Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters Costing Him—Again, with Assist from Wisconsin

Ron Paul - White and proud of it

In 2008 James Kirchick at The New Republic broke a disturbing expose about the anti-war, self-proclaimed libertarian candidate for president, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Lake Jackson, Texas; 14th District), now for the first time leading polls for the GOP nomination for president in Iowa, and who has a plausible path to the 2012 GOP nomination, to the utter panic of many Republicans.

Kirchick, whom many regard as a neocon writer, took a lot of grief from the many, loyal pro-Ron Paul fans. [So did I for merely applauding Kirchick in a piece that drew a lot of hits at the site, Uppity Wisconsin.]

By Michael Leon

Some of the political commentariat point out that Paul received a lot of support from veterans in 2008, though Ron Paul 2012 does not list Veterans Benefits as an issue in his webpage, and his anti-government benefits ideology makes this writer dismiss him as a veterans' advocates.

What's ironic is that a fairly rightwing writer, James Kirchick, may be dooming Ron Paul again and some believe throwing away the GOP's last, best hope to defeat President Obama in a GOP field dominated by lightweights and to be candid: Whacks.

Paul, who has a distinguished record as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force, also has a political past where he was the publisher of several racist, anti-Semitic newsletters uncovered by Kirchick who concludes, "Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing -- but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics."

Ron Paul is a radical, a politician who in the words of Gary Weiss "is a true friend of the 1 percent" engaging in a campaign of phony populism. In fact, just months after Kirchick's 2008 blockbuster, Paul traveled to Wisconsin (Steven Walters in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) where it was reported the "(f)ormer Republican presidential candidate ... will keynote Saturday's session of the 50th anniversary of the Appleton-based John Birch Society." The John Birch Society, dating back to the 1950s, is infamous for its conspiracy-minded, anti-Semitic, and Joe McCarthy-supporting radicals.

From Jonathan Chait:

"As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled 'What To Expect for the 1990s,' predicted that 'Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities' because 'mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’' Two months later, a newsletter warned of 'The Coming Race War,' and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, 'If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.' In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, 'Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.' 'This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,' the newsletter predicted."

Below is a video from C-SPAN in which Paul discusses his newsletters [starting at the 1:40 mark] in which Paul, speaking in the first-person, ["I"], describes his racist nonsense as a business-investment, political-type of investment-monetary newsletter.

How panicked is the GOP? Here's some recent pieces indicating why even a nomination of Newt might bring Karl Rove and the Koch brothers better news than a potential Ron Paul nomination:

• Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters? (Kirchick, The New Republic, 2011)
• How Ron Paul could give the GOP a heart attack (Kornacki, Salon)
• Grappling With Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters (Friedersdorf, The Atlantic)
• Ron Paul Gets Testy With Gloria Borger Over Questions on Racist Newsletters (Heather, Crooks and Liars)
• The Company Ron Paul Keeps (Kirchick, The Weekly Standard)
• News Bulletin: Ron Paul Is a Huge Racist (Chait, New York Magazine)
• Tim Carney's Preemptive Defense of Ron Paul (Goldberg, National Review)
• The Ron Paul Double Standard (Klein, Washington Examiner)

What did Kirchick expose in 2008 and for how long did this ugliness have Paul's assent?

Kirchick writes (Jan. 8, 2008):

Paul’s newsletters have carried different titles over the years--Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report--but they generally seem to have been published on a monthly basis since at least 1978. ... What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. ...

[In a] special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, Kirchick cites:

According to the newsletter, the looting (1992 LA riot) was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with 'civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.' It also denounced 'the media' for believing that 'America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.'

