The folks at the U of M-Duluth might be glad the whole “flood” thing happened.  It’ll draw attention away from their latest squandering of taxpayer money – to draw attention to white privilege:

The University of Minnesota – Duluth (UMD) is now sponsoring an ad-campaign designed to achieve “racial justice” by raising awareness of “white privilege.”

The project disseminates its message, that “society was setup for us [whites]” and as such is “unfair,” through an aggressive campaign of online videos, billboards, and lectures. The ads feature a number of Caucasians confessing their guilt for the supposed “privilege” that comes along with their fair features.

That’s right, UMD.  I’m “sorry” my anscestors were born in an ethnic group native to nations that subscribed to a worldview that exalted the individual and found no moral conundrum with the creation of individual wealth (outside of royalty).  I’m sorry – no scare quotes – that other societies on this planet didn’t have such a philosophy, and thus failed to thrive, and either exploited their own people or were unable to protect their people from being shanghaied and sold into slavery by their neighbors.

Beyond that?  Sorry that my culture fought the bloodiest war in its history to resolve – partially and imperfectly – the issue.

Sorry that, notwithstanding that racism is one of the maze of “We-isms” that every single human being on earth, from David Duke to Nina Totenberg, has, and that my culture has done more than any other significant cutlure on earth to try to overcome that natural human trait.

Please forgive me, asshole.

Campus Reform asks you…:

Call the school and voice your opinion at (218) 726-7106 or send an e-mail to chan@d.umn.edu. Tell them Campus Reform sent you.

The self-titled Un-Fair Campaign, is sponsored and supported by the University of Minnesota – Duluth, along with several liberal organizations including the NAACP, YWCA, and The League of Woman Voters.

And this is your tax dollar at work.

And it’s part of an ongoing pattern at UMD:

Documents obtained exclusively by Campus Reform this week, through a public records request, however, show that students on campus have expressed outrage over the administration’s support of the racially-charged campaign.

One student, whose identity was redacted in the documents released by UMD, e-mailed Chancellor Black expressing his discontent, writing that the Un-fair campaign “is in fact UNFAIR.”

The student proceeded to write: “It may be drawing awareness to factors that we might otherwise not pay attention to, but it’s creating a gap between people. It’s only making people more racist on both sides.”

Campus Reform contacted the school seeking further comment, but was unable to reach a spokesperson for comment by the time of publication.

Perhaps one white Duluthian had the right idea:

Berlin, the Lake Superior Zoo's polar bear, freed by the flood, but not for long enough to escape the madhouse that is Duluth.

Ebony & Irony

The media begins to chum the political waters for race-baiting.

There was little doubt that race was one of the larger underlying narratives of the 2008 presidential campaign.  The election of the country’s first African-American president, by the largest popular vote margin in twenty years, was widely hailed by Barack Obama’s supporters as a sign that racial relations had truly improved.

And now, what of the electorate that gave Obama 69 million votes, 365 electoral votes, and an 8% margin of victory?  According to the polling analyst du jour, America has not only returned to being a land of racist voters but, in fact, always was:

Though many people believe that our first African-American president won the election thanks in part to increased turnout by African-American voters, Stephens-Davidowitz’s research shows that those votes only added about 1 percentage point to Obama’s totals. “In the general election, this effect was comparatively minor,” he concludes. But in areas with high racial search rates, the fact that Obama is African American worked against him, sometimes significantly.

 

“The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote,” Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his study. “This implies racial animus gave Obama’s opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide.”

Apparently Obama was supposed to have won by 11% or even 15%.  Or maybe simply by acclamation.

Where is this thesis of latent racism coming from?  Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University, who gleaned his insight from that fount of all wisdom – the Internet.

Stephens-Davidowitz coupled internet search histories with racially charged words with searches for “Obama”, compared them to results for the 2004 election, and faster than you can google “the Bradley effect,” surmmerized that Americans are actually super secret racists.  And if you believe the liberal-leaning polling outfit, Public Policy Polling, you may need to add roughly one-quarter of African-American voters to the ranks of the racists since they’ve soured on Obama in North Carolina.  Perhaps Stephens-Davidowitz is saving that study for after he get his doctorate in an unrelated major.

There are a few issues within Stephens-Davidowitz’s thesis that most people wouldn’t contest.  Racists still do exist in some places in America and the electorate’s view on the condition of race relations has plummeted since Barack Obama’s election:

A myriad of reasons explain such stark polling data, but it doesn’t help that the media consistently attempts to propagate stories that seek to find racists around every corner.  Especially in political coverage which implies that to oppose President Obama is to oppose him based on the color of his skin.  It’s false and deeply insulting.

It’s also an attempt to prepare the battlefield post November.  As Stephens-Davidowitz concludes:

The state with the highest racially charged search rate was West Virginia, where 41 percent of voters chose Keith Judd, a white man who is also a convicted felon currently in prison in Texas, over Obama just this May. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 most-racist areas, according to the search queries used.

…

 

What does this mean for this year’s contest? “Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate’s winning the popular vote by a third,” Stephens-Davidowitz explains. “Prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania.”

