Disgusting

Absolutely disgusting with no redeeming value, comedic or otherwise.

Sammy Sosa bleaching himself white

Literally.

When baseball great Sammy Sosa showed up at a Latin Recording Academy event last week, he looked jaw-droppingly different from his days as iconic right fielder for his Chicago Cubs. It wasn't that the 41-year-old Dominican ballplayer seemed older or heavier. It was that he looked, well, white.

As his ghastly white image shot around the Web, Sosa quickly found himself the brunt of uncharitable comparisons to another famous, mysteriously lightened celebrity -- Michael Jackson. One jokester even put Sosa's "blackness" for auction on eBay, accompanied with damning before and after photographs. Sosa soon spoke out -- in his native Spanish -- on the Univision program "Primer Impacto."

"It's a bleaching cream that I apply before going to bed and whitens my skin some," he explained. "It's a cream that I have, that I use to soften [my skin], but has bleached me some. I'm not a racist. I live my life happily."

I never knew that skin whitening is actually a big business in some parts of the world.

In India, where fair skin is associated with attractiveness and marriageability, sales of over-the-counter whiteners rose a dramatic 17 percent in a nine-month period. And the cosmetic companies that make the products, which have long had a loyal following among women in Asia and Africa, are discovering a growing new market among men. When the Fair and Lovely brand spun off a Fair and Handsome line and recruited Indian superstar Sha Rukh Khan to endorse it in 2007, sales went through the roof.

Lighter skin, with its Western, aristocratic associations, isn't peddled overseas as merely attractive. It's a ticket to a better life. In a head-smackingly crazy 2006 spot for Fair and Lovely, a doting father plies his grown daughter with the cream and voilà! She gets a job she'd previously been turned down for -- and captures the eye of a handsome new colleague.

I don't suppose this is any different, except by a matter of degree, from hair relaxing.

And it isn't as extreme as cosmetic surgery, especially since I imagine just spending some time in the sun would reverse the effects of the lightening cream.

But it is a bit shocking to see someone's desire to look different illustrated in such stark relief.

Louisiana official denies marriage license to interracial couple

And he admits the reason he denied them the license is because they are an interracial couple.

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

See, he's not discriminating at all. He treats all race mixers the same. Can't none of 'em get married if he has anything to say about it.

What year is this, again?

The happy couple, who got married after another justice of the peace granted them a license, have asked the Justice Department to look into the case.

Rush Limbaugh's Explicit Racism

Rushlimbaugh.com has a feature with which you can ostensibly communicate directly with Limbaugh's sponsors.

I just used the feature to send the following message:

Dear Rush Limbaugh advertiser,

Do you want your business associated with the explicit racism that Mr. Limbaugh is expressing with comments such as these?

"Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama's America, the white kids get beat up with the black kids cheering."

Listen to the clip here: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909150017

Advertiser, even if there had been a racial motivating to the school bus fight in question, which the police say there was not, ask yourself what on earth it had to do with President Obama. The answer is, "nothing."

What does "Obama's America" even mean? Mr. Limbaugh's comments about this incident are racist. There is no other way to characterize his attempt to connect our first black president to a fight between black kids and white kids on a school bus.

Please give serious consideration to whether it is responsible for your business to support the incendiary, explicit racism that has become a distinguishing feature of the Rush Limbaugh Program.

It is possible that the message will be vetted and deleted by the website's administrator, but I feel it is important to take the chance that the message will actually make its way to Limbaugh's sponsors.

Something has to be done about this explicit race baiting. The First Amendment gives Limbaugh the right to say what he wants (mostly), but this explicit appeal to racial paranoia is too dangerous to go unaddressed. A market-based solution is the only way to address his irresponsible rhetoric. Only his employer can put effective pressure on a demagogue like Limbaugh. Radio giant Clear Channel will only pay attention if and when Limbaugh's explict racism starts to cost them money.

This is a serious matter. Limbaugh has dropped the mask completely. He has abandoned the code words. He is now saying openly that President Obama has a connection to racial violence by blacks against whites. He is stating openly that under Obama's leadership, white people have reason to fear that black people will attack their children. This is racism. It is an outrage. It cannot stand.

Armed and ready for what, exactly?

Source: Meet Your Conservative Movement

The New York Times told me that the 9/12 march was about jes' folks protestin' big government.

