Mean, Nasty, and Brutish

It's official: America is a nasty place.

As President Obama toured the country to drum up support for his jobs bill in an attempt to help the economy, the voters of the reliably Democratic congressional district in New York City's outer boroughs formerly represented by Anthony Weiner give Obama a drum beating not unlike Keith Moon's full-frontal drum assaults. The Ninth Congressional District sent a Republican, Bob Turner, to the House of Representatives for the first time since the 1920s. Voter dissatisfaction with Obama over the economy was cited as a primary reason for voting for Turner.

These Turner supporters were seemingly unfazed by the rightward drift in the Republican party, which crested to an all-time high in terms of heartlessness when presidential candidate Ron Paul, debating his Republican presidential nomination opponents in Tampa, suggested that a thirty-year-old man without health insurance who has a horrible accident and goes into a coma should be aware of the risks to life that come with freedom and that the government shouldn't be obliged to guarantee him health insurance. Whether or not Paul meant to suggest that the weaker and poorer among us should be allowed to die is irrelevant; the Tea party audience at the debate interpreted his comment as being an endorsement of such an idea, and that same audience subsequently applauded.

This all happened as a recently census report showed that poverty has risen steadily since 2001. One out of six Americans live in poverty now, and the unofficial (i.e., "real") numbers are likely higher.

My friend Karen Hunter suggested that the Democrats lost the New York congressional seat over local issues such as support for Israel - the ninth Congressional District is 40 percent Jewish - but when local voters cite anger toward Obama as a reason to vote for a Republican, you have to wonder how unpopular Obama is, whatever the locale.

My prediction: A combination of anger toward the Democrats and Tea Party hatred for Obama will bring a huge Republican victory in 2012. Obama will be the last Democratic President. The Democratic party will cease to exist.  New opposition parties will form, but Republicans will disenfranchise enough voters to give themselves a permanent majority. And America will become even more mean, nasty and brutish than it is now.

And then things will get bad.

The Earthquake In Haiti

I watched with interest a report on Haiti on the PBS NewsHour on Monday, before the devastating earthquake hit the the Port-au-Prince area, and it explained how the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation was trying to pick itself up after over two hundred years of anarchy and poverty. many international organizations were providing Haiti with aid and many of its debts were being foreign so that it could invest more in its people. The report explained how Haiti - the second oldest independent nation in the Americas, after the United States - was bring given one more chance - possibly one last chance - to get things right.

With this 7.0-Richter scale quake, which has left hundreds of thousands of people dead, all bets are now off. It is the most cosmic form of irony that Haiti should find its fortunes, which began to look promising after the election of President René Preval in 2006, reversed in a single natural disaster. Now, more than ever, anyone who can help with aid should do so. It's hard to find anyone without sympathy for the Haitian people.

But not impossible. Many people have already heard Rush Limbaugh's assertion that Preisdent Obama is sending aid to the Haitians to shore up support among his fellow black Americans and that he cares more about Haiti than about terrorism. But Limbaugh's racially bigoted, logically bewildering rhetoric pales in comparison to Pat Robertson's insistence that the earthquake was divine retribution for a pact Haitians supposedly made with the devil to win their independence from France.

Here's what Robertson said: "They were under the heel of the French, you know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it’s a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got . . . themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."

For the record, the Haitians revolted against France because the French parliament tried to restore slavery in the colony (then called Saint-Domingue) after it had been abolished by the National Convention government that took over France in 1792. Napoleon Bonaparte (not Napoleon III, the nephew of the original Napoleon) sent an army to crush the slave revolt, but the army was defeated by the slaves and done in by yellow fever - not the devil. Napoleon's troubles in Haiti led him to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States, including New Orleans.

Speaking of which, I don't want to repeat Robertson's interpretation of Hurricane Katrina.