Different Day, Same Shit.

Like Newton Leroy Gingrich, Donald Trump (who will now be known henceforth as "the Donald") knows that the fastest way to a conservative's heart is by tickling that particular portion of the brain that loves dog whistles and coded rhetoric. By throwing those big, juicy slabs of "straight talk" at the GOP masses, the Donald has managed to become the GOP's Flavor of the Month™ for the 2016 elections. The big question now is "will he manage to nab the nomination?"

The answer is a pretty definite "no." While the GOP masses adore a guy who "finally tells it like it is" on hot-button issues like immigration, the GOP establishment prefers its candidates to have a bit more...discretion. Unfortunately, the Donald's bombastic star power and deep pockets make the rest of the GOP field look absolutely hapless in comparison.

So will the GOP establishment manage to temper the Donald's presidential ambitions before things get out of hand? That remains to be seen. A few prominent pundits and writers (including one of my favorites, Chauncey DeVega) have compared the Donald's presidential run to a wrestling match. Judd Legum sums it up thusly:

In the current campaign, Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump’s opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair.

The Donald is the heel that everyone's supposed to hate, but has a massive cult following. His fans love how he throws his weight around in the ring and hate how boring and inept all of the babyfaces seem in comparison. He has the showmanship and stage presence, plus his refusal to play by the established rules is what his fans love most about him.

With a beloved heel like the Donald, the GOP establishment will have to pull its own Montreal Screwjob if it has any hope of getting the controllable candidate it wants.

I gotta admit, I haven't been all that enthused about following the 2016 presidential electoral campaigns. As I've said before, I'm not getting paid to engage in full-time punditry. But it doesn't take a pundit to realize that Ted Cruz's presidential aspirations are a classic case of showboating and attention whoring.

Let's face it - a presidential campaign is perhaps one of the best ways of grabbing some well-needed spotlight time if you want to be somebody on the Beltway scene. Just ask Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and a bunch of others who clawed their way towards the brass ring back in 2012. There's plenty to gain from being "that guy who ran for president back in 2016" just so long as you don't slice your own campaign into the weeds.

As to why Cruz's presidential aspirations will wind up unfulfilled, it's not the citizenship issue that'll trip him up (unless he's revealed to be Stephen Harper's Manchurian Candidate). Like our esteemed current president, Rafael Edward meets all of the important qualifications: he's over 35, he's lived in the U.S. for over 14 years and his dear mum was a U.S. citizen when he was born, in spite of his dad being a commie canuck.

A long while ago, I said Ralphy was a shoe-in for the 2016 presidential candidacy. That doesn't mean he'll be a shoe-in for the actual Oval Office job.

---

Poor Ralphy might be the darling of the birther/Tea Party set, but the rest of the GOP world just isn't feeling him:

First, Cruz doesn’t have enough support from party bigwigs. To win the Republican or Democratic nomination, you need the backing of at least some of the party apparatus. At a minimum, your fellow party members shouldn’t hate you. Otherwise, you end up getting the Newt Gingrich 2012 treatment. That is, you get pounced on the moment you’re seen as a threat to win the nomination.

If we’re ever in a world where it looks like Cruz could win the nomination, you’ll very likely see such pouncing. You can read article after article about how Cruz has isolated himself in the Senate. It got so bad that he recently had to apologize to his Republican colleagues.

And the Cruz hatred doesn’t stop at the edges of the Senate cloakroom. Influential party actors dislike him, too. I can’t remember another Republican who united Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Jennifer Rubin and Thomas Sowell in opposition.

Ralphy's previous showboating has put him at odds with many of the establishment players within the GOP. Being the political equivalent of a firebrand evangelical preacher packs the pews full of far-right conservatives looking for that old time religion, but at the end of the day, the GOP establishment picks moderates who won't scare the mainstreamers with their talk of fire, brimstone and damnation, but have just enough fire to avoid being called a weak RINO by their peers. It's all a balancing act, you see.

Which is why your chances of seeing Ted Cruz being sworn into office on January 20, 2017 are about as remote as Jon Huntsman's.

But pissing off the GOP establishment isn't the only reason why he might walk away from his 2016 campaign empty-handed. The fervent pursuit of ideological purity for appearance's sake tends to create a lot of moral and ethical casualties along the way. To wit, Ralphy's begrudging move towards Obamacare:

The newly announced Republican presidential candidate told CNN's Dana Bash on Tuesday that he will sign up for health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act -- a law he has been on a crusade to kill.

"We'll be getting new health insurance and we'll presumably do it through my job with the Senate, and so we'll be on the federal exchange with millions of others on the federal exchange," Cruz said.

Asked whether he would accept the government contribution available to lawmakers and congressional staffers for their health care coverage through the ACA, Cruz said he will "follow the text of the law."

"I strongly oppose the exemption that President Obama illegally put in place for members of Congress because (Senate Minority Leader) Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats didn't want to be under the same rules as the American people," Cruz said, before repeating: "I believe we should follow the text of the law."

That's right, the same man who was captured on video calling Obamacare a "trainwreck" had no other choice but to buy a ticket and climb aboard, hoping that his supporters and the general public would have the common decency to forgive him (or at least forget).

To sum things up, you can expect Rafael Edward Cruz to run in the 2016 primary, but don't expect him to become the preferred choice of the GOP establishment and consequently, their favored front-runner for the election. Personally, my money's on Jeb Bush - established pol, plenty of name recognition and deep down, America loves its dynasties.

Take it from someone who does this punditry stuff for a living:

If Cruz were in the position of someone like Rubio or even Rick Perry, I'd be more bullish. But he's not nominee material at all.
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) March 25, 2015

Pictured above is the treacherous Marxist Usurper in Chief, Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya, palling around with his "bestie" and fellow dictator, Supreme Leader Kim Jong "Make-em Say" Un, in an undisclosed location.

- Putin's back, baby! Turns out he was just in bed with the flu. Even authoritarian ex-KGB types get sick every once in a while. He should be glad he didn't come down with a sudden case of polonium poisoning.

- Say "goodnight" to the grand white Christian experiment. White, non-Hispanic Christians are no longer a majority in 19 states. By the 2040s, the white majority in the U.S. will vanish altogether.

- Fresh-faced senator and presumptive shoe-in for the "who's ready to become a GOP presidential candidate 2016" sweepstakes Tom Cotton recently led the effort to undo the White House's efforts to not start any more Middle Eastern conflicts. The Iranian government, POTUS and the rest of America reacted in shock and disdain.

Now let's see what an Army veteran has to say about Tom Cotton:

“I would use the word mutinous,” said Eaton, whose long career includes training Iraqi forces from 2003 to 2004. He is now a senior adviser to VoteVets.org. “I do not believe these senators were trying to sell out America. I do believe they defied the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act.” Eaton certainly had stern words for Cotton.

“What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better,” Eaton told me. “I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed.” The consequences of Cotton’s missive were plainly apparent to Eaton. “The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran,” he said.

“I think Senator Cotton recognizes this, and he simply does not care,” Eaton went on to say. “That’s what disappoints me the most.”

Ouch.

- The recent hubbub over Selma has besmirched the delicate sensibilities of the city's most stalwart Confederates, prompting a valiant defense of the grand southern tradition and the peculiar institution it nurtured and supported:

“The people in the south – the white people, who were being abused – organised a neighbourhood watch to try to re-establish some order,” he said of the nascent Klan. Slavery in the south was “a bad institution”, he said, but possibly “the mildest, most humane form of slavery ever practiced”.