The article mentioned the fact that some signs compared Obama to Hitler, but no photos of any such signs made it into the NYT's slideshow of the event.

They also managed not to notice any of the confederate flags and other expressions of racism on full display.

I don't know why the Times feels it is helpful to the country to use its reporting to soften the image of these dangerous, paranoid radicals.

[h/t Blue Gal]

Prominent scholar arrested for GHWB (Going Home While Black)

The main question in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates is not, as some suggest, whether he was insufficiently deferential to the police officer who slapped the cuffs on him.

The question is, why should he have had to be?

Even by the account of the Cambridge Police Department, Gates was arrested for nothing more than being loud.

The police report said that Gates was "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior" and that the officer, Sgt. James Crowley, identified himself. "We stand by whatever the officer said in his report," said Sgt. James DeFrancesco, a spokesman for the Cambridge Police Department. He would not comment on Gates's version of his arrest.

The department said that Crowley tried to calm Gates, but that the professor would not cooperate and said, "You don't know who you're messing with."

"These actions on behalf of Gates served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed," the report said.

Somebody call the Gang Task Force! Professor Henry Louis Gates is speaking loudly and causing people to "stop and take notice"! A cop's gotta do what a cop's gotta do! WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!!11!!!1!

I guess Gates should count himself lucky that the cops didn't put a beatdown on him. Or, zap him with a Taser. Or, pop a cap in him.

But to WSJ columnist James Taranto, the real problem was that Gates didn't have the sense to keep his mouth shut.

Becoming belligerent with a police officer is almost never a good idea. Not only can it get you arrested, but it can cause a merely uncomfortable situation to escalate into a deadly one. If Gates thought the officer behaved improperly, he should have held his peace, defused the situation, and later taken the matter up with local officials. In addition, if Gates did tell the officer he had “no idea who he was messing with,” he showed a distinct lack of grace.

Excuse me, but since when is it a crime to mouth off to a cop? Yeah, Gates could have held his peace, but he didn't. He felt that he had been treated as a burglary suspect in his own home. He felt that he had been the subject of racist assumptions by a police officer. Those are powerful emotions, and all he did was express them verbally. If Gates had hit the cop, his arrest would have been justified. If he had hurled a clay flower pot at the cop's car, his arrest would have been justified. But becoming beligerent? Being "loud and tumultuous"? What about that justifies being cuffed, hauled away in a cruiser, and detained for four hours?

Here's a thought: if the cop didn't like Gates yelling at him, why didn't he just leave? It's not like the professor was waiving a gun around, or setting fire to the neighborhood. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't slapping his old lady around. He was standing on his own porch demanding to know why he had been subjected to what he felt was racist treatment by the police. If you don't wish to engage the question, and your business is concluded, why not just get back into your car and drive away?

Even prior to that, why didn't the cop simply identify himself when Gates asked him to? Why did he turn and walk away without answering the question? Why not give the man his name, explain that he was only there to make sure everything was okay, hand him his card, and then leave? Did he not feel that this taxpaying citizen of Cambridge was due even the most basic courtesy?

It was not Gates who caused the situation to "escalate" by failing to hold his peace. It was the police who failed to engage in the most basic level of conflict resolution and who chose instead to arrest a man for talking.

Fox's Brian Kilmeade refers to Irish and Italians as 'other species'

Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade seems to think that Italians and Irish people are something other than human.

While extolling the virtues of Swedish and Finnish societies, which he believes forbid their citizens from marrying outside their own ethnicities, Kilmeade suggested that marrying people of Irish or Italian descent amounts to bestiality.

KILMEADE: We keep marrying other species and other ethnics--

GRETCHEN CARLSON: Are you sure you are not suffering from some of the causes of dementia right now?

KILMEADE: The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.

DAVE BRIGGS: This study does not apply?

KILMEADE: Does not apply to us.

[pause]

KILMEADE: Huh.

Wow.

Ironically, Ancestry.com says the surname "Meade" is an Irish variant of the English "Mead," which means "from the meadow."

Does Brian Kilmeade have a family? If so, is Mrs. Kilmeade aware that her children are, at best, only half human?

Prominent South Carolina Republican says Michelle Obama related to gorilla

The racist id of the Republican Party isn't making much effort to hide itself these days.

The latest example: Rusty DePass, a former Richland County, S.C. GOP chair, who remarked on his Facebook page that First Lady Michelle Obama was likely related to a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo in Columbia.

He wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."

Upon the exposure of this racist buffoon's remark, said racist buffoon offered a non-apology and proceeded to suggest that Mrs. Obama had, somehow, brought the insult on herself.

Busted by South Carolina political blogger Will Folks on his FITNEWS blog, DePass told WIS-TV in Columbia, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."

Then he added, "The comment was hers, not mine," claiming Michelle Obama made a recent remark about humans descending from apes. The Daily News could find no such comment.

[...]

Eric Davis, the current chairman of the Richland County Republicans, said his predecessor should get a pass. "Everyone says stupid things they regret later. I think the world should move on," he said.

Yes, that's exactly the right note to strike, Mr. Davis. Move along, nuthin' ta see heah but a good ol' boy comparing the First Lady of the United States to a lower primate.

You know what's really sad? I doubt that this Eric Davis is being disingenous. I suspect that he genuinely cannot comprehend why anybody would be find anything offensive about what DePass wrote.

Your Republican Party folks, in the Year of Our Lord 2009.

How's that minority outreach going, GOP?

Maria! I've just met a girl named Mariiiiiaaaaaa!!!!!

Sonia, Maria, Lupe, Carmencita - really, what's in a name?

[F]ormer Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (we dodged a bullet with that one) attempted to stay ahead of the game by releasing an early morning statement to the press which read as follows:

"The appointment of Maria Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is the clearest indication yet that President Obama's campaign promises to be a centrist and think in a bipartisan way were mere rhetoric."

One huge problem there, Mike! Her name isn't Maria. Contrary to popular belief, every Latina in the United States isn't named Maria. We'll forgive you. We're sure you were just watching West Side Story last night in preparation for this statement and got confused.

So, basically just writing off the Hispanic vote at this point, huh, Big Mike?

Yeah, good luck with that.

Local TV station reports: 'Hispanic man' shot in Baton Rouge

I read this story several times and for the life of me I can't figure out the relevance of the shooting victim's ethnicity.

Hispanic man shot outside apartment complex on Blvd. de Province

Posted: Feb 25, 2009 05:11 AM CST

Updated: Feb 25, 2009 05:33 AM CST

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - A 37-year-old Hispanic man was shot in the chest Tuesday morning by an unknown gunman outside a Baton Rouge apartment complex.

The shooting happened just after 11:30am at 1718 Blvd. de Province.

Police say a black man walked up to the victim and just shot him.

They say it happened for no apparent reason.

The suspect then got into a gray car with three other black men inside and they drove off.

Police say the victim was taken to a local hospital in stable condition.

The suspected shooter is described as being in his late teens to early 20s, 5'8" - 5'10" tall, weighing 140 lbs. - 150 lbs., with dreadlocks.

Police say a 26-year-old Hispanic man was shot at the same complex Monday during an attempted robbery.

They don't know yet whether the two shootings are related but the description of the suspect is very similar.

This is a racist style of news writing that fell out of favor, or should have, generations ago. Why on earth did the writer feel the need to even mention the victim's ethnicity, to say nothing of making it the central focus of the narrative?

Is the shooting deemed newsworthy because the victim is Hispanic? If so, why?

Are we to infer that the assault on this man would have been more or less tragic had he been white or black or asian?

And what is the point of mentioning that another "Hispanic man" was shot earlier in the same apartment complex? Do police believe that someone is targeting Hispanics? If so, that would make the victim's race newsworthy, but the story gives no indication of this.

Rather, it is by all appearances simply a gratuitous racial distinction.

In the Louisiana town where I grew up, the local newspaper maintained separate obituary columns for blacks and whites for much longer than was culturally justifiable. The paper did not abandon its "Colored Deaths" obit column until the 1970s.

This story reminds me of that.

This kind of writing has no place in American journalism in the 21st century.

What is up with the Hillsborough County, Florida GOP?

Aside from being infested with bigots, I mean.

Lawyers, Guns, and Money has the story of Carol Carter, a Florida Republican State Committeewoman who got herself into trouble by e-mailing a racist message to eight of her closest friends.

"How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in 1 day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn't get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?"

Charming.

After her "joke" migrated beyond the initial group to whom she sent it, Carter sent out an apology. Sort of.

