Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Trump Trump'eting



Having received only three comments for my last blog entry with two of them my own, I seriously considered not blogging about this or any other subject.

By now you know that I capitulated, and this blog entry is proof of that capitulation. Many bloggers are blogging tonight about President Obama releasing for public viewing a copy of his long-form birth certificate.

The short form (certification of life birth) should have been sufficient, but this is America after all, home of the frightened and the bigoted.

What we have seen for the past two and a half years from the Birthers, the bottom feeding members of the Tea(2)Party is what

My country, 'tis of me,
Sour land of calumny,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my black fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' loss of pride,
From every mountainside
Let calumny ring!

Orly Taitz, the Birthters' favorite daughter, and chief exponent, was fast tracked for U.S. citizenship after she immigrated to the United States in May 1987. Citizenship was bestowed upon her in 1992, five years after arriving here from Israel. I guess it helps if you're a dentist and a lawyer.

What Taitz learned early on, it seems, is how willing some Americans are to keep blacks in their place, and how she could use this American penchant to believe the worst of blacks to build a reputation on exposing the newly-elected black president as an interloper, and a fraud--one who placed the crown of citizenship upon his brow without the requisite document to prove that he was part of the illustrative many who could. Had Obama not been black, this opportunity for self-aggrandizement would have had to take another turn, delaying Taitz' rise to fame and fortune.

But Taitz knew her adopted country well. She knew that her birtherism claim that the president wasn't born here, would be met with general acceptance, given how willing some Americans are to delegitimize a black man who had the temerity to rise above his station.

Hence the Boyification of President Obama began in earnest. Seeing what the birther claims did for Taitz and others, Donald Trump aspired to be the poster boy for the group, calling on President Obama to deliver, or forever be discredited as a cheat, and a fraud. The certification of live birth wasn't sufficient for Donald and others who wanted to see the president meekly surrender to the demands of his white critics and detractors.

No sooner was the birther claim laid to rest, following the release of the president's birth certificate, that Taitz and Trump (What's with people whose last names begin with "T"!), planted other conspiratorial mines in hopes of doing what they failed to do with the birther claims.

They have the president by the toe, and they won't rest until he hollers. And when he hollers, they still won't let him go, but find another toe to "catch" and persecute, even if they have to attach a bogus toe to the ten he already has.

Now, this whole nation would be well served if Taitz' citizenship was annulled, and she was shipped back to Israel, or to Russia.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Fear: Far and nEAR

On the sidebar some bloggers reveal that they're reading a book. Other bloggers have gone a step further: They not only reveal their reading du jour, but offer a review.

For now, I'm going to break with a part of that tradition: I'm going to reveal the book I'm reading, but postpone a review for a later time. Instead, I'd like to excise a portion of it, and get your response.

Written by Manuel G. Gonzalez and Richard Delgado, the book explores how Bush-era Republicans used fear to win seats in congress and hold fast to the presidency. The book is titled, appropriately, The Politics of Fear: How Republicans Use Money, Race, and the Media to Win.

Copyrighted in 2006 by Paradigm Publishers the book is written with the insight, and uncommon examination of one published only yesterday.

What I'd like to bring to the fore is a statement made on the very last page of the book (the Conclusion chapter). The statement introduces a quote. Keep in mind that the quote predates the book's copyright date, and could very well have been published months, perhaps years, before.

"Every four years, Republicans present their party platform very openly and clearly before the electorate. Moreover, the GOP agenda, as we have seen, is one that has been articulated throughout the years by party strategists representing the various factions that collectively make up the New Right, and these operatives have been unusually forthright in some of their public declarations about their common vision: 'an America in which the rich will be taxed at the same rates as the poor [Be sure to watch the accompanying video], where capital is freed from government constraints [regulations], where government services are turned over to the free market [Watch the several videos highlighting the book, "The Shock Doctrine." Learn that Crises may be real, imagined or manufactured.], where the minimum wage is repealed [Some of the comments posted there are as inane as the proposal to replace adults with children and pay them less (less than minimum wage, that is)], unions are made irrelevant [I could have selected from thousands of articles with a similar focus.], and law-abiding citizens can pack handguns in every state and town.'57" [p. 132]

To show you just how far Republicans have come in realizing their vision for America, I have provided supportive articles that might be accessed within the previous statement by clicking on one, or all, of the highlighted links. The articles prove one thing: The persistence of the Republican Party, and its drive to establish One-Party Rule in this country.



57.Scherer, "Soul of the New Machine," 44.