President Obama's Inaugural Speech

I listened to President Obama's inaugural speech after the fact, because I was immersed in 1884 and forgot the time while transcribing a letter written by Edward McCarty Armstrong, Tom's great-great grandfather. Edward McCarty Armstrong was  a "good" man in many ways but a man who was on the wrong side of history and steeped in the myth of the Confederacy for which he had fought, a man who, in 1884, wrote to his son, recently moved from Virginia to Texas, about his happiness that the Democratic party of the Old South had taken back the legislature. The man elected that year, Major Daniel, mentioned by name by EMA, was later to participate in the Virginia Constitution of 1902, which instituted Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising African-Americans who had been given that right in the Virginia constitution of 1870--other Southern states were doing the same.

And so the South stood -- segregated, resistant to Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation with its institution of  "slavery by another name"-- until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an act which was avidly opposed by another Democrat and segregationist from Virginia, Chairman of the Rules Committee, Howard W. Smith. But President Johnson, a Democrat, too, from the South, used the bully pulpit of the presidency to help get the votes for the act, and an unprecedented parliamentary procedure enabled the bill to be moved to the Senate floor for debate.

With the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democratic party lost the segregationists of the Old South (and over the next few years, much of its southern support). We would do well to remember this history in our time, when certain forces are again calling for the passing of laws that would disenfranchise particular populations of our citizens, using the same language of the legislators of the Old South--ostensibly to prevent voting "fraud."

With this history so vividly called to mind by my research and my reading of old family letters, I was even more moved by the words of President Obama:

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."

The Day After

This is how my world looks the day after the 2012 presidential election. The only difference is that the sun is shining; yesterday was cloudy.

I do not get television reception here, and I don't subscribe to cable, so I missed the up-to-the-second updates on the polls. Instead, I would periodically check online to see how the numbers were adding up for President Barack Obama. So I didn't get that euphoric feeling one gets when news outlets first flash their announcements of the predictive winner. About forty minutes after Fox News called President Obama the predictive winner and Karl Rove argued to wait until more numbers came in, I checked Facebook, where my daughter had posted that now she could finally go to bed and another young friend posted "Obama ++." I sighed with relief.

I spent this historic occasion alone, crocheting, drinking a little wine and, later, hot chocolate, and watching Miss Marple Mysteries on Netflix, with two cats curled at my feet, a perfect picture of womanish old age. Tom, my husband, was at a meeting out-of-state, at a location where he could get no cell phone or internet connection. He has yet to respond to the celebratory message I e-mailed him last night.

Life goes on, as it would have done had Romney won, except that Mitt Romney was unable to move his party away from the lunatic fringe toward a more sane center, and thus all of President Barack Obama's achievements--most notably,  the Affordable Care Act--would have been lost. Now Obama's legacy will remain, and, according to Steve Kornacki, on Salon,  even Mitt Romney will benefit from this election, going down in history as the man who made Obamacare possible with the prior health care system he enacted in Massachusetts that served as the pattern for the Affordable Care Act.  History might well forget that Romney was pressured to disavow his healthcare program in order to maintain support of that radical fringe in his party.

Yes, I voted for Barack Obama, but I also voted against a recalcitrant Republican Party. I voted against obstructionism. I voted against torture.  I voted against all those radicals who showed up at rallies screaming that Barack Obama was a socialist or Hitler or the Anti-Christ. I voted against whoever put up that huge roadside sign along I-12 in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, advertising "Satan as Barack Obama." I voted against hate. I voted against racism. 

I sure hope the Republican Party can see that a lot of people voted against the far-right wing of their party as much as for Barack Obama. But I don't hold out much hope in the short term. No, the Republican Party needs to be cast out into the wilderness for a while, and that would mean losing Congress as well as the White House, and that didn't happen this election cycle. It needs to happen. 

I don't believe in the permanent ascendency of one political party because I think when one party governs for too long, that party loses its edge and falls into corruption. We need at least two parties, and I wish we could have a viable third party. But those parties should put the needs of the country ahead of partisan politics. Sure, they do and should have different views of governing, but they need to hammer out their differences in compromise. In that respect, the Republican Party failed miserably, as its leaders were far more determined to obstruct anything a Democratic president tried to achieve than they were determined to govern. And in their obstructionism, they pandered to racism.

 As Jacob Weisberg says, Mitt Romney lost because he had to cast himself as a right-wing extremist in order to win the nomination of his party.  Romney

had to pass muster with his party’s right-wing base on taxes, immigration, climate change, abortion, and gay rights. Many of his statements on these issues were patently insincere, but that was hardly reassuring. Romney’s very insincerity and flexibility made it improbable that he would stand up to the GOP’s hyper-partisan congressional wing once elected any more than he had during the primaries. [Jacob Weisberg, "Why Mitt Lost," in Slate, 7 November 2012]

I hope that leaders of the Republican Party realize this and do some soul-searching.

Meanwhile, we've got some serious issues to address in the four years ahead, and at the top of the list should be climate change, civil rights, and economic opportunity for those who have suffered the most from the financial crisis.

Why I Won't Vote Republican

In May of this year, I began writing on this blog about why I won't vote Republican. I had intended to carry that explanation through several blog posts, but here I'm keeping my reasons to a list:

• I don't believe in governments' torturing prisoners of war, or any other type of prisoner. Mitt Romney's national advisers are some of the same assholes who advised the Bush administration to torture prisoners.  [See Charlie Savage's article in The New York Times: "Election May Decide When Interrogation Amounts to Torture," 27 September 2012.] While I am not at all happy with how President Obama has continued some of the Bush national security policies, I know that a Republican-led government would not improve on these issues. President Obama has, at least, banned "enhanced interrogation" (torture!) and closed the CIA black sites. A second Democratic presidency will give us the opportunity to argue for re-examining those other issues. In addition, Mitt Romney's foreign policy technique, as illustrated by his visit to Great Britain during the London Olympics, dispels confidence in his ability to represent our country.

•  I don't trust a party that refuses to compromise for the good of the country, that is so focused on gaining power for itself that it is willing to damage or to destroy the lives of its citizens. I have written more about that here: "Reasons not to Vote Republican: Part 1."