"I have been asked to send this apology for my earlier email. I am sorry that it was received in a negative manner. I do hope that we are going to be allowed to keep our sense of humor. As you can now see, it went to very few people. I did add Todd Marks in this apology, as he is in the mix now. I am also sorry to learn that some of these persons are not real team players. There really was no reason for this to go beyond those that I emailed ( 8 people). This was not an email blast as I do not have that capability.

Carol"

She then resigned.

Really, if that's the best you can do, why go through the pretense of apologizing at all? Blaming the offended party for taking offense at your "sense of humor" does nothing to soothe hurt feelings. In fact, people would respect you more if you told them to go f____ themselves and get over it. They still wouldn't like you very much, but they wouldn't think of you as a weasel in addition to being a vicious racist.

Anyway, when I read this, Hillsborough County sounded familiar.

Now I remember why.*

This is not the first time that a Hillsborough County Republican Party official got in trouble for a racist e-mail.

In October, 2008, then-party chair David Storck instigated a scandal when he forwarded a racist e-mail from a local volunteer warning of "carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama."

It begins with the words "The Threat," and, referring to an early voting site in Temple Terrace, reads in part: "I see carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama. This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little that he is at minimum, socialist, and probably Marxist in his core beliefs. After all, he is black — no experience or accomplishments — but he is black."

Near the end of the e-mail, Whitley writes: "There is only one way to stop Obama: Vote!!!"

Storck prefaced his forwarding of the e-mail by saying: "If you think it can help us win this election, please pass it on."

And the similarity doesn't stop with the racist e-mail.

Like Carter, Storck reacted to the resulting controversy by whining about the fact the e-mail went beyond the original recipients.

It was supposed to be an internal e-mail, Storck said, and someone releasing it to the media was an attempt to "sabotage the Republican Party."

Later, however, Storck said he did not endorse the statement. Thursday afternoon, he sent a followup e-mail offering his "sincere apology."

And like Storck, Carter either never noticed the "Forward" button on her e-mail, or never bothered to figure out what it could be used for.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a trend, but the Hillsborough County GOP definitely seems to have a problem - with racism and stupidity.

_{*My original post from October about the David Storck controversy is here.}

Which is it, Rush, forward or backward?

Rush Limbaugh is trafficking a straw-man argument against Barack Obama that is so ridiculous it almost defies analysis. One is tempted to simply dismiss it as the paranoid ranting of a recovering drug addict who has gone back to the hard stuff.

But if the last eight years have taught us anything, nothing gains traction in the mainstream media quite like a brain-dead conservative talking point.

So in doing my part to stop this right-wing attack meme before it spreads too far, I give you Rush Limbaugh, interviewed by Sean Hannity.

They were gonna cover up the Jeremia Wright, all these things, that, that give indication of radicalism in Obama. Cover that up, portray him as he wants to be portrayed – somebody who’s not to be questioned, somebody who’s not to be doubted. We’re just supposed to accept and trust because most of these guys came alive and came of age in the civil rights battles of the 60s. It defines who they are. They’ve trained the young drive-bys to look at events through the same prism.

[...]

Racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left. We’re witnessing racism all this week, uh, that led up to the inauguration. We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles – bend over forward, backward, whichever - because his father was black. This is the first black president. We, we’ve just, we’ve got to accept this.

First things first: Jeremiah Wright.

Who in the news media made any effort to "cover up" the Jeremiah Wright story? Does Limbaugh even watch the news? Was he in solitary confinement last summer when Jeremiah Wright was all the cable networks wanted to talk about? If the Jeremiah Wright story suffered from anything, it was by no means a lack of exposure. This is a point so painfully obvious, I feel foolish even making it.

Next, the straw-man argument to which I alluded at the top of this post.

Limbaugh says: "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles – bend over forward, backward, whichever - because his father was black."

Really? And who is telling you this, Rush? Name one Democratic politician or prominent figure in the so-called liberal media who has said that Obama deserves our support because he is black. Name one. Go all the way back to February 10, 2007, and identify one supporter of Barack Obama, one politico or pundit, who has even suggested such a thing.

Yes, we celebrate the fact that Obama is the first black President of the United States. That is because he is the first black President of the United States. His inauguration was the most historic one since that of George Washington. When Obama took the oath of office on Tuesday, he broke a barrier that most Americans did not think would be broken in their lifetimes. That is entirely noteworthy (and, if I may be so bold, the likely source of your angst).

