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Blogs Eric Reads
A Case of the Mondays
(Sorry if all these bulleted-list posts seems like cop outs. It’s a busy time of the year.)
- The Senate Democratic caucus vote on whether Holy Joe Lieberman keeps his committee chairmanship is coming up soon. Kagro X reminds us that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, 93% of whose residents voted for Barack Obama, so it would be awfully shitty to let John McCain’s best buddy run the place. Since the Lieberman vote will be done by secret ballot, a fully expect the Democratic Senate majority to cave, just like they’ve been doing for the past couple years. (DailyKos)
- Still-President Bush has the high honor of being the first U.S. President to ever call Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi. Bush called Qadhafi to thank him for agreeing to a claims settlement agreement between the two countries. How dare Bush speak with a foreign leader with preconditions! Surrender!! (First Read)
- Right before the election, Barack Obama sent a letter to a bunch of federal employees telling them about change they can believe in. Basically, the letter explains all of the Bush administration policies that Obama would rescind, like outsourcing government work and censoring science. If it’s undoing something George Bush did, I’m for it. (Washington Post)
- Barack Obama met with John McCain today because he wanted to hear McCain call him “Mr. President-Elect” several times to his face. Oh, and they also released the world’s most generic joint statement. Seriously. It’s only two paragraphs long but it uses a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. On the plus side, there’s a hilariously awkward video of the two talking. Look how hard it is for Obama not to gloat. (Ben Smith/YouTube)
- Lots of racist white people are pissed off that we elected a black man to be president. They can’t handle that the rest of us don’t hate minorities as much as they do and they’re getting angry and violent. Obama has already received more death threats than any other president-elect in American history, and I’m willing to bet that some of that can be blamed on the vitriol of Sarah Palin. It’s not going to be an easy four years for President Obama. (Christian Science Monitor/Austin American-Statesman/Federal News Radio)
Shorter Rick Davis
Rick Davis: Campaign Rethinking Playing The Rev. Wright Card
- If everyone would just stop saying we’re running a racist campaign, we wouldn’t have to run a racist campaign.
If the Sheet Fits
Now that the McCain campaign has descended entirely into panic mode, the Republican base is starting to show their true colors.
First, a local party treasurer in my home state:
A local newspaper columnist, in a spoof of Obama’s platform, wrote in one recent piece that the Democrat would hire the rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black (a reference to a pro-Obama song by Ludacris), and divert more foreign aid to Africa so “the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.” He joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars on the U.S. flag “with a star and crescent logo,” an Islamic symbol, and that his policy on drugs would be to “raise taxes to pay for Obama’s inner-city political base.”
The columnist, Bobby May, is also treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party and was listed in a July news release as the county’s representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team, though he said his column reflected his views alone, and he denied it was racist.
Then we have the Florida teacher who used a racial slur to describe Obama:
Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials determined [teacher Greg] Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a dry-erase board in his class Sept. 26 at Marianna Middle School.
It said, “C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A (N-word) Get Elected.”
Howard, who’s been teaching in the district for 17 years, wrote the comment during his seventh-grade social-studies class that included 17 white students, six black students and one Asian.
There’s also the increasing sense among right-wing pundits like Ann Coulter that minorities are responsible for the economic crisis:
Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.
Instead of looking at “outdated criteria,” such as the mortgage applicant’s credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named “Caylee.”
And finally, of course, there’s Sarah Palin and her Barracuda Buddies:
McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev.Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
[Update: Greg Sargent says the unmentioned racial epithet was "uppity Negro."]
Republicans have seen the polls and they know that they’re in serious trouble, which means it’s time for the gloves to come off and pointy hoods to go on.
There are twenty-seven days left until the election. Now is the time to work like crazy to get out the vote for Obama or these racists will have another four years in power.
Uppity
Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) on the Obama family:
Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.
Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.
Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”
Well, I was wondering how long Republicans were going to keep calling Obama presumptuous, snobbish, and arrogant before they just came out and said it.
Racism
Via Atrios, MSNBC “reporter” Courtney Hazlett called Spike Lee “uppity” while discussing the feud between Lee and Clint Eastwood regarding the lack of African Americans in Eastwood’s World War II movies. HuffPo’s Danny Shea reminds us:
While the literal definition of “uppity” is “taking liberties or assuming airs beyond one’s station,” it is largely seen to have a racist connotation when applied to African Americans (witness the 2007 outcry after Salon labeled Obama “uppity” and then quickly swapped the word out for “smug”).
Video below, and may I add how totally awesome it is that racism is not “a big deal” in America anymore.
Update: Barack Obama can and will break all kinds of barriers, but there will always be racist assholes. Oh, and if the video embed doesn’t work, you can see it at Gawker.
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