Nope, no racism here! That's the conclusion of the Village bobbleheads, who in the past 24 hours solemnly nodded their heads as other Villagers said they were shocked, shocked that anyone thinks racism plays a part in the attacks on Obama. After all, didn't a lot of those same people vote for him?

Then they showed the racist signs from the Tea Party rally and said it was a very small minority, this is all about the policies.

And you know, they're actually right - just not in the way they mean.

Because all the powerful right-wing interests in this country really want is an opening, however small. It is all about the policies: Namely, anything that benefits the general population, and not them. The right wing has always been focused on their core mission: Cheap, disposable labor with no legal protections. (Ideally, living in complete insecurity and grateful for whatever crumbs they get.)

The tools they choose to use in their fight are almost incidental to the goal.

Remember, these are the same people who impeached the last Democratic president over his sex life. These are also the same people who asserted Hillary Clinton was a lesbian who was also having an affair with Vince Foster, who by the way, she had killed.

The vast right-wing conspiracy specializes in pushing emotional buttons. They say the most outrageous things they can manufacture, then sit back and watch the fun.

Right now, they're leaning on the race button for all it's worth - because it works. Because it splits us apart, and a split electorate is a lot easier to manipulate.

And here's how liberals add to the divide: "We don't want those people in our party! We don't want those stupid racists!"

Go ahead, keep telling yourself that. It's political suicide, but you keep yourself warm with all that righteous indignation.

I agree with Howard Dean: The guys with the gun racks in the pickup trucks are part of our natural constituency. They have more in common with the inner-city poor than they do with the boys on Townhall.com.

They're economically oppressed and badly served by their country. They often live in states with minimal education standards and little to offer in terms of upward mobility except the military. They work in mines, factories and fields until the day they drop, and no one gives a damn.

At some point (usually via talk radio), poisonous ideas worm their way into their brains. In classic political sleight of hand, their attention is directed "over there," where those brown people on welfare and all those got-dam illegal immigrants gather, sucking up all the opportunities.

And no matter how enthusiastically the white working-class poor cooperate with the right-wing master plan, no matter how tightly they embrace the hate, I still believe they're ultimately economic roadkill run over by the right wing, corporate machine - just like everyone else.

A shameful state of affairs. Bankers are collecting million-dollar bonuses while homeless children worry about their families and try to study:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — In the small trailer her family rented over the summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try harder and bring her grades back up from the C’s she got last spring — a dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel.

Charity is one child in a national surge of homeless schoolchildren that is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities — and the federal mandate — to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil.

The instability can be ruinous to schooling, educators say, adding multiple moves and lost class time to the inherent distress of homelessness. And so in accord with federal law, the Buncombe County district, where Charity attends, provides special bus service to shelters, motels, doubled-up houses, trailer parks and RV campgrounds to help children stay in their familiar schools as the families move about.

Still, Charity said of her last semester, “I couldn’t go to sleep, I was worried about all the stuff,” and she often nodded off in class.

Charity and her brother, Elijah Carrington, 6, were among 239 children from homeless families in her district as of last June, an increase of 80 percent over the year before, with indications this semester that as many or more will be enrolled in the months ahead.

While current national data are not available, the number of schoolchildren in homeless families appears to have risen by 75 percent to 100 percent in many districts over the last two years, according to Barbara Duffield, policy director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, an advocacy group.

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.

With schools just returning to session, initial reports point to further rises. In San Antonio, for example, the district has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school, twice as many as at the same point last year.

See, I would have been a lot happier if Obama's economic recovery plan forgave school loans (or at least a portion of them), instead of throwing money at bankers. But I guess there's a reason why I'm not in charge!

On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO released the results of a disturbing new Peter Hart survey, "Young Workers: A Lost Decade" that found that about a third of workers under 35 live at home with their parents, and they're far less likely to have health care or job security than they were ten years ago. Even then, in a 1999 survey, when they faced economic insecurity, they still had reasons to be hopeful.

Those days are long gone. A quarter of young workers say they don't earn enough to even pay their monthly bills, a 14% rise from the last survey. As Richard Trumka, the presumptive incoming president of the AFL-CIO, said in a press conference today:

We're calling the report "A Lost Decade" because we're seeing 10 years of opportunity lost as young workers across the board are struggling to keep their heads above water and often not succeeding. They've put off adulthood - - put off having kids, put off education - and a full 34 percent of workers under 35 live with their parents for financial reasons.

Thirty-five percent are significantly less likely to have health care than older workers, only 31 percent make enough money to pay their bills while putting anything aside in savings, and almost half are more worried than hopeful about their economic future.

That's one reason that Trumka and other labor leaders announced this week a new outreach campaign to recruit young workers -- and a stepped-up drive for the Employee Free Choice Act and health care reform. They're using the upcoming Labor Day, with the expected involvement of 100,000 union members in just the AFL-CIO alone in events and actions, as a launching pad to spur Congressional action.

Young people do need to find their collective voice, the way the AARP speaks for the middle-aged and elderly. Because what's happening to them isn't an accident. It's the result of corporate-centered policies.

The General digs up the, ah, hot tip:

The fine Real Americans at the Free Republic have found Obama's achilles heel: his Long Dark Staff of White Insecurity.

hoosiermama:

The only other thing that hit me was that Sinclair said BO was not circumcised. When my son was born in a hospital that was done as a matter of routine without even consulting us. Would the same be for Hawaii? OTOH People born at home or in some other cultures are not circumcised.

thecodont:

A relative of mine was born (in a hospital) a couple of years after BO's alleged birth date. He was circumcised also (as a matter of routine, not according to any family request).

afraidfortherepublic:

My son was born in June of 1961 in a hospital in CA, and the nurses released us because of miscommunication in a day and a half before the circumcision was done. We had to go back to the doctor’s office to have it done a week later, and the doctor was NOT HAPPY. My second son was born in the same hospital 4 years later. I don’t remember them asking me about it. Routine procedure for little boys.

hoosiermama:

Wish we had someone to make a phone call to the hospitols in HI and ask if they routinely do circumcism and when that practice started.

MHGinTN:

You might want to make that call to a Canadian hospital ...

MHGinTN:

No...it would have been in Kenya....not Canada.

Natural Born 54

I am having a vision of a court room scene. The judge turns to O sitting in the witness chair to his left and says “I am sorry, Mr. President, but I am going to have to ask you to stand and drop trou .....”

Anyone remember how Republicans wound up obsessing over Bill Clinton's Johnson, ad nauseam, even on TV? I remember Ann Coulter speculating over Paula Jones' claims about the shape and behavior of the Mighty Clenis, as we came to call it.

Now, I guess, they get to do the same for Obama's unit. This should get entertaining.

Shakespeare's Sister: Carnival of the Liberals, this time in rhyme!

HOLY CRAP: The Rev. Bob Schenck is trying to convince conservative Christians that Obama is not really a serious Christian. BTW, heteros are next on the fundie's hit list . Meanwhile, at Urban Outfitters, " the intifada has been Che'd."

Blog for Choice Day is January 22. And here's wishing the anti-stem cellers would just adopt a fetus and get real.

Words of Power: Bush-Cheney national insecurity team opens the gates of Hell, and wants to drag everyone else in.

PS. Photoshoppers beware, The Princess has the best. Condishots. ever.
--
Blue Gal