 

The narrative is set.  If Barack Obama loses re-election, the nation of progressive, racially-harmonious voters will have suddenly become extras in a remake of “Deliverance.”  But is this exactly a wise political strategy?  It’s bad enough when one party blames their defeat on the electorate being stupid enough to fall for the rhetoric of the opposition, but what is there to be gained from inferring that voters are racists?

Do Republicans need to counter that if you vote for Barack Obama, you’re secretly a religious bigot who hates Mormons?  Sheesh.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s revelation that NBC altnered the tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to bump up the “Racist” factor comes the news that Zimmerman didn’t say “It’s a f****ng coon”, but rather “It’s f***ng cold“.

CNN cleaned up the audio from the 911 call.  I took a listen to it.  While some quibble, it seemed pretty clear to me that Zimmerman was saying it was “f****ng cold”.  You be the judge.

If that’s the case – and I believe it is – then what we have here is a case of the media (aka “Obama’s Praetorian Guard”) committing a series of calculated lies, or at least making a curiously congruent set of unwarranted assumptions, that might not have been carefully designed to whip up racial tensions on the part of blacks (to draw their attention away from their catastrophic unemployment rate under Obama) and against civilian gun ownership (so as to make white liberals like “Spotty“, among many others, care about just another dead black kid) – but it’s hard to see how events and news would have unfolded differently if they had been trying.

We saw all of this here in the Twin Cities last fall with the Evanovich case; until Mike Freeman, the Henco prosecutor, exonerated the shooter, the local media was doing its absolute level best to whip up exactly the same combination of racial and anti-gun frenzy.

I was going to invoke Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”  But it doesn’t completely appliy.  It’s actually a contender to be a corollary to Berg Seven, if not a law unto itself:

“Any time the liberal media (to say nothing of leftyblogs) “reports” on guns or race, they should be distrusted but verified.  And then, almost invariably, distrusted some more“.

I lost count of the cases in point decades ago.

Let me make a coupile of things crystal clear, lest the idiocracy that is the Twin Cities Sorosphere try to make hay by gang-raping the context of what I’m about to write:

• In a self-defense shooting, nobody wins. As you are repeatedly told in carry permit training, having to kill someone in justified self-defense is the second-worst possiible outcome.  While most defensive gun uses involve no shots being fired – like, about 98% of them – there are usually around 1,000 homicides in the US every year that are ruled justifiable.  Most of them leave behind a family mourning someone whose life took a tragic turn – and one shooter who has to live with one of the most terrible moral conundra known to man for the rest of their life.   And even when it’s as justifiable as can be – a 100 poiund woman killing a 250 pound stalker with a sexual predator record longer than the woman’s legs – it’s almost always a tragedy for someone, and almost always a psychologically, to say nothing of financially, scarring event for the person who did the shooting, no matter how justified it was.
• I’m a parent.  In particular, I’m a parent who’s had all sorts of trouble raising teenagers (although not nearly as much trouble as one particularly loathsome, depraved, morally retarded and, I think, disturbed leftyblogger would have people believe).  Whenever I hear of some teenager and their family coming to grief in some awful tragedy – a car crash, suicide, overdose, a prank, stunt or impulsive criminal act gone wrong, or whatever – think “there but for the grace of God went I and mine”.  Defusing IEDs is nothing compared to the impulses of a hormone-addled teenager under the best of circumstances.  If the circumstances aren’t “the best?”  Ugh.

With that said; did you hear that hissing sound?  That was the sound of a media/liberal narrative starting to go flat (with emphasis added on occasion):

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law enforcement authorities have revealed to the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. There have been no reports that a witness saw that initial punch Zimmerman told police about.

Bear in mind, this is Zimmerman’s account – as, apparently, corroborated by witnesses.  This is far from a final report from the investigators, much less any indication of what the county attorney, much less the Feds, will end up doing.

This is what the newspaper has learned about Zimmerman’s account to investigators:

He said he was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father’s fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

And so on, and so on.

This is no more final and definitive than the left’s hooting and hollering about “murder” and “stalking” and “profiling” were last week…

…except that this time it’s the police, rather than Media Matters (and you can expect a campaign to discredit the police department and prosecutors from the left’s chanting points bots next).

Two facts here:

First: under Florida law, Zimmerman is considered innocent until proven guilty:  since it’s a plausible (!) self-defense claim, it’s the police and prosecutors’ job to prove he wasn’t in legitimate fear of death or great bodily harm, that he used excessive force, and that he was a willing participant.  As a result, expect Media Matters and, eventually, the media to start second-guessing the whole Fifth Amendment thing when they really really really want to find someone guilty of something.

Second? The Administration has to be getting nervous.  As we discussed yesterday, the Administration needs this incident to keep their constituents – Afro-Americans and lily-white urban liberals – whipped up. But lynch mobs have short attention spans, especially if they can’t actually lynch anyone.

As I said when the shoe was on the other foot and the media was telling us in lock-step that Zimmerman was a cold-blooded murderer – we don’t know everything yet.

And by “we”, I mean “and that means you too, liberal know-it-all who believes anything the media has to say about anything”.

Sandra Fluke got laid off from her position as “Obama Administration Stage Prop”.

