When Newt Gingrich invoked the name of Saul Alinsky during his "victory" speech in South Carolina, a speech that sounded anything but presidential, I looked at my husband and asked, "how many of those supporters has any idea who Saul Alinsky was and what he did?"

The answer we came to was pretty much none of them. Glenn Beck likes to invoke Saul Alinsky as well, as some sort of malevolent force driving Obama's agenda. I can pick off who are Beck disciples at the instant they say "Alinsky". I would love to see a journalist with integrity (HA! What an oxymoron that's become!) actually confront these yahoos and ask them to define "Marxism", "socialism", "Communism" and what Alinsky had to do with any of these -isms, and what makes him so scary to Republicans. For the record, Wikipedia's bio on Alinsky:

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left.

Oooh...scary! I'll bet $1,000 that I could take any random tea party nut and they wouldn't know even that much, much less that Alinsky died 40 years ago. The only thing radical about Alinsky--who made it his life's work to help those marginalized in ghettos--was the title of his most famous book, Rules for Radicals.

In the first chapter's opening paragraph, Alinsky writes, "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."[1]

Outlining his strategy in organizing, Alinsky writes:

There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoyevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.[2]

For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting whatever he believed to be wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a situation, they stop thinking about it.

The only people who find Alinsky's writings radical are the Haves, because it suggests that the Have Nots have the power to equalize the system a little more. That's a scary concept for the one percent for which the GOP is entirely dedicated. But unlike former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman in the clip above, I do think this resonates with those Republican voters notorious for voting against their own interests. Because not one of them will bother to get informed on Alinsky. Not one of them will bother to do any critical thinking but simply categorize Alinsky as one of those nefarious bad things from which to be frightened or suspicious of the liberal agenda.

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Third graders in in Gwinnett County, Ga., were given math homework Wednesday that asked questions about slavery and beatings.

Christopher Braxton told ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta that he couldn't believe the assignment his 8-year-old son brought home from of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross.

"It kind of blew me away," Braxton said. "Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He's not answering this question."

The question read, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?"

Another math problem read, "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?"

Another question asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled.

According to the school district, the teachers had put together interdisciplinary coursework, incorporating what they had been studying in Social Studies into their math, but holy cow! What were they thinking in devising these questions for third graders? Did anyone...any person...have a gut check on the appropriateness of these questions? How many beatings did Frederick the slave get? Who thinks this is an acceptable way to introduce algebraic thinking to third graders?

The mind reels. I really miss the days when racists attempted to hide their ignorance and bigotry.

Condoleezza Rice was interviewed by 700 Club correspondent Kristi Watts, who finished her interview with a softball on the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. When Rice proclaimed her favorite Thanksgiving dish to be mac and cheese, Watts immediately bonded with her fellow carb lover. But that choice just befuddled founder and host Pat Robertson, who asked Watts, "What is this 'mac and cheese'? Is that a black thing?"

To be charitable (and it's the holidays, so let's try), it's unclear to me if Robertson is completely unfamiliar with the dish itself, or the concept of serving it for Thanksgiving. It's say the chances are about 50/50 either way, but Robertson himself is no stranger to the befuddling or just plain hateful statements either.

(h/t MediaMatters)

Rachel Maddow thinks of him fondly as crazy "Uncle Pat" although she's very careful not to let him go unchallenged. Chris Matthews considers him the go-to guy for all race issues. From Morning Joe to Andrea Mitchell Reports to Hardball, Pat Buchanan appears to show up at the NBC studios in Washington DC first thing in the morning and just hang out for the entire day, appearing more than any other pundit on the array of programming offered. Remember, this is the same network that blackballed Markos Moulitsas for upsetting Joe Scarborough on Twitter; fired Keith Olbermann for making donations to Democratic candidates and being loud advocating for liberal politics; replaced Cenk Uygur for being too tough on Republicans; and indefinitely suspended David Shuster for auditioning for another network. Pat Buchanan has outlasted them all, despite a rather bewildering portfolio of racist, sexist and just plain hateful statements.

The operative question then, is 'why in the hell does Pat Buchanan still have a job at MSNBC?'

