Rand Paul: Black Like Me

RandPaulUnhingedRand Paul tries to get his Black on at Howard University

Rest at pale evening…
A tall slim tree…
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

Langston Hughes, Dream Variations

Following a decade-long bout with a temporary form of blindness, Texas author John Howard Griffin lit upon a novel idea: to effectively alter his physical appearance such that he could pass for a black man, to better understand the challenges that confronted the Black race in the pre-Civil Rights era of the late 1950s. The gritty results of this one man social experiment were published in book form under the title Black Like Me (later turned into a movie of the same name, starring James Whitmore). From the BBC account on the 50th anniversary of its publication:

In the American Deep South in 1959, to be black was to be despised — to be treated as something less than human. There was the grinding poverty, of course, and the segregation and legalised discrimination which reserved certain railroad cars, bus seats and drinking fountains for the whites. But there were humiliations that ran deeper still. In some states, black men accused of looking at white women with lust in their hearts could be arrested under laws which made “ogling” a form of sexual assault. In others, “eyeballing” laws meant that failing to look down at the sidewalk when white folks passed by could lead to a charge of behaving in a confrontational way.

(As a detested “heepy” living in Hawaii in the early ’70s, I learned early on, if possible, never make eye contact with da local boys. A fellow traveler was not so fortunate. Having caught the attention of the big guys hanging outside of Auggie’s Pool Hall in Paia, they raced across the street, chased him into a cane field, and beat him with their pool cues to within an inch of his life.)

All of which is background for a condescending historical lecture on Civil Rights given by Senator Ron Paul (R-Teabagger) to a polite but gobsmacked audience Wednesday at one of the country’s premiere Black colleges, Howard University. ThinkProgress has the highlights:

1. The Civil Rights movement is actually the “history of the Republican Party”.  The thrust of Paul’s speech was a recapitulation of the history of race and racism and a defense of the Republican record on race (representative line: “The story of emancipation, voting rights and citizenship, from Fredrick Douglass until the modern civil rights era, is in fact the history of the Republican Party.”) The problem was that this speech, ostensibly designed to persuade black voters that the GOP was interested in them, was telling the audience things it already knew. Moreover, the speech didn’t grapple with what happened to make the Democrats the more racially liberal party in the mid-40s or the turn towards racially divisive politics on the Republican right, essentially skipping over the real reason the GOP alienated African-American voters.

2. Assumed the audience didn’t know the history of the NAACP. In one of the most awkward moments of the talk, Paul asked the audience if anyone knew that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had been founded by Republicans. The audience responded with a resounding “yes!”

3. Suggested that African-Americans were “demeaning” the history of sergregation by calling voter ID laws discrimination. When asked how African-Americans could trust the Republican Party given its generalized support for discriminatory voter ID laws, Rand Paul told the audience to chill out about the measures, suggesting they were common sense. Paul argued that the view that these laws were an updated version of poll taxes was “[demeaning] the horror” of segregation. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous has said voter ID laws are “pushing more voters out of the ballot box than any point since Jim Crow.”

4. Mangled the name of the first popularly-elected black Senator. In what appeared to be an attempt to demonstrate his familiarity with the subject matter, Paul brought up Senator Edward William Brooke III (a Republican mentioned in the prepared remarks as “the first [elected] black U.S. Senator”). He referred to him, however, as “Edwin Brooks,” a point the audience corrected.

5. Misled about his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. Paul said “I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act.” The problem, as Mother JonesAdam Serwer pointed out, is that he opposed the law’s ban on discrimination in “places of public accommodation” like businesses, one of its most important planks. As an audience member asking Paul about this issue pointed out, “this was on tape.”

In his blog post Rand Paul and the Sweet Smell of Your Own Crap, TPM’s Josh Marshall comments that Paul’s embarrassment was…

“an example of what happens when a staunch conservative steps out of the GOP’s tightly-drawn racial nonsense bubble and hits an audience not dying to be convinced that the GOP’s problems with non-whites are the results of boffo misunderstandings about a Republican party that is actually the best thing that ever happened to black people.”