• I believe that we are ALL mutually interdependent upon government (which is WE, the people).  This idea so loudly trumpeted by Republicans that citizens are divided between the Makers and the Takers, between those who are dependent upon government and those who are independent Boot-strappers-by-God-built-that-myself-ers is a skewed perception of democracy. As my husband so eloquently puts it: "That whole world view is bullshit!"  (This world view is particularly laughable in that all those titans of finance who imagine themselves "Makers" took a lot--even individuals' life savings--from folks to whom they condescend and just about bankrupted the country. WHY DO PEOPLE NOT REMEMBER THIS?) Public education that provides people with knowledge to become workers and business owners; police forces that maintain law and order; state and interstate highways (subsidized with our taxes) that guarantee national commerce;  a coast guard to protect those waters full of off-shore drilling rigs, commercial fishing boats, and pleasure and sport craft; a huge military complex that provides protection to many U.S. businesses abroad as well as those of us at home--these are just a few things from which we all profit, even the 1%. So, no, I don't support someone who denies this interdependency by disparaging, condescending to, or demonizing those who are so poor they don't pay federal income taxes (though they pay other taxes--state taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes). [See David Corn's article in Mother Jones, "Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors what He Really Thinks of Obama Voters," 17 September 2012.] And Romney's last minute apology about his categorization of half of the U.S. is not convincing, especially since he double-downed on that statement several times immediately after it became public.

• Along with the condescending attitude toward the poor comes a willingness to deprive the poor of government support in healthcare. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian culture that promoted the idea that one was required to help those less fortunate, and so I don't get all bent out of shape about my taxes' going to welfare programs, such as Medicaid. Though I no longer participate in organized religion (a disaffection that came to a head during the Bush administration, as I witnessed church leaders and their congregations hurrahing torture and a war based on lies), I still believe in the ethic to care for those who cannot care for themselves, and I think government (which means US--corporations, whose wealth depends upon a stable government, and citizens) has a moral obligation to help those in need. One of my grandmothers spent her last years in a nursing home, her care supported by Medicaid. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would gut Medicaid. [See Kevin Drum's comments here: "The Romney-Ryan Plan to Obliterate Medicaid."] Medicaid is not just there for the very poor; it's available for the elderly who live middle-class lives and who find their life's savings destroyed by medical costs as they age. Mitt Romney's statement that the poor can always get medical care in the emergency room is bitterly out-of-touch. President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction in providing healthcare for most Americans and in reducing costs of healthcare. Mitt Romney has promised to repeal what could use some tweaking, not destroying.

•  I am dismayed by the increasing hostility toward science in the Republican Party. From climate change to contraception, Republicans have loudly and vociferously denied scientific research and the consensus of scientists. In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney criticized over and over President Barack Obama's economic support of green energy, and his running mate, Paul Ryan,

  has consistently voted against government efforts to tackle climate change. Like many House Republicans, he has voted to block efforts by the EPA to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. He approved an amendment that would bar the Department of Agriculture from studying how best to adapt to a warmer planet. Ryan voted to defund various climate-advisory positions within the White House. He also voted for an amendment, proposed by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), to cut $50 million from funding for ARPA-E, which funds long-shot energy research and development. [Brad Plumer, on Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, 14 August 2012]

  I mean, really.... voting to bar studies and research to determine how we can adapt to a warmer planet? How short-sighted is that!?

• Despite the financial crisis of 2007-2008, created in large part by the high-risk excesses of Wall Street and a corresponding lack of regulation, the Republican platform still calls for minimum regulation of Wall Street. I guess this explains why a CNNMoney Survey found that "[a]n overwhelming majority — 70 percent — of investment strategists and money managers in the survey say a Republican president would be better for the stock market"--even though, "as CNNMoney notes, stocks have historically performed better during Democratic administrations" [Michael Kling, "CNNMoney Survey: Wall Street Wants a Republican in the White House," 6 April 2012.]  See also how Republicans have worked to prevent implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank's Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by slashing the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission: Jack Kemp, "Wall Street and Republicans Team Up to Curb CFTC," Reuters, 7 June 2012.  Or you can read Public Citizen's report of May 2012: "Forgotten Lessons of Deregulation: Rolling Back Dodd-Frank's Derivatives Rules Would Repeat a Mistake that Led to the Financial Crisis."

•  Barack Obama and Joe Biden are not perfect men or perfect leaders, but I am not going to vote for president of this country a man who made millions of dollars saddling companies with debt. You can do a song and dance about that choice of careers all you want, claim that it's all-American in its worship of profit for investors (while workers lose their jobs), but I can't admire it. I'll choose the community organizer, conciliator, post-post partisan, introverted lawyer and current president. Also, as his chameleon performance in the first presidential debate illustrates, Mitt Romney's real beliefs are tough to pin down. Romney governed as a moderate Republican in Massachusetts but became increasingly more conservative on the campaign trail, eschewing even his own Massachusetts healthcare plan. Then, in the debate, he suddenly became moderate again, walking back on claims he had made over and over in the previous months. His running mate? Paul Ryan's world view seems to have been too much influenced by Ayn Rand. And, really, is Paul Ryan vice-presidential material, a heartbeat away from the White House?

•  I support environmental regulations; the Republican party would like to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. [See: David Roberts, "The Environment," in The Washington Monthly; Politico's "Mitt Romney Intensifies EPA Attacks"; and Think Progress' response to the Politico article, "Things Mainstream Reporters Can't Say: Mitt Romney is Lying about the Environmental Protection Agency".] Anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970s (even I, who was only just old enough to vote in 1976) remembers the ecological damage that our country suffered--acid rain, polluted rivers, chemically-fogged skies, Love Canal, lead gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency gives government a necessary tool to regulate pollution and to prepare for climate change (if we and our leaders only had the political will to do the latter).

•  I am a strong supporter of public lands; today's Republican Party (no longer the party of Teddy Roosevelt) and Mitt Romney are not so much. [See Timothy Egan's "The Geography of Nope; "Giving Reins to States over Drilling," in The New York Times; "Conservation Update: Romney Energy Plan Would Give Drilling Control on Federal Lands to States," in Field and Stream.]

• I am appalled by the Republican tactics of voter suppression. See Ruth Rosen's piece at George Mason University's History News Network: "Voter Suppression: The Unraveling of American Democracy." Or listen to local voices, such as those of The Plain Dealer's editorial board in Cleveland, Ohio: "Republicans want to limit last-minute early voting, which in 2008 was most heavily used by less-affluent, minority voters." Or listen to the voices of state Republican leaders--links in Timothy Noah's piece: "'47 Percent'--Voter ID Link Proved." See The Atlantic's piece on True the Vote: "The Ballot Cops,"; Common Cause's "Bullies at the Ballot Box"; Justin Levitt's "The Truth About Voter Fraud," on the Brennan Center for Justice website.  Get updates on voter ID laws here: "Voter Identification Requirements," on the website of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

• I support marriage equality. Making it legal for adults of the same sex to marry neither threatens our democracy nor my own (34-year) heterosexual marriage, and it provides legal protection for gays and lesbians who want to raise families, to support one another financially, and to care for one another in sickness and health. Although there may be "a growing awareness among prominent Republicans that embracing marriage equality could broaden the party’s base and soften the party’s image in crucial ways," the leaders now on marriage equality are Democrats [Frank Bruni, "The G. O. P.'s Gay Trajectory," The New York Times, 9 June 2012].

