Tag: Mitch McConnell

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Visit to Bizarro World

CREDIT: Americanspirit | Dreamstime.com

Though I’m going to write about something very serious, I would be remiss in not first mentioning the astonishing comeback victory of the Atlanta Falcons in Sunday’s Super Bowl. What a game for the ages!

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to say something that will be difficult for me, as a Hillary Clinton supporter. As we know, the election went as predicted, though Donald Trump did unexpectedly win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida, making the Electoral College vote closer than predicted. But that’s politics. Or so we thought.

The day after the election, we got the first indication that things might not go as expected. Clinton appeared to have an obsession with the electoral vote, claiming in speech after speech, even weeks after the election, that Republican “voter suppression” efforts had kept “millions of eligible voters” from being able to cast a ballot. Though urged by advisors to move on, she simply would not.

The week prior to her inauguration, CIA, FBI, and NSC leaders presented her with an intelligence report that showed that Russia had clearly interfered in the U.S. election and that several members of her campaign staff, including newly appointed National Security Chief John Podesta and Secretary of State designate Howard Dean, had been in Russia during the campaign and had regular phone and email contacts with Russian officials. Clinton denounced the report as “fake” and accused U.S. security agencies of leaking information to damage her, comparing them to Nazi Germany.

As Inauguration Day approached, some Democrats’ quiet fears were exacerbated when Clinton repeatedly boasted that she would have the “largest crowd to ever attend an Inauguration.”

When it turned out that Clinton’s Inaugural crowd was, in fact, smaller than most recent presidents’, Clinton called the National Park Service and demanded new aerial photos and sent her press secretary out to make assertions that were provably false.

Clinton next announced that her daughter, Chelsea, would become a chief advisor and would also run the Clinton Foundation. Chelsea’s husband, Wall Street banker Marc Mezvinsky, was named chief of staff. All of Clinton’s cabinet nominees were large funders of the Democratic Party and notably unqualified to run their designated agencies.

Finally, in a brazen move that stunned everyone, Clinton announced that “First Husband” Bill Clinton would not move into the White House, but would stay in a New York penthouse that would cost taxpayers $400,000 a day.

By this point, conservative talk radio and Fox News were going berserk, but we hadn’t seen anything yet. Clinton began issuing bizarre tweets, many apparently in reaction to what she was seeing on MSNBC and radical-left websites. She denounced any negative news or polls as “fake news” and disparaged a federal judge who halted one of her executive orders.

When she booted the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of National Intelligence off of the National Security Council and replaced them with Podesta and socialist Bill Ayers, GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan went public, raising the question that many were asking privately: Is the president mentally fit to serve? They were joined by a few courageous Democrats who had seen enough.

The last straw came when Clinton, in an interview with Rachel Maddow, dismissed Maddow’s assertion that Vladimir Putin was a “killer” by saying “we’ve got killers, too, Rachel.” Later that evening, Clinton tweeted four times about the latest episode of The Bachelor, saying that Jessica should have never gotten in the hot tub with Jake.

Enough, already. My friends, as I said earlier, it truly hurts me to admit this, but I was wrong about Hillary Clinton. She is not a good president. She is mentally unfit to serve. I urge Congress to impeach her for the good of the country.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Memphian Appears Before Congress For Discussion of LGBT Youth Homelessness

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Last week, ’80s pop legend Cyndi Lauper spoke before a Senate subcommittee about youth homelessness, and Memphian Kal Rocket had her back — literally.

Rocket was one of four formerly homeless youth from across the nation invited to sit behind Lauper as she testified before the subcommittee.

Lauper, whose True Colors nonprofit organization addresses youth homelessness, spoke to the committee about ways to address the issue of LGBT youth homelessness since LGBT youth make up 40 percent of the estimated 1.6 million homeless kids and youth adults (ages 12 to 24) across the country.

“So you can see the disparity. You can see there’s something bigger at play here. Basically, the kids come out, and they get thrown out. Or they run away because they don’t feel accepted,” Lauper said in her Senate speech. “Is that acceptable? I say no. No young person should be left without a home because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity. The truth is, they didn’t choose their identity. It’s like you choosing the color of your eyes. They’re born that way.”

Rocket was chosen for the trip after being picked as one of True Colors’ “40 of the 40,” a list of 40 LGBT young adults who have either experienced homelessness or housing instability. Rocket and the three others who accompanied Lauper sat behind her as she gave her speech. While in Washington, D.C., they also spoke on an LGBT youth homelessness panel for various government department heads. — Bianca Phillips

Justin Fox Burks

Kal Rocket

Flyer: So how did the big day in Washington, D.C., go?