Color of Change would like to know the answer to that and ask for your signature on a petition to MSNBC:

For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it.

Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America." This weekend, to promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show whose host has said things like "MLK's dream is our nightmare," and "interracial sex is white genocide."

Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he's not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC wants to be seen as a trusted, mainstream source of news and commentary, it needs to fire Buchanan now.

Please join us in calling on MSNBC to fire Pat Buchanan: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/buchanan/

There's no excuse for lending legitimacy and a national platform for such archaic and hateful attitudes. MSNBC has fired others for much less. Pat Buchanan needs to go.

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This post was e-mailed to me by a C&L reader. It's pretty sickening, but Limbaugh is a racist thug, and so is the Conserva-hack named Ken Rogulski -- a lowbrow reporter miscreant who uses the pain and suffering that the people of Detroit are experiencing and turns it into a racist giggle fest for RushBo's audience. Is there no decency in the world of conservative talk radio? Obviously not.

(photo via Detroit News)

King Crimson writes:

It was Wednesday when Rush Limbaugh received an .MP3 from the Desk of WJR Detroit's Ken Rogulski, the white-haired beat reporter, who also occasionally anchors certain top hour newscasts in the conservative talk station's broadcast day. The audio gift would be the gavel with which Rush would pound out hate and bigotry, revelry in personal suffering, and twisting of words and ideas for the rest of the week.

Earlier, Rogulski scurried down to the Cobo Convention Center, locally referred to as Cobo Hall to see what kind of audio he could bring back from the huge crowd developing as the applications for federal aid for the poor and destitute were being handed out. It was to be a brief windfall of assistance to one of the hardest hit cities in the country, where bankrupt auto companies and massive home foreclosure have helped define a new level of pain and suffering for these innocent human beings. But you could hear the hope in their voices flapping in a breeze of unsureness like an untethered sail in a storm, these proud, innocent residents.

The conservo-talk reporter cherry picked through the audio booty until he found the absolute best soundbite that would most perfectly frame the city as one filled with Obama-fawning morons, black Sambos, and greedy welfare grabbers - precisely, as Limbaugh would later argue, the kind of rank idiots who would vote for someone like America's first black president. Surely Ken's heart must have been pounding as he attached the audio to his corporate email and double checked the top-secret "To" address that would land the .MpP3 directly onto the desk of Rush's long time producer, Kitt Carson. JACKPOT!

Carson fast-tracked the audio to the OXYmoron, and by noon it was airing live.

"Where's the money coming from?!" Rogulski quickly quizzes.

"Obama!," the giddy resident chirps, confident the day will end in a bill being paid, or a week's worth of groceries to stuff into the old fridge.

"And where does Obama get it from?!" Rogulski follows up. To the more politically refined in the conservative talk world, the answer is loud and clear - TAXPAYERS. But Rogulski knows full well these "Motown simpletons" will not be so cynical as to believe he's recording them with intentions of caricaturing them later as thigh-slapping morons.

"I dunno! His stash, I dunno. But he givin' to us! We love him!"

Thursday, Rogulski, a small time nobody in comparison to his conservative mentor, decided to use this opportunity and momentum, and keep the mentions of his unimportant name ratta-tatting over the world-famous EIB Network going and sent another one. This one even more sensational than the first.

Rogulski gently pushes the "save" button on his MP3 recorder and slickly slides it into his pocket. Mission accomplished. Limbaugh doesn't poll affiliate stations daily to see if there's any news he needs to know about. He has a team of producers scouring the net daily. So when an affiliate sends something to the Golden Microphone ... it's because the sender knows Rush will want it, and knows precisely how he will use it.

And Rush could not have been happier. No editing necessary for his staff, no double checking, it was packaged, edited and air ready. And for three straight days, the AM Shock Talker pounded the audio candy like he had just been told the funniest joke this week.