And these beauties, noted by Kirchick:

• [L]iberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”
• One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” were better alternatives.
• While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled “The Duke’s Victory,” a newsletter celebrated Duke’s 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Senate primary. “Duke lost the election,” it said, “but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.”
• In an item titled, “The Pink House?” the author of a newsletter--again, presumably Paul--complained about President George H.W. Bush’s decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite “the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony,” adding, “I miss the closet.”
• “The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is ‘Silence = Death.’ But shouldn’t it be ‘Sodomy = Death’?”
• His adversaries are often described in harsh terms: Barbara Jordan is called “Barbara Morondon,” Eleanor Holmes Norton is a “black pinko,” Donna Shalala is a “short lesbian,” Ron Brown is a “racial victimologist,” and Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly gay public official confirmed by the United States Senate, is a “far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist.” Maybe such outbursts mean Ron Paul really is a straight-talker. Or maybe they just mean he is a man filled with hate.

Kirchick must have had to research long hours to dig up these Ron Paul newsletters housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's State Historical Society [a state agency in itself), which maintains a very broad and deep collection of political material dedicated to preserving American history for the benefit of people of all states.

The Wisconsin State Historical Society has been collecting political newsletters and other material since 1849, the year after Wisconsin became a state.

At the very top of Rep. Paul's Congressional site, Paul quotes Frederic Bastiat, "Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."

Right about now, Ron Paul likely wishes that preserving his racist tripe were not done at all.

Ron Paul explicit race-baiting

You're an Anti-Semite If You're Against War

Update: See also Glenn Greenwald's Ugly and Reckless Anti-Simitism Games. "Even by that magazine's lowly standards, The New Republic yesterday published an amazingly ugly, reckless, and at-times-deranged screed from its Literary Editor, Leon Wieseltier, devoting 4,300 words to accusing Andrew Sullivan of being an anti-semite, largely due to his critical (i.e., forbidden) comments about Israeli actions and American neoconservatives. Particularly since the horrific Israeli assault, Sullivan has become more critical of Israeli actions and more dubious of uncritical U.S. support."

One misses the days when those working for peace and standing up for war's victims were merely pinko-commie queers. Now, they're anti-Semites.

Over at the pages of the New Republic is a raging debate over whether neo-con/neo-liberal/neo Andrew Sullivan is per force an anti-Semite as he directs his commentary—as he has the last few years—onto victims of Israeli militarism.

That's a big leap for Sullivan who as recently as 2004 defended the invasion of Iraq ridiculing and slandering the war's detractors such as Noam Chomsky. Sullivan was also a reliable ally of the militarists in Israel.

So what's gotten into Sullivan that he would come to the defense of victims of American-Israeli militarism? If you believe the New Republic, it's anti-Semitism.

It seems unlikely that Sullivan, an intelligent man, could hold to racist views—presumably anti-Semitism requires a belief in the myth of a Jewish raceand the euqally silly notion that races are marked by distinguishing qualities of character inclination and behavior capacities.

No, what Leon Wieseltier says is the give-away is Sullivan "belongs to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt (whom he cites frequently and deferentially), to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington."

Actually what Mearsheimer, Walt and now Sullivan apparently believe is that Christain Zionists, militaristic Zionists in America and Israel and AIPAC comprise an enormously effective lobby, and that "... the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the nationalinterest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical. London Review of Books (Vol. 28 No. 6 · 23 March 2006))

That's enough to draw the charge of anti-Semitism from American militarists like Wieseltier.
You see, before accusing someone of a historical imprecation like anti-Semite, I would have the decency to have one hell of a lot of evidence. But evidence and decency, the tools of rational analysis, escape Wieseltier when defending the indefensible; that is atrocities, death and destruction that are the favored results of all militarists of any state, creed, and religious persuasion.

War sucks, Wieseltier. That's a truism you find dark and disturbing.

Here, by the way, is an excerpt from the understated text from Mearsheimer and Walt's article in the London Review of Books (Vol. 28 No. 6 · 23 March 2006).
---
The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the nationalinterest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesseis especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capitaincome roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation. ...

Rational Budget Talk from Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait injects some reality into the national budget debate—applicable to the Wisconsin budget debate.