Kal Rocket: We got up super early and went to the Eisenhower building for the panel. The four of us sat up front with Cyndi and two people who work with her at True Colors. And they picked one of us to give a testimony in front of Congress because they only had time for one of us. They picked the white, straight girl from Maine.

And what exactly was the purpose of meeting with Congress?

Congress has tasked all of these [government] departments to, by the end of this year, have a plan for youth homelessness. So this was the first briefing of three where they’re bringing together this plan. By 2019, they have to start putting the plan into action.

Was your visit a success?

The panel was in front of a bunch of homeless service providers and people who work for the departments. That was the easy part because they wanted to hear, from a youth perspective, what we needed.

Congress didn’t go so well. There were two senators who were not friendly. One was majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the other one was Bill Cassidy from Louisiana. He was like, “How do you know that it’s 40 percent [of homeless youth that are LGBT]? Where did you get these numbers?”

But we do know that about 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT. And we were like, “Well, we’re not just here to talk about gay kids. We’re here to talk about homeless kids.”

You didn’t get to speak before the committee, but what were you prepared to say if chosen?

I would have talked about how kids from small towns have come to live with me or come to the center [Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center], and they had no idea that they could get food stamps or that someone would help them. But a lot of places that I would take them to try and get them help would just try to “fix” them because they were gay or trans.

What about your own experience with housing instability?

I could have used services between ages 17 and 19. I lived in an apartment without utilities, and I was eating out of a food pantry. I was so scared [to go to a homeless service provider for help], because they would just be like, “Oh, well you’re gay. So that’s really the problem.”

What was Cyndi Lauper like? Cyndi is so funny. She talks exactly like she sings with that little baby voice. And when some of the senators said some things to her, she came back with really snarky remarks. She was full of energy, and she just wants to help. She was a homeless youth. That’s why she started this.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Raging Bull in D.C.

It’s ironic that one day after his reelection to a sixth term as senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, the soon-to-be Senate majority leader, characterized the Congress as an angry, raging bull. In a stern, public admonition, McConnell warned President Obama against invoking executive action to alleviate our chronic immigration crisis, comparing such action to “waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

Ironic and sinister. The Republican leadership, which gained control of the U.S. Senate in the November 4th election and now controls both houses, blocked all attempts at reasonable immigration reform during the most recent session of Congress. Then, they blamed the president for any and all immigration crises, including the arrival of thousands of women and children from Central America this past summer. Then, they accused the president of being weak/soft on immigration and as frustration set in, the president’s numbers with Hispanics fell precipitously. Then, the day after their victory, the Republican leadership warned the president against taking much-needed action to solve our broken immigration system — action favored by the majority of Americans.

This script, written in Washington, seems to have emerged out of a Gabriel García Márquez novel. 

President Obama has the opportunity to lead via executive action, and he should do so immediately. He can end deportation of those in the country under irregular circumstances, excluding, of course, those who have committed serious, violent crimes. Rolling through a stop sign should not be grounds for deportation. He can put in place a program whereby millions of people are offered authorization to remain in the country, if they wish. They could apply for work permits; they could pay taxes with greater ease, and live here — temporarily — in relative peace.  

Obama’s ratings with Hispanics dropped 20 percent during the past two years. People are frustrated by the lack of action on immigration reform, and they blame one man, the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, rather than Congress, with its many faces, multiple agendas, and 50 shades of long-term deception on the immigration issue.

Executive action on immigration is not what any of us had hoped for as the solution to our broken system. But it looks like it will happen, and any executive action can be signed away by the next executive. It’s entirely possible the next executive will be a Republican, assuming Democrats behave as badly and awkwardly as they behaved in the most recent election cycle.

The most cited example involves McConnell’s Kentucky opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who wouldn’t say whether she voted for Obama, when asked by reporters. It’s not a trick question, and it’s not an unfair question for a woman running as a Democrat for the United States Senate. Democrats lost (Grimes lost by 16 points) because they refused, in many places, to run as Democrats or to champion the many accomplishments of the past six years. Instead, they ran as lite, low-calorie Republicans, and many moderate Democrats and Independents simply voted for the real thing.  

