorists because she's, you know, a Muslim.

Bachmann shouldn't be serving on the Intelligence committee is she's this mentally unstable.

Andy Borowitz has a funny take on this in the New Yorker. Read the rest of this post...

"Whites only" Christian conference kicks off

Oh, Alabama.

A controversial pastor's conference welcoming only "white Christians" is underway in Lamar County, Ala., upsetting residents of the nearby town of Winfield in the western part of the state.

Christian Identity Ministries is holding a three-day conference for so-called "white Christians" who contend they have been treated unfairly, the Rev. Mel Lewis told local TV station WSFA. Lewis, the organizer and keynote speaker, says they have the right, like any other Americans, to worship how they wish.

Ku Klux Klan flags and white supremacy slogans surround the conference, which will conclude with a cross being set on fire Friday night. Organizers say it's not a cross-burning, but rather sacred Christian cross lighting.

Read the rest of this post...

Right wing politician in Switzerland calls for "Kristallnacht for Muslims"

At least he was removed from office, but wow.

Right-wing Swiss politician Alexander Müller is out of a party post as well as his private job after using Twitter to call for “Kristallnacht … this time for mosques.”

The Zurich man also faces a criminal investigation and police searched his home and confiscated his computer, according to media reports and his own blog.

The prosecutor’s office said Müller, 37, admitted tweeting in response to the May acquittal on hate-speech charges of a Muslim man who said it was "Sharia-compliant” for a man to beat his wife if she refused to have sex with him, the newspaper Tages Anzeiger (Daily News) and others said. Otherwise, Aziz Osmanoglu had said, the man might be unfaithful.

Read the rest of this post...

Artur Davis is becoming a Republican because of the GOP's embrace of "diversity." Seriously.

Artur Davis is becoming a
Republican because of the
GOP's embrace of "diversity."
Stop laughing. 

I always get a kick when far right Republicans cry that they just aren't welcome in the Democratic party.

No sh*t, Sherlock.

Former US House member Artur Davis, from Alabama (go figure), has left the Democratic party because he says the party has moved too far to the left.  His "proof" of this move to the left is simply priceless.

Here are examples of the "diversity" that Davis thinks the Dems lack, but the GOP has:

Imagine if a Democratic candidate, senator or congressman were to say this week, "The Supreme Court is going to issue a ruling soon on the Affordable Care Act, and I sure hope the court overturns it." Can you imagine what the reaction would be? And this is, mind you, two years after 36 Democrats voted against the Affordable Care Act in the House. I can't imagine a Democrat saying that.

Imagine.

You mean, Democrats aren't willing to welcome fellow Democrats who try to undermine the President's number one campaign promise and the singular achievement of his entire first term? The horror!

That's not a sign of Democratic intolerance. It's a sign of politics. Neither Democrats nor Republicans tolerate party members who try to undercut their most important policy goal of the coming four years. Since Davis wants to talk health care reform as a litmus test of party intolerance, let's talk health care reform.

How many Democrats voted against their party and against health care reform? 36

How many Republicans voted against their party and for health care reform? 0

Now tell me again which party is more intolerant of a diversity of viewpoints on health care reform.

But oh, it gets better. More examples of Democratic intolerance from Davis:

Take same-sex marriage. Can you imagine if a prominent Democratic elected official were to say this week, "I think the 1st Circuit got it wrong on the Defense of Marriage Act, and I think the president's got it wrong on same-sex marriage"? I don't mean Sanford Bishop in Georgia, or an African-American politician perhaps in the South. I mean if a major Democratic figure were to say that, that person would be denounced instantly.

Can you imagine if a prominent Democratic elected official were to say that the Supreme Court got it wrong on Brown v Board of Education or Loving v Virginia?  Would Davis be cheering their "diversity" then?  Doubtful.  But don't try too hard to find consistency among southern bigots.  (Oh, and before Davis trots out the old "it's not the same thing" line, Coretta Scott King says it is.)

Davis is upset because the Democrats won't tolerate his intolerance.

Then there's Davis' third example:

Look at what happened to Cory Booker on Bain Capital. Mind you, that wasn't a philosophical disagreement; that was a tactical statement that the Obama campaign was unwise to attack Mitt Romney's history running Bain Capital. Cory Booker was savaged, particularly in the blogosphere, for just tactically questioning an element of the campaign.

Yes, how dare anyone criticize Cory Booker for undercutting his own party's primary argument against electing Mitt Romney as president.  Shouldn't the Democrats openly welcome people who give aid and comfort to the Republican nominee?  I mean, the Republicans would be just as welcoming of their own party members who supported Democratic policies and principles - just look at how many Republicans voted for the President's stimulus package: 3.

Lots of diversity in Artur Davis' GOP.

And finally, Artur Davis, a black man from Alabama, thinks the notion of "inequality" being a problem in America is overblown.

Last fall when Occupy Wall Street was in vogue, there were a few major Democrats who said, "Well, they need to get their act together and develop a sense of priority." But I don't remember a single major Democratic elected official who said that their focus on inequality is an overstatement, is an exaggeration, is wrong, and that the dominant focus of the administration ought to be finding ways to strengthen the entrepreneurial class.

Yes, because there's certainly no inequality in Artur Davis' own Alabama:

Source: Kids Count

Not that Artur Davis ever cared.

