Some First-Hand Experiences

I'd like to expand on Mark's post because I have direct personal experience with this kind of racism. I'll be the first to say that anecdotes, like way too many surveys, are meaningless, but since Fox News relies exclusively on anecdotes to buttress every "news" story they air, I figure it's my turn.

When my fourth sister announced that she was marrying a Latino Texan my father disowned her. Then he disowned my third sister for helping her put on the wedding. I had to walk my sister down the aisle because my father refused.

There was nothing wrong with this guy. They met in the Army Reserves. They've got two kids and have been married for 20 years now. He has a decent job locating fiber optic cables buried underground.

Whites seem to have a racial predisposition to getting diseases that put them on disability...

My father approved of my second sister for years. She married a fine, upstanding, right-wing racist just like my dad. She married this kind of guy three times. And now she's been divorced three times. Oddly, it turns out that intolerant white, gun-loving, right-wing conservatives make terrible husbands. They all turned out to be bums, with any number of excuses for why they can't be bothered to work, from "my head hurts," to alcoholism, to multiple sclerosis (not that guy's fault, of course, but whites have this racial predisposition to getting diseases that always seem to put them on disability...).

My third sister's husband was the same: another gun-loving conservative alcoholic who can't keep a job. Is it just my sisters' poor taste in men, or is something wrong with white guys?

But then my second sister got in the doghouse with my dad because her oldest daughter got pregnant and married a Latino guy.

Yes, you can find racists everywhere. Yes, there are blacks who -- after having been treated like animals for centuries by white slave owners, were then harassed for another century and a half by post-bellum Southerners who falsely imprisoned them, beat them, lynched them, prevented them from voting, made them sit at the back of the bus, didn't let them use rest rooms and drinking fountains, segregated them into poverty-stricken ghettos, sent them to terrible schools, and to this day send cops into their neighborhoods to single them out for harassment on minor traffic violations and shoot them for walking in the street -- bear resentment against whites. I can't figure out why.

And, yeah, many Chinese and Filipino and Japanese and English and Irish and Norwegian American parents are opposed to their children marrying outside their ethnic group. But this is not always racism: frequently, it's tribalism.

Is it racist to fear that your culture will die out because your children marry outside your ethnic group?

It's not surprising that some Chinese parents don't want their kids marrying Anglos because they're afraid they'll stop speaking Chinese, they'll abandon Chinese customs, and their grandkids won't look like them.

Children are the only real form of immortality there is. The people some commenters say are racist may just be people who think that if their grandkids don't look like them, it will be the end of their line. Their culture -- their "kind" -- will die out. Now, I'll grant it's a silly notion -- their DNA is still there, they can still wield cultural, social and moral influence over their grandkids (as long as they don't foolishly disown them).

In fact, the entire idea of race is false: there are blood types and tissue types, not racial types. Africans can donate blood and organs to Scandinavians, and all humans can cross-fertilize (to the chagrin of the racists). "Racial" differences are minute evolutionary changes that have crept in over the last few tens of thousands of years. Race is purely a function of geography, not biology.

But the fear of losing ethnic, cultural and linguistic connections with their descendants is understandable.

More to the point, this is exactly the same thing that the Republicans are talking about when they speak of "taking back America." Why is it racist for Filipino Americans to want to perpetuate their culture and ethnic appearance, but not racist for Republicans to want to "take back America?"

When Republicans say the United States is a Christian nation, they're saying that non-Christians are unwelcome.

When Republicans say the United States is a Christian nation, they're saying that non-Christians are unwelcome (although Republicans currently favor Jews for political reasons, this has not always been the case). And since religion and ethnicity are tightly linked, it's an inherently racist proposition.

And here is the core difference between the Democratic and the Republican Parties. The Republican Party welcomes the reactionaries and racists who want to maintain racial, religious and cultural purity. They adopt political platforms to move this agenda forward and actively devise electoral strategies to garner the support of and motivate racists.

Individual Democrats might have racial and tribal prejudices, but the party does not.

Republicans these days don't make their racism explicit. They couch it in terms like "take back America," "Christian nation," "states rights," "welfare queens," and low taxes. But everyone who knows the code knows what's really going on.

Now, Republicans will welcome blacks, Latinos and Asians into their party, just as long as they toe the line and give up everything that makes them different: speak English only, adopt one of two related monotheistic religions, abandon their parent's culture, abhor the "gay lifestyle," constantly mouth Old Testament paternalisms, adopt a vindictive, suspicious and fearful mindset, watch Fox News, badmouth Obama and Obamacare, drive the right kind of car (pickup truck, Hummer or anything that gets less than 15 mpg), constantly screech for the blood of Muslims, denounce climate change as a hoax, genuflect every time St. Ronald is mentioned, etc.