Chait, one should note, famously wrote of the early Bush-Cheney budgetary statements: "He's [Bush] lying," and that deficits and mounting debt were sure to follow. Chait was right. And he's right again.

From The New Republic:

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column pointing out how strange it is that President Obama is being blamed for huge budget deficits, when the projected deficits we face are entirely due to policies he inherited. In my column, I cited this paper by the Center on Budget and Policy priorities, which found that Obama's budget would reduce the budget by $900 billion over ten years compared with keeping current policies in place.

Yesterday David Leonhardt of the New York Times took up a similar question. Leonhardt looked at the budget from 2009 through 2012, and tried to figure out what had changed in those years since 2001. He found that the business cycle accounted for 37% of the higher red ink. More than half came from legislation signed by President Bush. Seven percent came from Obama's stimulus bill, and only three percent from his regular budget.

It was an admirable and serious article. A good sense of how serious can be seen in the contrast to a Politico story that ran the same day. Politico concerned itself entirely with the perception that Obama is responsible for the new debt without bothering to explore the merits of the perception. It ran quotes alleging as much (GOP Sen. John Cornyn: 'This was not an inherited situation. This was a matter entirely of this administration’s and this Democratic leadership’s making') without pointing out that the allegation is demonstrably false.

This debate such as it is sounds familiar in Wisconsin political circles with the same malarkey emitting from the GOP and its shills.

TNR Profiles Dr. Doom

The New Republic has a profile on Nouriel Roubini, "the economist known to the general public as Dr. Doom, Prophet of the Financial Apocalypse," by Julia Ioffe.

Though he hasn't attacked the Obama administration's policies with Paul Krugman's fury, and though he is no longer the most bearish of the bears, his short-term outlook is still quite bleak: a 36-month downturn, double-digit unemployment, and sluggish, recessionary growth well into 2010. ...

Roubini understood better than anyone just how weak the fundamentals of our economy were. The day after the now-famous 2006 IMF talk, he went on 'Kudlow & Company,' on CNBC. Roubini was, as always, the foil to Kudlow's chipperness. 'All my friends are in a great mood, Nouriel. They're in a terrific mood. They love America,' Kudlow sang. Roubini countered starkly: 'Well, they're all rich,' he said. 'The average American actually is in debt'--a sign to Roubini that housing would only be the catalyst of something larger.

LGBT Community Needs to Fracking Chill on Obama and Warren

Update: Percentage of Americans who believe that God created man pretty much in his present form in one instance within the last 10,000 years: 47 percent. ... Rick Warren is one of these people.

Most here have heard the indictment that Barack Obama's inauguration will include a "humiliating" (Maddow) slap at the LGBT community for the incoming administration's political benefit.

Rick Warren, pastor and author (at right), will deliver the invocation at Obama's swearing-in ceremony on the Capitol steps.

Warren possesses a bright mind, and happens to hold benighted and bigoted views on gays perforce making the man an ignoramus popular in rightwing circles.

Warren's delivery of the Obama invocation has brought down a shower of condemnation from the civil rights community summed up by Rachel Maddow and John Aravosis of AmericaBlog [wouldn't bother reading Andrew Sullivan ...—"[It's] shrewd politics, but if anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now... ."—Sullivan is of the couldn't-make-of-his-mind-to-support-Bush-or-Kerry fame in 2004; and Sullivan's a disingenuous showboat anyway].

Include Warren

Before arguing here for Obama's choice of Warren's inclusion in the inauguration, let's add that Aravosis found this gem at TNR by Alan Wolfe in which "Rick Warren outright told a Jewish woman, in front of a large gasping crowd, that she was going to hell because she hasn't converted to Christianity." Hey, Happy Hanukkah.

But such idiocies that Warren professes as consigning world Jewry to eternal damnation [or whatever fate in hell awaits our functionally fellow heathens, that's going to be some party] is a good place to begin.