On immigration, Democrats need to hold together as a party and support a president who has very few options at this point. Democrats need to develop a short-term strategy to support those with irregular immigration status who want to live and work here. Then, the Democratic leadership needs to develop a long-term plan to win the White House in 2016, retake the Congress, and pass comprehensive immigration reform. Americans are demanding this type of activist, bold leadership. The American people are much further ahead of their political leaders on this issue, and when the Democratic Party realizes this, they’ll return to power.

But it might be time for some new ideas within the Democratic leadership. Many pundits assume that Hillary Clinton is a lock for the Democratic nomination, but Clinton’s glide-path to the White House is fraught with turbulence. Elizabeth Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, claims she’s not running, but we’d like to see her energy, brilliance, fearlessness, charisma, and leadership in the White House.

Can the nation endure an actual liberal from Massachusetts in the White House? We know what we can’t endure: the raging bull that’s de rigueur in D.C. these days.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A New Day in Washington

With the stock market at an all-time high, with almost 50 consecutive months of positive job growth, with the nation’s annual deficit at a six-year low, and with America now the leading producer of oil and gas products in the world, why are a majority of Americans so dispirited and disappointed with President Obama and the Democrats? 

And, separately, with a divided government in Washington now, is there hope for progress on key issues in Washington over the next two years?

Let’s answer in reverse order. 

Yes, there is hope for progress, but it depends on two things. First, which wing of the Republican Party will lead and negotiate matters of legislative seriousness in Washington. If Republicans follow the “sore winners” wing of their party — symbolized by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who declared election night that the Republican sweep ends an era of “Obama lawlessness” — it’s unlikely anything meaningful gets done. The paralysis and foolishness of Washington will only persist. 

But if Orrin Hatch of Utah, Rob Portman of Ohio and, yes, Mitch McConnell — the GOP Senate majority leader from Kentucky who on election night called for cooperation and change — are the dominant faces of Republican leadership, there’s a chance for a new day to emerge. 

Can important compromises be reached between the president and Congress on trade, taxes, immigration, and energy policy? 

Very likely, especially if Republicans agree to the creation of a public-private bank to jumpstart critical U.S. building initiatives — including new airports, broadband networks, roads, schools, pipelines, and subway lines. In addition, the Republicans need to accept that an outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka “Obamacare”) isn’t going to happen. They should aim instead to repeal the medical device tax portion of the ACA, a policy change I support, as do many Republicans and Democrats. 

But, first, the Republicans should give the president the trade promotion authority he has sought but been denied by the Senate’s Democratic leadership over the past years. What a White House visual that would be in the next few weeks: the president, surrounded by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, signing a piece of legislation! 

Obama and the Democrats have to be willing to do their part. The president’s first reaction to the election last Wednesday was a seeming effort to dodge any accountability for our party’s losses. Fortunately, on Sunday, Obama pushed the reset button by acknowledging that the buck stops with him.   

If I were advising the president, I’d recommend three things:

First, he should sign the Keystone Pipeline legislation and then agree not to change immigration laws unilaterally right now. And, in exchange, the Republicans should agree to raise the minimum wage and not repeal the ACA. This deal is achievable if the president leads on it.  

Independent analysis of the environmental impact of building the Keystone Pipeline substantiates a negligible carbon impact, and, in addition, a large number of Congressional Democrats want it as well. The long-term job-creation impact of the pipeline’s construction is in dispute. But what is not is that the pipeline’s construction would immediately produce thousands of well-paying jobs.    

Second, to deal with immigration, the president should appoint a bipartisan, Baker-Hamilton 9/11-like commission to offer recommendations by June to the president and Congress. He should ask majority leaders John Boehner and McConnell to agree to a vote on all or some of the recommendations before Congress adjourns for the year in the fall. If the Republicans don’t act in good faith, then the president can act by executive action at the end of the year. 

Next, raise the carried-interest rate to 25 percent, and lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent to make it more competitive globally, while granting a 90-day, 12.5 percent tax holiday for repatriation. Proceeds from the tax holiday could fund a public-private bank to begin rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. 

And last, Obama should be more social with Congress, spending regular time with congressional leaders from both parties who have complained that they don’t see the president enough. If for no other reason, better answers to the avalanche of foreign policy challenges the country faces are likely to be attained if there’s increased dialogue and trust between Congress and the president. 

Some will argue that these recommendations aren’t big enough. But it’s surely preferable for the political argument in this country to be about how to do more things in Washington and not just about how to get something — anything — done.