Marshall concludes with an insight into what happens when the brain’s narrative circuitry crystallizes around a long held personal prejudice:

” You can become so lost in your own story that you confuse your conciliation with your aggression. The GOP is so deep into its own self-justifying racial alternative reality that there’s some genuine surprise when the claptrap doesn’t survive first contact with actual black people.”

It’s like, for the whole fifty years of his sheltered life, Senator Aqua Buddha lived in a parallel Libertarian universe where compassionate, visionary Republicans ushered in the Second Great Emancipation of the downtrodden Negro race. I guess his nose was too stuck too far into Ayn Rand’s fantasy novels to notice that when the Redneck South abandoned the Democratic Party after LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Acts, those Yellow Dog Democrats found a welcome home in the GOP. Or that Ronald Reagan announced his 1980 presidential run in the Mississippi town where civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney were murdered in 1964.

Yesterday, I watched the new movie 42 about the legendary Jackie Robinson, the first Black professional baseball player who did so much to pave the way for later day civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers. Jackie suffered much abuse as he became the focal point of the intense racial hatred that prevailed during the year of his breakthrough, 1947.  Scenes from the movie include the iconic Whites Only signs that hung like nooses over bathroom doors and restaurants and professional baseball parks. In one scene, his minor league team bus stopped to gas up and Jackie headed towards the restroom to relieve himself. The attendant forbade from using it, saying he should know better.

Ron Paul, even today, would have supported the attendant’s choice, given his reading of the Constitution that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate.

Because, you know, freedom.

 

Mad To The Max: Paul Ryan, Beyond Blunderdome

Paul Ryan Beyond Blunderdome

The barn door has closed on yet another episode of CPAC’s Wingnut Woodstock, the annual conclave of conservaschism‘s most extreme proponents. (See our archives for previous entries.)

Among the 70+ speakers were the party’s last two failed GOP Veep candidates, Rep. Paul Ryan (R- Gault’s Gulch), who couldn’t be bothered to even mention his former running mate, Mitt Romney, who was also there;  and Sarah Palin (R-Alaskan Quitter), who couldn’t resist sucking up some sugar water poison from a Big Gulp and throwing some red meat to the Birthers while attacking Karl Rove:

“If these experts who keep losin’ elections and keep gettin’ rehired and gettin’ millions — if they feel that strong about who gets to run in this party, then they should buck-up or stay in the truck.”

Rand Paul, who won the presidential straw poll beating Marco Rubio, 25%-23%, also implicitly took a shot at Rove and the establishment wing of the party, calling it “stale and moss covered,” in need of a complete do-over.  Rubio took the opposite tack, saying that the party just needed better packaging, everything else is just fine… except maybe their attitude toward immigration, a word that curiously never passed his lips.  Ted Cruz responded politely to GOP’s “grey eminence” John McCain, after McCain called him a “whackobird” for supporting Paul’s 13 hour filibuster against extra-judicial targeted killings, ala drone strikes.

All told, over 70 speeches were given.  And while Donald Trump said nothing of substance, he will be remembered for making a further investment in self-parody, talking to a room full of empty chairs after tweeting enthusiastically about how the sponsors were expecting a standing room only crowd for the pleasure of his company.

Empty chairs TrumpSquint real hard and you might see Trump holding court for a handful of starstruck suckups

Noticeable for their absence were Past GOP luminaries New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Virgina Governor Bob McDonnell weren’t invited this year because they had committed the unforgivable sin of, you know, actual governance, an activity antithetical to the overriding mission of modern conservatism— the wholesale dismantling of the US government (except as it benefits the 1%).