For a political party that prides itself on rugged individualism, the degree of rigid uniformity required to be a Republican is staggering.

The Republican Party is not a political party: it's a conservative Christian tribe. And you have to adopt all the trappings of the tribe or you're not welcome.

Republicans defend themselves against the racism charge by pointing at Herman Cain and Bobby Jindal. But seriously, if Jindal was still a Hindu, do you think he'd be the Republican governor of Louisiana today?

In the end, tribalism is just as evil and destructive as racism.  It encourages the same sorts of violence and hatred that skin color does. Just ask the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland, or the soccer hooligans in England.

Or Cardinals and 49ers fans.

The Maturity Level Of The Gun Cult

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Seven)

At a recent holiday gathering, my father in law, a lifelong Democrat and strong supporter of the president, said that he had nothing against black people. He just didn't want my daughter dating or marrying one.

This sort of attitude is illustrated in the graphic below.

Though the numbers are trending downward, they are still far too high for this day and age. No doubt, this is true for both parties. I think the flatline for the Democrats likely represents the age cohort in which my father in law belongs.

Yet it still is important to note that there still are more Republicans than Democrats who opposed interracial marriage. Again, I think this is due to older people simply being more conservative than liberal as well as more conservatives being from the South.

Good Words

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Strength to Love, 1963.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Six)

One of the great lies that has been spread over the years about black people is that they are less intelligent than white people. Or, in the case of this question, they are more unintelligent than intelligent.

White Republicans track pretty even since the early 90s with the GOP being slightly more of the belief that blacks are more unintelligent than intelligent. After the election of 2008, the GOP even sunk lower than the Democrats but rose above them again by 2012. The trend is still downward for the Democrats.

I find it pretty distressing that there are even this many people that think this. 15 percent of our white population? Really?

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Five)

Our series on racism in political parties takes a positive turn today with this question.

One caveat here is that GSS did not ask this question between 1998 and 2006, hence the smoothness during that time. Yet we still see a drop when the question gets asked again and that is very good news indeed.

Progress!

The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Use

Politico has a piece up about the myth of defensive gun ownership that is certain to cause many mouths to foam and bowels to be blown. Here are a few choice pulls...

What do these and so many other cases have in common? They are the byproduct of a tragic myth: that millions of gun owners successfully use their firearms to defend themselves and their families from criminals. Despite having nearly no academic support in public health literature, this myth is the single largest motivation behind gun ownership. It traces its origin to a two-decade-old series of surveys that, despite being thoroughly repudiated at the time, persists in influencing personal safety decisions and public policy throughout the United States. 

Check. My brother in law assures me that his children are much more safe in his house because there are many guns there. When I ask him who is more likely to have an accident with a gun, his kids or my kids (living in a house with zero guns), he says, with a straight face, my kids. You really have to love the Gun Cult:)

In 1992, Gary Kleck and Marc Getz, criminologists at Florida State University, conducted a random digit-dial survey to establish the annual number of defensive gun uses in the United States. They surveyed 5,000 individuals, asking them if they had used a firearm in self-defense in the past year and, if so, for what reason and to what effect. Sixty-six incidences of defensive gun use were reported from the sample. The researchers then extrapolated their findings to the entire U.S. population, resulting in an estimate of between 1 million and 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year.

Did they, now? Now I understand why the Right is so paranoid about data. They are simply projecting the fact that they manipulate data on to the rest of us. What a complete load of bullshit. Not everyone in American owns a gun so to extrapolate to the entire population is terribly flawed. Worse, the fact that the NRA humps this "fact" all the time without mentioning the amount of accidents that occur with those same gun owners honestly creates a make believe land where guns are always good, forever and ever, amen.

Brand new data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-partisan organization devoted to collecting gun violence data, further confirms Hemenway’s suspicion that Kleck and Getz’s findings are absurd. The archive found that for all of 2014 there were fewer than 1,600 verified defensive guns uses, meaning a police report was filed. This total includes all outcomes and types of defensive uses with a police report—a far cry from the millions that Kleck and Getz estimated.

I've never heard of the Gun Violence Archive but I can bet that the words "non-partisan" are nearly certain to elicit shrieks of disapproval and chest thumping from the Gun Cult. This is especially true when you see something like this.

So, really, it's far less than 2 million defensive uses a year. The Politico piece also notes that Kleck himself admitted that "defensive gun use" is a relative term. 36 to 64 percent of the defensive gun use was illegal? Wow. And when you compare it to the other statistics like accidental shootings, murders, and injuries, the necessity of defensive gun use is exposed to be one of the greatest lies ever believed by the American people. As the article concludes...