•  I believe that abortion should be legal and that the decision to have an abortion be a private matter between a woman, her medical provider, and her own conscience. The Republican Party's platform states that "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed" and that "the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children."  That strongly-worded statement pretty much turns over a pregnant woman's decision making to the federal government. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or mother's medical condition. Imagine the consequences if such a view became law. 

• I am mightily suspicious of the support of these guys and these guys of the Republican Party. What they expect to gain can only hurt the rest of us democratic, freedom-of-religion types.

•  We had eight years of a disastrous Republican presidency under George W. Bush. Mitt Romney is proposing nothing substantially different from a Bush presidency.  His message contains the same warmongering, regulation cutting, tax cutting mantra that brought us two wars, a horrendous deficit, and a financial crisis that almost blew up the country. As my husband says, "Willard" is just W-2.

What Mitt Romney Really Thinks of Us

Yes, I'm offended that Mitt Romney has this to say about people who support Barack Obama:

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 the 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…These are people who pay no income tax. ["Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters," David Corn, in Mother Jones, 17 September 2012.]

The guy who wants to be president of these United States believes that half of Americans think they are "victims" and don't "take responsibility and care for their lives." What arrogance.

And he's back to that stupid "no income tax" meme. Hey, Mitt, those same people pay sales taxes, state taxes, and payroll taxes. And guess what? A bunch of the 47% of folks who DON'T MAKE ENOUGH MONEY to pay federal income taxes (the elderly, college students, the poor) are voting for you because they think you support their values and that you're in their corner. What a joke on them.

Note:
See "Why the Poor Pay No Federal Income Tax: A Wee Tutorial," Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, 17 Sept. 2012.

See also, "The 47%: Who They Are, Where They Live, How They Vote, and Why They Matter," Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 18 Sept. 2012.

Sick of the Willful Amnesia

Because of the riots in the Mideast, the attacks on U.S. embassies, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) calls President Barack Obama the "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy." Where was this woman on 9/11? Did she call President Bush "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy" then?

As early as May 2, 2001, "the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that 'a group presently in the United States' was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be 'imminent,' although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible." Yet Bush's neo-con advisors pooh-poohed the idea, and the government did not go on high alert. [Kurt Eichenwald,  "The Deafness Before the Storm," New York Times, 10 September 2012; a reason why Eichenwald's reminder matters here--"Why the New Pre-9/11 Disclosures Matter," Alec McGillis, The New Republic, 11 September 2012.]

(I almost laughed aloud in disbelief when a relative of mine told me recently that George W. Bush had "kept us safe." The attacks on the Twin Towers came almost eight months into Bush's first year in office--and then there were the anthrax attacks, in which five people died and at least 22 people were infected with the deadly virus!)

Did Michele Bachman call President George W. Bush "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy" when:

• A car bomb killed 10 people and injured over 50 others outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002?
• Explosions erupted near the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan in 2004?
• Gunman "stormed the American Consulate" in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 2004?
• Armed gunmen attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, in 2006?
• An antitank grenade was fired on the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 2007?
• Protesters set fire to the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2008?
• Ten people were killed in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in 2008? (h/t Media Matters-- When I started looking up information on embassy attacks, I discovered that others had done the work already.) 

How about the 2005 riots in Afghanistan over "a report that interrogators desecrated Iran's holy book at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay"? 

Or how about these Pew Research Findings in 2006, well into George W. Bush's second year in office:

Positive views of the United States have declined sharply in Spain (from 41% to 23%), India (71% to 56%), and Turkey (23% to 12%). Even in Indonesia, where U.S. tsunami aid helped lift America's image in 2005, favorable opinions of the U.S. have fallen (from 38% to 30%). . . .[snip] Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, 60% say the war has made the world more dangerous, compared with 30% who say it has made the world safer.

Did Michele Bachmann think then, "uh, oh, President George W. Bush is falling down on the job in foreign policy"?

Have we forgotten Abu Ghraib?  Whose Mideast policy was responsible for that blot on our nation?

Discussing policy differences is fine and necessary. Willfully forgetting the past in order to propagandize the present is stupid. But even more stupid? Believing those who do this.

Quote for the Day, Ta-Nehisi Coates

"...I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama's opponent "a home-state advantage nationally," I can't stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop." Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Toward a Politically Correct Conservatism, cont.," posted online at The Atlantic, 20 June 2012.

Gay Marriage a "Radical" Experiment?

I like Conor Friedersdorf's response to Dennis Prager's claim that "nothing as radical as redefining marriage to include members of the same sex has ever been publicly supported by a president of the United States" and that gay marriage is "the most radical social experiment in modern history." Friedersdorf reminds Prager and others who would make similar claims that "same sex marriage would permit gays to participate in an existing institution that encourages those who enter it to practice sexual fidelity, give emotional support, and provide financial stability."

Encouraging gay people to marry seems like an argument for traditional values to me, and giving gay couples rights is just plain fairness. Maurice Sendak, famous author of some of the best-loved children's books, recently died at the age of 83. For 50 years, he and his partner, psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, lived together. When Glynn was dying of lung cancer, Sendak made all the arrangements to provide his partner with around-the-clock medical care in their home. But how many gay couples have the financial resources for such care? Instead, their loved ones are checked into hospitals or hospice care, where in many states the healthy gay partner can be refused admittance to the loved one's bedside by family members inimical to the relationship, no matter how long or how committed that relationship has been.

Conor Friedersdorf lists the many radical experiments that have been initiated in this country, a list that includes women's suffrage, the birth control pill, the GI bill, in vitro fertilization, the abolition of slavery and the Civil Rights movement. How about public education?

So folks should just temper their hyperbolic language and dampen their fear of change. Gay marriage would not end civilization as we know it. No.....that would be climate change.

Update
Dahlia Lithwick writes  thoughtfully in Slate today about President's "evolving" thinking on gay marriage: "It's  About the Empathy, Stupid."