But neither Barack Obama nor anyone who supports him has ever cited his skin color as a reason that he should be president. We supported him and believed in his candidacy because he is smart, he is accomplished, and he promised a change from the destructive excesses of the Bush presidency. And he has already begun delivering on that promise.

In his first two days in the Oval Office, Obama has:

• Formally committed to closing the Guantanamo torture chamber within one year;
  
• Ordered a suspension of Military Commission show trials for the detainess being held there;
  
• Ordered the CIA to follow Army Field Manual rules on interrogations;
  
• Repealed the global abortion gag rule for family planning organizations receiving federal funding;
  
• Loosened Bush's restrictions on access to presidential records;
  
• Met with military commanders on an exit strategy from Iraq;
  
• Prohibited former lobbyists on his staff from working on issues related to their fields

That is quite a record for our new president's first 48 hours on the job.

The strongest argument in support of Barack Obama's candidacy, and the only one that anyone has ever made, is about his intelligence, his competence, and his determination to do the right thing.

This blather about race is nothing but projection. People like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck accuse Obama and his supporters of obsessing about race because they are obsessed about it. They cannot see past their prejudices. They refuse to look forward because if they do, they will see that history has left them behind.

This racial straw-man argument reminds me of the Clinton campaign's insistence after Super Tuesday that Obama-loving media figures were trying to make Hillary drop out of the race. This, despite the fact that aside from a couple of liberal blogs, no one in the media ever told Hillary to drop out of the race.

Like the Clinton campaign back then, Rush Limbaugh is fighting back against an argument that no one is making.

But, the right-wing remnant that comprises his audience is all too eager to wallow in Limbaugh's paranoid racist fantasy. It comforts them. It allows them to huddle more deeply into their narrow world view. It simply cannot be that America has elected a black president based on nothing more or less than the content of his character. It has to be something else, something that allows them to see Obama's victory as something illegitimate and unacceptable.

Remember what else Limbaugh said: "This is the first black president. We, we’ve just, we’ve got to accept this."

Well, yes, you do. You have to accept it. For the next four years, the President of the United States is a black Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama. You have to accept it, not because liberals in the media tell you to, but because it really happened.

It's not a dream. It's not a trick. It's not a crime.

Oh, and it's not affirmative action. That is, after all, the real meaning behind Limbaugh's straw-man construction. He only got it because he is black.

Just like your cousin who lost out on that promotion that one time, not because he shows up late for work three days a week, but because of affirmative action.

Those blacks, they never work for anything. They just get it because of affirmative action. You don't have to accept the Obama presidency. It's not real. He only got it because he's black.

Conservatism is reduced to this: plain, unadorned race-baiting. If Limbaugh can be seen as a leading indicator of conservative conventional wisdom, the right wing will spend the next four years stoking the flames of white racial resentment against the Obama presidency.

Don't be surprised to see Republican campaign signs in the next election that read simply: The White One, '12.

'No experience or accomplishments, but he is black'

Undisguised racism has become an unfortunate characteristic of the final days of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The chair of a local GOP chapter in Florida is warning of "car loads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama."

The head of the Hillsborough GOP, David Storck, distributed an email from a Republican Party volunteer saying the voters are a threat.

[...]

It goes on to say, "This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little the he is at minimum a socialist and probably Marxist in his core beliefs." The Republican volunteer says that is because, "After all he is black- no experience or accomplishments but he is black."

Now, the racism involved in characterizing peaceful voters, who happen to be black, as a threat is one thing.

But I would like to examine the part of the e-mail that dismisses Barack Obama as someone with "no experience or accomplishments."

Barack Obama is a graduate of two of the world's most elite institutions of higher learning: Columbia University and Harvard.

He is a former editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He is a former professor of constitutional law at the top-tier University of Chicago Law School.

After graduation, he chose the life of a community organizer over a high-paying career on Wall Street.

Nonetheless, he is a self-made millionaire, the author of two best-selling books.

He is the husband of a loving wife and the father of two adoring children.

He is a former Illinois state lawmaker.

He is a United States senator.

And he is the Democratic Party's 2008 nominee for president of the United States.

If Barack Obama is not accomplished, nobody is accomplished.

Yet, David Storck, the Hillsborough GOP chair in Temple Terrace, FL insists that Obama's only appeal for tens of millions of voters is that he is black.

Well.