Listen to how the first audio soundbite is edited to end with a laugh, which to the racist's ear is a dog-whistle. To a bigot, it is the laugh of bug-eyed Jemima. But to the rest of America, it is the innocent guffaw of a child holding out her hands for a cool drink of water in one of the hottest economic downturns in a century. Note how Limbaugh allows the sound of her laugh to hang in the air for a moment, to let it be the last thing you hear, to let it resonate with the comedic timing of George Burns before going on to the next soundbite. A pause so small and so seemingly insignificant. but silence is a moment as important as a word, that has been practiced and mastered by comedians and even broadcast greats like the similarly conservative late Paul Harvey.

Rush Limbaugh, and the affiliates who support his message of bigotry are not just racists. They are the worst kind of racists. They are the ones who can say the "N" word in code publicly, laugh out loud and hearty, and then argue that you are missing some bigger message if you think it's meant as anything but good, clean fun.

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Credit: TPM

They don't even try to hide it anymore.

Alabama state Sen. Scott Beason, a cooperating witness in a federal corruption case, called black gambling hall customers "aborigines" when he was wearing an FBI wire and recording conversations with his fellow lawmakers, it was revealed in court this week.

Beason and two other Republican legislators were joking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers of the Greenetrack casino, the Associated Press reports.

"That's y'all's Indians," one Republican said.

"They're aborigines, but they're not Indians," replied Beason.

The transcript was read Wednesday in the federal trial of casino owner Milton McGregor.
The Justice Department indicted eleven defendants, including McGregor, in a massive bingo bribery probe back in October. Feds charged that the four current and former state legislators, three lobbyists and two businessmen with casino interests were part of a conspiracy to influence pro-bribery legislation. Some defendants, including McGregor's lobbyist, have plead guilty. McGregor's trial got underway last week.

In another recorded conversation, Beason -- who cooperated with the feds' investigation and has not been charged -- agreed with other Republican legislators who said that there would be a big turnout of black voters if bingo was on the ballot because casino owners would offer free buffets and gambling credits to lure African-American customers and then bus them to the polls.

Beason is the same bastion of tolerance that advocated that if the Republicans wanted to really deal with illegal immigration, they should just “empty the clip, and do what has to be done.” There are calls for Beason to resign for his racist statements, although so far, Beason has resisted doing so.

Will the media hound him and his party relentlessly until he does resign? Or is this another case of IOKIYAR?

David Neiwert covered it originally when Eric Bolling went ghetto describing a White House visit by the President of Gabon. I, of course, am not one of the two dozen regular viewers of Fox Business Channel, so I missed it, which is probably a good thing for the switchboard operators at Fox Business.

But like me, Whoopi Goldberg heard it after the fact and decided to let Eric Bolling know just what she thought of his attempt to be street. Surprise, surprise, even Elizabeth Hasselbeck thought it went over the line. Will she remember that the next time she's on Fox?

For what it's worth, this is hardly Eric Bolling's first time being openly racist. Media Matters (who has to be at least 2-3 of the two dozen viewers Fox Business Channel enjoys) has documented Bolling's previous racist statements, but hell, why stop there?

Bolling's History Of Other Inflammatory Rhetoric And Smears

Bolling Habitually Scapegoats And Stokes Fear Of Muslims

Bolling Has Promoted Numerous Conspiracy Theories

Bolling Has Demonized Immigrants

Bolling Has Made Numerous False Claims About Energy And Repeatedly Shilled For More Oil Drilling

Bolling Regularly Mocks, Denies Climate Change

Bolling Has A Long Track Record Of False Claims About The Economy And Taxes

"Crush Collective Bargaining": Bolling Targets Labor Unions

Bolling Has Made False Claims Regarding Obama And Foreign Policy

Bolling Hyped Debunked ACORN Videos, Attacked ACORN

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Sorry, I'm still working to get my jaw off the floor when I saw this article tweeted. It appears the uproar over it caused Psychology Today to pull it down, but there is still a cache version for you to see that it was all too real.

How do you respond to such a grossly heinous attempt to post racism as an objective scientific study?

The whole thing is a pile of crap. Not just because it’s absurdly racist and obnoxious (which it is), but because it’s utterly scientifically incoherent. There’s a lot of stupidity in the piece, and I’ll be linking to some more thorough takedowns later. But for me, one sentence stood out from all the others: “For example, because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races.”

I’ll repeat that: Because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes.