Which brings us to the substance of Paul Ryan’s speech, his proposed 2014 budget confabulation. The zombie eyed granny starver once again tried to disguise his Ayn Randian flavored social Darwinism as deficit reduction, framing his argument as the only rational approach to a country teetering on the edge of the apocalypse:

Unless we change course, we will have a debt crisis.  Pressed for cash, the government will take the easy way out:  It will crank up the printing presses.  The final stage of this intergenerational theft will be the debasement of our currency.  Government will cheat us of our just rewards.  Our finances will collapse.  The economy will stall.  The safety net will unravel. And the most vulnerable will suffer.

But it’s not too late.  This budget provides an exit ramp from the current mess— and an entry ramp to a better future.  Unlike the President’s last budget, which never balanced, this budget achieves balance within ten years.

Washington Post and MSNBC economic policy wonk Ezra Klein comments:

These are tremendously important paragraphs. They’re emphasized a few pages later, in the first real section of the budget, which is entitled “The Debt Crisis Ahead.”  These paragraphs matter because they serve as Ryan’s justification for his budget.  They are why we need to throw 35 million people off health insurance.  They are why we need to cut deep into education and infrastructure and food stamps and housing assistance.  They are why this budget is an act of mercy rather than cruelty — because if this future is the only alternative, then this budget is painful but necessary medicine.

But it’s not.  Ryan’s nightmare scenario isn’t likely even in the absence of new policy.  A reasonable assumption of future debt is about 112 percent of GDP come 2037 — and that’s assuming the repeal of the sequester.  That’s too high for comfort, and there’s some evidence that debt at that level could harm the economy.  But there’s no evidence that it would create the kind of Mad Max-style scenario Ryan paints.

Ryan’s GOP budget takes a meat ax to the social safety net for the old, poor, and infirm, all the while sparing the military/medical/prison/financial industrial complex or any other corporate interest group from any sacrifice whatsoever. Ryan ignores deficit expanding tax expenditures that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy, which in 2009 cost the federal government a cool trillion; says nothing about eliminating tens of billions of dollars in direct taxpayer subsidies to hugely profitable industries like the oil companies and Big Ag, many of whom don’t even pay any income tax thanks to lobbyist provided loopholes; and lowers tax rates across the board, which again, overwhelmingly favors the rich.MORE. . .“Mad To The Max: Paul Ryan, Beyond Blunderdome”

Glenn Beck’s Independence, USA!

Frank Zappa called it “Centerville,” Homer Simpson calls it Springfield, Glenn Beck calls it “Independence.”

Romney’s Parallel Universe Machine (Update)

For the man who has everything (except the presidency) , this handy device takes less energy than an Etch-a-Sketch to alter reality

The fallout from Mitt Romney‘s lies about President Obama shipping U.S. jobs to China continued yesterday as General Motors spokesman Greg Martin told The Detroit Free Press:

We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

Huffpo describes  it thus:

Mitt Romney’s round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies….

The day before, meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne penned a letter to the Detroit News insisting that there was no validity to the idea that the company was shipping Jeep production overseas. Instead, he noted, the company was looking to open new factories in China to meet increasing demand there.

Used to be that when a political campaign got caught with its pants down, it would mumble an apology or at least have the good sense to STFU.  Not this generation of Rethugs. Instead, they double down, drop their undies and moon  the world.:

The Romney campaign has showed no willingness to back off the suggestion that American Jeep workers may end up losing their jobs. In fact, the campaign has released a radio ad in Ohio to complement the one it has on television there that repeats the insinuation.

Which of course is entirely consistent with their adoption of the Big Lie strategy that Goebbels found so effective. What really makes it work though is constant repetition, made possible by Citizens United and the unlimited amounts money provided by plutocrat billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson who think so much of themselves that they’re intent in re-making the US in their own distorted image.

At the close of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

What we are witnessing this election is no less than a battle for the very soul of the country.  We are right at that tipping point Franklin referred to.  Will we continue to be an admittedly flawed  representative government, where the democratic principle of one person, one vote prevails, and the belief that free speech is not measured in personal and corporate wealth?  Or will be become just another oligarchy run by greedy and power-hungry billionaires who have more in common with Ayn Rand than the Founders, who promised “to promote the general welfare” at home and maintain “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” abroad.