And we the people should do our part. Let us be as diligent in educating ourselves on the issues as we are in hurling invective at our political opponents. Let us not attack others’ political ideas unless we have alternatives to fix problems we know exist. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

How to Fail in Politics 101

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Toward the end of his just-concluded campaign for U.S. Senate, Democratic candidate Gordon Ball, son of a moonshiner (that was one of his never-fail best self-descriptions), a self-made multi-millionaire Knoxville lawyer who made his money and his name suing polluters and greedy corporations, altered his presentation in a perplexing way.

To back up: Ball had always been determined, as he put it, to take a broom against the feckless Washington, D.C., power community that he saw, in the original and negative sense of the term, as so much rascal flats. He would fulminate against the major inhabitants of this gone-wrong Potemkin Village, particularly Republican opponent Senator Lamar Alexander, whom he castigated for what was made to sound like an ill-gotten $22 million net worth, including $620,000 reaped from a $1 investment in the now-defunct Knoxville Journal. “A finder’s fee,” Ball scornfully quoted Alexander.

“If you want to change things in Washington, you’ve got to change the people,” Ball said. And he would name names of those who had to go — Mitch McConnell, the would-be Senate majority leader from Kentucky who was drenched with oil and gas and Koch money and would do nothing but obstruct any modest agenda put forth by Democrats, and Alexander, who opposed minimum wage and women’s rights and veterans’ rights and so much else, and needed to go home and tend to his garden of greenbacks.

So far, so good, I thought, as I heard all this at a morning stop last week at the IBEW headquarters on Madison. He’s coming on as a populist and demonizing the opposition and pitching to his base. But afterward, when we reporters had a chance for some private words with Ball, something he’d said on the road that I’d read in somebody else’s coverage kind of chafed at me, not in an ideological sense but in purely practical terms. So I had to ask.

Had Ball actually included on this list of desirable purgees the name of Harry Reid, the bespectacled ex-pugilist from Searchlight, Nevada, who’d risen to become Senate Democratic Majority Leader and who was constantly at battle with Senate Republicans determined to filibuster every proposal brought by the Obama administration?

Instead of reading my question as a rhetorical one, maybe even an implied rebuke (What’s to gain from attacking your own party leadership?), Ball took what I’d said as a prod. He’d overlooked Reid, whom, in various articles along the trail, he’d said he wouldn’t be able to vote for as leader. He apologized for having omitted Reid’s name at the IBEW rally and added it back in. “Yes, let’s include Harry Reid in there, too. We need to get rid of Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander and Harry Reid!”

It scanned wrong with my sensors, mainly because it diluted Ball’s respectably populist message, already nudged a little bit toward that shadowy, ill-defined reform constituency — the Tea Party — that had repudiated Common Core, as had any number of classroom teachers, who disliked the standardized tests and career-binding teacher scores that came with it as heartily as the Tea Party folks hated what they saw as governmental over-reach.

These were the folks who contained so much of the undecided vote that Ball needed in order to make up the gap shown in the final Middle Tennessee State University poll — reputedly showing Alexander (the same Alexander who netted only 49 percent of the Republican primary vote in August) with 42 percent, Ball with 26, and the rest, 32 percent, undecided. “I’ve got to get almost all that undecided,” Ball would tell me on election eve.

We can all do the math and see how much of it would have had to break Ball’s way — and, since this is being read after the election, we can now see for ourselves how much of it did break toward the challenger.

Something tells me that the Knoxville Democrat’s rhetorical throwing of his current party leader, Reid, on the same trash heap as Alexander and McConnell was worth very little to his hopes and, indeed, was likely counter-productive.

I am sure there are extant studies on the efficacy of this kind of acrobatic tactic, in which a candidate separates from his party, or from what he perceives as the unpopular national version of it, in hopes of ultimately gaining both re-entry into his party’s good graces and –more importantly — immunity from its adversaries.

Maybe even their toleration. Heck, maybe even their votes!

If there aren’t such studies, there should be, and, meanwhile, with a conviction based entirely on my intuitive sense, coupled with case after case of actual results. I say this sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing maneuver is a loser, always.

First, there is no reason to believe, literally no reason, that a disparagement of some symbolic party colleague whom one’s political adversary has made an arch villain will gain a single vote for oneself. Those who would agree with the disparagement are already on the other side, for that and any number of other assorted reasons.

It’s just a guess, but I believe a candidate would do equally well with the opposition voter by heaping rhapsodic praise on the party colleague whom the other guys have demonized. A wash, is my guess.

On the other hand, he would certainly get better results with his own party base and ideological constituency with the latter course, which might have the salvific effect of rousing them to solidarity and sincere effort on one’s behalf.