Why is this the stupidest sentence in the whole stupid article? Because — and I can’t believe I even have to type this — all humans are descended from common ancestors. No population of humans has “existed longer” than any other, because we all share the same great-great-great-great-(and so on)-grandparents. One group may have left Africa earlier or later than another, but we’ve all been on the planet the same length of time.

The stoopid, it seriously burns. But writer Zantoshi Kanazawa makes many other bizarre allegations, using the term "objective attractiveness" frequently without explanation of how a subjective characterization could possibly be quantified objectively.

Given that ideas of who and what is beautiful are more cultural than objective, it’s not surprising that in the United States, black women are rated on the low end and white women are rated pretty high. Kanazawa can’t figure out why black women receive lower attractiveness ratings, so he wilds a guess: Testosterone.

Great guess. Totally explains things. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that beauty itself is routinely imaged (at least in the country where this study was conducted) as white, and that the physical preferences of the folks who control most media and advertising outlets tend to reign supreme (hint: Those folks are usually light-skinned dudes). Definitely has nothing to do with the fact that our perceptions of beauty tie closely to perceptions of social class, and white people are on the top of the class game in a country like the United States, where white people legally and physically forced black people first into a slave class and then into a generalized underclass with fewer rights and fewer resources. I’m sure centuries of sustained exploitation and abuse of black people by white people, and sustained efforts on the part of white people to maintain social and economic supremacy at almost any cost, have nothing to do with beauty standards. It’s just, like, hormones. Objectively.

Perhaps at another point in my life, I would laugh this off as the musings of someone too stupid to realize how racist he is. But we live in an environment where the President of the United States is repeatedly forced to produce his birth certificate to prove that he was born in this country and where one of the leading candidates on the Republican side repeatedly characterizes the President's attitude as "Kenyan anti-colonialist" and produces dog whistles like "food stamp president looking to make the entire country like Detroit". This is not an isolated event by an insulated individual. This is a nasty undercurrent that simmers below the surface all the time and that has been bubbling up more and more frequently. And after being tangentially part of some rather heated online discussions about race and privilege recently, I don't know that we can ever truly work towards a more progressive future without acknowledging and dealing with this.

There's a well-known truism that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Unwilling to give up his irrational hate of Muslims or the uncomfortable parallels to Senator Joe McCarthy's hearings of the 50s, Rep Peter King is holding hearings beginning Monday on the "threat" of terrorism stemming from Muslim-Americans.

Rep. Peter King of New York defended on Sunday a congressional hearing he will hold this week on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism that focuses on Muslim-Americans, calling it an issue "which is not being talked about publicly" and needs to be.

"People in this country are being self-radicalized, whether it's Major Hasan or whether it's Shahzad or whether it was Zazi in New York," King said on CNN's "State of the Union." "These were all people who were identifying, in one way or another, with al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So it's an international movement with elements here in the United States."

King was referring to Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a military psychiatrist whose shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 claimed 13 lives; Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born man living in Colorado charged in 2009 with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction; and Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born man living in suburban Connecticut, whose attempt to blow up a bomb in Times Square last June was foiled.

I have no problem whatsoever with the notion of having a hearing on the threats of domestic terrorism, but for cryin' out loud, how intellectually dishonest of King to focus on one religious group and ignore the fact that the vast majority of domestic terrorism comes not from radicalized Muslim-Americans but from radicalized right wingnuts.

Keith Ellison does a yeoman's job trying to temper King's hate-on for Muslims, but this kind of wingnuttery requires a statement from the White House too. So Sunday, we got it:

We have a choice. We can choose to send a message to certain Americans that they are somehow “less American” because of their faith or how they look; that we see their entire community as a potential threat—as we’ve seen in several inexcusable incidents in recent weeks across the country that were captured on video. Well, those incidents do not represent America. And if we make that choice, we risk feeding the very feelings of disenchantment that may push some members of that community to violent extremism.

Or, we can make another choice. We can send the message that we’re all Americans. That’s the message that the President conveyed last summer when he was discussing Muslim Americans serving in our military and the need to honor their service. “Part of honoring their service, he said, “is making sure that they understand that we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us.”