There is a saying that black parents tell their children: You have to be twice as good to be considered just as good.

In other words, there is no margin of error. If you do not command respect with excellence, nobody will give you the benefit of the doubt. It is not good enough to be as good as everybody else. You have to be better. Then, and only then, will "they" consider you good enough.

But for some people, even an overachiever like Barack Obama must still prove himself worthy of respect. He can never be good enough.

There is no period of Obama's life that is not marked by the pursuit and achievement of excellence. But David Storck, this local GOP chair in Florida, looks at Obama and can't see any of it. He looks at Obama and sees only one thing: skin color.

And to add insult to injury, he denigrates Obama's supporters as the racists.

Nice try, but no sale.

There are plenty of legitimate grounds upon which honest people can disagree about Obama's qualifications for the presidency. But his record of accomplishment is not one of them.

So let's drop the pretense. For people like David Storck, it is not about socialism. It is not about Marxism. It is not about birth certificates or taxes or Islam.

If Columbia, Harvard, the Law Review, the Law School, the Audacity of Hope, the United States Senate, the nomination, the family, and the content of the man's character don't allow you to see anything more than the color of his skin, you sir or madam are a racist.

_{*Edited slightly for style.}

McCain: 'Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies'

Is this what you were talking about John?

“I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?”

“When you got a nigra running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer.”

“He seems like a sheep - or a wolf in sheep’s clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin - she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.”

“He’s related to a known terrorist, for one.”

“He is friends with a terrorist of this country!”

“He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama.”

“Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody’s still kinda - a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but… I dunno, it’s just kinda… a little unnerving.”

“Obama and his wife, I’m concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that.”

“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash… because we’re not!”

And just so we're clear - you did say you were "categorically" proud, right John?

Main Entry: cat·e·gor·i·cal
Pronunciation: \ˌka-tə-ˈgȯr-i-kəl, -ˈgär-\
Variant(s): also cat·e·gor·ic \-ik\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin categoricus, from Greek katēgorikos, from katēgoria
Date: 1588

1: absolute , unqualified

So, your pride in the people who come to your rallies is absolute and unqualified.

Got it.

Kristol to McCain: Play the 'Wright' card!

This is what panic looks like.

In a largely incoherent op-ed today, NYT columnist Bill Kristol advises John McCain to go full-metal racist in a last-ditch attempt to save his candidacy.

[Obama] also has radical associates in his past.

The most famous of these is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and I wonder if Obama may have inadvertently set the stage for the McCain team to reintroduce him to the American public. On Saturday, Obama criticized McCain for never using in the debate Friday night the words “middle class.” The Obama campaign even released an advertisement trumpeting McCain’s omission.

The McCain campaign might consider responding by calling attention to Chapter 14 of Obama’s eloquent memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” There Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.”

So when Biden goes on about the middle class on Thursday, Palin might ask Biden when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness.

Kristol is urging Sarah Palin to invoke Jeremiah Wright in the context of the economy. Yes, I'm sure that would be very well-received. It's not as though Palin is already an object of ridicule over her tendency to respond with outrageous non-sequiturs to perfectly reasonable questions.



I have no doubt that McCain would benefit greatly from his running mate exposing herself to charges of bigotry by trying to re-inflame the racial tensions of the Jeremiah Wright episode.

Follow that advice, John McCain. There is nobody smarter than Bill Kristol. He is right about everything. Remember when he said there was no history of animosity between the Sunni and Shia of Iraq? Look how well that turned out!

So, yes, you should absolutely re-brand McCain/Palin '08 as a white supremacist hate group. That's change you can believe in.

More racism from Imus

If it waddles like a racist and quacks like a racist, it's probably a racist.

Sportscaster Warner Wolf: Defensive back Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones, recently signed by the Cowboys — here’s a guy suspended all of 2007 following a shooting in a Vegas nightclub –

Imus: Well, stuff happens, you’re in a nightclub for God’s sake. What do you think's gonna happen in a nightclub? People are drinking and doing drugs, there are women there, and, uh, people have guns. ...

Wolf: He’s also, he’s been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005.

Imus: What color is he?

Wolf: He’s African-American.

Imus: Oh, well, there you go. Now we know.

It is time to acknowledge that Don Imus is a racist, and that anybody who hires him is endorsing his racism.

'There's a pattern emerging here'

Hillary Clinton has decided apparently that racism is her one remaining path to the Democratic presidential nomination.