Trayvon Martin has the gig now.

I’ve been pondering why the Administration has been going so long on the Martin case.

Certainly the Obama administration has hated guns all along; the President tried use the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to pin responsibility for Mexico’s ‘drug wars on the law-abiding American gun owner.  The fact that the media has been so utterly hands-off with “Fast and Furious” should show you just what an explosive scandal it should be; the Government trying to set up the majority of its own population?

Can you imagine what they’d have said if George W. Bush had used the FBI to set up a sting to try to blame 9/11 on Democrats, purely for political gain on a wedge issue?

So of course, Obama would like to find some way to take a chunk out of firearm rights, a movement that has spit in the eye of the left and (are you listening, MNGOP Legislative caucus) won, and won consistently for the past thirty years, by setting its bar high and not compromising on core principle

But gun control is only part of the story.

Here’s the real story: Afro-Americans are losing their enthusiasm for Obama.   Oh, not in a way that’ll lose him the black vote – but Obama’s initial election depended entirely on a whipped up base.  Obama is going to face an uphill fight getting his based whipped up, though; whatever “recovery” we’re in has largely skipped the black community; the black unemployment rate of 14% (actually up in the past month) only tells part of the story; while 59.6% of the general population is actually working, only 53% of the black working-age population has a job.

That’s catastrophic.  Not only has the black community not gotten any of the hopey-changey yet, it’s inescapable that if you’re black in America, you are worse off than you were four years ago.

Of course, a black kid getting killed is hardly news.  It’s sad but true; it happens all the time.  And the white liberal media could hardly care less; confronting the horrendous death and incarceration rate among black youth – to say nothing of black unemployment – would force them to confront liberalism’s failures, which means confronting its institutional racism.   So while the possibly unjust death of a young black man may be good for enthusiasm points, if it doesn’t get media coverage, it’s the proverbial tree falling alone in a forest.

But when you combine a dead black kid with an issue that does get the white liberal media exercised – their fear of citizens with guns?  You’ve got political gold.  Suddenly, you’ve got media coverage!

And that’s why Trayvon Martin is in the news, and Sandra Fluke is out.  Every dim-bulb that can be fooled into thinking “Republicans will ban contraception” has already been fooled.  Now it’s time to hoodwink the ones that think Republicans want to arm white people to kill black people.

And the media – wittingly or not – is totally on board with that.

Can you imagine a “White People For Romney” group?

No?

Because it’d be roundly condemned on all sides of the aisle, right?

Just remember – “Republicans and conservatives…

…are obsessed with race”.

No, keep saying it!

Remember – the only reason not to vote for a utopian socialist who believes in radically transforming American society and the economy, who has a three year record of failure and is the worst president of your lifetime is…because he’s black.

No other reason could possibly exist!

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus note that if the Obamessiah weren’t president, they’d be ‘marching on the White House’:

Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

So…why not march?

I mean, all us crackers did it, right?

“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”

In other words, the only reason not to march is…racism

Run a conservative African-American – Alan West or Condi Rice or Thomas Sowell, for all I care – against a white, nay Scandanavian, liberal.

Who do you think I’ll vote for?

Does it make me an anti-white “racist?”

Empirical research has proven in recent years that people who favor smaller government, by whatever label – conservatives, Tea Partiers, whatever – are smarter, better-informed, better-educated and more generally successful at life, are generally happier, more generous,  and are even better in bed than big-government people by whatever label (liberal, “progressive’, yadda yadda).

And now, we have proof that not only are we as a whole less racist than big-government advocates…:

Social scientists usually measure traditional racism against African Americans by looking at the survey responses of white Americans only. Among whites in the latest General Social Survey (2008), only 4.5% of small-government advocates express the view that “most Blacks/African-Americans have less in-born ability to learn,” compared to 12.3% of those who favor bigger government or take a middle position expressing this racist view (Figure 2). We social scientists sometimes like to express things in relative odds, especially for small percentages. Here the odds of small government whites not expressing racist views (21-to-1 odds) is three times higher than the odds of big-government whites not being racist (7-to-1 odds).

…but that we long-abused white male small-government are, empirically, the least-racist subgroup of all, by a whopping margin:

Figure 3 shows that, among whites, Republican advocates of smaller government are even less racist (1.3% believing that blacks have less in-born ability) than the rest of the general public (11.3% expressing racist views). Thus, in 2008 Republicans who believe that the government in Washington does too much have 10 times higher odds of not expressing racist views on the in-born ability question than the rest of the population (79-to-1 odds v. 7.9-to-1 odds).

How social conservatives who aren’t necessarily small-government – stereotypically southern?

Yep – still half as likely to be a racist as a typical American:

In 2008, only 5.4% of white conservative Republicans expressed racist views on the in-born ability question, compared to 10.3% of the rest of the white population.

An aberration – perhaps caused by all that messianic hopey-changey twaddle?

Nope:

In sixteen surveys from 1977 through 2008 (Figure 4), overall white Republicans were significantly less racist on the in-born ability question than white Democrats (13.3% to 17.3%), and white conservative Republicans were significantly less racist than other white Americans (11.7% to 14.7%), though in most surveys the differences were too small to be significant taken individually — and in the 1993 survey, the relationship was reversed: conservative Republicans were significantly more racist on the racial inheritance question than the rest of the public.