Oh, and here are a few other fun facts that demonstrate Artur Davis' commitment to diversity by moving over to the GOP:

Percentage of African-Americans in the US population at large: 12.6%
Percentage of African-American Republicans in the US House: 0.8% (2/242)
Percentage of African-American Democrats in the US House: 22% (42/190)

So Artur Davis thinks there's more diversity in a party that has 0.8% people like himself than a party that has 22% of the same.

Artur Davis isn't leaving the Democratic party because the Democrats have gone too far to the left.  Artur Davis is leaving the Democratic party because he cares more about Wall Street than racial inequality, civil rights, or affordable health care - which is pretty much the textbook definition of a conservative Republican.  I'm sure he'll be quite happy in his new home. Read the rest of this post...

Sununu criticizes CNN for Romney's embrace of birther Trump

Bad CNN. How dare they report the news. Especially when the news makes Republicans look bad. Doesn't CNN know that they're only allowed to report news that makes Democrats look bad?

One day after Donald Trump accused CNN of covering the birther issue in order to boost its ratings, Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu accused the network of a fixation with the birther issue.

"Why is CNN so fixated on this?" Sununu, the former New Hampshire Governor, asked CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "It's CNN that wants to bring this up. I don't want to bring it up. Mitt Romney has made it clear that he believes President Obama was born in the U.S. You had Donald Trump on last night, and now you are asking the question this morning. It's CNN's fixation."

Sununu also asserted that CNN supported President Obama: "The fact is, this country has a jobs problem, and supporters of the president, like CNN, keep wanting to talk about other issues."

Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's news because for a short while Donald Trump was the most famous GOP presidential candidate in the race? And maybe it's news because whiter-than-white Mitt Romney continues to embrace Donald Trump, refuses to criticize Donald Trump, after Trump continues to spout racist birther accusations against an African-American President?  (And it's particularly interesting that Romney is refusing to distance himself from racists when he's a bishop in a faith with a long tradition of racism.)

It's really pretty disgusting that Mitt Romney is now helping to coordinate a counter-attack on CNN - and that's clearly what this is, a coordinated counter-attack - in order to permit Romney's surrogates to continue launching racist attacks on the President. Read the rest of this post...

Romney plays to nation's racial subconscious

Presidential politics is an increasingly exact science. Words are carefully chosen, poll-tested and fine-tuned before being used, and every catchphrase, slogan and sound bite is designed to maximize the campaign's appeal to their target audience.

This appeal takes place on two different levels- one conscious and one subconscious. While the term "subconscious" alludes to subliminal advertising, it generally only means appealing to implicit attitudes that are not consciously processed (although subliminal ads have entered presidential campaigns before). The best way to think of the distinction between the two is to consider what a candidate says as a conscious appeal, but how the candidate says it, or the choice to say it in the first place, a subconscious appeal.

Following the 1980 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan launched his general election campaign with what have since become boilerplate GOP talking points. Here's an excerpt of what he said:

I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.

On a conscious level, what Reagan said was fairly innocuous. But how did he say it? The speech was framed around Regan's "[belief] in states' rights," and was delivered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the same place where three civil rights workers had been killed for attempting to register African-American voters.

The Reagan campaign chose the location under the advice of Strom Thurmond (who, ironically, was later found to have fathered an out-of-wedlock child with his African-American housekeeper), and used the frame and location of the speech to make an appeal to the "Dixiecrats" of the South. Jimmy Carter failed to call Reagan out for the implicit racial appeal, and Reagan went on to cream Carter, winning every Southern state which Carter had won in 1976, except for Georgia, Carter's home state.

Fast-forward to 2012.

Mitt Romney is the front-runner for the Republican nomination but has showed signs of weakness with rural voters, particularly in the South. Many Republican strategists are worried that Team Romney will not be able to generate enough enthusiasm to win crucial states such as North Carolina and Virginia. Moreover, the rhetoric necessary to generate such enthusiasm among the GOP base will likely alienate independents in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. How has the Romney campaign attempted to confront this dilemma? With a catchy, multi-faceted slogan:

The black guy "isn't working" - get it?

As Tommy Christopher of Mediaite notes:

When I first saw the banner...the multiple meanings were clear: President Obama's policies aren't working, the Obama presidency isn't working, President Obama...isn't working, as in, doing any work. That's not a nice thing to say about any president, but like it or not, it becomes a more loaded accusation when leveled at our first black president.

Subconscious appeals are called dog-whistles for a reason: Three different people can read the above phrase and get three very different messages. "Obama Isn't Working" has economic connotations for some and racial connotations for others. For the surprisingly high amount of Americans who hold implicit racial biases, the phrase also can trigger negative subconscious associations regarding President Obama based on the color of his skin, aka racism.

Because of the slogan's multiple meanings, the Romney campaign has plausible deniability when its racial component is brought up. However, given its history, the GOP has forfeited its right to the benefit of the doubt when it comes to race. Considering the level of scrutiny placed on every word used by a presidential candidate, and the emphasis Romney is placing on this new slogan (in addition to appearing on stage, it has its own website), I find it hard to believe that the racial connotations of "Obama Isn't Working" went unnoticed before the phrase was unveiled.

Moreover, considering the benefit Team Romney gains from being able to trigger implicit racial biases without getting taken to task for it on a conscious level, it is far more likely that the creation of the slogan was a deliberate play to America's dark, but very real, subconscious biases and prejudices based on race. Read the rest of this post...