Love and Bondage

The possibility of a fascist state in America that I alluded to in an earlier post became slightly more realistic yesterday when it turned out that a pact to protect the sanctity of marriage that was put out by the Family Leader, a right-wing advocacy group, that had been signed by two Republican presidential candidates featured a rosy view of black family life under slavery. The document, signed by Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, expressed the belief that a black child born in slavery in 1860, before the Civil War, had a more stable family life, with two parents, than a black child born during Barack Obama's Presidency.

If this statement had expressed outrage or pity over this assessment, the Family Leader might have gotten away with it. But the wording suggested that the Family Leader endorsed slavery. Though they retracted the wording, they've still managed to call attention to the underlying racism of social conservative groups fighting for . . . no change. They want to return to the 1950s ideal of white nuclear middle-class families before gays came out of the closet, women went to work, and actresses like Cybill Shepherd mouthed off about marriage being a misogynistic institution . . . and when blacks were seen but not heard.

I understand why Bachmann signed the vow. She thought John Quincy Adams and other Founding Fathers ended slavery long before 1860. I don't know why Rick Santorum, who's evidently dumber than he looks (he reminds me of the 1980s video game character Evil Otto) would sign this pact, because I don't think he has anything against black people. It's the gays he hates.

Anyway, like Michele Bachmann's statement about the Founding Fathers and the belief that "Father Knows Best" reflected real life, the Family Leader's statement just isn't true. Plantation owners had no regard for slave family units; slave marriages were not recognized as legitimate, and many families were broken up at the auction block. Absent fathers may be a problem in black America today, but both parents were likelier to be absent in a slave child's life because the master sold them to another cotton grower.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has reared her ugly head on the cover of Newsweek, telling the magazine that she can win a general presidential election and toying with the possibility of a presidential campaign. And even while family leader is trying to distance itself from charges of racism, Palin is dismissing President Obama as a "sugar daddy" for doling out money in the form of government spending and that he has "run out of sugar." Unfortunately, Palin, more evil than Evil Otto, hasn't yet run out of sweet talk designed to keep people paying attention to her - some of that same talk being sourly racist.

It should be obvious that the United States is becoming more like apartheid-era South Africa, where we will see more laws based on fundamentalist Christianity, white people will be the minority but will still control everything, people of color have no voting rights, women have no health amenities, and the capitalist system merrily rolls along enriching only a few people. Pretty soon other countries will boycott us.

Except China, which will continue to make our kitchen utensils and underwear.

Be Very Afraid

Michele Bachmann is running for President.

That's the second scariest six-word sentence in the English language: Michele Bachmann is running for President.

The scariest six-word sentence in the English language would be this: Michele Bachmann has been elected President.

This dame makes Sarah Palin look like Margaret Chase Smith. Can you imagine America's fist female President to be a Tea Party Republican who equates President Obama's private-public hybrid health care law with socialism? How about a woman who thinks carbon dioxide is harmless? Or a woman who thought Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire? Okay, history isn't her best subject, you may say, and besides, she actually got her history right, she just screwed up her geography. Well, remember when she said the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to eradicate slavery, like John Quincy Adams - who did work tirelessly to eradicate slavery but was not a Founding Father and died before slavery was eradicated?

And she advocates home schooling?

Or how about when she announced her presidential campaign in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa yesterday and said she felt a kindred spirit with noted Waterloo favorite son John Wayne? Except that John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa on the other end of the state. But a similarly named fellow was a resident of Waterloo, Iowa - John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who dressed as a clown and murdered 33 boys.

There was a dangerous clown in Waterloo, Iowa yesterday. Her name was Michele Bachmann.

Chris Matthews admires Bachmann's authenticity and loyal following and says the Democrats could be in trouble without any women in visible, politically powerful positions going into 2012. What? Because Chris Matthews is a women's rights advocate like Newt Gingrich is a family man, you really have to do a double take to consider what Matthews is suggesting - that Bachmann could appeal to soccer moms just because she's a woman. It's even more frightening that people support Bachmann because she's an idiot; her mistakes actually endear her supporters to her because she's like a member of their family to them. Namely, the crazy aunt in the attic.

Bachmann's chances? Small. No sitting House of Representatives member, like Bachmann is, has been elected President since James Garfield in 1880.

We should be glad she won re-election to the House in 2010. She'd have more time as a private citizen to devote to her campaign in she hadn't.

Union Rules

President Obama gave his 2011 State of the Union address tonight, and while I thought the speech was well-delivered and also measured in terms of what the United States needs to do to regain its edge, it wasn't exactly the rousing call to action I thought it might be. He was very specific in stressing the need for support for economic opportunity, education, and rebuilding infrastructure, and he declared the fact that Americans are falling behind as a wake-up call comparable to Sputnik. It didn't energize me to action, though. It only made me satisfied that he knows what needs to be done. Still, the spirit of cooperation seemed pretty genuine, if only because the attack on Gabrielle Giffords continues to reverberate among members of Congress.