Another traditional racism question — on segregated neighborhoods — was asked on fifteen General Social Surveys from 1972 through 1996. Though the percentage of white Democrats and white Republicans who slightly or strongly agreed that “White people have a right to keep Blacks out of their neighborhoods” did not differ significantly in any one survey, overall white Democrats were significantly more likely to support segregated neighborhoods than white Republicans (30.4% to 26.3%).

Quite clearly, the legacy of Nixon’s “southern strategy” – which was never especially racist in its own right – is long dead.

The Dems’ “racism of low expectations” is, in fact, just racism.

Maybe we need some sort of outreach program to, I dunno, judge people by the contents of their hearts rather than the color of their skin.

As I worked in my office yesterday, over my shoulder the television set to Bloomberg, I heard President Obama step to the press conference podium. Blah blah blah, me me me, etcetera, and then I heard a familiar voice from the eighties and it wasn’t Michael J. Fox or Duran Duran.

With Mr. Obama standing largely silently at his side, Mr. Clinton took over the lectern to lend his backing to the tax compromise the White House reached this week with Republicans.

As the television buzzed in the background, I came to realize that Clinton had been talking for a while and yet went on…and on and on and on. I swung around to look at the screen, and President Obama…was gone! I wondered if Clinton has the nuke codes now too?

And then Mr. Clinton went on, for half an hour, answering questions and holding forth on topics from triangulation to Haiti to the mortgage crisis and the nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

…and cigars? No?

Hey Barry, at least your old teleprompter had an off switch.

Barack Obama is the man who swept America off her feet (and to complete the metaphor, slipped her a mickey and violated her as she lay unconscious). A scant two years later, his political capital is so deeply overdrawn that he needs a loan from Bill Clinton to sell his compromise to his own party.

But after Mr. Clinton began taking questions, the current president politely interjected that Michelle Obama was expecting him at one of the many holiday parties that presidents host during December.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting,” Mr. Obama said.

Best not do that with Bill Clinton in the House. You might find him on your spouse.

Chalk up the list of minority groups on whose votes the Minnesota DFL party believes they can count, no matter how brazenly they abuse them; blacks, women, gays, asians, latinos…

…Catholics?

This is a mailer the DFL sent out:

… a picture of a priest wearing a button that says “Ignore the Poor”.

The picture takes up the entire side of the postcard!

How low has the DFL party sunk that they would mail out pictures of a priest urging people to ignore the poor?

In their haste to try to run from the Democrat agenda of Higher Taxes and ever more Inefficient, Ineffective and Expensive Government programs, the DFL has gone too far.

The other side of the postcard talks about Government Health Care. Government run health care means the end of Catholic Hospitals. I guess the Democrats have to demonize Catholics in order to justify their stand on Government Run Health Care

I’ve long since given up on Minnesota Catholics following their church’s direction on, say, abortion; apparently those that convenience doesn’t win over, ideology trumps.

But Catholic Charities is not only among Minnesota’s largest charities – it’s among its most efficient, in terms of dollars reaching the actual poor.

Are Minnesota’s catholics satisfied being yet another kick toy for the DFL to demonize with impunity?

CORRECTION:  I inadvertently credited the postcard to the DFL Central Committee.  It’s actually the DFL State Committee.  I have  corrected the error, and regret any confusion caused by my mistake.

Florida will see the biggest slime-attack of its entire history…

…against Jennifer Carroll.

Carroll, a native of Trinidad, a retired Navy Lieutenant-Commander, a mother of three, an immigrant from Trinidad, and a conservative, is Rick Scott’s new running mate on the Florida GOP gubenatorial ticket.

Oh, yeah; she’s of African descent:

“Jennifer Carroll is the embodiment of the American dream. She came to America as a young girl, decided to serve her country with the United States Navy, pursued a higher education, started a small business, and then was elected the first African-American female Republican in the Florida Legislature,” said Scott, who launched a new website featuring his new running mate (www.ScottCarrollforFlorida.com).

“Her conservative principles are in line with mine, and this fall we will present a clear choice between conservatives with business experience and a plan to create 700,000 jobs and liberal Obamacrats who want to bring the failed Obama agenda to Florida,” Scott said in a statement to his supporters.

Ms. Carroll looks to be a very, very sharp candidate.

Look for a Democratic smear campaign painting her as stupid, unaccomplished and, most likely, racist; look for at least one “Auntie Tom” reference from a C-list pseudo-celebrity.

She’s the thing the left fears most; an apostate.

(Via E-Mo)

J. Christian Adams on the Administration’s intercession in the Black Panther voter intimidation case.

Read the whole thing; it explains the legal vacuity and the legal incompetence of the Administration’s actions (dismissing the case despite clear and overwhelming evidence of federal violations).

But the conclusion is worse:

Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it “payback time.” Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.

Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.

Just keep chanting, liberals; “conservatives are racist; conservatives are racist;conservatives are racist;conservatives are racist;conservatives are racist…”

ME:  Hi!

REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL):  Conservatism is fundamentally racist!

ME: Um – beg your pardon?

“RGOL”:  Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism!

ME:  OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument.  Do tell!

“RGOL”:  Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists to the GOP!

ME: Er, let’s get back to “the south” in a bit here.  You did read my post last week about Jacob Weisberg’s article in that noted racist conservative hangout Slate, that noted there are distinct differences between Northeastern, Southern and Western conservatism, right?  How Northeastern conservatism is largely comfortable with big government but with an emphasis on making big government more fiscally sane – think Mitt Romney – and race is largely a non-entity, and in fact part of the roots of Northeastern conservatism are at least partly in the abolition movement?  And how Western conservatism, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is fundamentally libertarian, which means racism is anathema, since libertarian government is utterly color blind, and all real racism – the racism that makes people unequal before the law – is entirely a function of excessive and illegitimate government power, right?  Which leaves southern conservatism, which certainly had racists among its adherents, but whose fundamental “racism” is at least partly a matter of framing by, well liberals?

“RGOL”:  Of course we did.  Now – look at this list of southern conservatives and the racist things they’ve said…

ME: OK, you’re more or less dodging the point here.  Can individuals be racist?  Certainly.  I mean, every human in the world is a “we-ist”, more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.

“RGOL”:  Right.  Like conservatism!

ME:  Well, no.  Liberals too.  I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…

“RGOL”:  Hah!  Dumb redneck wingnut!

ME:  …or an NRA member…

“RGOL”:  Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!

ME: ….right, or Sarah Palin…

“RGOL”:  Hahahahaha!  She went to community college!  Trig is Bristol’s baby!  She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …

ME:  …or the Japanese…

“RGOL”:  Er…what?

ME:  Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.

“RGOL”: …

ME: OK, fine, it was seventy years ago.  Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism”  seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.

To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!

“RGOL”:  What are you talking about?

ME: For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.

“RGOL”:  Right!   Conservatism supports slavery!

ME:  {{facepalm}} No.  No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination.  And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…

“RGOL”:  Bosses!  Bosses!

ME: …right.  They largely opposed Jim Crow, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!

“RGOL”:  But the southerners were racists!  And Nixon brought them into the GOP!

ME:  Well, no and yes and no.  The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states.  And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does.  Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress.  The framing of all southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological.  Just watch:  “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.

“RGOL”:  But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…

ME:  Thanks.  I rest my case.

“RGOL”:  …um…

ME:  Move along.

“RGOL”:  Yeah?  Well…what about Arizona?

ME:  Jeez.  More framing.  The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders.  That is one of the missions of government, no?

“RGOL”:  But it’s racist!

ME:   Huh?  Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?

“RGOL”:  But that’s just dumb.

ME:  What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?

“RGOL”:  Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…

ME:  Er, yeah.  Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?

“RGOL”:  Er…huh?

ME:  …

“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.

ME:  Riiiiight.

Bob Collins at MPR’s NewsCut NewsQ Gather.com posts a picture…:

Notice the sign with the little arrow by it? Click for a larger view. Photo by Bob Collins.

…showing a sign saying “Tax Cuts: Even A Monkey Can Do It”.   That’d be one sign, out of hundreds of signs and thousands of people at the Jason Lewis Tax Cut rally, with a (possibly) racist overtone.

Was that the sign’s intent?  “A monkey could do it” is a not-uncommon way of saying “Duh”; the Bush years saw more than a few “Chimp” references that passed without (disapproving) comment from the mainstream media.

If it was racist – was it a tax protester, or one of the ringers sent from the left to stand by the media’s cameras to smear the tea party?

We don’t know.  Bob Collins didn’t check.  Perhaps it was because it didn’t fit the narrative that the media has set up about the Tea Party, which both the WaPo article and (wittingly or not) Collins extend – that it’s racist until proven otherwise.  Or maybe he didn’t feel like walking through the crowd to check.  We’ll never know.  For the media’s narrative about the Tea Parties, “knowing” might be inconvenient.

Not sure if Bob ever asked Jess Mador how many racists signs were at the 4/15 rally?  There were none.  Partly, I’m sure, because the Tea Party publicized the fact that its security people would have cameras, and would be actively looking for scabrous signs, to post on blogs and run down identities.  I’m not sure that that would have kept a racist away – it’s not like they read blogs.  We don’t know.  But there was not one single racist sign at the rally, and near as we can tell only one questionable one at the Jason Lewis rally last weekend.

Collins adds a bit from a WaPo article quoting a few Tea Partiers and bunch of Democrat pundits saying the Tea Party is “fighting a perception” of racism – that, nobody adds, was largely a media meme in the first place, borne of cameras lingering and editors drooling over signs at previous rallies that were – let’s be blunt – spectacularly non-representative of the Tea Parties as a whole.  “But nearly three in 10 see racial prejudice as underlying the tea party”, the article says, elaborating that “About 61 percent of tea party opponents say racism has a lot to do with the movement, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party supporters.”  In other words, the left – which includes the media – spreads the meme that supports their prejudices; the Tea Party itself rebukes the idea.

How to get to the bottom of this?

