Don’t like being called racist because you oppose President Barack Obama?

I’ll make a deal with you. Assuming you are not a person who holds up signs with our president dressed as an African witch doctor or demanding to know where his birth certificate is, I’ll take you at your word that it’s his policies and not his race that bother you.

But you have to agree to acknowledge that those of us who voted for Barack Obama and support his goals, including health-care reform, are “real” Americans, too.

Try to resist the urge to proclaim how badly you want to take “your” country back because it’s not your country alone. It’s our country too. Deal? – Donna Gratehouse, Phoenix

I was surprised they printed it because it’s not my best work and I’m not sure if my point was clear. I guess they like the incendiary lead sentence. The comments from readers are boringly predictable. Teabaggers are NOT racist so stop saying that, dissent is patriotic (now), blah blah Thomas Jefferson blah blah Constitution blah.

I wrote it because I agree with both Jimmy Carter, who attributes the vitriol of Obama’s critics in large part to racism, and Bill Clinton, who thinks it’s a lot more than that. They’re both right. If Hillary Clinton were President right now you can bet there’d be the same amount of hostility, along with a heaping dose of misogyny. If Bill Richardson were President, ditto on the hostility and ditto on the anti-Hispanic sentiment. President Joe Biden would have fared slightly better, being white and male, but they’d be hating on him with the same ferocity they showed toward President Clinton. The commonality is the arrogance and entitlement that have been the hallmark of the reactionary wing of America since Reconstruction. They are the “real Americans” and don’t you (people who are not like them in some way) forget it. Over the years it’s become a movement that is hostile to cities and culture and education – and thus inclusive of fewer and fewer actual people – but it has remained a bastion of white straight male Christians and those who identify with them. Which is why having a Black Democratic President adds gasoline to the fire of their hatred but y’all know their heads would be exploding no matter who the Democrat was.

On the subject of the Birthers I’m going to share what I’ve long suspected the motivation is for at least some of them: Oh yeah, it’s racism for sure. But it’s more than simply a belief that Barack Obama can’t be a legitimate President because he’s African American, though that is an element of it. It also has to do with the fact that a substantial number of white Americans are deeply offended by interracial relationships. It’s no longer socially acceptable to express that publicly so the Birther conspiracy theory allows white people who fervently wish they’d bring back miscegenation laws to vent their spleen about the circumstances of Obama’s birth. Think about it, a young white woman married and had a baby with a BLACK man from AFRICA in 1961!! Not only was no one lynched but the grandparents accepted and raised the child, who would be described as a “mongrel” and worse in many circles back in the ’60s. You know that’s got to be driving a segment of white people in this country nuts, which is why they are so eager to embrace this cockamamie story about Barack Obama being born in Kenya and documents and birth announcements being forged 48 years ago. They not only can’t accept that he’s President, they can’t accept that he was ever brought into the world in the first place. I may be wrong about the Birthers, but I don’t think I am.

I mean, heck, at least the crazy 9-11 Truthers can claim that buildings actually blew up.

Okay, let’s first dispatch with the fallacy that this is an AIG bonus tax.  It is not.  It is a tax on bonuses paid to people at companies that received TARP funds.  

The supposed constitutional issues with the tax are non-existent.  Legal scholar and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe explained why to the Wall Street Journal the other day.  It’s not a Bill of Attainder, doesn’t violate ex post facto law, and isn’t a taking. Seriously, don’t take my word for it, read the link.

Legalities aside, there been a lot of bi-partisan fretting over the “singling out” of a group of people for taxation. Even VP Biden’s adviser joined in the fray, sniffling about “using the tax code to surgically punish a small group” on Stephanopoulous this morning. Oh the humanity!

Excuse me, but can anyone name a tax that doesn’t “single out” a specific group? Why, there isn’t one! And believe me, I ought to know since I’m a smoker. Every pack of smokes I buy is about 80% tax on the price because the federal and state governments have determined that my group makes a nice juicy target to “punish” with taxes. Same goes for alcohol. Smokers just got dinged with a hefty increase to pay for SCHIP. I understand the rationale behind it, and I wasn’t going to complain until all these people started bleeding their hearts over the poor dears at AIG having to pay a special tax because they, you know, destroyed the freaking world economy. Which, last time I checked, I hadn’t done by smoking.