The conventional wisdom is wrong. Clinton is not interested in a graceful exit from the primary contest. She does not intend to withdraw after Oregon and Kentucky vote on May 20. She does not intend to withdraw after the rules committee meets on a compromise for Florida and Michigan on May 31. She does not intend to withdraw after Montana and South Dakota vote on June 3.

Clinton is doubling down on one last hand - a backroom deal in Denver. She intends to take her fight for the nomination all the way to the Democratic National Convention in August, just three months before the 2008 presidential election.

Having lost the ability to claim a delegate count mandate, a big-state mandate, or a popular-vote mandate, she is employing one last-ditch argument to convince party power brokers to hand her the nomination that she could not win: Obama is too black to be president.

Clinton articulates her latest rationale in an interview with USA Today.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Clinton's blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions.

There is, indeed, a pattern emerging here. Hillary Clinton seems to have decided to frighten the Democratic Party into granting her the nomination by stating - not suggesting, but stating outright - that a black man cannot win the presidency.

I say this as someone who covered David Duke's campaign for U.S. Senate in 1990: I don't think I have ever heard a candidate for national office use such stark racial rhetoric as the Clinton campaign has over the last few days.

Clinton's chief strategist Geoff Garin advanced the race-based extension of her campaign's "electability" argument in the hours after Indiana was called for Clinton by a 1.8 percent margin.

Garin argued that the North Carolina contest, which Obama won by 14 points, represented "progress" for Hillary because she did better among white voters there than she did in Virginia.

"When we began in North Carolina," Garin said, "our internal polling and much of the public polling [showed] we were running exactly even with white voters."

Garin said that the Virginia electorate was the "closest white electorate in the country" to North Carolina, and added that Hillary "started even" among whites in North Carolina, and "ended up earning a significant win of 24 points."

The exploitation of racial tensions is nothing new for Clinton and her surrogates, of course. Bill Clinton attmepted to cast Obama as the black candidate by equating his South Carolina victory with Jesse Jackson's. Geraldine Ferraro's infamous remarks about Obama's great good fortune for having been born black were an appeal to working-class white Democrats' resentments over affirmative action. And Paul Begala's recent gibe about "eggheads and African-Americans" was delivered as part of a broader, and false, suggestion that Obama has failed to reach out to white, working-class voters.

But the explicit racial language coming now from the campaign, including the candidate herself, is something else. This is a new iteration of the old "They're not ready for a black __________" rationalization.

We know that you're the hardest working reporter in the newsroom, and you look and sound great on camera, and we'd love to give you a shot on the desk, but we just don't think the market is ready for a black news anchor.

We know that you're the highest-billing account executive the firm has ever had, and we'd love to give you the promotion, but the company just isn't ready a black sales manager.

We know that you won more states, more votes, and more delegates than every other candidate in the field, and we'd love to have you as our nominee, but America just isn't ready for a black president.

Is Clinton oblivious to the damage she will do to herself and to her party if she succeeds in stealing the nomination from Obama with this argument? Or is she fully aware of the implications, but simply does not care?

And make no mistake - the only way for Clinton to get the nomination is to steal it in a backroom deal with superdelegates. Obama's lead is insurmountable. She has been working for months to undermine his viability, and has failed. Her shameless piling on during the manufactured Wright controversy and the manufactured Farrakhan mini-controversy were both part of an ugly, integrated whole - creating a guilt-by-association pall over Obama's candidacy.

Having failed to influence voters with the spectre of the scary black man, Clinton is now willing to use Obama's very racial identity as the reason that the superdelegates should deny him the nomination that he has earned, and give it to her instead.

It won't work. At least, I don't think it will. If it does, this is not the party that I thought I belonged to. It is not the country that I thought I lived in.

As someone who once loved Bill and Hillary Clinton, I am hurt and disappointed almost beyond my ability to express it. I cannot believe that she is willing to sacrifice her dignity, her very humanity, for the sake of stealing the nomination from the man who earned it.

And I cannot imagine why she thinks the prize is worth having at all if this is the only way to get it.

Irregular People

According to Chis Matthews, the category of "regular people" does not include negroes, or those with a lot of fancy book learnin'.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you about how he -- how's he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?

And I guess if Chris ever met a black person who has one of those advanced degrees, then he'd really freak out.