I invite Bob Collins to come with me to the next Tea Party event.  We’ll skip the usual MPR Reporter drill – hanging out in front of the crowd taping speakers.  We can wander around there the real fun is; the middle of the crowd, the fringers, the vendor row, where all the real conversation happens.  Y’know – doing a crowd on the dynamics of a grass-roots movement by actually meeting the movement.

Pass the word.

Ask any parent; teenagers are morons.  Even the supposedly-smart valedictorian ones supposedly bound for the Ivy League; indeed, if teenagers don’t get their stupidity out of the way, they wind up as Robert Gibbs.

But I digress; another group of teenage bobbleheads has incited a racial incident in Jersey:

For the second time in less than a month, a New Jersey teenager has been arrested for allegedly making a racist announcement over a store’s public address system.

The latest incident happened over the weekend at the Whole Foods Market on River Road in Edgewater, according to the Bergen Record.

A 14-year-old girl reportedly grabbed the microphone at the store’s courtesy desk and said, “All blacks leave the store.”

Now, let’s be clear; duh.  Duuuu-uuuuuu-uuuuuh.  If either of my kids did this, I’d kick their asses, and never stop kicking.

Which would, indeed, be a better idea than what actually did happen:

A store employee immediately called the police, according to the Record, and the girl and a 14-year-old boy who was with her were taken into custody moments later.

The girl is reportedly charged with bias intimidation and harassment.

“Intimidation”?  An idiot 14 year old girl?

I’m trying to think if there’s anything about this incident that couldn’t have been better handled by a couple of irate black customers pinning the little scumbags to the wall by their hair and giving them what-for until they were ready to slink away beneath their own shadows.

Now, I’ve never bought into the “the media made me do it” defense – but if you’re a not very bright teenager, you’ve literally spent much of your cognitive life in a society where Eric Cartman and Chris Rock say exactly that kind of thing, and it’s considered edgy comedy.

“But it’s just common sense…” is the response I expect – from people who don’t have teenagers.

At any rate – what does it say about our society that “a couple of kids saying something stupid and racist on an intercom” is “intimidation”?   It’s audible vandalism, of course, and it should be the sort of thing a store could sue the kids over; it damaged the image of WalMart and Whole Foods. 

But am I the only one wondering who would actually call it “indimidation?”

If there’s anyone that an extremist hates worse than their enemies, it’s an apostate.

For example, in all the decades of the battle between Palestinians and Israelis, the most dangerous thing to be remains a moderate Arab.

Likewise, to the American left, there’s no evil worse than any of “their” constituents – blacks, women, latinos, gays – going over to “the enemy”.

Now, there are plenty of conservative women, and they come in for some pretty mind-numbing disgraceful abuse if they rise to any kind of prominence.  But it was a partly academic exercise with blacks and Latinos for a long time; there are black, latino and asian conservatives, but not enough to make for a trend.

Now, of course, significant numbers of blacks are joining the Tea Parties.  How’s the left taking it?

Oh, how do you think?

“I’ve been told I hate myself. I’ve been called an Uncle Tom. I’ve been told I’m a spook at the door,” said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.

“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,” he said.

Johnson and other black conservatives say they were drawn to the tea party movement because of what they consider its commonsense fiscal values of controlled spending, less taxes and smaller government. The fact that they’re black—or that most tea partyers are white—should have nothing to do with it, they say.

“You have to be honest and true to yourself. What am I supposed to do, vote Democratic just to be popular? Just to fit in?” asked Clifton Bazar, a 45-year-old New Jersey freelance photographer and conservative blogger.

Opponents have branded the tea party as a group of racists hiding behind economic concerns—and reports that some tea partyers were lobbing racist slurs at black congressmen during last month’s heated health care vote give them ammunition.

The reports were, in every case, lies; the $100,000 Andrew Breitbart offered for proof that anyone had actually lobbed a slur remains pristinely unclaimed.

But the larger point – that the left attacks black conservatives, as well as any of “its” voters, women or latinos, asians and gays – that start thinking for themselves – is more important.

I’ve repeatedly asked liberals to show me a single instance of a conservative woman, black or latino that their movement, and usually they themselves, haven’t tried to destroy.  The question remains unanswered.

I don’t think it’s going to change.

Kevin Jackson, owner of Black Sphere.net, is worth checking out…

A few weeks ago, someone in Saint Cloud posted a fairly scabrously racist poster, defaming the Somali community.

My friend and radio colleague King Banaian, who is not one to cry “racism” prematurely,  says the poster was pretty bad.  And the “somali community” took, at least at first blush, the course every real American should take; by meeting bad speech with more, better speech.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, along with the one Somali speaker, they recruited some SCSU faculty.  And university faculty are (King’s company excepted) rarely people to go to for “real American” responses to anything:

Somalis are upset, and rightly so. When the campus announced that its Somali student organization wanted to hold a speak-out, that seemed a very reasonable thing to do. The best way to deal with hateful acts is by speaking about them. But the news report this morning about this event contains two statements that I found deviated from speaking against the cartoon. And, unfortunately not a surprise, it comes from two faculty. First,

Luke Tripp, a professor of community studies, said the same “conservative white” mind-set led to the election of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater.