Over the 2008 campaign, I wrote 10,000s of words on Barack Obama since I first heard about the man's candidacy, in any length anyway, from my Georgia-bred-and-raised Irish mother—[a greater foe of racism and bigotry I have not met than she, and I have been fortunate to meet many incredible people].

It's difficult to apprehend the American mind when, for instance, in knocking on 100s of doors on the south side of Milwaukee this summer and engaging charming people, a nice elderly house-bound woman proceeds to tell me that yeah, she's voting Democratic this year, things need changing, but it's just too damn bad the Mexicans and Blacks have "taken over" what in the past were largely Polish-white neighborhoods. [A joke among some political circles in Wisconsin is that the 27th street viaduct crossing I-94 in Milwaukee is the "longest bridge in the world" because it connects Africa (a very Black area) with Mexico (a mixed but quite Mexican and other Hispanic-populated area on the south side). The joke used to be Africa to Poland.] By the way, check out Gare-Bear's bar just on the Africa side: Cool people.

The 2008 race was historic. I felt more personally involved this year than in any race that I have worked in, in any manner. But I knew all through this Fall that some 41 percent (in a best-case scenario) of the vote would still go to the John McCain-Palin ticket and the self-conscious ignorance and bigotry this ugly reality of our political culture represents in the modern Republican Party.

Casting Jews to hell. The state controlling a woman's body. Disenfranchising LGBT folks by denying them equal protection under the law. Massive lies and mass murder (aka war). Jailing millions. Starving millions. Preventing the dreams and happiness of millions. An industrial policy that seemingly aims at restoring feudalism.

This is the reality of contemporary American society sustained by ignorance, isolation and depolicalization consonant with broadcast networks dedicating an untold number of hours on the personal lives of hot, blond woman [nothing wrong with hot, blond women mind you] vis a vis discussions of the continuing wars America is waging over the world to catastrophic results.

If one were to exclude from the inauguration and other official functions the imbecilic Americans who fervently believe that those unperfected Christians, aka Jews, are headed for damnation, then many mainline Christians would find themselves thinking, well, who knows what they think. But 10s of millions of Americans (many of them wonderful human beings not withstanding their array of anti-human sentiments) would be told in a message to get lost: All that Obama unity talk was crap.

But the 43 percent of voting Americans who did vote for McCain, or think that dinosaurs frolicked with early man and that biological evolution is a liberal plot are as American as we are.

So, does Obama who campaigned on unity and a presidency representing all American exclude these American among us who hold idiotic views?

And I don't know about you, but I'm into public policy and not the substance of an inaugural invocation. [My sister Joan, Brucie and my crazy nieces are going to the inauguration, but I doubt seriously that the invocation will stay etched into their minds.]

What is an invocation anyway other a banal, insipid address to an imaginary friend? Warren will intend well and I doubt that he'll use the occasion to cast down spells (prayers, whatever) on gays, Jews, and the rational among us.

Warren's just a guy, a fool to be sure, talking. So, lighten up.

Personally, I do without religion and its artifacts remaining in political ceremony, and the other foolish fare to ill-formulated questions from which the religious-minded among us run without apparently caring what precisely so frightens then.

But hey, people believe what they want to believe and they are our fellow citizens, finally being called by a president to engage in a common effort.

Our president is their president.

So to all of my fellow LGBT civil rights workers and political analysts outraged by the soon-to-be-forgotten address by Rick Warren: Forget about this silly exercise of the invocation, enjoy Obama's address, party down, and then get your asses back to work on public policy

All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
- H.L. Mencken, Damn! A Book of Calumny, (1918)

Obama's Got This

See Don't Panic--Reassurances From a Poll Neurotic.

TNR's Kirchick Vindicated for Revealing Ron Paul's Racist Past

James Kirchick who wrote a piece in The New Republic in January knocking down the former candidate for president, Rep. Ron Paul, as a bigoted nutbag has been vindicated.