“If you look at the wealth created by the slaves, in food, clothing, shelter, medical care, care before you’re old enough to work, care until you died, they got 90% of the wealth that they generated,” he said. “I don’t get that. The damn government takes my money to the tune of 50%.”

You know what the scariest thing about this is? A mainstream conservative pundit like Glenn Beck can clean this up and totally roll with it nearly word-for-word and no one in his listening group would bat an eyelash.

- Because the great state of Alabama largely finds the idea of same-sex marriages to be an absolute affront to the natural order of things, a gay couple's having second thoughts about leaving their substantial estate to the University of Alabama.

And how much were they intending to leave behind? A cool $15 to 18 million.

- Because the GOP largely finds the idea of helping the undeserving poor to be an absolute affront to how the natural order of things should be, it's unveiling a budget that cuts a $100 million chunk out of the SNAP program.

And remember, if you call yourself a "Man of God" and think it's totally OK to ask your congregation for a cool $65 million so you can buy yourself a new private jet, then you probably need to have another pastor sit with you while you re-read the Holy Bible cover to cover.

- Where's Putin? Who knows? Maybe he took a page from Mark Sanford's book and went on a "hiking trip." After all, presidential side chick Alina Kabaeva recently gave birth to a bouncing baby girl, although Swiss authorities claim there's no proof he ever paid a visit.

- Pando's Mark Ames (nee NSFWCorp) offers a quick reminder of the racist origins behind "Right to Work" legislation. From Ames' previous piece on the same subject:

Those hearings revealed that the anti-FDR "convention" that Vance Muse put on, through his "Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution"— which featured guests of honor like Gerald L K Smith, America’s leading anti-Semite and godfather to the modern American Nazi movement — was financed not only by Confederate sponsors like Texan Will Clayton, owner of the world’s largest cotton broker, but also reactionary northeast Republican money: the DuPont brothers, J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil, Alfred Sloan of General Motors... That unholy alliance of Northeastern and Confederate plutocrat money financed the first serious attempt at splitting the Southern Democrats off by exploiting white supremacism, all in order to break labor power and return to the world before the New Deal — and to the open shop.

Incidentally, Vance Muse’s northern donors — DuPont, Pew, Sloan — were the same core investors in (and board directors of) the first modern libertarian think-tanks of the 40s and 50s, including the Foundation for Economic Education. DuPont, Pew and Sloan funds also seeded the American careers of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard, among others. In other words, Vance Muse’s funders built the first layer of the libertarian nomenklatura that Charles Koch later took control of — no surprise, since Koch outfits are credited with making the Michigan "right to work" law possible.

To the average industrialist in search of fatter bottom lines and cheaper labor, unrepentant bigots like Vance Muse are useful tools. All you have to do is stir up their feelings about those blacks and browns and they'll do whatever you ask of them, just as long as it accomplishes knee-capping the "other" even at the expense of their own well-being.

- It's been a while since the right wing had a "vast left-wing conspiracy" to catch vapors over. So when it was discovered that former Secretary of State and likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not only exclusively used a personal email account instead of a government account and pole-axed over 30,000 emails associated with that personal account, you knew the right finally had another juicy Clinton scandal to work themselves silly over.

Yes, using your personal email for your State Dept. gig smacks of a complete lack of accountability and, if it were anyone else, grounds for termination. But when you step back and think of all the potential controversies that could have surfaced, this one seems a bit weak in comparison.

Meanwhile, some sources say Valerie Jarrett blew the whistle over Email-gate because of how the Clintons seemed to be dissing the current Commander-in-Chief.

- Jarvis DeBerry drops a little Dr. Seuss on presumptive presidential fodder Bobby (nee Piyush) Jindal.

- Sure, the Department of Justice wasn't able to stick Darren Wilson in a can, but it did crack open the proverbial hamper and aired out the city of Ferguson, Missouri's dirty laundry. And because of the DOJ's findings, several high-ranking city officials have resigned, including the city manager and police chief.

Meanwhile, St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle has launched an effort to recall the city's current mayor. This is the same guy who, months prior to Michael Brown's death, staunchly championed privatizing large portions of Ferguson's law enforcement services.

The DOJ revealed a city (and numerous others like it) as little more than a naked cash-harvesting program using captive residents as a semi-renewable revenue stream. Yours truly will have more on this soon.

- Jeremy Clarkson discovers there are consequences for punching people not named Piers Morgan. How this affects the future of one of the world's most popular television series remains to be seen.

And by the way, John McCain, the next time you and your friends in the Senate try to undermine the president's authority and foreign affairs acumen, you might want to come up with an excuse a bit more substantial than "I sign lots of letters."

More and more haters are climbing out of the woodpile for our esteemed president. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, would-be/could-be/shouldn't-be contender for the 2016 presidential elections, who recently expressed doubts over POTUS's love of country and all it stands for, for better or worse. Meanwhile...

- The Great State of Alabama officially apologizes for mistaking an elderly Indian man for a really skinny black guy. You know how these things are and, well...they all look alike sometimes. Fortunately for Sureshbhai Patel and family, the Indian government has brought to bear tremendous pressure upon the state on their behalf, resulting in the offending officer's swift dismissal and arrest. Meanwhile, the black community looks on in envy.

- Police shootings are kinda getting out of hand. You shouldn't be shot 16 times in your own bed for grabbing your wallet. At least the victim got a $3 million settlement out of it.

- As it turns out, the conservative PACs that benefited most from Citizens United have been lining their own pockets by fleecing their donors:

Let’s say Ronald Reagan is still alive and someone starts the Re-Elect Ronald Reagan To A Third Term PAC. Because people love Reagan, let’s suppose that conservative donors pony up $500,000 to help the organization. However, the donors don’t know that Ronald Reagan has nothing to do with the PAC. Furthermore, the real goal of the PAC is to line the pockets of its owner, not to help Ronald Reagan. So, the PAC sets up two vendors, both controlled by the PAC owner: Scam Vendor #1 and Scam Vendor #2. Let’s assume it costs $50,000 to raise the half million the PAC takes in. Then, the PAC sends $100,000 to the first company and $100,000 to the second company to “promote Ronald Reagan for President.” Each of the companies then goes out and spends $1,000 on fliers. The “independent expenditures” that show up on the FEC report? They’re at 40%. That’s because the FEC doesn’t require vendors to disclose how much of the money they receive is eaten up as overhead. The dubious net benefit that Ronald Reagan receives from an organization that raised $500,000 on his name? It’s $2,000. On the other hand, the net profit for the PAC owner is $448,000. Is that legal? The short answer is, “It’s a bit of a grey area, but, yes, it is legal.”

I'm not surprised. This is what happens when you open the floodgates to every grifter and con artist on the block.

- Dinesh D'Souza continues to fight for America's freedoms using the power of Twitter. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

And remember folks, a little rioting is healthy for the soul. Unless you happen to be black, then it's a mug's game for thugs or, as buyers of commemorative "I Am Darren Wilson" sweatshirts would say, "a good day for a good shoot."

I'll admit - I've been out of the loop these past few months. A lot of things have happened and there's a lot of ground to cover, but playing catchup, let alone keep up with a fast-paced news cycle that has a life expectancy shorter than Michael Sam's NFL career, takes time and effort. But I'll do my best, which leads me to ISIS.