Informed by what we know, several basic principles must guide us in what we do—as individuals, as communities and as a country. We must resolve not to label someone as an extremist simply because of their opposition to the policies of the U.S. government or their strong religious beliefs. Under our Constitution, we have the freedom to speak our minds. And we have the right to practice our faiths freely knowing that the government should neither promote nor hinder any one religion over the other.

As such, we must resolve to protect the rights and civil liberties of every American. That’s why, under President Obama, the civil rights division at the Justice Department is devoting new energy and effort to its founding mission—protecting civil rights. It’s why we are vigorously enforcing new hate crimes laws. And it’s why even as we do everything in our power to protect the American people from terrorist attacks, we’re also doing everything in our power to uphold civil liberties.

We must resolve that, in our determination to protect our nation, we will not stigmatize or demonize entire communities because of the actions of a few. In the United States of America, we don’t practice guilt by association. And let’s remember that just as violence and extremism are not unique to any one faith, the responsibility to oppose ignorance and violence rests with us all.

In the wake of terrorist attacks, instead of condemning whole communities, we need to join with those communities to help them protect themselves as well. And if one faith community faces intimidation, we need to come together across faiths, as happened several years ago here at the ADAMS Center, when Christian and Jewish leaders literally stood guard overnight to protect this center from vandalism. You showed us the true meaning of e pluribus unum—out of many, one.

It's fairly astonishing, really, how little coverage the horrendous shooting rampage in Florida earlier this week has gotten in the American press: Someone walks up to a townhouse meeting room full of Chilean college students and opens fire on them -- after having warned neighbors earlier not to have any immigrants in her home, and asking one of them if they wanted to join him in his "revolution."

Two kids (including Racine Balbontin, 22, left) dead, five hospitalized. This is just a mundane story? Well, it's a major, front-page news story in Chile, at least, and in much of the rest of Latin America.

Northwest Florida Daily News reports:

Cooperative Radio reporter Stephanie Hunt spoke to the Daily News via phone from Santiago, Chile, Friday morning. She said Chilean Government Minister Francisco Vidal called the crime "macabre" and "brutal."

Hunt said Chile's Deputy Consul General is working to get family members to the United States so they can be with the injured students and bring back the bodies of those who didn't survive. Families traveled from all over Chile Thursday to Santiago to meet with officials in an attempt to expedite the process of getting passports and visas.

Although the case is sensitive because it involves foreign nationals and 14 victims total, The Walton County Sheriff's Office released some new information.

"It was a tremendously horrific scene," said Sheriff Mike Adkinson. "Even the survivors are victims."

Adkinson said the shooting happened about 1:45 a.m. when Dannie Baker, 60, approached Unit 12 in the Summer Lakes townhome complex and opened fire through a window. When he was done, Adkinson said, he went back to his home at Unit 25.

We're gradually learning more about the shooter, Dannie Baker -- but a heap of questions remain unanswered. It appears that he used to campaign for Republicans, but they dropped him when he sent some e-mails in 2007 that apparently frightened them.

According to one news story:

Not much is known about Baker or his lifestyle yet, according to the Sheriff's Office.

He was a volunteer at the Walton County Republican Headquarters during the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign in 2004.

"He volunteered the same time I did," said Pat Magee, a member of the Walton County Republican Executive Committee. "I was shocked. The person I knew would have never done anything bad to anyone."

Magee said Baker answered phones and did general office work during the campaign. Although she didn't remember much about his personal life, she said he had mentioned he was from Alabama and had attended Auburn University.

Jim Anders, another member of the Republican Executive Committee, said Baker was very active during the 2004 election but added that he was very eccentric. He said Baker traveled to Atlanta once a year to assist in some sort of music ministry there.

Baker did not volunteer during last year's election, but local Republicans said they began to receive disturbing e-mails from him about national political issues, said Anders.

"Dannie had some emotional problems, it seemed," said Anders, who added that that many e-mails were "radical" and "inappropriate."

The e-mails were so disturbing they were reported to the Sheriff's Office, the Republican volunteers said.

The Sheriff's Office said the e-mails did not target any individuals, but would not reveal any more details about them.

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