Steven Walters in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reveals today that "(f)ormer Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will keynote Saturday's session of the 50th anniversary of the Appleton-based John Birch Society."

The John Birch Society, dating back to the 1950s, is infamous for its conspiracy-minded, anti-Semitic, Joe McCarthy-supporting whacks.

Writes Kirchick in the January 8, 2008 The New Republic on Paul:

Finding ... (Ron Paul's) pre-1999 newsletters was no easy task, but I was able to track many of them down at the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. ... (Ron Paul's) The Freedom Report's online archives only go back to 1999, but I was curious to see older editions of Paul's newsletters, in part because of a controversy dating to 1996, when Charles 'Lefty' Morris, a Democrat running against Paul for a House seat, released excerpts stating that "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions," that 'if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be,' and that black representative Barbara Jordan is 'the archetypical half-educated victimologist' whose 'race and sex protect her from criticism.'

Bush Neglect Killing Veterans - Updated

Update: No respect for vets and one VA staffer who got caught and Vets for Common Sense Blast VA

The Bush administration just does not believe in focusing the assets of the American government on most of its citizens. You have be part of a select few, and veterans do not count unless they work for Blackwater.

Sarah Stillman has a piece in The New Republic worth reading:

The director of the National Institute of Mental Health says that more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans may die from suicide than from combat. So why isn't the Pentagon protecting our soldiers off the battlefield?

... (A)mong the nearly 1.7 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, some 300,000 veterans suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or major depression, with nearly half of all cases going untreated. The study also highlighted a less widely-covered trend: Some 320,000 troops returning from both wars are plagued by traumatic brain injuries--again, with only half seeking treatment.

Alan I. Abramowitz: Cheer Up, Democrats! Party in Great November Shape

Updated: Party Fears Racial Divide, Hillary Attacks Could Do Lasting Harm, Democrats Say

One of the reasons Hillary is insistent on winning the Democratic nomination to the point of weakening the Party in November is the view among observers, and shared by Hillary no doubt, that the Republican Party looks headed for major electoral defeat along the lines of 2006 no matter what Hillary does.

Still others point to the lasting damage to the modern-day Democratic coalition. "If this party is perceived by people as having gone into a back room somewhere and brokered a nominee, that would not be good for our party," House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the highest ranking African American in Congress, warned yesterday. "I'm telling you, if this continues on its current course, [the damage] is going to be irreparable." (Post, April 26)

Alan I. Abramowitz has a cheerful read in The New Republic: Cheer Up, Democrats! Even if the primary stretches on, a long-term tectonic shift in the electorate means the party is in great shape for November.

Irrespective of the damage done by Hillary, playing on race and fear is a political wrong in itself. Some things you just don't do.

John Judis Comes out for Hillary

via MAL Contends

Update II: Maybe Hillary, Judis and Co are on to something; even Patrick Buchanan agrees with them.

Update: Many readers have asked: Why are you quoting TNR? Good question. TNR is good on fiscal policy; and I believe this crap by Judis needs to be knocked down. [But I promise never to even bother with Jason Zengerle who is pure shit.] But Salon is pushing this story too, though more judiciously, in Michael Lind’s piece].

John B. Judis knows better.

His piece in The New Republic, Woe Is He, asserts the necessity of the Democratic nominee garnering the white working class demographic.

But Judis, for reasons unclear, uses the parody of the Hillary/broadcast media issues, contending that the "Bitter" and "Rev. Wright" controversies are actually substantive points, and not faux, contrived, out-of-context cheap shots, revealing only of the not credible media and sources who misuse what Obama actually says.

Writes Judis:

(T)o win in November, Obama will have to win almost all of these heartland states. Which is a problem, because even before he uttered his infamous words about these voters 'clinging' to guns, religion, abortion, and fears about free trade, Obama looked vulnerable in the region. ... These difficulties were clear before Obama spoke in San Francisco, but they're much more glaring now. In the speech, Obama appeared to say that Pennsylvania voters' opposition to gun control or abortion or immigration or free trade was pathological--a product of what Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse once called "false consciousness."