Or IS. Or Islamic State, as it seems to be called at the moment. According to the mainstream media, it's a terrorist group that's shaped up to be the worst thing that's happened to the world since...well...this happened.* According to Gary Brecher, Pando Daily's (and formerly NSFWCorp's) very own War Nerd, it's just a collection of sullen Sunni Arab combatants who weren't happy about winding up on the losing end of the latest rounds of sectarian warfare. Sorta like the various Confederate revanchists who weren't happy about the dream of the southern planter class going up in smoke.

See that analogy? IS reminds us of a lot of things. The most recent antics of IS reminded Chauncey DeVega of a little thing that most good Americans have worked hard to studiously ignore, which is the lengthy reign of terror suffered by black Americans all throughout the post-Reconstruction and pre-Civil Rights era. Domestic terrorism, even under the guise of white anti-federalism as expressed by the likes of Timothy McVeigh, isn't really called that. That's a title generally reserved for leftist groups and people of Middle Eastern persuasion or non-Christian religious mores.

The people who were responsible for the 4,743 officially counted lynchings that occurred between 1882 and 1968 - good, upstanding Christian Americans one and all - wouldn't have considered themselves "terrorists," nor are they referred as such anywhere other than the occasional comment on a black-oriented blog. Make no mistake - those acts were every bit as much terrorism as the act of hurling two fully-loaded jets into the tallest skyscrapers New York City had to offer. Both acts were designed to instill sheer terror in those watching or even hearing about them.* The main difference is that 9/11 was designed to strike terror into the heart of all Americans. With few exceptions, the average lynching struck terror in the heart of minority groups who weren't fortunate enough to have their rights as citizens and human beings respected.

---

It's that comparison that apparently drew the ire of the War Nerd:

For people like Chauncey’s fans or Moyers’s admirers, nothing that happens outside the US matters at all. Only our sins are important. So a man burned alive in the Syrian desert becomes nothing but an excuse for a sermon on American History X, because only America matters, only America’s sins are real.

Brecher's beef lies with how, along with Bill Moyer, DeVega seemingly discounts Muadh al Kasasbeh’s death in favor of expounding on America's own flaws and ills. It's something that many of the more conservative types accuse liberal minded folks of doing - gleefully pointing out how America's just as bad as the bad guys it fights. It's no wonder this apparent failure to acknowledge this act and its ramifications in the broader geopolitical world in favor of domestic navel-gazing somehow struck a nerve:

Try imagining Chauncey or Bill minimizing an IDF phosphorus bombing in Gaza the way they trivialize this IS pyro video. Phosphorus burns people alive just as horrifically as kerosene, but would Moyers or de Vega trivialize Palestinian kids burnt alive with phosphorus by saying, “Remember the KKK! We’re just as bad!” Never. Because everyone would scream, quite rightly, that they were trivializing the IDF’s atrocity.

But both these fools spend thousands of words trivializing IS snuff movies, because…ah, it’s too stupid to paraphrase, but it goes something like this: “The US is the root of all evil, so IS is only acting out because it’s a victim. We did something bad to it somehow.”

If Brecher thinks DeVega is minimizing terrorist actions overseas by throwing up comparisons to lynching, then he should probably step back and consider this from the perspective of the average black person, a person unencumbered by the sectarian shit-kicking antics of a dying terrorist group in a land beset by sectarian strife and international intervention, but sorely affected by an entire institution seemingly sanctioned to commit a much quicker and more solitary form of lynching.

To the average black person on the street, the doings of IS pale in comparison to what they've directly and collectively experienced at the hands of America's own oft-acknowledged terrorist groups, with plenty of ongoing help from state institutions that continue to instill terror in black Americans to this day.

To say that DeVega gives few damns about what the IDF does to Palestinian children because what the NYPD does to young black Americans by far and large somehow overshadows the former is...well...a damn sight moronic in its own right, as DeVega himself points out. As for the distress over how lefty liberals are loath to go all-in on IS-bashing, Moyer's biggest fear is how it might lead to a renewed occupation effort by U.S. forces - the very thing that many on the left had fought tooth-and-nail against during the salad days of Iraq.

I respect the War Nerd's work, as it offers a no-bullshit perspective of current events (which is why I enjoyed NSFWCorp in the first place) and the occasional no-holds-barred takedown of some of the more egregious assholes who've somehow managed to actually get paid for their fluff work (I see you, Jen Percy). But he's off-base on this one. Even the commentariat over at Pando's calling foul.

* That's right Mack, just crack open the hornet's nest with your bare fist.

Michael Brown's death and the subsequent protests in the city of Ferguson, Missouri have laid bare a few simple, troubling facts about living in this country as a black American:

1. You are always considered a danger or a threat until proven otherwise.
2. As a possible threat, you are subject to the wishes and whims of law enforcement, the courts and the penal system.
3. Even ordinary citizens can deal with you as they see fit if they consider you a threat, as codified in both de facto and de jure forms.

The above has had an effect on how the black community sees and deals with law enforcement, as highlighted in Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest piece. When you know the police are more likely to see you as a threat rather than as a person in need, you're less likely to want to interact with them in any way, shape or form. Out of necessity, community-driven self-policing becomes the norm.

But the reason for LEO insistence on treating black Americans as a clear and present danger has little to do with criminal stats or personal experiences - those are often used as pretextual justifications for their behavior. Instead, it's a bit deeper than that:

The police departments of America are endowed by the state with dominion over your body. I came home at the end of this summer to find that dominion had been. This summer in Ferguson and Staten Island we have seen that dominion employed to the maximum ends—destruction of the body. This is neither new nor extraordinary. It does not matter if the destruction of your body was an overreaction. It does not matter if the destruction of your body resulted from a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction of your body springs from foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be be destroyed. Protect the home of your mother and your body can be destroyed. Visit the home of your young daughter and your body will be destroyed. The destroyers of your body will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.

Ownership of and authority over the black body is something that stretches as far back as the beginning of the slave trade, when the purchase and use of involuntary African labor came into vogue. It was most apparent during the heyday of the plantation system, with the southern planter class and their allies in control of black labor and black movement. The black body was theirs to do as they saw fit.

This attitude did not vanish once the plantation system - at least in its slavery-supported form - vanished. The loss of control over the black body also meant a grievous economic loss. When black Americans began taking advantage of the Reconstruction period, there was a realization that this loss of control could be permanent. The fight against Reconstruction, the imposition of Jim Crow laws throughout the south and the use of those laws to create a new prison-supported plantation system marked the re-imposition of control over the black body.

Today, mainstream America struggles to maintain authority over the black body, to do as they see fit with it. Even if it means warehousing your body in a secure facility for decades on end. Or bruising your body to the point of disfigurement and paralysis. Or simply destroying your body outright.

It doesn't take a united organization to exercise that sort of control over the black body. Such tasks are often outsourced to ordinary individuals - people who have their own agendas, but nevertheless inherently understand the need for policing the black body. Jason Zimmerman did his part to re-impose societal control over the black body - he understood clearly what society subconsciously asked of him once he saw those black teenagers behaving in a way that suggested a lack of control.

LEO behavior in Ferguson, L.A., N.Y.C. and points elsewhere are part and parcel with the continuing need to control the black body, whether for the benefit of the scared white suburbanite, the unrepentant Lost Causer, the workaday man or woman who doesn't want to lose their job or home to "those people," the businessmen who see black bodies as a goldmine of dependable cheap labor or the politician who uses black bodies as a "tough on crime" liferaft to keep his or her career afloat.