Here is the conclusion of his essay:

I read [President Obama's words on gay marriage] as a very literal reminder of what needs to happen more often during this election campaign: We need to listen to the experiences of others before dismissing them as dangerous, immoral, and wrong. Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, that his whole moral code was conditioned on the idea that to be able to empathize with people richer and poorer, more liberal and more conservative, is to be "forced beyond our limited vision.” Andrew Sullivan has called what Obama did yesterday “letting go of fear.” You can’t do that unless you listen to fear first, and that’s as good a descriptor as any for what the president did this week. 

Okay, so President Obama Supports Gay Marriage

Years ago, I stood in the hallway of a Southern Baptist church discussing homosexuality with my pastor. I had grown up in a very conservative, country church but as an adult attended a much more liberal church in a mid-sized town with a large university. However, for years I had been struggling with the disconnect between my evolving beliefs and the increasing fundamentalism of the Southern Baptist Church. The whole carapace of my childhood faith, I thought, was either going to shatter or be transformed. I was seriously considering leaving the Southern Baptist Church, and the deciding factor was the church's stand on homosexuality. Oh, there were many other reasons to leave, but this one issue was the most important to me at the time. One of my best friends was gay; he came out of the same religious tradition as I, and I had watched him struggle to reconcile his sexuality with his religion. I had witnessed his pain. I had seen his first love in the death grip of AIDS, and I had watched him find love again. The gay friends I had in college opened my heart to tolerance; this friend opened my heart to complete acceptance. 

Now I had children of my own. If I left my church, in what religious tradition would I raise my family? Yet how could I raise them in this church? I knew I couldn't. 

In the hallway, my pastor described to me the Sunday School class whose members were gay, the pianist who was gay, the silent minority that sat every morning among people who would prefer them to live as celibates, who would prefer them to live a life without love, or who believed they could be "converted" to heterosexuality.  He said he believed that science would prove that sexuality was a continuum, that homosexuality was biologically linked; he was concerned that, once again, the Southern Baptist Church would find itself on the wrong side of history. He told me that he had the same concerns as I but that the day he stepped into the pulpit and announced that gays should be accepted fully in the church would be the day he would be out of a job. 

I think of that pastor today as I read the reactions to President Obama's interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News, in which the president announced his support of gay marriage. David Plotz of Slate is "irked by [the president's] all-too-eloquent conversion story" and believes that rather than evolving, the president had "always" favored gay marriage, that the president's announcement is one of political convenience.  (Others, here and here, are more generous.)

Perhaps, like my former pastor, President Obama indeed figured he might be out of a job if he officially announced his support of gay marriage, that he would lose political support. But I think he deserves praise for finally making that public announcement, even if it reveals what he has secretly thought for some years. I don't know if my former pastor ever stood before his church and revealed his unqualified support for gay rights. I moved across the country shortly thereafter and left the Southern Baptist Church.

Barack Obama's support of gay marriage will certainly affect the presidential campaign. It remains to be seen how, exactly, but I bet you there is a flyer out already claiming that Barack Obama's support of gay marriage is really a War Against Marriage and the Family. Ironic, huh?

Reasons not to Vote Republican, Part 2b: Refusing to Disavow Conspiracy Theories

Reason #2b: Refusing to Disavow Paranoia and Conspiracy Theories

I'm going to follow through with my plan to write several posts on why not to vote Republican in 2012 (which translates to why I'm not going to vote Republican, because--haven't you read your neuropsychology?--whose mind am I going to change) although I already feel as if I've fallen down a rabbit hole. But these are the rational posts I'm going to cling to as the Crazy Season hits hurricane force before the election. 

I can't think of a single mainstream Democrat who publicly supported the crazy conspiracy on the far left that President George W. Bush and the American government destroyed the Twin Towers, but I don't have enough fingers to count the mainstream Republicans who have publicly supported the Birthers or who have remained silent in the presence of others who publicly support the Birthers. That anyone believes that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a forgery is a mystery to me, for that belief requires all kinds of mental contortions. Do people really believe that one political party would allow a member of the other political party to become president if that president-elect were not a natural born citizen? Geez.  I personally know people who believe the Birthers, who think that Barack Obama is president illegitimately. (Where were these people when the Supreme Court ordered that the vote recounting be stopped in Florida in 2000? Oh, and by the way, the loser in that election supported the right of George W. Bush to be accepted as president.)

But, hey, refusing to disavow the crazy birthers helps Republicans in the polls. Donald Trump received a bump in the polls when he stepped aboard the Birther Train. In February 2011:

Fifty-one percent of 400 Republican primary voters surveyed nationwide by Public Policy Polling said they ascribe to the controversial birther conspiracy theory — despite the fact that the state of Hawaii has posted Obama’s certificate of live birth.

 Only 28 percent said they think the president was born in the United States — a constitutional requirement to be president. Twenty-one percent said they were “not sure." (Politico, "Poll: 51 percent of GOP primary voters think Obama born abroad.")

In April of last year, the new Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, was reported in an interview with U. S. News and World Report to repudiate the birthers and their crazy conspiracy, but later, Priebus tweeted that he never said that. As Sahil Kapur states in a blog post on the topic ("RNC chairman denies he ever repudiated 'birthers'"): "[t]hat Priebus felt the need to back away from what US News & World Report depicted as nothing more than a clear repudiation of the birthers is a testament to the influence that the fervent conspiracy theorists have in mainstream Republican circles."

Overlapping the birther crazies are the Obama-should-be-impeached-for-treason crazies and Obama-is-a-Muslim crazies. Mitt Romney is being compared to John McCain because of an incident that happened at a town hall meeting near Cleveland, Ohio, this week.  A woman who stood to ask Romney a question said that Obama "should be tried for treason," for which comment she received a round of applause from the audience. In a similar situation in the last presidential primary, when a woman at a town hall meeting said that she didn't trust Barack Obama because he was "an Arab," John McCain denied her claim civilly, saying that Obama was a "decent family man, citizen." But the current Republican presidential candidate let stand with no comment a claim that our president is "treasonous"--until much later, away from the crazies, when he was questioned by reporters.

Mainstream Republicans are acting in rational self-interest, of course, by not repudiating birtherism and other crazy shit conspiracy theories that have sprung up to try to deny our first black president's right to the office. Those of us who remember the Clinton years remember how well conspiracy theories rallied the far-right base then. But, really, if mainstream Republicans repudiated the conspiracy theories of the far right, would those voters vote the Democratic ticket? Of course not. But they might stay home and stew in their conspiracy juices and not vote at all. 

