“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Nelson Mandela
Nelson R. Mandela was inaugurated the first Black President of South Africa on this date in 1994.
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What’s amusing is to watch as the Republicans try and figure out why their outreach efforts to non-white communities aren’t going so well. At least not yet. And I guess the rather obvious explanation would be that these non-white communities tend not to be stupid and most of them do have functional memories with the ability to reach back, back, waaaay back into the depths of time beyond, say, a few months. Those posters held up at Tea Party rallies of President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose? Yeah, well…they (we) kinda remember that sorta stuff. And that’s just for starters.
All of which is why I found Frank Rich’s piece in the recent edition of New York Magazine such an interesting and enlightening read. What Rich points out early on, and what so badly needs pointing out, is how so many Republicans want to keep reminding us that theirs is the party of Abraham Lincoln who, of course, freed the slaves. And more recently than that, it was United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren who presided over the famous Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, and Warren was also a Republican. And there are others as well who have done good and wonderful things and who are certainly deserving of praise.
But hey, those well-deserved props are from a place in time long ago and far away, folks. What have you done for us lately? As Rich says:
Then you ask, what about today? You’re told that Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama “the food-stamp president” and Sarah Palin’s invocation of “shuck and jive ” were just ephemeral campaign-season gaffes from sideshow clowns soon to get the hook. Rush Limbaugh’s perennial race-baiting? Yesterday’s news. Mitt Romney’s alliance with the off-the-rails birther Donald Trump? Just clueless Mitt being Mitt. Those sightings of racist placards at tea-party rallies? Cherry-picked, planted, or invented by the liberal media. And besides, the Democrats have their own history of race-baiting ranters—queue up the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s greatest hits on YouTube.
The only fact that can’t be easily batted away by defensive Republicans is that actual black Americans almost never vote for Republicans in a national election. What’s up with that?
Yeah, what exactly is up with that? Let’s just say that until Republicans can come up with an answer to that question that doesn’t cause intelligent folks to cringe with embarrassment, they can reach out all they want and keep coming up with air.
So Mark Sanford wins a congressional seat in a district so red that Mitt Romney won in 2012 over President Obama by 18 points, and the Republicans are doing the happy dance? Of course, the Republicans are also trying to gloss over Mr. Sanford’s marital infidelity by saying that he’s “just like” Bill Clinton. Oh, that’s funny.
Bill Clinton had a dalliance (Ok, maybe more than one). He did NOT leave his wife. He did NOT leave the country (on the government’s dime)–with NO notice and NO legal coverage of his government position and then lie about his whereabouts.
Just as importantly, the Republican Party is the one constantly screaming about “the sanctity of marriage”. Yes, the party of Gingrich, Limbaugh, Vitter, Ensign, and so many other Republicans who play fast and loose with their own marriages is now holding up as a role model yet another adulterer.
They and their party spend every single day blasting others and attempting to control the lives and bodies and decisions of women.
I know Bill Clinton, and Mark Sanford is no Bill Clinton. South Carolina, by continuing to support more Republican hypocrisy, you get what you deserve.
Whoever created the phrase, “The devil is busy,” this is what they meant.
Just finished reading a story in the Christian Science Monitor explaining how the Republicans don’t stop fighting just because somebody told them the battle is over. They just nod, then keep on track with the program of seeking and destroying whatever and whoever is foolish enough to try and stand in the way of their warped agenda.
Says Robert Reich, who wrote the article, “How Republicans Quietly Repeal Laws They Don’t Like,”:
In effect, much of our nation’s worker safety laws and rules have been quietly repealed because there aren’t enough inspectors to enforce them.
That’s been the Republican strategy in general: When they can’t directly repeal laws they don’t like, they repeal them indirectly by hollowing them out — denying funds to fully implement them, and reducing funds to enforce them.
Consider taxes. Republicans have been unable to round up enough votes to cut taxes on big corporations and the wealthy as much as they’d like, so what do they do? They’re hollowing out the IRS. As they cut its enforcement budget – presto! — tax collections decline.
Despite an increasing number of billionaires and multi-millionaires using every tax dodge imaginable – laundering their money through phantom corporations and tax havens (Remember Mitt’s tax returns?) — the IRS’s budget has been cut by 17 percent since 2002, adjusted for inflation.
Devious and perverse, but damned smart. It’s also why the Republicans continue to win significant victories even after the re-election of President Barack Obama in 2012, and the not insignificant number of seats achieved by Democrats in both the House and the Senate. Because when you’re in a fight, and I mean a real street fight where you know what’s gonna happen if you don’t keep swinging despite all the blood in your eyes, you just don’t stop. You gotta be like the Terminator. While many of us Democrats and progressives were cheering last November, Republican termites were busy chewing away at the woodwork.
And now look what’s happening to the house….
Macon B. Allen, the first Black licensed to practice law in the United States, passed his law examination in Worcester, MA, on this date in 1845.
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