Control of the black body has always been good for business and good for society. Yours truly doesn't expect that to stop anytime soon.

Paul Ryan is an idiot. Most of us know this already. So it was no surprise that he would attempt to woo Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers with the following patented dogwhistle:



The above conjures up the ages-old image of the indolent Negro and the equally old argument that a Negro whose back was not under the direct path of an overseer's whip was a Negro bound for a life of excessive sloth and inexcusable leisure. Therefore, it was nearly a moral imperative to "encourage" otherwise indolent Negroids to donate their sweat equity to the cause of hard labor for their white American betters. The "convict lease" programs of the early 20th century were more or less an involuntary push to deliver the Negro from the ills of idleness.

Fast-forwarding to the modern era, scolding the black community over the lack of well-paying jobs and the resultant poverty is a comforting pastime for conservatives and quite a few progressives, as well. Solving the actual problems of poverty and joblessness among inner city black Americans requires a structural teardown and rebuild of our society, something that many Americans are loath to do. Instead, it's much easier to scold from afar, although that does as much good as blaming a man who woke up in the eye of a hurricane for his current predicament.

Suggesting that poverty and joblessness are cultural problems allows people to equate systemic failures among a group of people as a moral and personal failing of said group. It makes it that much easier to dismiss inner city black Americans as a lazy, shiftless lot unwilling to do a hard day's work - consequently an echo to those times when even an accusation of loitering spelled swift imprisonment under the employ of a farm or a mining company, for starters. Nevermind that job prospects for black Americans have always been dismal.

Ryan's feigned pseudo-sincerity over the inner city black American's plight exists only to gain an edge in the popularity polls and all the electoral advantages they offer.

We all know how tone-deaf Republicans tend to get when it comes to women's issues. Par for the course for those folks. In an effort to go against type and score those sweet, precious political points, Mike Huckabee crafted what Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post describes as a "three-coil steamer." Well, she's being extraordinarily polite here:

I think it’s time for Republicans to no longer accept listening to Democrats talk about a war on women. Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war FOR women. For them to be empowered; to be something other than victims of their gender. Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for them birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war ON them, it’s a war FOR them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing or them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it, let’s take that discussion all across America because women are far more than Democrats have made them to be. And women across America have to stand up and say, Enough of that nonsense.

This, from the same folks who brought to you mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds and cockneyed theories about rape, birth control and pregnancy.

But even if Huckabee's "Uncle Sugar" speech went over like a lead balloon with women everywhere, at least it resonated with the base. A recent poll shows Huckabee in the top spot for the GOP presidential primary for 2016:

Following the controversy over his 'Uncle Sugar' speech Mike Huckabee has...taken the lead in the Republican primary race for 2016. He's at 16% to 14% for Jeb Bush, 13% for Chris Christie, 11% for Rand Paul, 8% each for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan, 6% for Scott Walker, and 5% for Bobby Jindal.

There's been more movement than usual over the last month, with Huckabee and Bush each gaining 3-4 points, and Chris Christie and Ted Cruz each falling by 6 points. Cruz had been leading the field among 'very conservative' voters for months but in the wake of Huckabee's press attention last week he's taken the top spot with that group. He's at 20% to 15% for Paul, 11% for Cruz, and 10% for Bush. In the wake of Bridgegate Christie's supremacy with moderate voters is being challenged- a month ago he led Bush by 23 points with them, but now his advantage is down to 3 points at 28/25.

The same poll also shows Sarah Palin winning the "Ms. Congeniality" prize of "best liked person."

For your reading pleasure, the Washington Post has a transcript available of Chris Christie's "Bridgegate" conference. Just like the actual presser itself, the transcript is a long, winding read into Christie's inelegant maneuvering post-bridge controversy.

"The buck stops here." Except when you pass that buck onto your staffers. Who've you just fired to maintain a thin, crumbling veneer of plausible deniability:

So I had no reason to believe that she was telling me anything other than the truth, and that's why I used the phrase before that I was heartbroken, because I trusted that I was being told the truth, and I wasn't. And I wasn't by somebody who I had placed a significant amount of trust in.

So, yeah, did I miss it? We missed it. I mean, that's why we're here, right? We missed it. But then what do you do when you find out you missed it? I found out at 9 -- a little before 9 yesterday morning. By 9:00 this morning, her position was terminated. And I think that's swift, appropriate action that people would expect from the chief executive of the state.

Also:

Q: Governor, you said you didn't seek the mayor's endorsement -- (off mic). Just wondering, in the course of the campaign, you're having these meetings where you were actively seeking the support of many Democrats in the state. But when you have these meetings, and they say, you know, Governor's latest polling, here's your new ad, here's the update on the Democratic outreach -- did anyone say do you, well, the mayor of Fort Lee, he's -- (off mic)?

GOV. CHRISTIE: He never -- his name was never mentioned to me.

His position was never mentioned to me. When I say, John (sp), he was not on my radar screen, that means he was not on my radar screen. I never had Bill Stepien or anybody else connected with the campaign even mention to me, like even an update, like, hey, we've had two meetings with the mayor; we think things are going well or we think things are going poorly. I'd get those kind of updates. I never heard the Fort Lee mayor's name, Mark Sokolich, his name, until all this stuff happened.

And so he was not on my radar screen at all. Plenty of other mayors were. And a number of them wound up endorsing us, and a number of them, I wound up having meetings with like you're referencing. Mayor Sokolich -- not only did I never have a meeting with him, he was never mentioned to me. That's why -- you know, you go back to the question over here about, you know, making a joke about this. That's part of the reason I felt comfortable doing it. Like, this can't have anything to do with politics. I don't even know this guy. How could it be that someone would be doing something like this against a mayor that I never had any conversations with nor any sense that we were even seeking his endorsement?

And so, you know, that's why this is such -- that's part of the reason this is such a mystery to me, John (sp), and why I'm so upset about it.

Q: That's what I'm trying to -- (off mic) -- somebody said, screw him or to hell with him -- (off mic) --

GOV. CHRISTIE: I would have said, who's he?

Q: (Off mic) -- wasn't you?

GOV. CHRISTIE: No, I would have said, who's he? If somebody would have said something that to me I -- who's he and what did he do? I mean, I don't know this guy. Like I said, I may have met him in a greeting line or in a -- in a big Bergen County event or at a town hall meeting or something. But I'm telling you, like, until yesterday when I saw his picture on TV, I wouldn't have -- I -- if he walked in the room, I wouldn't have been able to pick him out.

So that's not to diminish him in any way. It's just that in this context, this is not a guy who was on my radar screen in any way, nor was his name ever brought up to my by Bill Stepien until after the story started to appear about the Fort Lee traffic problem.

And that's the first time that I heard about Mayor Sokolich. And so that's why, John (sp), it's such a mystery to me. And --

Q: (Off mic) -- with Democrats?

GOV. CHRISTIE: Sure. Of course I was, Kelly. But you know what? He wasn't one of them. He wasn't one of them. I mean, I'm happy to admit I that I was trying to run up the score, absolutely. That's what you do in a political campaign, try to get as many supporters, endorsers that turn into voters. That's part of your job.

Translation: "I never even met the guy. How I'm gonna muscle a guy I never even met? I didn't know my staffers were even messing with this guy, who I never met in my life."

No matter how many staffers you throw under the George Washington Bridge and no matter how many village idiots attempt to rework the narrative in your favor, this isn't going away, Chris.