This is personal for me. Although I am no longer on the crazy list for forwarded political e-mails, I am just tired of hearing people I know spout this stuff. Thank you, Reince and all you other otherwise rational Republicans, for helping destroy whatever respect I once had for some of those I love. But even more importantly, now that you've gotten in bed with conspiracy theorists, you're going to have a difficult time kicking them out of the bedroom if you win the presidential election in 2012. What will you concede to then for their support?

Another Quote for the Campaign Season

"If Gingrich is nominated, it won’t be because of his ideological clarity – he’s Flip to Mitt Romney’s Flop. It will be because he’s seen as the most likely to bully and humiliate Barack Obama. And that’s what GOP politics has come down to today." --Joan Walsh, "When Obama Underestimated Newt," posted in Salon, 11 December 2011.

Worth Reading

Frank Rich lets loose: "Obama's Original Sin," in New York Magazine's "News and Features," 3 July 2011.

This article would be great to use in a communications class in which one is discussing the art of rhetoric (ethos, logos, and pathos) and the emotional appeal of language (buried metaphors such as "paw print," alliteration, understatement, hyperbole, aphorisms, etc.)

A few excerpts:

• "As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers."

• "It's as if the Watergate investigation were halted after the cops nabbed the nudniks who did the break-in."

• "What some call a settlement others may find a cover-up."

• "Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and ­cashiered employees were left with the bills. The weak Dodd-Frank financial-reform law that rose from the ruins remains largely inoperative, since the actual rule-writing was delegated to understaffed agencies now under siege by banking lobbyists and their well-greased congressional overlords." (my emphasis--Just listen to the hard "R's" rolling through the first part of that last sentence, only to be let out like air from a tire, with the emphasis on "S's" at the end of the sentence.)

• And--ouch!: "But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature. While he has never lusted after money—he’d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen—he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys."

And the final two paragraphs that one hopes the President (or someone who can influence him) reads and heeds:

“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” Obama declared at his inauguration. What he said on that bright January morning is no less true or stirring now. For all his failings since, he is the only one who can make this case. There’s nothing but his own passivity to stop him from doing so—and from shaking up the administration team that, well beyond the halfway-out-the-door Geithner and his Treasury Department, has showered too many favors on the prosperous. This will mean turning on his own cadre of the liberal elite. But it’s essential if he is to call the bluff of a fake man-of-the-people like Romney. To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years.

The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.

Depressing if True

William Greider, writing for The Nation, seems to think that while Republicans have certainly done their best to demonize Elizabeth Warren, there are folks surrounding President Barack Obama who also don't want this candid woman to chair the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Greider's information relies on a Very Reliable Source, unnamed, so who can really tell how accurate this is. But based on what I've read about the financial industry and how all those finance guys seem to end up in positions of power around the presidency (including Obama's), I wouldn't be surprised. Here's a quote from Greider:

Tim Geithner, said my Very Reliable Source, really, really doesn’t want Elizabeth Warren in the position where she is sure to be a tough-minded and independent voice on major financial-policy issues. As CFPB director, Warren would also sit on the new “systemic risk” council of regulators who decide very large questions like “too big to fail.” The other regulators can outvote her easily enough, but Warren has an alarming history of personal candor. She says what she thinks, out loud and in public. That naturally disturbs the club members, all of whom have a rank history of making life easier for the big boys of banking.

Warren made her integrity clear when she served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel digging into the financial crisis and bailouts. Her investigations turned up alarming facts the bankers and bank regulators wished to avoid. Furthermore, Warren was often dissenting on legislative issues Geithner and team were pushing in the congressional debates on financial reform. Geithner doesn’t tolerate contrary thinkers in his midst; witness the galaxy of Wall Streeters he recruited to run the Treasury department. Geithner is a favorite of the president’s, perhaps because he is absolutely faithful to the financial establishment’s best interests. [William Greider, "Why is Obama Dragging his Heels on Appointing Elizabeth Warren to head CPFB?," The Nation, 27 May 2011.]

I don't know the answer to the question in the title of Greider's article, and I'm no expert. But I've read enough about the economic crisis to know that we can't blame just one political party for all the deregulation that eventually led to the risks that the financial industry took and the financial crisis that ensued. Those at the top seem to cover each other's backs very well. Just sayin'.

David Corn, an editor for Mother Jones and a former editor of The Nation, described the distance between Timothy Geithner and Elizabeth Warren in this article on HuffPost's "Politics Daily," in 2010. Here is a quote from Corn's article: "Elizabeth Warren Vs. Timothy Geithner: A Big Decision for Obama."

As head of the bailout oversight panel, Warren has fiercely called out Geithner and Treasury on a number of fronts: for providing a backdoor bailout to AIG, for botching homeowner relief programs, for failing to get mega-banks to resume lending. Moreover, she's an articulate and thoughtful populist, who applies a Main Street-first perspective toward financial matters and who has been a scourge of credit card companies and banks. Geithner is a member of the Big Finance establishment; he's no crusader.

It would be nice to have an "articulate and thoughtful populist" on one's side.

Irony?

On page 104 of the 18th edition of Barron's GRE study guide is the following test question:

There is some _______ the fact that President Barack Obama is viewed as representative of African American society, for he spent his childhood growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii, and did not live in the black community until he was an adult.
(A) gratification in
(B) irony in
(C) validity to
(D) uncertainty about
(E) apprehension about

According to the answer key, the answer is "(A) irony in." Now let's unpack the assumptions made in this question: first, that only a certain sort of black American--not defined, of course-- can represent, without irony, "the black community." What is "the black community"? Is it a physical location?  Well, of course not--but the question suggests that it is, that someone has to live there to be considered un-ironically black. So--if one is black, but grew up in a neighborhood that's majority white, is one precluded from being "African-American"? Is a certain percentage of "blackness" required in the neighborhood in which one grew up in order for one to be able to un-ironically represent African-Americans? The "black community" is taken as a whole to be representative of all African-Americans. And that "black community" is indeed diverse, is now, has been in the past. There are people who identify themselves as belonging to the "black community" who are poor, who are rich, who are middle-class, who grew up in the South, who grew up in the North, who grew up in the East or the West, and who live overseas on military bases or in foreign countries as government employees or even as citizens whose parents are employed by multi-national companies . So wouldn't it stand to reason--and not be "ironic"--that any African-American could represent this very diverse group? And does where one spent one's childhood somehow define whether or not one is truly "American" or "African-American"?