Another case in point — speaking of McConnell — is that of Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky who, for much of the past year, had been running neck-and-neck with the venerable GOP Senate leader.

Here of late, however, McConnell seemed to be pulling away a bit, and either as partial cause or maybe just as an objective correlative to that fact, Grimes has apparently tried to join McConnell on the anti-Obama bandwagon, refusing four times in a brief televised performance to say she had voted for Obama for president.

As Memphis Leftwing Cracker blogger Steve Steffens noted with some dismay, along with fellow Democratic blogger Rick Maynard, Grimes had demonstrably been a convention delegate of Obama’s — something requiring a positive embrace and avowal of a candidate on a relatively public scale. And now she was denying him? Thinking … what?

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Steffens and Maynard both concluded.

I am one who thinks current Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Roy Herron is doing good work, and I always thought he was a conscientious, effective state Senator, but, while I recognized the head of steam Republican Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump had going in the 8th District congressional race of 2010, I thought Herron, a longtime fixture in the area,  was competitive until he began pandering to what he perceived as his home folks’ animus against national Democrats, and ended up repudiating the then-Democratic House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, whom he vowed to vote against.

Same arithmetic as with all other such cases: No gain from the opposition camp, while there is a palpable unease in one’s own party ranks, resulting in resentment, resignation, and fatalism that probably cost votes.

And need we mention the 2006 U.S. Senate race, in which the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Harold Ford Jr., made a concerted effort to dissociate himself not only from national party luminaries but from established party talking points on issues such as gay rights, a Draconian bankruptcy bill, opposition to the war in Iraq, and even from the party label itself.

At his headquarters opening in Memphis in 2006, he declaimed at one point, “I’m not a Democrat running up to Washington yelling ‘Democrat, Democrat, Democrat!”

And sure enough, Ford, who in other ways was running what may have been the last truly competitive statewide Democratic race against a Republican, lost to Republican Bob Corker and never got a chance to go up thataway yelling “Democrat, Democrat, Democrat” or “Blue Dog, Blue Dog, Blue Dog” or whatever other mutated and minimized form of party identity he was willing to own up to. 

Maybe “Wall Street, Wall Street, Wall Street”? That’s where he works today, having thus far failed to rekindle popular excitement for another political candidacy, here, there, or anywhere.

Radical thought: Maybe it actually pays to embrace one’s political party, its principles, and its personnel. Maybe that’s how you get elected.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

“I’m Not a Scientist … ”

I was reading a story the other day about the Senate race in Kentucky. That’s the one where Rhodes College grad Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat, is taking on incumbent Republican, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.

In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, McConnell was asked his views on climate change, and specifically whether he agreed with the overwhelming scientific consensus that it’s real. McConnell went straight to the standard line from the GOP playbook on this issue: “I’m not a scientist,” he said, deflecting the question.

Well, duh. That’s why we have scientists: to tell us the scientific evidence for one thing or another. McConnell is well aware that global climate change is happening. Only a fool could read the hundreds of articles about warmer temperatures world-wide, the loss of our polar ice caps, the rise of sea levels, the increasing power of storms, long-lived droughts, and massive floods, and not conclude that the scientists might be on to something.

But McConnell knows that to admit that he believes in the scientific consensus will lose him votes among know-nothing voters who still see global climate change as a plot for scientists to get grant money. In this Limbaugh-esque worldview, scientists are like welfare queens, gaming the system for profit. McConnell knows that if a large part of your base is ignorant, you’ve got to act ignorant, too, or risk chasing them off. He also needs to keep his big-oil donors happy.

Though I’m not a huge fan of Senator Lamar Alexander, he is at least on record as being sensible on this issue: “Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming,” Alexander said in 2012, adding: “If fire chiefs of the same reputation told me my house was about to burn down, I’d buy some fire insurance.”

Sadly, Alexander is an exception among GOP leaders. Florida’s Governor Rick Scott and Senator Marco Rubio both have repeatedly used the “I’m not a scientist” dodge, as has Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose state has already lost 2,000 square miles to rising ocean water. House Majority Leader John Boehner is also “not a scientist.”

The weird thing is that by using this line, these GOP leaders are admitting that scientists know more about, well, science, than they do, but that they’ve decided to ignore the scientific consensus. Imagine extending this “logic” to other areas. It would mean you could have no opinion on anything in which you were not an accredited expert. The economy? Sorry, I’ll leave that to the economists. War in the Middle East? I’m not a general, so I can’t have an opinion. Ebola? I’m no doctor. It’s beyond absurd.