Obama made it clear that he wants to push ahead to create jobs and get spending under control, and he threw in a few zingers - suggesting an end to tax breaks for oil companies, for example. The only problem, of course, is that he faces a Republican House that doesn't want to meet him halfway on anything. Representative Paul Ryan's official response for the Republicans - specifically on health care reform - was more incendiary than conciliatory. He hinted that vital social programs ought to be destroyed. He didn't suggest anything he might support Obama on. And, of course, he wrapped himself in the Constitution and the aura of the Founding Fathers.

At least Ryan, a congressman from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, seems to know a thing or two about history - unlike Michele Bachmann, the undistinguished not-so-gentle woman from Minnesota, who is giving a Tea Party response. Bachmann recently praised the Founding Fathers, particularly John Quincy Adams, for ending the scourge of slavery.

The Founding Fathers, of course, not only did not end slavery, they counted slaves in the Constitution as three-fifths of a person - though they did end the foreign slave trade with the ratification of that document (it was abolished in 1808). And while she was right to praise Adams for working tirelessly to end slavery - I assume she saw Amistad - she kind of confused John Quincy Adams with his Founder father, John Adams.

Bachmann's easy victory over Tarryl Clark in her House district in the November election suggests that not only is she stupid, but so are her constituents.

The Year of The Dumb Republican Woman

Too many women in Republican politics, it seems, are turning out to be just as stupid as men are. Of course, what do you expect from the party that gave us lawmakers hoping to make abortion a capital crime? Nevadans Sharron Angle and Sue Lowden may have disappeared for the time being, but several GOP women threaten to loom large in what passes for political discourse in this new year.

First, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann is getting a seat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Next! Incoming New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte is already hitting the ground running in her attempts to appear dumber and dimmer than Bachmann. Delivering the Republican response to President Obama's weekly address this New Year's Day, Ayotte declared that the American people sent a message that they want both the size of government and the deficit reduced by voting for GOP candidates in November. Never mind polls indicating that most people don't consider the deficit a top priority and that they support more government spending to create more jobs while opposing cuts in Social Security to bring down the deficit. By talking up the need for jobs today, Obama seemed more in tune with average Americans than Ayotte did. How dumb is that, a Republican giving a Democratic President the advantage in the debate? The election was not an endorsement of Republican ideas, as one new senator insists, but rather discontent with the status quo. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the only freshman Democrat elected to a full Senate term last year? No, Marco Rubio of Florida.

Sarah Palin, of course, continues to dominate among dumb women in the Republican party, with her folksy (read uneducated) demeanor and her insistence on opposing everything coming out of the Obama White House - including First Lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. One might think Sarah Palin is actually pretty smart in her attempts at solidarity with the dumb male GOP primary voter by shooting a defenseless caribou and encouraging consumption of fatty foods. After all, those are the biggest pastimes of her intended audience. But with only 49 percent of Republicans endorsing her possible presidential bid compared to 67 percent of them expressing enthusiasm for a run by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee - who, being someone who's dealt with obesity himself, has sharply criticized Palin for her attack on Mrs. Obama - she appears to have peaked and her moment in the sun has passed. Only no one can convince her.

Chris Matthews, incidentally, thought it was ridiculous of Palin to compare herself to Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor of California, the nation's most populous state, who, Matthews said, revitalized the American economy and ended the Cold War as President. Uh, Chris? The collapse of OPEC revitalized the American economy. Pope John Paul II, Lech Wałęsa, and Lithuanian nationalists ended the Cold War. That damn actor in the White House had nothing to do with any of it.

Finally, to perpetual remedial student Christine O'Donnell, who has enjoyed fourteen minutes and thirty seconds of fame with the clock ticking. Under investigation for using campaign funds for personal expenses, O'Donnell countercharged that she is the victim of a leftist smear campaign directed by Vice President Biden and aimed at destroying her political career. Uh, I think she already did that herself. How many points did she lose by in her bid for Biden's U.S. Senate seat in Delaware? Seventeen?

Unlike with Bachmann or Palin (the jury's still out on Ayotte), I don't dislike Christine O'Donnell. I'm more inclined to pity her. And, if God protects fools and children, she sure has it covered both ways.

It's a Cruel, Cruel Summer. . . .

In an effort to keep health care reform alive, President Obama may have killed it by suggesting that a public option program may not be necessary. Well, in the case, maybe health care reform may not be necessary. Health care reform without a public program for people who can't afford private insurance may be taken off the table in order to get a bill passed in the Senate. We might as well forget reforming the medical insurance system for another fifteen years.

There aren't enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill with a public option despite a Democratic majority of sixty seats. Paradoxically, as many as one hundred Democrats in the House, led by Anthony Wiener of New York, refuse to support a health care reform bill if a public option is not included.

Health care reform in America is dead unless Obama bypasses the Republicans and gets some kind of public plan passed and twists a few arms in the Senate. I can't think of anything more depressing.

No, I'm kidding, this is America, so I can. Minnesota right-wing congresswoman Michelle Bachmann - who makes Sarah Palin look like Hannah Arendt - is thinking of running for President in 2012.