The second assumption? That growing up in Hawaii necessarily precludes someone from being seen as truly African-American? I thought that Hawii was one of the fifty states, as American as Alaska or Texas. Why is it "ironic" that an African-American born in Hawaii might represent the "black community"? Except for four years spent in Indonesia with his mother and step-father, Barack Obama lived in Hawaii as a child and adolescent.

This question--with its suspicious fill-in-the-blank answer--raises troubling questions about how African-Americans are viewed in our society. And it's very troubling that Barron's GRE Guide seems to perpetuate those narrow views.

Profiles that Complicate our Cardboard Cut-Out Judgments

Reading the profile of John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods, online at The New Yorker this morning reminded me of some of the reasons I have subscribed to that magazine off and on over the years. The article's in-depth description of a complicated character makes me re-think my own knee-jerk reaction to Mackey's op-ed on health care reform that the Wall Street Journal published last year. Not only did I think the guy was a nut, I agreed with Matt Yglesias, who wrote that:

there’s asking a CEO to pander to your prejudices, and there’s pressuring a CEO not to go out of his way to offend your prejudices. Corporate executives have a lot of social and political power in the United States, in a way that goes above and beyond the social and political power that stems directly from their wealth. The opinions of businessmen on political issues are taken very seriously by the press and by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Once upon a time perhaps union leaders exercised the same kind of sway, but these days all Republicans, most of the media, and some Democrats feel comfortable writing labor off as just an “interest group” while Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Jack Welch are treated as all-purpose sages. One could easily imagine a world in which CEOs were reluctant to play the role of freelance political pundit out of fear of alienating their customer base. And it seems to me that that might very well be a nice world to live in.

What Yglesias had to say on the issue still resonates with me--the idea that rich CEOs have too much power, anyway, so they need to be careful about how they throw their weight around in the public arena--but Nick Baumgarten's article also provides me with a more nuanced profile of John Mackey, whom I had never really thought about until Mackey wrote that op-ed.  Like many interesting characters, Mackey is a contradictory mix of hippie, capitalist, libertarian, paternalism, and goofiness. I think Mackey's idea that the world would be a wonderful place if other corporate leaders ran their companies as he does his--his idea of "conscious capitalism"-- and thus there would be no need for government laws to protect people from the over-reaching power of corporations, is very pie-in-the-sky.  I think we've had a very nasty wake-up call as to the self-centeredness and greediness of corporations--manned by their overpaid CEOs--in the debacle of Wall Street, the bail-out of banks, and the almost-collapse of our economy. I am glad that there are corporate leaders such as Mackey who do think it necessary and good to provide their workers with fairly generous benefits and good wages--too bad there aren't more of them these days.

Reading the article on Mackey reminded me of the profile of Barack Obama that I read in The New Yorker a couple of years ago: "The Conciliator," by Larissa MacFarquhar. Anyone who read that article would not have been surprised by Obama's leadership style this past year. Obama might have been one of the most liberal voters in the Senate, but as MacFarquhar pointed out two years ago, " In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative." Obama had a history already of trying to understand "the other side," on whatever the issue might be. This is a telling story from his long-time friend Cassandra Butts:

Obama is always disappointing people who feel that he gives too much respect or yields too much ground to the other side, rather than fighting aggressively for his principles. “In law school, we had a seminar together and Charles Fried, who is very conservative, was one of our speakers,” Cassandra Butts says. “The issue of the Second Amendment came up and Fried is pretty much a Second Amendment absolutist. One of our classmates was in favor of gun control—he’d come from an urban environment where guns were a big issue. And, while Barack agreed with our classmate, he was much more willing to hear Fried out—he was very moved by the fact that Fried grew up in the Soviet bloc, where they didn’t have those freedoms. After the class, our classmate was still challenging Fried and Barack was just not as passionate and I didn’t understand that.”

So when I read the crazy right-wing comparisons of Barack Obama to "Hitler" or the claims that Obama is a "socialist," I know right away that the person making that claim is just plain stupid or highly misinformed--or deliberately misleading. And there are a lot of folks like that. They obviously don't read The New Yorker, and, of course, I'm sure they hold in high disdain anyone who does. It's an "elitist" magazine. But I sure as hell have learned a lot from reading it--many times the articles challenge my own assumptions. However, there are a lot of people who don't want their assumptions challenged or their minds changed in any way.

I quit subscribing because, damn it, the magazine is published every week, and I can't keep up with the reading of it. I love the cover art, and I continue to think I will return to read articles I don't have time to read right away, and so the paper copies just stack up--I can hardly bear to recycle them (though I did grit my teeth at the end of the year and did just that). I think I need to get with a couple of other people who would like to subscribe and start a joint subscription--in other words, have someone to whom to pass on my copies.

Prizes

First, congratulations to Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. We all have a pretty good idea why the Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded him the honor: Obama has changed the tone of the White House by embracing the rest of the world as partners in arms rather than opponents to arm against. This is a good thing. The rest of the world--except the Taliban, Al-qaeda, and the usual fringe voices on the right (Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, those people)--think this is a good thing. Republicans who have not forgotten how to be gracious think that's a good thing. That being said, the award of the prize to Barack Obama, whom I support and for whom I voted for President of the United States, reminds me of when my son played Little League baseball one year in Waverly Hall, Georgia.

The person in charge of the Little League teams was a woman who also was going to coach a team. She made sure that she had a chance to see every child's baseball skills; then she chose the best players for her team. My son, who was enthusiastic but not skilled at baseball and who was also a little unconscious at times (looking at the sky, thinking of something else besides the baseball heading his way), ended up on a team of very unskillful players. It was a sad situation. The woman who should have made sure that every team had an equal mixture of skilled and unskilled players was looking out only for herself and a handful of children.

At the end of the season, my son's team had not won one game. (Wait, I think they may have been awarded a game because another team forfeited for some reason.) Anyway, the coaches of the team planned an end-of-season picnic, and we all showed up to discover that each child was receiving a huge trophy. My husband and I couldn't believe it. Sure, we weren't happy that the team suffered from a huge handicap due to the poor choices of the Little League leader; we were sorry our son's team didn't win one game; and we thought it was important to praise the boys for the work they had attempted. But huge trophies? Maybe a small gift or token to illustrate the importance of trying and to encourage the kids not to give up when faced again with such insurmountable odds.

I'm afraid that our son's trophy was a family joke. We told him that we were proud that he had done the best job he could have done but that we didn't think the team's efforts were worth such ostentatious rewards.