Judis has gone off the deep end here.

But David Coleman, who actually listened to Obama, has it right.

(Obama) urged the volunteer to tell Pennsylvania voters he encountered that Obama's campaign is about something more than programs and talking points. It was at this point that Obama began to talk about addressing the bitter feelings that many in some rural communities in Pennsylvania have about being brushed aside in the wake of the global economy. Senator Obama appeared to theorize, perhaps improvidently given the coverage this week, that some of the people in those communities take refuge in political concerns about guns, religion and immigration. But what has not so far been reported is that those statements preceded and were joined with additional observations that black youth in urban areas are told they are no longer 'relevant' in the global economy and, feeling marginalized, they engage in destructive behavior. Unlike the week's commentators who have seized upon the remarks about 'bitter feelings' in some depressed communities in Pennsylvania, I gleaned a different meaning from the entire answer.

Seems to me that Obama's focus on high-paying jobs, ludicrously crafted trade agreements, health care for all, education and understanding the plight of the white working class might just appeal to this demographic.

But I doubt the motivation of Judis noting this imperative of appealing to the white working class and then linking it to the politically charged and utterly contrived controversy pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and those sympathetic to its continuing past June.

What's next for Judis? Noting the imperative of appealing to the white working class demographic because it's important that the world-wise, sniper-taking Hillary is better suited to take a 3:00 AM phone call?

Judis is trying to push another contrived controversy under cover of a demographic analysis, and completely ignoring the fact that the object of the controversy is vacuous and the fabrication of a desperate Clinton campaign.

Embarrassing for Judis, and his credibility ought suffer accordingly.

Buchanan: Petraeus Points to War With Iran

The fear and/or prediction of many that Bush, Cheney, McCain/Lieberman and company just may be stupid enough to launch an air strike against Iran this year has long been shared by isolationist, conservative columnist, Patrick J. Buchanan.

Because candidate McCain is so unschooled in foreign policy, McCain has repeatedly "confused the basic Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide that's absolutely fundamental to grasping the Middle East ... ," he fits in well with the neocon, imperialist foreign policy school.

Buchanan, citing Petraeus' testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee this week and other development, writes in his Petraeus Points to War With Iran:

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran. ... This is Bush's last chance to strike and, when Iran responds, to effect its nuclear castration. Are Bush and Cheney likely to pass up this last chance to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and effect the election of John McCain? For any attack on Iran's 'terrorist bases' would rally the GOP and drive a wedge between Obama and Hillary. ...

Buchanan notes that the congressional Democrats have acted with the moral courage that is on a par of that displayed by the many authoritarian Arab countries that Vice President Cheney has been touring lately in the region.

In early 2007, Nancy Pelosi pulled down a resolution that would have denied Bush the authority to attack Iran without congressional approval. In September, both Houses passed the Kyl-Lieberman resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Courtesy of Congress, Bush thus has a blank check for war on Iran. And the signs are growing that he intends to fill it in and cash it.

This is going to be one fascinating fall election; less fascinating, though, if you happen to be a human being living in Iran.

Geraldine Ferraro, Clinton Surrogate, Blows Dog Whistle to Racists

UpdateIII: A Brown Woman's Open Letter to Geraldine Ferraro & the Clinton Campaign

UpdateII: Ferraro Resigns From Campaign She Claimed Couldn't Fire Her

Update: BREAKING NEWS: NBC News confirms Geraldine Ferraro leaving Clinton campaign

Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton continue their deplorable appeals to racism, but now the denunciations are pouring in. The latest:

Ferraro's original statement to Daily Breeze, which suggested that Obama has gotten preferential political treatment because of his race, was a dog-whistle to white voters who resent affirmative action. (Her subsequent statement to the New York Times, in which she defiantly defended herself by proclaiming "I will not be discriminated against because I’m white," wasn't a dog whistle. It was a huge, screeching megaphone.) ...