Wanna know what might blow a hole in your political ambitions for 2016? It's not being seen palling around with the Socialist Marxist Kenyan in Chief. Or having a mouth that's just as wide as your own personal girth. Turns out it's having your minions gridlock one of the busiest thoroughfares in the nation just to get back at some Democrat mayor who wouldn't endorse your generously proportioned Republican ass so you could have bigger numbers to fuel your presidential campaign.

Screwing with poor welfare recipients and schoolteachers is one thing. But screwing with the ordinary motorist on one of the busiest commutes in the nation is just something you don't do, period.

Chris Christie figured he could escape the backlash and watch his minions take the hit, because that's what minions are supposed to be there for. And indeed they did. Sorta.



At least Mittens had the forethought to expunge any and all traces of impropriety on part of his staff. As far as pulling dirty tricks on political opponents, Christie still has a lot to learn from Richard Nixon, nevermind how his penchant for rigging the playing field even when handed sure-fire victory was driven by pathological paranoia, whereas Christie's own egomania was calling the shots.

Meanwhile, a lot of people are saying Christie's fucked. And he is. And in a way, he's always been fucked. He's not a fan favorite of the rabid GOP base, except when he's yelling and throwing his weight around. They liked how he pissed off liberals, but that's pretty much it. His penchant for maneuvering himself as the moderate choice works for grabbing moderate GOP voters, but it does him no favors for attracting conservative voters who like a little fire-breathing with their sermons.

Problem is, we're still at least a year away from presidential nominations and most people have short memory spans. Will this man still be fucked when it comes time to pick the next GOP candidate for president come 2016? That's anyone's guess and it all depends on how deep investigators dig and how much political gold gets unearthed.

Or perhaps how long ordinary motorists stay pissed at Christie's Soprano-esque move.

"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

Ronald Reagan's infamous "Welfare Queen" mythos shaped and defined the way conservatives and many ordinary Americans saw - and continue to see - public assistance and "big government," as well as those who rely most on both. It's a sweet siren song that tantalizes the baser natures of the conservative constituency while serving as a cautionary tale to taxpayers when rendering unto Uncle Sam that which is Uncle Sam's.

Reagan, who began weaving this narrative into his speeches throughout his 1976 candidacy bid for president, never mentioned the identity of the woman behind the story, nor did he ever make mention of any ethnic background. In fact, the narrative sounded so patently ridiculous that many liberals assumed he made the whole thing up just to discredit welfare and curry favor to voters' racial resentments in the process.

For decades, few bothered to learn the true story of the "Welfare Queen." It was more than enough for most to use her illustrated escapades as outrage porn fodder for straitlaced conservatives and purported proof of indolence and sloth among a particular ethnic group.

Josh Levin's extensive Slate report finally pulls back the curtain on the "Welfare Queen" mythos. As it turns out, there's a lot more to the life of the woman starring as Reagan's "Welfare Queen" than meets the eye.

Of course, there were few things that stood out in my mind about this story and the woman at the center of it:

• Linda Taylor was a profoundly broken individual and a poster child for psychopathy, judging by her actions and the way she treated others and even her own children.
• Much of Taylor's life was based on ambiguity, lies and conjecture. Documents proved a relatively unreliable way of pinning down truths. Even her death certificate stood as proof that things were never as they appeared.
• Taylor's ethnic background was equally ambiguous and fluid. The commonplace caricature of the dark-skinned, heavy-set and weave-donning EBT/SNAP cheat gives way to a woman who was considered white by most and able to switch ethnicity based on her needs and whims:

It’s possible that Taylor’s biological father—identified by Hubert Mooney as a man named Marvin White—was black. Or perhaps a family secret was buried a few more generations back. No matter her bloodlines, the more persistent truth was that Martha Miller—who would later shed her childhood name for a nearly endless set of aliases—was a racial Rorschach test. She was white according to official records and in the view of certain family members who couldn’t imagine it any other way. She was black (or colored, or a Negro) when it suited her needs, or when someone saw a woman they didn’t think, or didn’t want to think, could possibly be Caucasian.

• Taylor wasn't just a con artist and a fraudster - she was also a suspected murderer. It's likely that she's responsible for killing Patricia Parks and possibly had a hand in the deaths of Sherman Ray and Mildred Markham. In the case of Patricia Parks, Taylor positioned herself as a friend and caretaker, feeding Parks a steady diet of barbiturates while draining the Trinidadian native's finances dry. She wasn't above setting other people against one another to get what she wanted. In the case of Ray, it's said by many that she fueled a mutual conflict between Ray and another man, Willtrue Loyd, eventually leading to the death of Ray by Loyd's hand. Taylor later married Loyd.
• Taylor was also a suspected kidnapper and child trafficker. During the 1960s, she was arrested twice for kidnapping, but was never charged since the children were returned safe and sound. She was also suspected in the 1964 kidnapping of Paul Joseph Fronczak, who has yet to be found. Some thought it was part of a scheme to better substantiate fraudulent welfare claims, but her son offered a far more troubling explanation:
  

  Given Taylor’s ability to fabricate paperwork, acquiring flesh-and-blood children seems like an unnecessary risk if all you're looking to do is pad a welfare application. Her son Johnnie believes his mother saw children as commodities, something to be acquired and sold. He remembers a little black girl—he doesn’t know her name—who stayed with them for a few months in the early 1960s, “and then she just disappeared one day.” Shortly before Lawrence Wakefield died, Johnnie says, a white baby named Tiger showed up out of nowhere, and then left the household just as mysteriously. I ask him if he knew where these kids came from or who they belonged to. “You knew they wasn’t hers,” he says.

• The ultimate motive in Taylor's acts was always money. In the cases of Parks, Markham, Ray and Loyd, Taylor stood to gain financially, whether through veterans benefits, life insurance payouts or, as with Parks, a steady drain her finances and assets until there was nothing left.
• The mainstream media either glossed over the above exploits or treated them as mere sideshows for what was considered the main event - her outsized penchant for welfare fraud. Even law enforcement officials and the courts were more concerned with her conviction as a welfare cheat than bringing her to justice as a murderer or kidnapper. After her trial and conviction for theft and perjury, the politicians and media lost interest in Taylor. However, the political narrative created from her exploits lived on.
• While many of the details offered by Reagan's Welfare Queen narrative seemed true, there was also plenty of room for fudging on his part. The oft-quoted $150,000 figure came about as estimates from various reporters. In really, Taylor was only charged with bilking $8,000 in welfare benefits, since it was all the hard evidence that officials could find. Nevertheless, bigger numbers make for larger guffaws of indignation among voters.

Okay, you’re asking here about the Obama administration’s not-so-subtle signals that it wants to launch some cruise missiles at Syria, which would be punishment for what it says is Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians.

It’s true that basically no one believes that this will turn the tide of the Syrian war. But this is important: it’s not supposed to. The strikes wouldn’t be meant to shape the course of the war or to topple Assad, which Obama thinks would just make things worse anyway. They would be meant to punish Assad for (allegedly) using chemical weapons and to deter him, or any future military leader in any future war, from using them again.

The above quoted comes from Max Fisher's recent Washington Post piece, "9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask," a sort of Syrian Civil War for Dummies guide to help the average schlub keep up with current events. This answers question #7: "Why would President Obama just lob a few cruise missiles at Assad and call it a day?"