So is it that voting for Rep. Bachmann (as a thin plurality did in the past two elections, which were famously awful for Republicans at large) makes you a racist?  Or that being a racist (as Mr. Tripp apparently believes most “conservative whites” are) make you vote for Michele Bachmann? 

Or both?

King:

This is an outrageous accusation. It says that anyone who voted for Rep. Bachmann has the same mind-set as the scribbler, is capable of being the scribbler, and is a reprobate. By what perverted analysis do you determine the moral principles of tens of thousands of area citizens that voted for this woman, many of them twice?

[Need I remind you – there’s your tax dollars at work!]

What inspires a man to take a speak out against hateful speech of his students as an opportunity to engage in the worst stereotyping of political opponents?

How do we count the ways?

Because academia, especially in lefty bullpens like “Community Studies”, promotes both extremism (and its bedfellow, bigotry) and unaccountability?

Because “Professor” Luke Tripp, who lives a comfy, cushy life as an (I’ll assume) tenured professor in a make-work “discipline” that is essentially a left-wing echo chamber, has developed both a deep sense of the bigotry that acc0mpanies marinading ones’ intellect in comfortable agreement for a whole career, and the tendency of too many such academics to say what they want, and hiding behind “academic freedom” to prevent himself from being held accountable?

Mr. Tripp; I invite you to come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network one of these weekends to defend your defamatory claim; I invite my St. Cloud and SCSU area readers to please forward this challenge to “Professor” Tripp (not that I think he has either the intellectual integrity or the balls to take me up on it).

I collect great speeches.  I’ve got a whole slew of big ones; Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” and the “Dunkirk” speech, Reagan’s “Shining City” and “A Time for Choosing” and the Brandenburg Gate speech, Kennedy’s “To The Moon!” and his Little Rock speech, “I Have A Dream”…

…and about a year ago, I finally got a copy of Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been To The Mountain“, made the day before he was assassinated.  And while I’ve been hearing about the speech for decades, it’s amazing to listen to.  Some speeches inspire you; some make you angry; “I’ve Been To The Mountain” is a little of everything, but also draining.  It is almost emotionally exhausting to listen to. 

But it’s worth a listen; it’s one of the greatest speeches in American history.

Part I

Part II

It ends with an account of a near-death experience when a woman tried to stab him, years ago in New York.   

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.

And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Well worth a listen.

…in weather a lot like this, that the Battle of the Bulge started.

I thought about that yesterday, as I wrestled with a cold car; “how much more fun would this be if I’d spent the night in a three foot deep foxhole, with no sleep, wrapped in an overcoat and old newspapers?

Here’s an old Army newsreel of the battle, in that classic forties newsreel style.

The Bulge was such a huge story – even 65 years later, it’s hard to know where to start.  So much of it is well-known – the 101st Airborne (and 7th Armored) at Bastogne; Patton’s epic counterattack; the story of thousands of Americans, cut off from higher authority and on their own in atrocious winter conditions, adapting and persisting and eventually prevailing against the Nazi onslaught.

But there are two stories I usually return to, over and over.

One of the great stories of the battle – one that was more or less untold until the eighties – was that of Lieutenant Lyle Bouck and the Intelligence and Reconaissance platoon of the 394th Infantry Regiment – eighteen guys with three machine guns and orders to hold an isolated hill near the Belgian village of Lanzerath, astride one of the huge gaps in the American lines. 

Lanzerath, and the monument to Bouck's platoon, today

An entire German airborne regiment was charged with clearing the hill to make way for the SS Panzergrenadiers of Colonel Joachim Peiper – the elite  stormtroopers who were going to be the tip of the spear that would drive all the way to Antwerp and, according to Hitler’s plan, divide the Allied armies and make victory over Germany impossible.

But the nineteen-man platoon held off the entire German regiment for 24 hours, killing hundreds of paratroopers, delaying Peiper’s breakthrough; not long enough to prevent Peiper from driving all the way to Dinant (the peak of the “bulge”), but long enough that the reinforcements that finally did arrive on the scene were able to hit Peiper’s flank rather than watch his dust (or blowing snow) disappearing in the west.

Bouck’s platoon were captured after they ran out of ammunition.  One man died; the rest spent four months in POW camps.  When released from the POW camp, Bouck was too ill to file an after-action report – and reportedly didn’t think they’d done anything especially notable anyway.  And so the events didn’t get formally commemorated until 1981.