I feel a little the same way about our President's award. I'm happy and pleased that important people think our president is doing a good job, that he has begun to lift the dark cloud of hubris and suspicion that the Bush administration created, that he is really pushing for nuclear disarmament, that he is engaging the world in diplomacy. But the peace prize seems a little premature. Oh, I know there is an argument for it. The prize shows support of his efforts. But it's such a big prize. Couldn't a smaller prize have done?

I just hope the Nobel Peace prize doesn't become a family joke and that the President lives up to the expectations it raises. Good luck to him. We should all support him.

Note: I think that James Fallows provides a good analysis of the President's speech this morning in which the President acknowledged the Nobel Peace Prize: "Obama's Nobel Remarks: Four Very Skillful Paragraphs."

Cozy, Cozy, Cozy

Matthew Yglesias links to a Frank Rich column today in The New York Times, in which Rich describes the lobbyists' cozying up to Democrats. Those of us who cheered--especially those of us who care a lot about health care reform--when Barack Obama promised in his inaugural address that under his leadership Washington would "do our business in the light of day" are cheering less these days as it seems as if business is being conducted as usual in Washington. Just a few highlights from the Rich column:

• Heather Podesta, the high-profile lobbyist for "health care players like Eli Lilly, HealthSouth and Cigna"? She is married to "Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, the Clinton White House chief of staff who ran the Obama transition."
  
  
• How do these close connections to the White House work out for the lobbying duo? Tony's "business was up 57 percent from last year in the first six months of 2009. Heather Podesta’s was up 65 percent."
  
  
• During the last administration, the place to meet, greet, and influence was Jack Abramoff's restaurant Signatures. These days, it's Ristorante Tosca, where the likes of Heather Podesta (lobbying against health reform for big healthcare companies) and Steve Elmendorf (former chief of staff for Dick Gephart now lobbying for financial clients such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs) meet their clients and government officials they hope to influence.
  
  
• "[I]n early August...the UnitedHealth Group and its fellow insurance giants had already quietly rounded up moderate Democrats in the House to block any public health care option that would compete with them for business." Those lobbyists whose clients include UnitedHealth Group? Steven Elmendorf (Elmendorf Strategies), Tom Daschle (ummm, not officially a lobbyist, but a "special policy advisor"...), and "a former chief of staff to Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader."
  
  
• Of course, the Republicans may be out of power, but they're just as easily influenced as those in power. Eric Cantor and John Boehner "are big recipients of UnitedHealth campaign cash." And, of course, there's John Ensign (R-Nevada), who used his connections to provide clients for his mistress's husband--a special category of lobbyist influence all of its own.

But then, we knew that...and those of us who voted for Barack Obama hoped that he would deliver on his promise. As Frank Rich says, "If the Olympic committee has the audacity to stand up to a lobbyist as powerful as the president of the United States, then surely the president of the United States can stand up to the powerful interests angling to defeat his promise of reform."

Quotations from Frank Rich's op-ed column, "The Rabbit Ragu Democrats," The New York Times, 3 October 2009.

See also: Thomas Franks' column in The Wall Street Journal, "Obama and the K Street Set," 30 September 2009.

Decatur Book Festival 2009, First Day

Yesterday we attended several afternoon events of the Decatur Book Festival, sponsored by, among others, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Dekalb Medical Center. The day was overcast, and when my husband and I set off on the mile-long walk to downtown Decatur, a few stray drops of water fell from the sky. However, there was no significant rainfall to dampen the spirits of the crowd in downtown Decatur. Our daughter attended some events at the teen gathering in a dance studio near the downtown square, and then she and friends went to lunch together.

Tom and I first went to the Decatur Public Library Stage to hear Niall Stanage, an Irish journalist who covered Barack Obama's election. Stanage first gave us the international perspective on Barack Obama, nothing new, of course, to those of us who keep up with the news, but it was good to be reminded that Obama's election "really redeemed an old idea for America" that had been eroded over the years by the Bush administration. Stanage said that while there is a small margin, a fringe on the left, that has an "implacable" resistance and dislike of America and its power, most Europeans have a fondness for America. The Bush administration policies, however, had seriously eroded that goodwill (for example, in 2000, Germans had a 70% favorable attitude toward the U.S.; by 2007, that goodwill had dropped to 30%). Barack Obama re-invigorated the fondness Europeans had for America.

What was really interesting to me, however, was the audience's response to the clips of Obama's speeches that Stanage showed to illustrate his points. The first clip was the very hopeful speech Obama gave at the 2000 Democratic Convention, the one where he says these rousing lines: "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America." I could feel the energy in the room as these words echoed in the small auditorium. People clapped after every speech with the kind of enthusiasm I remembered from the election. I swear, the middle-aged guy next to me was crying, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes. Now, cynical far-right Republicans would call this Obama-awe. I think it's something way more important: it's hope. There still remains among us liberals the hope that the country can be re-united; that we are the United States of America. But the radicals on the right, what Kevin Drum and others call the "fever swamp crowd," have just about eroded that hope in their terrorist takeover of the national dialogue.

After Stanage's speech, Tom and I parted ways to attend different events; he attended an environmentalist presentation, and I walked to the First Baptist Church of Decatur to hear Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Blackmon has written an exhaustively researched book titled Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II. The title pretty much summarizes the point of the book, and that's how Blackmon began his presentation, with a summary of his book, a summary of the re-enslavement of African-Americans in the South in a kind of neo-slavery, involuntary servitude. He reminded us that many of the early fortunes of the "fathers of Atlanta" were built on this practice of servitude and that many Atlanta-based companies we know today tie back to the brutal practices of another time.

There is an American mythology that "Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves" that Americans cling to, totally removing from memory the brutality of the early twentieth-century. Thousands of African-Americans, Blackmon said, are alive today who were born into defacto slavery in the 1920s and 1930s. Georgia and Alabama particularly supported this practice, for their economies depended upon free or cheap labor: agriculture, mining. These southern states "used the criminal justice system to create a new slavery and the fear of this system to intimidate African-Americans." As just one example, Blackmon described how a black man who wanted to leave one farmer and work for another had to get permission from his original boss. If he did not, he would be charged and slapped with a fine. This is just a small example of the ways that African-Americans were intimidated. Of course, we all know about the Jim Crow laws. Right? I left this presentation determined to buy Blackmon's book, but all the venues were out of their supply; I'll have to order it later.

Tom and I later met up for a poetry reading that ended with two very moving poems by Patricia Smith. The last one, written for the 34 victims left behind in a nursing home during Hurricane Katrina, brought tears to my eyes.