The answer lies with question #6: "Why hasn't the U.S. shoved its collective foot up Assad's authoritarian ass until he can taste our Freedom™ and Liberty™-flavored shoe soles?" Because, as Fisher explains, all of our other military options would literally make things worse:

• A full-on ground invasion would be Iraq all over again, only this time it's Barack Obama's presidential ass in the sling.
• An air strike? Forget about it. Too much time and political capital needed to maintain a no-fly zone a la Iraq.
• A targeted assassination of Bashir al-Assad would just open up a power vacuum for some other asshole or group of assholes to fill, putting the U.S. and ordinary Syrians right back where they started.
• Giving the Syrian rebels all the weapons they can tote and letting God/Allah sort them out wouldn't work, either. Too many opportunities to accidentally outfit the next Taliban with decent weaponry for dominating future internecine conflicts. Besides, the Saudis gave Syrian rebels some weapons and look at what happened with that.
• Doing nothing is also an option and it's one some on the left would rather Obama take. But doing nothing puts a bigger dent in his credibility in foreign matters than doing something.

So the only option left on the table is to smack Assad on the wrist with a cruise missile-shaped ruler and hope he's shook enough to stay away from chemical weapons for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I'm not so sure that this will be enough. We're talking about a guy whose goons have had no compunction against raping and killing civilians, children included. As far as everyone's concerned, Bashir al-Assad is a Bad Dude, as are is his majority-Alawite armed forces. To send any sort of message to Assad, it'd have to be a rather painful one - and there's always the fear of innocents accidentally sharing that pain.

According to Omar Dahi, the answer involves action that eschews actual military intervention of any form with something that actually helps the Syrian people:

What should be the response to these events? The answer for those who care about the fate of Syrians is the same as it has been to the ongoing violence previously, which is to push for a political settlement and an immediate cessation of violence coupled with humanitarian aid for Syrians.

A US- or NATO-led attack, which appears to be imminent, is likely to be disastrous for Syrians (as well as Lebanese and Palestinians). If the attack is intense enough to completely destroy the Syrian regime it will destroy whatever is left of Syria. If it is not, it will leave the regime in place to retaliate where it is strong, against its internal enemies, except now having its nationalist credentials bolstered as having fought off US aggression. Either way the strike will be devastating to millions inside Syria, not to mention the millions of refugees and internally displaced populations who are living hand to mouth and who depend on daily humanitarian aid that will surely be disrupted or stopped. There is no such thing as a surgical strike, and no possibility in a country as densely populated as Syria for an attack that does not incur civilian casualties. This is excluding the fact that US foreign policy in the Middle East, past and present, including its own complicity in chemical weapons attacks, makes it impossible not to be cynical about the motives behind this attack. Moreover, in the past two years people within the region became convinced that US policy towards Syria is dictated—as before—by what benefits Israel, which had not desired a total regime collapse but was benefitting from a perpetual conflict in its northern border so long as it remained contained.

It's not just Israel that has its eyes on Syria. Russia would very much like to keep its naval port on the Mediterranean while Iran would someday love to have the same. The Saudis seem to be working to cajole Russia into backing away from Assad, but the way it's going about it is likely to make things even worse.

In the short term, there seems to be nothing that can be done. As Fisher explains, the long-term ramifications are just as bleak: the various Syrian factions are likely to continue killing one another for years until fatigue sets in or someone achieves something resembling a victory. Afterwards, a precarious peace among numerous ethnic groups - at least until something somewhere sparks up yet another conflict.

We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that's a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons. That would change my calculations significantly.

The above quoted is President Barack Obama warning the Syrian government and its president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad, what would happen if it used chemical weapons to fight and neutralize the various rebel factions in its ongoing civil war.

It's also a quote that's been rehashed, reheated and given it's own unique garnish by countless other officials in and around the White House. So much so that the original intent was quickly lost to the winds:

The idea was to put a chill into the Assad regime without actually trapping the president into any predetermined action,” said one senior official, who, like others, discussed the internal debate on the condition of anonymity. But “what the president said in August was unscripted,” another official said. Mr. Obama was thinking of a chemical attack that would cause mass fatalities, not relatively small-scale episodes like those now being investigated, except the “nuance got completely dropped.

That's the thing about tough talk in the geopolitical arena - it makes you and your country appear strong and resolute, but it gives you little room to wiggle out of a showdown if and when the time comes, which in turn makes you look like a complete chump.

And damned if someone in Syria didn't go ahead and use those chemical weapons. U.S. intelligence points to the Syrian government as the responsible party. However, recent reports weave a much different narrative, from a Saudi-sourced delivery from intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan intended for Al-Queda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, to numerous rebels who simply didn't know what they had their hands on, leading to their deaths and approximately 1,400 others.

Even more intriguing is Saudi Arabia's role in the anti-Assad column. According to various sources, Prince Bandar went into talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin using a classic carrot-and-stick approach: kick Assad to the curb and we'll give you some sweet, sweet crude and look after your gas contracts. Otherwise, we know plenty of Chechens who'd love to ruin your winter Olympics. Meanwhile, Putin dismissed U.S. claims of chemical attacks as "utter nonsense."

But the big story isn't how Turkey, once a significant backer of Jabhat al-Nusra is now having second thoughts about having its Seal of Approval on a wayward product. Or how Syria is lining up to be yet another stepping stone in the U.S. geopolitical game of hopscotch towards its true target, Iran. Or even the possibility of anti-Assad rebel groups pinning the blame for the chemical attacks on the Assad regime in hopes of some good ol' fashioned American intervention.

Nope, it's about how Congress has suddenly found its principles, forcing the president to go through it to authorize any military action whatsoever on Syria.

---

The whole issue of congressional approval for military operations has been, for lack of a better word, iffy. World War II was, by most counts, the last major war that received congressional approval. Since then, running these sorts of things past Congress was more of a formality rather than an absolute necessity, as proven at various points by Reagan, Clinton and both Bush the Elder and Younger. And thanks to the War Powers Resolution of 1973, U.S. leaders have as much as a 90-day window to commit military forces wherever needed sans said congressional approval.

This isn't to say that clearing these sorts of things through Congress isn't the proper thing to do. Even the president thought it was fitting and proper to go to war only after Capitol Hill gives the OK. But the sudden objections against unilateral military activity from the right wing seems a tad hypocritical given the relative lack of formality concerning the junior Bush's military forays into Iraq and Afghanistan. It all has less to do with any actual concerns that House and Senate GOP members may have and more to do with political posturing and a continuing case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

From the left wing comes the usual concerns about Syrian blood on American hands. People who are already disappointed over the president's stance on drones will likely be further disappointed if the U.S. enters the conflict. Those who thought the president would base his time in office as someone who'd completely eschew overseas conflict in favor of more peaceful and non-interventionist solutions may also be disappointed with his actions. Between disillusioned liberals and disgruntled conservatives, the president is in between a rock and a hard place.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there are no "known knowns" when it comes to Syria. U.S. military intervention here means diving into the unknown. At best, the president will end up with a replay of the recent Iraq War and its aftermath on his hands. At worst, the debacle of yet another "unwinnable war" will likely have him facing impeachment by emboldened Republicans. It's little wonder the president has so far only committed to aerial strikes - fighter jets and drones sound more appealing than putting actual boots on the ground.

