Post-racial America? Uh, not really

Really?!

A white/Hispanic man kills a black youth in Florida and does not get arrested, for at least for a month and a half.

Fox News commenters put it all into racist perspective.

A white columnist wrote a racist column for the National Review and, shockingly, lost his job.


But, polling shows that white America isn't paying that much attention to the Florida case.

Apparently, we don't care much about the Tulsa, Okla., case where three blacks were killed and two wounded in random shootings. A white man and a Native American, who considers himself white, were arrested.


And we obviously didn't hear about the case in Georgia in 2005, when a black man stood his ground by shooting and killing a white man who threatened his son and himself at their home with a knife. Naturally, the black man is serving a life sentence. There was little cry of a miscarriage of justice.

Our national obsession with guns, of course, grew even more heated when President Obama won the election in 2008. Gun purchases skyrocketed then and they're picking up now because these paranoid Americans believe Obama will get re-elected and take away their guns like he did last time. Of course, no one took away anyone's guns, but it's hard to convince the NRA and gun-nuts of that fact.

Guns and Obama apparently go hand in hand. Foster Friess, a wealthy Republican who backed Rick Santorum and now backs Mitt Romney, had this to say: “Now that they have trained their barrels on President Obama, I hope his teleprompters are bullet-proof.”


Last month, when Santorum visited a shooting range in Louisiana, a woman screamed that he ought to pretend Obama was his target.

Post-racial America? No, it looks and sounds like racism is alive and well.

Update: Inside the belly of the beast

Well, it didn't take long for Fox News to fire the "mole" who penned some inside dirt for the website Gawker.

It was fun while it lasted.


It looks the blog Gawker has a new contributor who happens to work for Fox News.

Yes, that's a right, a mole.

He, or is it she, provides a little insight into the deceptive practices of this "news" channel.

Here's a sample:

"The (Fox) Nation aggregates news stories, gives them provocative headlines, and invites commenters to weigh in. The comments are fascinating actually, if you can detach yourself enough to view them as sort of the id of the conservative movement. Of course, if you can't detach yourself, then you're going to come away with a diminished view of human decency, because HOLY MOLY THESE PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE THE BLACK PRESIDENT. I'm not saying they dislike him BECAUSE he's black, but a lot of the comments, unprompted, mention the fact that he is black, so what would you say, Dr. Freud?

"The Fox Nation moderators, realizing that they had a problem on their hands, did the absolute bare minimum, hiring one or two college kids to comb the comments for the most egregiously racist postings, and putting in automatic text filters that blocked various key words. Of course the intrepid commenters quickly found ways around these filters using letter substitutions and spacings, which is why many comments complain about our "n@gger president" and the "M u s l i m in the White House."

Here's another nugget:

"So here I am. And I come bearing gifts. The video above is of Mitt Romney and Sean Hannity bantering before the taping of an interview for the "Hannity Vegas Forum" in February. Of note: Romney professes his and his wife Ann's well-known love of horseriding, praising the qualities of the "Austrian Warmbloods" that his wife rides—the are "dressage" horses, he notes—while maintaining his own preference for the "smoother gait" of his own "Missouri foxtrotter."

Now there's nothing wrong with Mitt and his wife loving horseback riding. But remember this video next time Romney attacks Obama for golfing. The inherent elitism and snootiness of golf is NOTHING compared to competitive horseback riding. And I think Mitt loses points with the GOP base for his correct pronunciation of dressage. To GOP-voter ears it sounds not only gay, but even worse, French."

But, you already knew all this about Fox News.

Still, it's reassuring to read about it from someone who actually has the temerity to work at Fox News.

Corporate tax rate is how high?

American corporations want every American to know that they have the highest tax rate in the world at 39.2 percent.

Yet, that isn't what American corporations actually pay in taxes. The real number: 12.1 percent of profits are taxed.

How could that be?

Well, check out this report from last fall.

In fact, tax dodging is so effective that 26 major corporations have negative tax bills.

Yes, that's right, taxpayers pay them billions to make even more money. As as added "bonus," they ship American jobs overseas or south of the border.

It's no wonder, then, that federal tax revenues have plunged to levels not seen since the 1940s.

Oh, and by the way, we have a huge federal deficit.

Can anyone connect the dots?

News you can use

Some noteworthy stories appeared on the web today.

They include:

1) Oregon's Crater Lake is considered one of the 10 most sacred spots on earth along with Mount Sinai in Egypt and Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback.

Here's an excerpt from the MSNBC story:

"The Native American Klamath tribe has long considered the lake a sacred site: Their legends say a battle here between the Chief of the Above World and the Chief of the Below World led to the destruction of Mount Mazama (which formed Crater Lake)."

I tend to believe that most natural wonders like Crater Lake are sacred places and should be preserved as long as possible.


2) Birther craziness takes root in New Jersey as 400 turn out in Morris County to hear an author of a book titled, "Where's the Birth Certificate."


From the news item: "Morris Republican chairman John Sette (said) ... 'There’s lots of people who might have outlandish views in every spectrum in politics. We’re open to everybody and we believe in freedom of speech.' "


Okay. Move over Arizona, birthers live on the East Coast, too.


3) Also on the East Coast, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, a Fox affiliate in Florida referred to a neo-Nazi organization as a "another civil rights group."

4) Which leads to a new study pointing out that "low-effort thinking" is linked to conservative politics.

Ya think?