Sin taxes are an obvious example of picking certain groups but like I said, what tax doesn’t? If you drive you pay vehicle registration fees and gas taxes. So drivers, as a group, are singled out for taxation. If you own property, you pay special taxes on it. Looks like the tax code has been used to “surgically punish” you for owning property. Hell, if you earn income, you are in a group known as income earners, and you pay taxes as a result. Non-income earners don’t pay taxes, do they? OMG that’s sooooo unfair!

Folks, the plutocrats are continuing, unabated, in their quest to enrich themselves at your expense. Unfortunately, some of the worst enablers are Democrats. This bonus tax thing tapped into a volcano of populist anger and it scares the bejeezus out of the ownership class and the politicians they own. That’s a good thing. So the next time something like this comes up, I must ask that people use a little perspective and judgment and do some research so that you’re not unwittingly catapaulting the plutocratic propaganda. Thanks.

The EFCA, or “card check” legislation, may be a boon to the union supporters who spent $450 million in behalf of Democrats in the past election cycle. But it will constitute a crushing burden to the economy – just when businesses start crawling out of the shell hole of the recession.

The stagnant wages of recent years are a serious concern, not just for organized labor but for the health of the economy. The radical card-check proposal is not the way to fix that problem, however.

Card-check would render pointless the fundamental tool of labor organizing: the private, anonymous vote by workers on whether to organize. Further,

Card-check is dangerous legislation in a good economy. In times this bad, it could smother a recovery in its infancy.

We hope Vice President Joe Biden reconsiders his commitment made to union leaders last week at the pricey Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.

Card-check is bad policy in the best of times. It is particularly harmful in a down economy.

Oooh scary.

However, the careful reader will note the absence of some necessary information in that statement. First, what exactly is in this legislation that frightens them so? Second, what does it do that “render(s) pointless the fundamental tool of labor organizing: the private anonymous vote by workers on whether to organize”?

Let’s start with what the Employee Free Choice Act is, and isn’t. Current employment law allows workers to form a union either through a process called card check – where the majority sign a card stating they want to form a union – or by an election. Sounds great. The problem is that the National Labor Relations Board will only recognize a union if the workers form a union through getting at least 30% to sign a card requesting a union and then holding a secret election run by the NLRB. Even if 100% of the workers signed the cards, the election must be held and companies are given several weeks to bring in high-priced, high-pressure union busters to browbeat employees into voting against the union. EFCA will allow the workers to bypass the election entirely and form a union by simply having the majority sign cards. EFCA will NOT take away the right of workers to have a secret election if they so choose. The Republic is obscuring that fact with weasel-y ambiguation. The act will let the workers, not the employer, decide. So, of course, it’s “dangerous legislation”. To the Chamber of Commerce.

The EFCA also requires that bargaining proceed within 10 days of the card check or election and stipulates that if the union and the employer can’t reach an agreement within 90 days, either party can refer the matter for resolution via Federal mediation. This must be what the Republic is referring to when it states, ominously, that “it would dramatically increase the role of the federal government in arbitrating union contracts.” Oh noes!

Once you understand all this, it pretty much renders everything else the editorial says silly and needlessly alarmist.   And notice the promiscuous use of the term “radical” to describe EFCA.  It’s a word appearing frequently in right wing talking points of late.   I suppose I should give the Republic points for not succumbing to the urge to throw “socialist” in there too.  

Oh, and the Fountainebleau Hotel in Miami?  Reviewers on tripadvisor.com say it’s a dump. 

I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because Barack Obama is so dangerously inexperienced, his running mate Joe Biden just said, he invites a major international crisis that he will be unprepared to handle alone.

If Democrats win full control of government, they will want to give civil rights to terrorists and talk unconditionally to dictators and state sponsors of terror. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the experience and judgment to lead America. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and authorized by McCain-Palin 2008.

This is similar to the script voters are hearing in states like Nevada where McCain is struggling. Apparently, we Zonies weren’t worthy of such hair raising alerts until recent polls showed a dead heat. Oh yeah, our Senator was all about leaving us out to dry, without the information we need to make the correct choice between our stalwart steadfast war hero and Barack HusseinpalsaroundwithterroristsOMGHEZAMUSLIM!1! Obama.

Geez, you’d think he’d be a little more worried about the location of four of his houses before now, dontcha?