Of course, that doesn't count the wide-ranging geopolitical effects that are sure to reverberate throughout the Middle East and the world. Who's to say that a U.S. military strike against Assad's forces won't set off a new wave of terrorist attacks against the U.S., or if Russia decides that the U.S. presence in Syria is a bridge too far and plans some sort of retributive measure in response? What if Israel sees the president's supposed indecisiveness on Syria as a sign of weakness and initiate their own course of military action? What about the implications of Saudi involvement in trafficking chemical weapons for use against the Assad regime? Is that something that the U.S. is secretly in on?*

Drawing a line in the sand in the first place might have bolstered the president's credentials as a tough, fearless leader among many, but it also comes with its consequences. Fortunately for him, asking Congress for official permission to act on behalf of anti-Assad forces gives him an out. In the event that GOP congressmen give the thumbs down on a U.S. intervention into Syrian affairs, the political fallout lands squarely on Congress while the president avoids any backlash for his bold rhetoric. Also, he won't look too much like a chump for having his hands tied by the good folks on Capitol Hill.

* Seems far-fetched, but it doesn't hurt asking, considering the CIA's lengthy and storied history.

If you're a minority and you're suffering from racial inequality, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal thinks it's all your fault:

We have made tremendous progress, but as long as our society is comprised of imperfect human beings, we will always be striving for a more perfect union. We must not let this constant process prevent us from acknowledging the enormous strides we have already made.

Yet we still place far too much emphasis on our “separateness,” our heritage, ethnic background, skin color, etc. We live in the age of hyphenated Americans: Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Indian-Americans, and Native Americans, to name just a few.

Here’s an idea: How about just “Americans?” That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our “separateness” is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.

There is nothing wrong with people being proud of their different heritages. We have a long tradition of folks from all different backgrounds incorporating their traditions into the American experience, but we must resist the politically correct trend of changing the melting pot into a salad bowl. E pluribus Unum.

For the longest, black Americans really, REALLY wanted to be just plain ol' "Americans." Too bad about the constant, unending and institutionalized push via a variety of social, political and economic forces to keep those African-Americans and others hyphenated not just in name, but also in how they interact with so-called "plain ol' Americans."

For the record, Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans and Indian-Americans can all integrate themselves into the plain ol' American collective by adopting varying degrees of Whiteness™. That's something that hasn't quite been afforded to African-Americans. Or Native-Americans, for that matter.

As Aviva Shen sums things up over at Think Progress:

If he had done even cursory research before writing his editorial, Jindal may have discovered some systemic inequities preventing minorities from assimilating to his satisfaction. Though Jindal is right that Americans have made “significant progress” since the March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom, the national black unemployment rate has steadily remained double the white unemployment rate for the past 60 years.

In urban areas like Chicago, the poverty rate and median income for black families is also about the same as it was in 1963.

Even segregation, once vanquished by the civil rights movement, is rebounding aggressively. Since 2001, urban schools and neighborhoods have become increasingly re-segregated through lax integration enforcement and so-called “white flight.” Research shows this resegregation intensifies poverty and violence in minority neighborhoods, trapping black families in an endless cycle. Jindal himself has helped this trend along in New Orleans with his school privatization plan, which has worsened racial inequality in 34 historically segregated public schools and, according to the Justice Department, “reversed much of the progress made toward integration.”

Instead of digging deep into the historical, social and institutional flaws that have served to cockblock genuine equality and progress, Piyush makes a standard-issue plea for "togetherness" and through his criticism of those who dare hold on to their own cultural identities, subtly blames minorities for not working hard enough to genuinely be a part of America.

A platitude of this magnitude just goes to show how much our friend Piyush is out-of-touch with the realities of being in the "minority" column in the U.S. I know he has to keep those conservative bonafides burnished, as he's done by taking pot-shots at Eric Holder over school vouchers, but come on - you'd figure that someone who had to change his name to meet the minimum standards of acceptability among the unreconstructed should know better.

Then again, I should know better, especially with guys like Allen West around.

Meanwhile, the state of Louisiana leads the world in incarceration. He may want to take a good look at that, too.

Privileged individuals have a knack for making themselves known and every once in a while, they get a little exposure on DDSS. Gene Marks, John Derbyshire, Glenn Greenwald and most recently, David Sirota. Between them, every single one has made the cardinal sin of adopting a particularly privileged view of ethnic relations between themselves and their black American counterparts. It's a particular view that's far removed from the realities of everyday black American life and more rooted in an idealized and pre-packaged conceptualization easily influenced by deliberate and subconscious pre-judgements, as well as by their own personal experiences, some of which are also easily influenced by deliberate and subconscious pre-judgements.

If you've somehow construed the above as yet another "racist" rant from a man still wearing his "race goggles," chances are you'd probably find yourself in some form of agreement with Victor Davis Hanson's piece on the president's most recent speech on the Zimmerman trial and Trayvon Martin. Hanson immediately opens up with a salvo that sets the tone of the article:

Last week President Obama weighed in again on the Trayvon Martin episode. Sadly, most of what he said was wrong, both literally and ethically.

Pace the president, the Zimmerman case was not about Stand Your Ground laws. It was not a white-on-black episode. The shooting involved a Latino of mixed heritage in a violent altercation with a black youth.

Which leads you to wonder exactly what was it all about, if it wasn't any of these things. Removing "Stand Your Ground" and the deep-set racial components from the event, it devolves into a mere altercation between two individuals that got out of hand and resulted in a loss of life on one side. Distilling the case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman down to that anodyne reasoning obviates the need for an uncomfortable discussion about race or even gun control, for that matter. Everyone gets to go home without putting too much thought in a case that's now become worthy of a below-the-fold mention somewhere in the extreme lower right-hand corner of the Sanford Herald, with a brief blurb buried somewhere on A7.

Hanson also manages to squeeze in the question of George Zimmerman's ethnic background, black America's insistence on identifying him as white and the outrage of those who wanted to play up Zimmerman's Hispanic origins, most notably those on his Peruvian mother's side of the family, to disarm and de-fang the "white-on-black" aspect of the case. Nevermind that his father comes from German-American stock. It's something that's rarely, if ever mentioned by the mainstream.

Nevertheless, this sets the stage for Hanson to question the president's involvement in the case via his recent speech, along with Eric Holder's involvement via civil rights probe:

Is it ethical for the president to weigh in on a civil-rights case apparently being examined by his own Justice Department? The president knows that if it is true that African-American males are viewed suspiciously, it is probably because statistically they commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. If that were not true, they might well be given no more attention as supposed suspects than is accorded to white, Asian, or Latino youths. Had George Zimmerman been black, he would have been, statistically at least, more likely to have shot Trayvon Martin — and statistically likewise less likely to have been tried.

Barack Obama knows that if non-African-Americans were to cease all inordinate scrutiny of young African-American males, the latters’ inordinate crime rates would probably not be affected — given other causation for disproportionate incidences of criminality. Yet should their statistical crime profiles suddenly resemble those of other racial and ethnic groups, the so-called profiling would likely cease.

Like many others, Hanson zeros in on black crime rates to justify Zimmerman's rationale for confronting Martin, but with the added twist of condemning the president's interest in the case. If Zimmerman was just another black guy or a visible Hispanic (as opposed to one that appears roughly as white as his father), neither the president nor the U.S. Attorney General would have bothered with any attention. After all, it's not like they or their fellow blacks pay attention to black-on-black crime, which is yet another argument others used to condemn the president's interest in Trayvon Martin.

Hanson's claims of black crime rates remaining unaffected by a cessation in racial profiling would be dis-proven once the NYPD, LAPD and other law enforcement agencies across the country cease their profiling efforts. Further still with the advent of the end of drug sentencing guidelines weighted heavily towards drug activities most likely performed by minority groups and the impoverished.