Christians and Hatred

Justin Elliot of TPM Muckraker points out today that the guy who showed up with an AK-47 at an event where Barack Obama spoke attends a church where the pastor preaches sermons with titles such as "Why I Hate Barack Obama." In fact, Chris Broughton, the man with the AK-47 and handgun, had heard just that sermon the day before showing up armed. I tried to listen to the entire sermon, but I couldn't stand to hear such hatred. The preacher referred to "the whoredoms and witchcrafts of the U.S. government and Barack Obama" and said that he prays to God that Barack Obama will "die and go to hell."

We might be tempted to wave a hand dismissively and label this pastor as a small feeder on the fringe. But elected Republicans are spouting language that is just as incendiary. Republican Senator John Inofe (Oklahoma) told his constituents, "We're almost reaching a revolution in this country." (h/t Steve Benen, Josh Marshall) He says he doesn't know what's in the health reform bill, won't read it, and will vote against it (in the full splendor of his self-proclaimed stupidity). Representative Michele Bachman (R-MN) wants her constituents to be "armed and dangerous." These people may claim to be using such language "figuratively," they may be punctuating their calls to arms with little moues of self-righteousness, but they are building a fire they will not be able to control.

Crazy "Birthers"

Update below

After publishing my previous post this morning, in which I ended on some comments about crazy "birthers," I received an e-mail from an anonymous person "arguing" (I use the term loosely here) that the vote on Sotomayor should be postponed because Barack Obama's presidency is illegitimate. The "argument"? That Obama couldn't be president because he holds "dual citizenship" with the U.S. and with Kenya. I won't publish the comment because the writer does not identify himself/herself and because it seems to have been some kind of robo-response. It might have been copied from some mass e-mail, for it bears the characteristics of those blightful communications (illogical sentences, confused content, inflated language). But I've summarized the gist of the comment here.

As Steve Benen notes, these people never quit, no matter how many times they have been confronted with the facts. The non-partisan Factcheck.org also is fed up with responding to these folks, as indicated in the post "The Last Word? We Wish."

We at FactCheck.org are grateful to the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorists for hundreds of thousands of page views to our "Born in the U.S.A." article from last November, and to our other items debunking some of their more outrageously false claims. We’re less grateful for their thousands of sometimes abusive e-mails claiming that we’re perpetuating a dangerous falsehood, among the more printable comments. Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii Department of Health, is also fed up. She has now released her second statement (the first was made last November) saying that state records show Obama was indeed born in the U.S.A. This one states unequivocally that he is "a natural-born American citizen," and will everyone please just leave it alone now? (We confess we are paraphrasing that second part.)

And in case my readership (which is small!) actually includes crazy birthers, here is the link to Factcheck.org's 2008 post on Barack Obama's citizenship: "Born in the USA: The Truth about Obama's Birth Certificate," posted August 21, 2008 and updated November 1, 2008. And in March, FactCheck.org fielded another silly claim by birthers: "More Citizenship Quibbles."As far as dual citizenship, Factcheck. org addressed that bit of silliness back in 2008, too: "Does Barack Obama Have Kenyan Citizenship,". As the factchecker on that issue noted, after a good discussion of that issue:

"the Kenyan Constitution prohibits dual citizenship for adults. Kenya recognizes dual citizenship for children, but Kenya's Constitution specifies that at age 21, Kenyan citizens who possesses citizenship in more than one country automatically lose their Kenyan citizenship unless they formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.

But, then, as my husband has often reminded me, crazy people are not rational, and, thus, facts mean nothing to them.

Update: More on those birther statistics in the South can be found here: "Early Poll Data: Half Of All Virginia Voters Are Birthers," Eric Kleefield, posted on Talking Points Memo, 3 August 2009.

Regional Bias

Most people feel at least a little faithful to the region in which they were born and in which they grew up. We want to defend our "home," even when that defense might seem wrong-headed. If we are thoughtful people, we recognize the shortcomings of our birth home, and, when we do, wish for improvement. And, of course, we get defensive when people from other regions spout ill-founded judgments about the region with which we most closely identify. Southerners, particularly, seem to have to work hard to overcome negative images some people have of the region and its people. I was reminded of this bias on our trip to the northern California Pacific Coast to visit very dear friends who had moved from the South (Louisiana) to Crescent City, California.

We had been in the area for about a day when one of my friend's new local friends dropped by to meet us. This well-spoken, lovely woman in her sixties had grown up in Oregon. Within only a few minutes, she expressed her ambivalence about the South. "I think I would like to visit the South," she said, "but I'm a little afraid of the South. It's prone to violence, isn't it? Several years ago at a conference [she was a counselor until she retired], we discussed a study that concluded that Southerners tended more to violence because the South was settled by Scots-Irish."

Oh, yes--the study that proves Southerners are more violent than other Americans because the majority of them are descended from Scots who settled in northern Ireland where bloody war continued between the Protestant Scots and the Catholic Irish--these "Scots-Irish" later immigrated to the United States in great numbers, many of them moving to the Appalachians and further south. That study continues to be used by otherwise thoughtful folks to bolster their bias toward the South. My husband encountered the study when we lived in Minnesota; folks at a Minnesotan university brought it up in an interview with him. Behind the reference to that study is the suggestion that the Southerner in the room is therefore suspect: he can't be trusted because he might have heretofore unexpressed violent tendencies. It's used as an excuse to condescend to and to judge an individual based on his or her place of birth. And it encourages the undiscerning to judge a whole region of individuals, many of whom have very mixed genetic heritage.

Of course, some information coming out of the South makes even me wonder what's up with us. Take the "birther" movement. Although it's not just Southerners who question Barack Obama's birth--despite hard evidence, including a birth certificate (!) that proves the man was born in the U.S.--an astonishingly high percentage of Southerners question Obama's right to the presidency based on this "birther" conspiracy. As Steve Benen discusses in this post, a recent poll indicates that some 20% or so of Southerners think Barack Obama was not born in the United States and 30% are unsure. How can that be? Is that 20% of ALL Southerners or 20% of Southern REPUBLICANS? Can it be true that about 50% of Southerners either believe Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. or that perhaps he wasn't? Statistics like that make me want to enroll in a voice class to eliminate my Southern drawl.

The bottom line is, however, that we shouldn't judge individuals based on statistical studies. We should judge them by their own character.

Update: Steve Benen addresses more birther nonsense today: "They'll never stop," Washington Monthly, 3 August 2009.