But the evidence clearly shows that our lax gun laws and increased gun ownership, spurred on by this myth, do not help “good guys with guns” defend themselves, their families or our society. Instead, they are aiding and abetting criminals by providing them with more guns, with 200,000 already stolen on an annual basis. And more guns means more homicides. More suicides. More dead men, women and children. Not fewer. 

Yep.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Four)

Next up in our series on racism within the GOP is this question.

An interesting question to say the least. It is indeed heartening to see the trend moving downward for both parties but note the uptick (again) right after the president gets elected. It's much sharper with Republicans. I'll be interested to see the data from the last two years.

The Pope Sides with Terrorists on Charlie Hebdo?

While en route to the Philippines the pope talked about the massacre in Paris. And he really screwed the pooch on this one:

The Pope also condemned the Paris violence. “One cannot offend, make war, kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God,” Francis said. “To kill in the name of God is an aberration.

He broke it down in everyday terms, something that is coming to be known as classic Francis teaching style. “If [a close friend] says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose,” he explained. “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.”

The pope is trying to have it both ways: first he condemns Islamic terrorists, and then he condones physical violence as retaliation for verbal insults. He believes that if someone says something sufficiently demeaning you have the right to retaliate physically.

This mindset is exactly why mass mayhem ruled Europe for centuries during the slaughters between Catholics and Protestants over disagreements on religious dogma -- nonsense like transubstantiation, for God's sake -- in what we would today call religious terrorism.

Is the pope really this oblivious? Violence begets more violence.

Is the pope really this oblivious to the ways of the world? When Joe calls Mike's mom a slut, and Mike punches Joe out, it doesn't end there. Joe punches Mike back. Then Mike picks up a bottle and smashes it over Joe's head. Then Joe hits Mike with a chair. Then Mike tackles Joe, throwing him to the floor and cracking his skull open. Then Mike goes to jail for killing Joe.

Violence begets more violence.Wasn't it Jesus who advocated turning the other cheek when someone smites you? Now the pope says it's okay to strike first?

Is the pope endorsing duels? Medieval trial by combat? The idea that might makes right? Or is he simply trying to understand and explain the reactions of unsophisticated brutes to insults, which is extremely insulting in and of itself?

In any case, what difference do insults make? If Mike's mom is a slut then it's a true statement and therefore not actionable. If she isn't, then Joe is a liar and scumbag and unworthy of response. Or, if the charges are public and sufficiently slanderous, Mike can take Joe to court.

The entire business of proselytizing religions such as Christianity and Islam is to demean other religions.

Now, on a larger scale, the entire business of proselytizing religions such as Christianity and Islam is to promote themselves, and to demonstrate their superiority over other religions. This inevitably means that other religions must be cast as inferior, and their basic tenets and practices must be derided as false and risible.

Christianity's official positions on Mohammed have ranged from him being a liar, a warlord, a polygamist, a false prophet and according to Luther, "a devil and first-born child of Satan." How much more insulting can you get?

Whenever another religion disagrees with yours on matters of theology, it is insulting your faith and demeaning your beliefs. It doesn't matter whether they use angry four-letter words or euphemisms couched in civility.

Because, truly, what's the difference between saying that A) Mary, the mother of the Church, was not a virgin her entire life, and B) Joseph and Mary fucked like minks? Why will A get a throat clearing, and B elicit a papal punch in the face?

Popes during the Reformation orchestrated religious wars and the deaths of thousands in Europe for centuries. They executed thousands of people simply for denying abstruse points of theology. In the Middle Ages popes demanded Christians go to the Holy Land and slaughter thousands of Muslims because their religious beliefs insulted the Lord.

And this nonsense isn't over. Some sects of Islam consider the very existence of other sects to be an affront to their religion. This is why the Sunni/Shia schism in Iraq is so bad -- the Saudi/Al Qaeda branch of Sunni Islam is determined to kill all Shiites, apparently by blowing up one mosque at a time.

So listen up, Francis. If you condone beating people up for calling your mom a slut, then you condone beating gays for insulting God's laws, then you condone the murder of doctors who disagree with Catholic dogma, then you condone terrorists that slaughter cartoonists who defame the image of the one true prophet of Allah.

You can't have it both ways. Once you condone physical violence as retribution for mere words, ideas or pictures, you endorse all-out war. Because physical violence always escalates. The bigger the insult, the more violent the retaliation.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Three)

Next up in our examination of racism within the Republican party is this.

These numbers are fairly shocking for both parties. The Democrats seem to have leveled off but that humber is still too high. And, as I have been saying right along, the Republicans have a serious problem with racism against black people. Combine this graphic with my previous two graphics and it's just plain awful. In addition, note the spike when President Obama took office.

Honestly, there's not really anything positive to take away from this question.

The Death of Email?

I just went through the arduous process of changing my email addresses. It took several hours to go through all the websites I use and test that everything still works. It was a lot more work for me than most people because I had to change both my personal email as well as several business emails, and change some software that uses them.