Finally, Hanson goes in for the kill:

The president, I think, spoke out for three reasons: 1) He is an unbound, lame-duck president, with a ruined agenda, facing mounting ethical scandals; from now on, he will say things more consonant with being a community organizer than with being a nation’s president; 2) he knows the federal civil-rights case has little merit and cannot be pursued, and thus wanted to shore up his bona fides with an aggrieved black community; and 3) as with the ginned-up “assault-weapons ban” and the claim that Republicans are waging a “war on women,” Obama knows, as a community activist, that tension can mask culpability — in his case, the utter failure to address soaring unemployment in the inner city, epidemic black murder rates, the bankruptcy of Detroit, and the ways his failed economic policies disproportionately affect inner-city youth.

In short, Hanson distills the president's concern about the state of his country in the aftermath of a game-changing case and verdict not as any sort of genuine concern for the nation's welfare, but as an opportunity moment for a mere lame-duck desperate to mask his own policy and leadership failures with a last-minute rapport with "his people," to both allay their grievances and improve his own appearance.

And it would be a most brutal deconstruction of the president's supposed political chess-move, if it wasn't for three simple and salient facts.

That America has a very real institutionalized problem with race.
That aspects of the Zimmerman case were steeped in it, whether people wanted to admit it or not.
That the president did the right thing by reminding people of the first and that people should try to work out why the second matters and ultimately, how to not let a future case be influenced in that manner again.

Then again, I didn't expect Hanson to have a clue in the first place.

The following puts a choke-hold on that point:

Attorney General Eric Holder earlier gave an address to the NAACP on the Zimmerman trial. His oration was likewise not aimed at binding wounds. Apparently he wanted to remind his anguished audience that because of the acquittal of Zimmerman, there still is not racial justice in America.

Holder noted in lamentation that he had to repeat to his own son the lecture that his father long ago gave him. The sermon was about the dangers of police stereotyping of young black males. Apparently, Holder believes that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yet I fear that for every lecture of the sort that Holder is forced to give his son, millions of non-African-Americans are offering their own versions of ensuring safety to their progeny.

In my case, the sermon — aside from constant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not on his class or race — was very precise.

First, let me say that my father was a lifelong Democrat. He had helped to establish a local junior college aimed at providing vocational education for at-risk minorities, and as a hands-on administrator he found himself on some occasions in a physical altercation with a disaffected student. In middle age, he and my mother once were parking their car on a visit to San Francisco when they were suddenly surrounded by several African-American teens. When confronted with their demands, he offered to give the thieves all his cash if they would leave him and my mother alone. Thankfully they took his cash and left.

I think that experience — and others — is why he once advised me, “When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.” Note what he did not say to me. He did not employ language like “typical black person.” He did not advise extra caution about black women, the elderly, or the very young — or about young Asian Punjabi, or Native American males. In other words, the advice was not about race per se, but instead about the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime.

It was after some first-hand episodes with young African-American males that I offered a similar lecture to my own son. The advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping. When I was a graduate student living in East Palo Alto, two adult black males once tried to break through the door of my apartment — while I was in it. On a second occasion, four black males attempted to steal my bicycle — while I was on it. I could cite three more examples that more or less conform to the same apprehensions once expressed by a younger Jesse Jackson. Regrettably, I expect that my son already has his own warnings prepared to pass on to his own future children.

I remember when John Derbyshire tried his own version of The Talk™. Like Derbyshire, Hanson doesn't quite grasp the actual reason why black Americans had to devise life-saving rules of conduct for their young black children, boys and young men, especially, to survive life in this country at a most basic level.



This is why.

The story of Emmit Till was an example of what happens when a young black male strays outside of the rules of conduct laid down within The Talk™, thereby bringing eventual harm to himself by offending the sensibilities of a shockingly violent mainstream white society. Till's story was just one of the few out of thousands that managed to be immortalized and documented.

These days, the reward for not following the rules of conduct as explained in The Talk™ is much of the same - possible expulsion, possible jail time and in many cases, possible death, whether administered by an officer of the law or by someone whose sensibilities were as offended as the people responsible for transforming Emmit Till's face into the infamous visual that shocked and deservedly shamed the rest of America into giving black America's plight larger consideration.

This isn't to say that George Zimmerman's intentions were as vicious and venal as Till's murderers. At this point, readers sympathetic to the man have likely clicked away in disgust, denouncing yours truly as "a sick racist who only sees race and nothing else" or "just another race-hustling pimp just like his idol Sharpton (or Jackson) and Holder." That is, if they've even made it to this point.

Hanson justifying his own trepidation around blacks by comparing the black community's need for "The Talk™" with his own, notably tamer experiences, smack of privileged stupidity. Neither Hanson nor his father had to bear the worries of traversing an institutionalized and deeply-ingrained minefield of racially-motivated antagonism. Nor did they have to worry about "night riders" assaulting and killing them in the dead of night just because or being publicly murdered in the town square, their bodies left up for decoration by a bemused yet thrilled crowd.

Victor Davis Hanson doesn't have to worry about his ethnic background being a factor in his sudden death at the hands of someone whose sensibilities were offended by his appearance.

I'll let Ta-Nehisi Coates offer his own explanation:

Let us be direct -- in any other context we would automatically recognize this "talk" as stupid advice. If I were to tell you that I only employ Asian-Americans to do my taxes because "Asian-Americans do better on the Math SAT," you would not simply question my sensitivity, but my mental faculties. That is because you would understand that in making an individual decision, employing an ancestral class of millions is not very intelligent. Moreover, were I to tell you I wanted my son to marry a Jewish woman because "Jews are really successful," you would understand that statement for the stupidity which it is.

It would not be acceptable for me to make such suggestions (to say nothing of policy) in an enlightened society -- not simply because they are "impolite" but because they betray a rote, incurious and addled intellect. There is no difference between my argument above and the notion that black boys should be avoided because they are overrepresented in the violent crime stats. But one of the effects of racism is its tendency to justify stupidity.

Those of who have spent much of our lives living in relatively high crime neighborhoods grasp this particular stupidity immediately. We have a great many strategies which we employ to try to protect ourselves and our children. We tell them to watch who they are walking with, to not go to neighborhoods where they don't know anyone, that when a crowd runs toward a fight they should go the other way, to avoid blocks with busted street-lights, to keep their heads up while walking, to not daydream and to be aware of their surroundings.

When you start getting down to particular neighborhoods the advice gets even more specific -- don't cut through the woods to get to school, stay away from Jermaine Wilks, don't got to Mondawmin on the first hot day of the year, etc. There is a great scene in the film The Interruptors when one of the anti-violence workers notes that when she sees a bunch of people in a place, and then they all suddenly clear out, she knows something is coming down. My point is that parents who regularly have to cope with violent crime understand the advantages of good, solid intelligence. They know that saying '"stay away from black kids" is the equivalent of looking at 9/11, shrugging one's shoulders and saying, "It was them Muslims."

It should come as no surprise that Victor Davis Hanson's generational advice has met with mixed results. But when you are more interested in a kind of bigoted nationalism than your actual safety, this is what happens.

When it comes to ethnic relations, Hanson couldn't recognize systemic, institutionalized racial antagonism if it had surrounded his car and demanded his cash, jewelry and smartphone. That's what privileged stupidity does to a man. It leaves him without a clue and it doesn't have the common decency to let him know it's gone.