I have a suggestion: The next time you hear one of these clowns use the “I’m not a scientist” line, mentally insert the word “rocket” in front of “scientist.” It makes total sense that way.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (October 1, 2014)

CREDIT: Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

John Boehner

So now they expect you to reward them. The most unproductive, polarized, ineffective, and despised Congress in American history has abandoned the nation’s business in order to focus on convincing you that they are worthy of your support for reelection. After a five-week summer recess and a grueling eight days back in session, the congressional Republicans just said, “Fuck it,” and lit out for the territories, leaving trivial matters such as war and peace to wait until after the mid-term elections.

Indulge me in a hypothesis: Let’s say that you are the personnel manager of a large hospital, and right in the middle of a measles outbreak, all your employees decided to return home to prepare for their performance reviews. When they came back after the epidemic had worsened, would you rehire them?

And yet, the noise on the right has grown so deafening, they think they’re winning. Republicans are as confident as Mitt Romney on election night. The hammer-locked Congress, led by the fearsome tag-team of “Blubbering John” Boehner and Mitch “The Obamacare Assassin” McConnell, don’t even realize that their strategy of destroying the president at the expense of the country hasn’t worked. Even after Obama’s reelection and Eric Cantor’s loss, they still didn’t get the message and continued with their destructive agenda.

The goose-stepping Congressional Republicans have obstructed, delayed, blocked, and filibustered every single initiative offered by the president, costing countless numbers of desperately needed jobs, and now they want your vote. Republicans have loudly criticized the president for taking executive actions and then they leave town during an international crisis, abdicating their Constitutional responsibilities.

The British Parliament’s debate was fascinating, but Congressman Bubba from Birmingham can’t be called away from his fish fry. There are donors’ hands to shake. Can you imagine if John McCain and Sarah Palin were elected in 2012? We’d be dropping nukes on the Kremlin screaming, “We’re all Ukrainians now,” although recent events have shown we may have used the Palin family fistfight diplomacy first.

While Obama was securing a unanimous vote by the UN Security Council to crack down on foreign fighters joining ISIS, only the second U.S. president in history to chair such a committee, right-wing media exploded in outrage over his salute to a marine while holding a coffee cup. Fox News went wild with indignation, even though this militaristic gesture of saluting while exiting a helicopter was initiated only 30 years ago by the Hollywood warrior, Ronald Reagan.

Then, the usual Fox suspects exulted at the resignation of Eric Holder, like the 7th Cavalry claiming a scalp, while vilifying the attorney general for his presumed “racial favoritism.” Holder once said that when it comes to discussing matters of race, we are “a nation of cowards.” His choice of words may have been combative, but he was right. Or, maybe half-right. We don’t discuss race across color lines, but that never stopped the Caucasian Party from discussing it among themselves.

To believe the GOP, you’d think that roving gangs of displaced Acorn volunteers and welfare cheats were conspiring to vote under false names to steal the next election. Just listen to their rhetoric: A Fox News host said that Holder was, “one of the most dangerous … men in America,” who, “ran the Department of Justice much like the Black Panthers would.” The morally bankrupt Dick Cheney claimed Obama “would much rather spend money on food stamps … than defending our troops.” And Old Faithful, Palin, telling a recent audience how to combat liberals who “scream racism just to end debate,” uttered this gem: “Well, don’t retreat. You reload with truth, which I know is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Her verbal bomb fell about two blocks short of its target. For the sake of sane government, these right-wing obstructionists are richly deserving of being swept from office. If they can’t win fairly, they cheat. They demand new documentation as a condition for voting, they restrict days and hours to make it difficult for the poor to vote, they gerrymander districts to ensure a Republican majority, and they lie. All the time.

In these dark days, what we are witnessing is the last gasp of white supremacy in this nation. That’s what all this “we want our country back” stuff is about. But the GOP is willing to burn down the country club before they’ll admit any of these mixed-race aliens into their midst. Largely based in the South, the Republican Party is now the last bastion of the old Confederate mentality. Regardless of who controls the Congress in 2014 or even wins the presidency in 2016, this is the last spasm of the philosophy of white entitlement. 

Ultimately, leaders will come along who see the value of diversity and replace the agenda-driven, politicized, corporate-owned justices on the Supreme Court and restore honor to the term “public servant.” No time soon, however. The Fox News demographic may be aging, but not fast enough. Die-hard viewers of the corporate propaganda outlet still think Obama is the anti-Christ.