South Carolina's Joe Wilson and GOP Racism

I have already touched on the rising racism within the Republican Party - or at least a more visible and dangerous form racism from that of the past - and Barack Obama seems to be the epitome of the fears of these insecure "patriotic Americans:" the loss of white privilege and white domination of all aspects of U.S. society. Walking around New York City today and this evening, yes, the city is definitely more racially diverse than it was say 30 years ago. But what is wrong with that? Nothing in my opinion. Yet this changing population nation wide scares the Hell out of the GOP base which wants everything and everyone to reflect their white bread world. Maureen Dowd has a great column in the New York Times that skewers South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson that is too good to not mention and in it she looks at the underlying racism behind this summer of madness on the far right, Here are some highlights:

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The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

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The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

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I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race. . . . . But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

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Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe. For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

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The New York Daily News likewise had commentary on Joe Wilson and those of his ilk. Here are some highlights:

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A class act he is not, but South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's boorish behavior during President Obama's speech on health reform more than earned him his 15 minutes of infamy. It is understandable that he chose - or as some suggested, was told - to bellow "You lie!" when the President was explaining for the umpteenth time that undocumented immigrants would not be covered under health care legislation. After all, Wilson's extreme anti-immigrant positions are well known.

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Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst is not only a massive breach of decorum," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, "but the latest example of how race-baiting and immigrant bashing have become standard fare for hard-right elements of the Republican Party." One has to wonder if Wilson and his ilk are intent on committing political suicide - and in the process taking down with them the entire GOP - or if their prejudices are so deep that they just cannot help themselves.

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[E]ven if Wilson and his cohorts do not like it, Latinos are the fastest-growing group of new voters in the nation. And they can be sure that mistreating, dehumanizing and disrespecting Latinos - and immigrants in general - is not going to help them win their hearts and minds. There will be hell to pay at the polls.

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Ironically, after all is said and done, Joe (You lie!) Wilson's outburst could go down in history as the death knell for the most reactionary and extremist wing of the Republican Party. Call it poetic justice.

Sarah and Todd Palin's REAL Ties to Anti-Americans

The ever disingenuous Bible Spice Palin continues to tell lies about Barack Obama's alleged ties to terrorists yet conveniently forgets her husband's seven year love fest with Alaska Independence Party ("AIP") and/or her own past statements that she supports the party's principles - like breaking away from the USA? The women is despicable and proves herself more of a lying snake with each passing day. Now Salon has a lengthy article that looks at the Palin's ties to the AIP and one can only wonder why the MSM is not all over the issue. But then I forget, most in the MSM no longer have heard of the concept of investigative reporting. A reading of the Salon article makes it clear that it is Sarah Palin, not Barack Obama, who is out of touch with true mainstream American values. This woman is a nutcase and dangerous. Here are some highlights from the Salon story:

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Though [former Alaskan Independence Party chairman Mark] Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

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Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."

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The AIP was born of the vision of "Old Joe" Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as he hated wolves and environmentalists. . . . . During a gubernatorial debate in 1982, Vogler proposed using nuclear weapons to obliterate the glaciers blocking roadways to Juneau. "There's gold under there!" he exclaimed. Vogler made another failed run for the governor's mansion in 1986. But the AIP's fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced Richard Nixon's former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor under his party's banner. Hickel coasted to victory.

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Hickel's subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before he could, Old Joe's long, strange political career ended tragically that May when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.

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"The AIP is very family-oriented," Chryson explained. "We're for the traditional family -- daddy, mommy, kids -- because we all know that it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we don't care if Heather has two mommies. That's not a traditional family."

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"The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded movement in the world," Chryson exclaimed. "And Alaska is not the only place that's about separation. There's at least 30 different states that are talking about some type of separation from the United States." This has meant rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years.

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Another far-right organization with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips' militia-minded Constitution Party. The AIP has been listed as the Constitution Party's state affiliate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Constitution Party's presidential candidates (Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin) in the past two elections. The Constitution Party boasts an openly theocratic platform that reads, "It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations." . . . . In Wasilla, the AIP became powerful by proxy -- because of Chryson and Stoll's alliance with Sarah Palin.

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In 1994, Sarah Palin attended the AIP's statewide convention. In 1995, her husband, Todd, changed his voter registration to AIP. Except for an interruption of a few months, he would remain registered was an AIP member until 2002, when he changed his registration to undeclared. In 1996, Palin decided to run against John Stein as the Republican candidate for mayor of Wasilla. While Palin pushed back against Stein's policies, particularly those related to funding public works, Chryson said he and Steve Stoll prepared the groundwork for her mayoral campaign.

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While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control -- the two hobgoblins of the AIP -- mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as "the Christian candidate," a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish.

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By Chryson's account, he and Palin also worked hand-in-glove to slash property taxes and block a state proposal that would have taken money for public programs from the Permanent Fund Dividend, or the oil and gas fund that doles out annual payments to citizens of Alaska. Palin endorsed Chryson's unsuccessful initiative to move the state Legislature from Juneau to Wasilla.

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Chryson says the door remains open now that Palin is governor. (Palin's office did not respond to Salon's request for an interview.) While Palin has been more circumspect in her dealings with groups like the AIP as she has risen through the political ranks, she has stayed in touch. When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP's ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP's state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair.

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But whether the Palins participated directly in shaping the AIP's program is less relevant than the extent to which they will implement that program. Chryson and his allies have demonstrated just as much interest in grooming major party candidates as they have in putting forward their own people. At a national convention of secessionist groups in 2007, AIP vice chairman Dexter Clark announced that his party would seek to "infiltrate" the Democratic and Republican parties with candidates sympathetic to its hard-right, secessionist agenda. "You should use that tactic. You should infiltrate," Clark told his audience of neo-Confederates, theocrats and libertarians. "Whichever party you think in that area you can get something done, get into that party. Even though that party has its problems, right now that is the only avenue."

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Now, Palin is a household name and her every move is scrutinized by the Washington press corps. She can no longer afford to kibitz with secessionists, however instrumental they may have been to her meteoric ascendancy. This does not trouble her old AIP allies. Indeed, Chryson is hopeful that Palin's inauguration will also represent the start of a new infiltration. "I've had my issues but she's still staying true to her core values," Chryson concluded. "Sarah's friends don't all agree with her, but do they respect her? Do they respect her ideology and her values? Definitely."