- Jonathan Cohn in TNR

Novak: Former Clinton Cabinet Members Scorn Hillary Candidacy

From the Evans-Novak Political Report:

The best indicator of Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) distress is the fact that erstwhile supporters, including former Clinton Cabinet members, are badmouthing her as a very poor candidate. Inside the Democratic Party, it is already taken for granted that the queen is dead and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is the king.

Novak is right, Hillary is denounced and rejected by the voters; so she can go away now, right?

Noam Scheiber's has a fun look at Hillary's falling flat last night, and all season.

New TNR Revelations on Ron Paul's Bigoted Newsletters

Too bad about Ron Paul. I liked his anti-war positions.

But the newest TNR revelations leave no doubt about the bigotry in his repulsive journals; it must be the issues that he never read, if we are to believe Paul's explanations.

If you have not read James Kirchick's first piece on the story, give it a look.

###

Wisconsin Historical Society Archives and Enterprising Writer Should Doom Ron Paul's Candidacy

James Kirchick at The New Republic has a disturbing piece about the anti-war libertarian candidate for president, Rep. Ron Paul

Kirchick has researched old Ron Paul political newsletters that contain blatantly racist tracts.

And the Wisconsin Historical Society, a repository for such political periodicals just may be responsible for putting an end to a candidacy that has been a thorn in the side of the pro-war GOP.

Writes Kirchick:

Finding the pre-1999 newsletters was no easy task, but I was able to track many of them down at the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The racist nature of several pieces in the newsletters is obvious:

The Freedom Report's online archives only go back to 1999, but I was curious to see older editions of Paul's newsletters, in part because of a controversy dating to 1996, when Charles "Lefty" Morris, a Democrat running against Paul for a House seat, released excerpts stating that "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions," that "if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be," and that black representative Barbara Jordan is "the archetypical half-educated victimologist" whose "race and sex protect her from criticism." At the time, Paul's campaign said that Morris had quoted the newsletter out of context. Later, in 2001, Paul would claim that someone else had written the controversial passages. (Few of the newsletters contain actual bylines.) Caldwell, writing in the Times Magazine last year, said he found Paul's explanation believable, "since the style diverges widely from his own."

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Inspectors General Offices Under Bush Corrupted

The regional Inspectors General offices in the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) have become a collective political hatchet, rejecting their role as watchdogs ensuring good government and delivery of government services, in favor of an agency ranging from hostile to incompetent.

Unfortunately for the country this abandonment of impartial oversight by inspectors general extends throughout the government.

Joshua Kurlantzick reports in The New Republic's Look Who's Not Looking:

... Alas, Krongrad and Bowen's cases are hardly unique. In Washington, inspectors general in each cabinet agency are supposed to serve a vital role, operating as the watchdogs inside the federal government who sniff out fraud, misconduct, self-dealing, waste, and a host of other criminal activities. But under the Bush administration--surprise, surprise--inspector general positions have been filled by White House loyalists or outright hacks, leaving agencies virtually unpoliced. And while the inspectors general do nothing, the administration says nothing. No one is watching the watchers.

During previous administrations, the White House appointed impartial inspectors general, many of whom had extensive backgrounds in the areas they would police. As a 2004 report by the Democrats on the House Committee on Government Reform revealed, in the Clinton administration, over 60 percent of Inspectors General had some past experience conducting audits--the essential task of an IG--and less than one-quarter of Clinton IG appointees had previous political experience, meaning they were not hardcore Clinton loyalists. Under Bush, the committee found that more than 60 percent of Bush IG appointees had previous political experience, like working for a Republican White House, and more than half of them had been contributors to President Bush or other GOP candidates. Less than 20 percent of the Bush Inspectors General had any previous auditing experience.

