Sarah Palin is a western feminist?

Joan McCarter demolishes that trope here.

Quote of the day

From a recent digby article that discusses Arizona's reactionary immigration law:

The American Dream has been patented for use only by Real Americans, I'm afraid. But immigrants shouldn't feel slighted. According to the right wing anyone who doesn't vote Republican is "foreign" too.

Our reactionaries, it seems, believe that the set of all real Americans, when measured by the number of individuals it contains, is smaller than the set of all American citizens and much smaller than the set of all individuals who reside within the boundaries of the United States. Now, let us suppose that 100M of us are Real Americans. (I know I'm not a real American, not that that admission amounts to much.) And let us next consider the possibility that these real Americans might someday make a claim on the government to purify the country they love by cleansing it of every non-American living within its boundaries. If the federal government were to meet their demand, it could do so only by expelling, jailing, killing, etc. over 200M individuals (I base my crude arithmetic on the Census estimate of July 2009). An obvious question follows from these considerations. Would this purification project not be a human catastrophe so immense that would surpass the aggregate suffering generated by the Second World War?

Real Americans for genocidal cleansing….

Show us your papers

As Bill Quigley rightly points out:

While people protest the terrible Arizona state law that uses local law enforcement to target immigrants, the federal government is expanding its efforts to use local law enforcement in immigration enforcement and has launched a major PR campaign to defend it.

Why is Quigley right to point to the federal government's efforts in this matter? Consider:

One example of the out-of-control federal program occurred last week in Maryland. Florinda Lorenzo-Desimilian, a 26 year old married mother of three, lives in Prince George's County Maryland. Last week she was arrested in her home by local police on a misdemeanor charge of selling $2 phone cards out of her apartment window without a license. Ms. Lorenzo-Desimilian was booked at the county jail. During booking, she was fingerprinted. Local police sent her prints to the FBI who in turn notified ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that she had overstayed her work visa. Even though her three children are U.S. citizens, ICE kept her in jail for two days and is now trying to deport her. This is the result of a federal ICE and Homeland Security program called "Secure Communities" which is supposed to be targeting violent criminals. Instead, the program is really operating a dragnet scooping up and deporting tens of thousands of immigrants, like Ms. Lorenzo-Desimilian, who are no security risk to anyone.

Congress provided funding to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in 2008 to "identify aliens convicted of a crime, sentenced to imprisonment, who may be deportable, and remove them from the US once they are judged deportable." ICE says this program "supports public safety by strengthening efforts to identify and remove the most dangerous criminal aliens from the United States." However, ICE is not actually targeting convicted criminal aliens, dangerous aliens, or even violent aliens. They are targeting everyone.

ICE, through Secure Communities contracts with local law enforcement offices, runs every accused person's fingerprints through multiple databases regardless how minor the charges. Thus, people like Ms. Lorenzo-Desimilian are subject to ICE investigation, detention and deportation.

America's security fetish points to a dictatorship to come. Labeling a program of this kind a police state operation is to us a cliché as the program's identifying mark. Yet, what else could it be but a police state operation?

It’s about earning and spending

Michael Lind makes a commonsensical case for a massive federal effort to repair America's compromised and increasingly dangerous infrastructure, shore up its financially-strapped state and local governments, stimulate the crisis-laden economy and, last but not least, put people to work. He also warns his readers that this kind of effort is likely to produce another bout of Beltway foolishness — e.g. a good bit of rightwing identity politics (i.e. race- and class-baiting), programs designed to maximize the PR-value available to Congressmen and women and a knee-jerk rush to offer tax credits to capital. Lind instead argues that this federal effort should be massive and recurring investment in the country's institutions. How, according to Lind, would America pay for a program of this magnitude? A Value Added Tax!

Lind's proposal makes sense, of course. It surely is an appropriate response to one of the crises of the moment. But is it a feasible proposal? Can Washington act rationally?

Seditious white folks

Chris Hedges and VBS.tv report from the heartland:

The day of the spectacle

David Yearsley compares Bruce Springsteen's Superbowl halftime show to the Nuremberg Rally of 1934. I believe the comparison apt.

A black woman casts her vote for McCain-Palin?

In Diebold we can trust….

Double Yikes….

Using the N-Word at a Palin rally

Via the Red State Rebels.

Culture or Cash?

A roundtable on America's culture war

Some crisis links (10.23-10.24.2008)

The police nationwide prepare to crack heads (maintain order) on election Tuesday, according to The Hill (via News from the Underground).

Alan Greenspan admitted to having made a mistake when "…he…put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and…failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending." So, in the end it turns out the earth is not flat….

Mike Whitney's latest article begins by noting that the credit crisis has abated somewhat. This has come about because:

The US Treasury and Federal Reserve are now underwriting the entire financial system. The free market has been abandoned altogether. Everything from commercial paper to money markets is now backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States". Without that explicit government guarantee, the credit markets would still be frozen and the system would crash.

Nouriel Roubini (via Naked Capitalism) recently predicted that hedge funds will fail, thus forcing countries to close their financial markets.

Following the global trend, the Dow fell again, today, according to the New York Times.

The good news: The continuing failure of the McCain-Palin strategy which, by attacking Obama, amounts to an appeal to the GOP's racist base.