The prospect of four more years of The Black Man in The White House is enough to send the Rethugs over the edge, despite record corporate profits and huge increases in the personal wealth of the top 1%.

The Koch Brothers spent $25 million between 2005-2008 alone, fighting every attempt to regulate climate-changing green house gases, the byproduct of their energy extraction companies.  The results are super-storms like Sandy that just killed some 74 people (and counting), traumatized millions more, and wreaked $50 billion (and counting) in property damage.

And now they’re on the cusp of getting one of their own into, arguably, the most powerful office in the world.  A say-anything politician and his Darwinian running mate that want to privatize FEMA disaster relief by further cutting the social safety net to pay for it.  How’s that for Bizarro World logic?

Somehow I think that when these traitors to the planet are called to account for their crimes they will have so deluded themselves about their assumed natural superiority and moral rightness that they will find no contrition in their hearts, and thus no need for mercy from the real Powers That Be.

 But when mercy is exhausted, when the “memory” thereof testifies to its depletion, then does justice prevail and righteousness decree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it; mercy is not a gift to be trampled under foot by the persistent rebels of time.

The Urantia Book

I want to be around for that.  Meanwhile, a little justice and righteousness would be a good thing right now.

[Image found here.]

UPDATE: (11/1 @ 1:25 pm) Exxon and Shell just announced they made $16 billion in profits during the last quarter alone.

And here’s a reminder of what a dick Romney is on the issue of climate change.

 

Blaming The Victims

  Thanks to a five hour delay in my flight yesterday (first plane was two hours late, and after finally boarding it and sitting in it for a half hour, we had to deplane for mechanical reasons, forced to wait again until the airline could find us another bird); and having run out of battery charge for my laptop, I …

Magical Rethug Thinking

The zombie eyed granny starver demonstrates his compassionate conservatism

Having done my share of restaurant dish washing as a teenager living on Maui in the early Seventies, I found myself laughing out loud at this clip of Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan scouring pots and pans that had already been cleaned. (Notice how deftly Ryan, who Charlie Pierce calls “the zombie eyed granny starver”, prevents the camera from seeing the inside of the pans.) The venue for this overly staged PR puff piece was a volunteer soup kitchen, which just might go out of business should Ryan and Mitt Romney win the election.

As shown by a recent analysis of the Joint Committee on Taxation, a bi-partisan Congressional committee equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, the proposed Ryan-Romney tax plan is mathematically impossible to achieve.  The central feature of that plan is an across the board 20% tax cut (which overwhelmingly favors Romney and his fellow uber rich). In order to pay for it, even if the vast majority of the largest tax loopholes and deductions are eliminated, including charitable contributions that makes soup kitchens and other vital community services possible, the revenue raised by eliminating the write-offs  would  total something like 4%.

 Making up the deficit between 4% and 20% is pure faith based, trickle down, voodoo economics, predicated on all kinds of assumptions about “broadening the tax base.”  Which is precisely why the Romney-Ryan campaign refuses to provide specifics of their secret plan to balance the budget. (Shades of Nixon’s campaign promise of a secret plan to end the Vietnam war, which only worsened when he expanded the conflict into Laos and Cambodia.).
Promising to balance the budge by starving the government of desperately needed revenues, while simultaneously increasing the budget of the military industrial complex, is an exercise in magical thinking. Maybe Mitten’s magic underwear has shrunk to the point where it’s cutting off the blood to his brain.

Mitty And The Moochers

The classic 1932 cartoon featured the first film of Cab Calloway, whose moon walking moves were rotoscoped by Max Fleischman  on to his dancing walrus

“Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?” –Ayn Rand, “Hunger and Freedom”

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.Mitt Romney, Boca Raton, Florida, May 2012