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Jonathan Chait on the Huckster's Snake Oil

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is no Jack Kennedy.

And Huckabee is no William Jennings Bryan, the populist turn-of-the-century, three-time Democratic nominee for president.

Jonathan Chait has a nice piece in TNR that demonstrates that Huckabee's quasi-populist appeal that has him near or at the top of Iowa's pre-primary polls is "ideological snake oil," easily removed by analysis and the most superficial glance at Huckabee's record.

Writes Chait:

Seeking more insight into Huckabee's apparently Bryan-esque worldview, I turned to his manifesto, From Hope to Higher Ground. In it, he recounts how, during his governorship, low-wage behemoth Wal-Mart hired away many of his top state employees. This is classic populist grist--a huge corporation buys up government employees to ensure docile oversight. Huckabee expressed his reaction to this outrage thusly: "Frankly, I appreciated it when they saw the same talent and ability in those individuals as I discovered when I originally interviewed and hired them." And he proceeded to call Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton--whose salary surely qualified as immoral if anybody's ever did--a "visionary" with "extraordinary integrity." What kind of populist is this guy?

A very confused one, it seems. When Huckabee first declared his intent to run for the presidency, he was generally dismissed as a naive country bumpkin who had no business in a national campaign. His articulate speeches and rapid ascent in the polls have won him a second look, and he is now lauded in such places as The New Yorker, which called him "curiously unthreatening." Alas, when you look closely at Huckabee's platform, it turns out that everybody pretty much had it right the first time around.

Read more of Jonathan Chait's piece in TNR.
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TNR Embarrasses Itself Again on Mike Gravel

Weird and skin-raising-yucky receiving the The New Republic Online's "This Week in Politics” e-mail June 14.

The New Republic’s e-mail includes an item entitled “Debatable” by the editors subtitled that “America doesn't need to hear from Mike Gravel.”
Mike Gravel, of-course, is the former Senator from Alaska who famously read into the congressional record the Pentagon Papers, that laid out the lies before and during the Vietnam War that ultimately cost some three million lives, and wreaks havoc today on untold millions more, including 100,000s of Vietnam-era veterans whom the Veterans Administration is trying to shaft on VA beneits. That’s a bad thing, TNR.

In TNR’s unenthusiastic reporting of the early debates by the presidential candidates, the editors (ignoring the inordinately inane) single out the substancial former Senator Mike Gravel:

These days, the debates often resemble the audition round of 'American Idol' where the talented and crazy alike vie for their 15 minutes of fame and maybe a little profit afterward. And, thus, debate time must be found for a specimen like Mike Gravel ("Who the hell are we going to nuke? Tell me, Barack. Barack, who do you want to nuke?").

Golly gee, I found the former Senator Gravel’s reluctance to nuke human beings insightful and worthy; no, basic towards establishing a sane and humanistic US foreign policy.

But TNR, who endorsed invade-Iraq and we-need-the-Patriot-Act Senator Joe Lieberman for president (nice call there), complain of the debates, rightly, that “Moronic episodes like this one are what make a joke of the concept of real debate--which entails people thinking aloud and challenging one another's ideas. What we get instead are mongrel hybrids combining the worst of press conferences (evasive answers without the tough follow-ups) and campaign speeches (platitudes with no pretense at substance).”

But when Senator Gravel (and Congressman Dennis Kucinich) actually injects some intelligence and challenging of neocon assumptions into the debate, TNR folds like so much joking Joe Momentum.

TNR ought to consider listening to Gravel and Kucinich who were spot-on accurate on the Iraq war and Patriot Act, among other Bush idiocies, and think, and to borrow from TNR:

Raise your hand if you find TNR idiotic for ridiculing the presidential candidates who have been proven correct time and time again as 100,000s of more lives are destroyed by the very imbecilic Bushian idiocies supported by The New Republic.

Just a thought.

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