I mean if you watch Fox News, listen to Rush Limbaugh and pore over the Wall Street Journal editorial page, then you have all the information you ever need.

Still, the study's author, Dr. Scott Eidelman noted on The Huffington Post, "Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking."

5) Which leads to the GOP's "war on women" campaign:

After killing an Equal Pay law in Wisconsin, recall-targeted Gov. Scott Walker signed three more bills that restrict abortion and access to contraceptives. As Republicans say, "nothing to see here. There is no war on women."

6) If your blood isn't percolating yet, there is always executive pay to rail against as this New York Times story shows.

Here's an excerpt:

• Among the 100 top-paid C.E.O.s, overall pay last year rose a scant 2 percent from 2010.

• The median chief executive in this group took home $14.4 million — compared with the average annual American salary of $45,230.

• In all, the combined compensation of these 100 C.E.O.s totaled $2.1 billion, the rough equivalent of the estimated annual economic output of Sierra Leone.

7) After item No. 6, it's best to leave on a comedic note provided, of course, by Stephen Colbert. Take particular note of the hilarious bit on Mitt Romney's task of appealing to (Hispanic) voters.

Not much difference between local GOP candidates

Except one.

And it's the only issue that Republican primary voters care about: abortion.

State Sen. Chris Telfer believes existing state abortion laws are fine, according to a report in the local daily about the recent debate between Telfer and her challenger Tim Knopp.

But, she's also quoted in the paper as saying "the choices of others 'may not be my choices.' "

That quote will likely cost her the primary election next month as the diehards will see her as a RINO, Republican in Name Only, instead of the party's real mascot: a big, fat elephant.

That's too bad because Knopp, a former state legislator, believes government should further intrude on people's lives and he supports all kinds of abortion restrictions that have already been rejected by voters and lawmakers.

So much for creating jobs, which Knopp says Telfer has failed to do.

It's a crazy argument because conservatives complain constantly that government can't do anything right and should leave all economic issues to the private sector and the hallowed "invisible hand of the market."

Except when the well-to-do want government handouts and bailouts.

When Republicans say they want to cut government spending, they mean they want less money going to the less fortunate and more money to flow to the well-heeled.

Knopp works for the local builders association/union and they're funding his counter-productive campaign.

Telfer, meanwhile, has been reasonably effective as any state senator in the minority party.

Yes, she voted for the long overdue hike in the gas tax, which is the only thing that has created jobs in  this area during the recession aside from school construction bond measures passed by voters.

Knopp is delusional in thinking that he could create a single job in Central Oregon.

Should he win the primary, which is more than probable, he'll easily win the general election in November because Republican voters enjoy as substantial lead in the district over registered Democrats.

And then, the economy, which is already on the upswing, will improve on its own and Knopp will take all the credit.

It's all garbage.

Telfer is no saint, but she is infinitely more qualified to represent Central Oregon than Knopp, who represents religious extremists and the very industries, such as buildiers and Realtors, that made the recession in the region much worse than it should have been.

It is much better to have Telfer in Salem than Knopp and I urge all  GOP voters to choose Telfer as the Republican candidate in the primary.

GOP pushing 'social eugenics'

President Obama came out firing today at Republican budget plans for the government calling them "social Darwinism," and a "Trojan Horse" that will impose a "radical vision on our country."

I wouldn't disagree with the president's comments because the GOP budget transfers even more money from the poor, through deep cuts to healthcare and education, to the wealthiest, through huge tax cuts.

Naturally, Republicans claim President Obama is engaging in "class warfare" while they pillage the poor, sack the seniors and trample on the middle class.

Republican contempt for 99 percent of Americans can be read in their own words in this posting.

It was amusing, though, to see the president refer to Darwinism, implying survival of the fittest, because it does not resonate at all with Republicans since most of them don't believe in evolution by natural selection.

In fact, over the past few decades more Republicans, particularly the more educated ones, have a greater distrust of science than ever.

Go figure. There is no way the GOP can be the "education" party when it doesn't even believe one of the basic tenets of modern biology.

Anyway, Obama was being kind by invoking Darwin, who most Americans equate with the "monkey" theory of how we became who we are.

But, Republicans are actually promoting "social eugenics," to improve the genetic makeup of the rich by making life impossible for the poor.

Actually, conservatives just want the problems of the underprivileged to just go away. They want to do this by removing safety nets and financial incentives that would benefit the less fortunate.

And then, Republicans want to brand America as a "Christian nation."

How does increasing the military budget to further obscene levels while slashing taxes even more for the wealthy makes us worthy of being equated with Jesus Christ?

Well, it doesn't.

Republicans prefer class divisions where privileged white males can rub elbows with each other and not have to encounter African-Americans, Hispanics, gays and, even women.

It's an America that never really existed except in the fantasies of a breed of Americans that is slowly, but surely, dying away.

We can only hope.

All hail the 'job creators!' April Fool's

Couple of articles worth noting that shed light of the richest 1 percent of Americans and all they do for our country.

The first is by Nicholas Kristof that links Wall Street financiers, including Goldman Sachs, with sex trafficking.

Evidently, sex trafficking is job creation to some 1 percenters.

The other is a long piece in Salon titled "How billionaires destroy democracy."

The article's subtitle is: "Wealthy Wall Streeters have rigged the economy and the government against the people."


 So, the next time you hear someone babble on about all the jobs these "heroic capitalists" create by having more money than you can ever imagine, just refer them to these two articles.

It won't change their minds, but, like the ads say, pass it on and help make this a better life.