Every single member of the platoon was decorated for their actions that day – making them the most-decorated platoon-sized unit of the entire war:

• PFC William James Tsakanikas (DSC)
• Tech. Sgt. William L. Slape (DSC)
• PFC Risto Milsovech (DSC)
• First Lt. Lyle J. Bouck Jr. (DSC)
• Pvt. John B. Creger (Silver Star)
• Pvt. Louis J. Kalil (Silver Star)
• Cpl. Aubrey P. McGeehee (Silver Star)
• PFC Jordan H. Robinson (Silver Star)
• Pvt. James R. Silvola (Silver Star)
• Pvt. Robert D. Adams (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Pvt. Robert D. Baasch (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Sgt. William D. Dustman (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Pvt. Clifford R. Fansher (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• T/3 James Fort (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Cpl. Samuel L. Jenkins (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Pvt. Joseph A. McConnell (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Cpl. Robert H. Preston (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)
• Sgt. George H. Redmond (Bronze Star Medal with V device for heroism)

Another of the stories – more mixed, in this case – was that the Battle of the Bulge was the beginning of the end of segregation in the military and, in turn, the United States.  Theretofore, most African-Americans in the Army served in labor units, digging ditches and building airfields and burying the dead.  Much of the work was crucial; most of the supply trucks that supported Patton’s blitz through France in 1944 had black drivers.  But it was the considered opinion of many officers, from Eisenhower and Patton to the US Army’s personnel director, General Robert E. Lee (not making that up) that blacks lacked the courage and intelligence to serve as good combat soldiers.

Pressure from the Roosevelt adminstration knocked a few cracks into the system; the Army Air Force trained 1,000 black pilots, including the celebrated “Tuskeegee Airmen”; the Marines, two segregated combat battalions; the Army, a number of combat and combat support units along with some of the traditional black “Buffalo Soldier” units, dating back to the Civil War; the white-led 92dn Infantry Division led the way in Italy, and the 761st Tank Battalion (immortalized in a fantastic book by none other than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) spearheaded Patton’s relief of Bastogne:

A Sherman of the 761st "Black Panther" Tank Battalion

A black light-anti-aircraft battalion had the highest score of any AA gun unit in Europe.

But during the Bulge, the casualties spiked horribly; the replacement depots’ supplies of white replacement troops dried up.  The call went out to the labor, mechanics and truck units, looking for volunteers.  Thousands stepped up; while the plan was to keep them in segregated platoons.  But as the friction of combat ground the plans down, the platoons became squads mixed into white platoons, and soon black soldiers in squads with white troops.  By the end of the Battle, black and white troops were bunking together in confiscated houses. 

It’d be great to say the Army learned its lesson – but it wouldn’t be true.  Once the dust died down, the Army resegregated the troops; the white troops earned points for combat service, while the black ones plodded along through menial service jobs.  It took three more years before Truman desegregated the military. 

But the experience at the Bulge was one of the key experiences that discredited the institutional belief in the inferiority of blacks as soldiers.

For all these years, I thought that being “African-American” was a combination of African-descended ethnicity and, at some level, some stake in the cultural history involving slavery, reconstruction and the battle for civil rights.

Silly me.

It’s all about supporting Obama, no matter what:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Well, there you have it!

I was going to give the President kudos for making this observation while on the Letterman show during the media’s Obamapalooza this past few days…:

Addressing suggestions that recent criticism of his health care reform efforts has been grounded in racism, President Obama this afternoon quipped, “I think it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election.”…

…Mr. Obama said the notion that racism is playing a role in the criticism, which has been voiced by former President Jimmy Carter and others, is countered in part by the fact that he was elected in the first place – which, he said, “tells you a lot about where the country’s at.”

Well, that’s cool. 

But the kudo-ing is somewhat tempered by the knowledge that the President can afford to take the high road.  He’s got all sorts of flaks, minions and stooges who are on the payroll to do all the dirty, uncivil, defamatory work for him:

Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, issued the following statement today regarding recent attempts of right wing extremists to silence working families by attacking progressive individuals and community organizations:

“This is a moment of profound change for this country–from kitchen tables to town halls to the floor of the Senate, this nation is engaged in a vigorous and heated debate about how we rebuild our economy, solve our national healthcare crisis and restore the American Dream.

“As has always happened when progressive change is in the air, the backlash gets fierce, ugly and anti-American. This time is no different. Right now, there is an insidious and coordinated effort on the part of the extreme right to target individuals and grassroots community groups as a way to silence the voices of women and men who have suffered the most under 8 years of right wing policies.

“These extremists will attempt to shut down and shout down anyone with a different point of view.

Why, yes, that’d be Andy Stern of the SEIU, whose goons actually did silence people at last month’s Town Hall rallies.  But don’t dare call them un-American, mind you.  As someone who (unlike most DFLers) is a former union member, I’m ashamed at Stern’s disingenuity.

And of course, Jimmuh Cartuh, Babs Boxer, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are still roaming around trying to defame all who dissent.

But hey – at least the President said the right thing.  Right?

New York Governor David Paterson is afro-American.

Therefore the only reason to want him out of office is racism:

National Democratic Party leaders have asked Gov. David Paterson to consider withdrawing from the 2010 governor’s race, according to two senior New York Democratic advisers…

…The New York Times, which originally reported the request on its Web site, said that it was President Barack Obama who asked Paterson to withdraw.

Racists!  And probably Nazis to boot!

To: Jimmy Carter

Of course, had I known thirty years ago that you were not only an incompetent idiot, but…

Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst to President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress last week was an act “based on racism” and rooted in fears of a black president.

“I think it’s based on racism,” Carter said in response to an audience question at a town hall held at his presidential center in Atlanta. “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”

…a corrosively stupid person, it would have made the choice all the easier.

That is all.