McCain refuses to condemn Obama-Osama comparison

The straight talk express talks out of both sides of its mouth

From TPM (and here):

America on the road to dictatorship (10.13.2008)

The Lewis-McCain-Obama exchange

It has been a difficult month for the McCain campaign. Obama solidifies his lead as the days pass and McCain confronts an electorate which fears what the future could bring, a future largely generated by the policies of George W. Bush.

Its response: The McCain campaign went 'negative,' presumably in order to recapture the momentum it lost when America's long-simmering financial crisis boiled over and ignited a global economic crisis.

The McCain campaign's attacks on Obama's character were such that the naturally compliant media felt obliged to criticize the McCain campaign for its divisive identity politics. Both the McCain campaign and the country as a whole were embarrassed by the rhetorical excesses of some McCain supporters, at least one of which violently threatened Obama.

One of the more notable responses to this situation can be found in a message written by the one-time Hillary Clinton supporter Representative John Lewis (D-GA). His statement:

"As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

"During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

"As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

Lewis' statement could only be consequential for the McCain campaign, for, as the Los Angeles Times reminds us, "[a]t a campaign forum in August, McCain named Lewis as one of the three people he would rely on most in his administration."

"McCain did not take the scolding well," as John Nichols noted.

McCain replied to Lewis:

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain today issued the following statement:

"Congressman John Lewis' comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale. The notion that legitimate criticism of Senator Obama's record and positions could be compared to Governor George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.

"I call on Senator Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America."

The Obama campaign's statement on the McCain-Lewis exchange:

"Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies. But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.' As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Senator Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead," said Obama-Biden spokesman Bill Burton.

It would be naïve to expect America to have surpassed racial and religious politics or, for that matter, chauvinism and xenophobia. Each has been an enduring feature of its political culture; it is too late in the game to expect a miracle cure of these problems. Nevertheless, I can only consider it a good sign that the media took the McCain campaign to task for the reactionary turn it has recently adopted. When it comes to smear tactic politics the right has gotten a relatively free pass from the media. It is time that they pay the fare for this ride.

America on the road to dictatorship (10.11.2008)

Rightwing identity politics in the heartland

McCain and Palin's base speaks

Sliming Obama

From character assassination to the real thing

It is hardly unusual that John McCain, Sarah Palin and some rightwing interest groups are smearing Barak Obama during the fall campaign. When political campaigns avoid issue discussions and replace them with sound bites and identity politics, as American campaigns typically do, smear tactics become one tool among many similar tools in a campaign's box.

Yet, with Barack Hussein Obama, the merely despicable use of race and gender, class and ethnicity as political weapons have been augmented by the McCain campaign, which seemingly has taken to inciting the use of violence against their adversary (on which, see this and this).

As Jeffrey Feldman rightly points out

Since the start of the election campaign well over a year ago, voters have been subject to ongoing smear campaigns in emails and push polls accusing Sen. Obama of ties to and sympathies with domestic and foreign terrorist groups. No matter how many times these smear campaigns have been exposed, they continued. Now that John McCain and Sarah Palin have echoed these accusations — the idea that Sen. Obama is secretly a terrorist has the stamp of approval of a presidential campaign, but of a multi-term U.S. senator and a U.S. governor.

Feldman continues

One wonders at this point how the various agencies charged with the responsibility of protecting the Presidential candidates from violence will respond to this latest tactic from the McCain campaign. If, for example, a McCain supporter threatens the life of Sen. Obama by shouting 'Kill him!' at a Palin rally, should Sen. Obama's Secret Service contingent launch an investigation?

The Secret Service should, and seemingly will investigate this incident. Nevertheless, what does it say about America's political culture when a presidential campaign of a major party can use baseless slander to provoke some of its partisans to threaten the loyal opposition with violent acts, including assassination? What does it say about America's legal system that a campaign can do this without also fearing the legal consequences of their suggestive actions?

Update (10.9.2008)

Anthony DiMaggio sums up this issue thusly

The Democrats' attempt to appeal across party lines has clearly not been the preferred tactic of the Republican Party. Angry over their likely loss of power in the upcoming election, they have become increasingly desperate in their attacks on the Democrats and the legitimacy of the two party state. This is particularly disturbing at a time when it is becoming harder and harder to discern concrete or substantive differences in the economic policies of the two parties. In reality, Obama and Biden's vague references to "regulation" don't amount to a whole lot when they fail to follow them up with actual policy proposals. That these Democrats are demonized by Republicans as sub-human, dangerous, or terrorist is more a sign of the growing extremism of conservatives than of the moral weakness or treachery of the Democrats. The Democratic Party today may be morally bankrupt, spineless, and bland, but none of those are anywhere near as dangerous as the Republican Party's fundamentalist contempt for multi-party elections and bi-partisan politics [emphasis added].

Claiming that the Republican Party may be a disloyal opponent of America's democratic republic, such as Americans know it today and as I did here, amounts to this, as DiMaggio put it:

Increasingly, right-wing conservatives and Republican political leaders are issuing dire warnings to the American public that they — and only they — are the legitimate rulers of the United States and the world. This basic contempt for anything but one-party rule is manifested in a number of dire threats repeated by the party, with its members promising the end of Western civilization as we know it if they lose their dominant status in government.