I had to do this because my old email addresses have become useless. I get hundreds of emails a day, and 99.9% of them are spam. Real email messages are then lost in that sea of crap.

Why did I have to do this? Hackers have attacked several major websites in recent months, stealing hundreds of millions of credit cards and email addresses. Spammers also scour web pages across the Internet, harvesting any email addresses they find.

Spam is the perfect example of a libertarian paradise where there are no government controls on business.

But changing my email address won't solve this problem for very long. It's only a matter of time before more websites get hacked, or the address books of the people I correspond with get ripped off. Or one of the websites I gave my email address to sells it to spammers. And then these new email addresses will become useless.

The act of creating new email addresses means I have to give them to other people, from whom spammers will ultimately take them, therefore defeating the entire purpose of creating the new emails in the first place.

Email is essentially a completely open and free market, without no central controls. If you want an idea of what life would be like in a libertarian paradise with no government controls on what business can do, spam is the perfect example.

The Tragedy of the Commons
The current state of email is the tragedy of the commons on steroids. This is an economic theory, first postulated by William Forster Lloyd and reiterated by Garret Hardin, which states that people acting independently and rationally in self-interest ultimately behave contrary to the best interests of the group.

Originally the "commons" was the actual common village green in an English village, which was shared among villagers. Everyone could pasture their cows and sheep there, which of course led to overgrazing that quickly turned the village green into a barren pit of mud.

The metaphor extends to all resources held in common, such as:

• The ocean, which is being overfished and polluted by dumping and toxic runoff.
• The atmosphere, which is used as a dumping ground for automobile exhaust, coal-burning power plants and industrial pollution.
• The freeway system, which gets overcrowded at rush hour, making it useless for everyone.
• The stock market, which can be manipulated by insider trading, high-frequency computer trading and hedge fund rumor-mongers for personal gain while trashing market value for everyone else.
• The financial system, which was nearly brought down in 2008 through bad lending practices by individuals increasing their personal gain at everyone else's loss.
• The telephone system, which is exploited by con men and phony charities, like those calls from Apogee Retail begging for used clothing in the name of real charities, to which they give nothing.

The percentage of spam in email has fluctuated over time. It has been estimated to be anywhere from 68% to 90% of all email in recent years. I can't find reliable current stats, but my personal experience is that there has been a significant uptick in spam in recent months after a significant drop last year.

Spam filters help, but are no panacea. Real emails get lost when they're falsely flagged as spam, or when mailboxes get filled. And spammers are getting better at making spam look like more like real email that gets past the filters.

Another way to deal with spam is to simply reject any email you get from an address you don't recognize. That might work for individuals, but it doesn't work for businesses that need to accept queries from customers. To avoid having to deal with spam, those businesses instead turn to web forms (which have those annoying captchas to prevent spammers from sending spam through web interfaces).

Then there are the economic costs: worldwide millions of man-hours are wasted each day simply by people having to spend time weeding out and deleting spam.

If 60-90% of email is spam, that means that 60-90% of the network capacity, the server horsepower, and the very electricity that powers all the Internet infrastructure devoted to handling email is being wasted.

That adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Which means people are just going to start giving up on email. And many of them already have: lots of people send texts, or use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or other texting apps on their smart phones in preference to email.

So, the Internet had better come up with a real solution for spam, or email is going to go the way of snail mail.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Two)

Our next graphic has just as much to do with anti-government sentiment as it does with anti-black sentiment.

I think the anti-government sentiment and the fact that a black man got elected president in 2008 explain the rise on the Republican side. This question seemed to be trending downward for both parties but there was an uptick after the 2008 election. Thankfully, the Democrats are down to the single digits now.

The Republicans, however, clearly have their work cut out for them. If a third of their party believes that too much money is spent on improving the conditions of blacks, they do not have a grasp of history. Let's review

400 years of slavery
100 years of Jim Crow
50 years since the Civil Rights Act passed.
20 years (maybe) of white people being less crazy and a little more nice.

The whole "get over it" meme doesn't really work when you consider the depth of devastation done to black people in this country over time. This is where an anti-government type like Rand Paul could capture the black vote. It was the federal government that allowed slavery for how many years?

Let's also remember this piece from a while back. The biggest recipients of welfare?

The South.

Robbing A Gun Store

I've been assured by the Gun Cult that no one would ever consider robbing a gun store least of criminals. They would be deterred by the mere presence of that which is to be worshiped while gently fondling one's penis!

Well, there goes another bullshit lie.

Much of downtown Shawnee went into lockdown in the minutes following the attempted robbery and shootout at a gun shop there on Friday.

So, if there were schools full of guns and armed people like this gun shop then it would really make any difference.

When are we going to stop listening to these people?

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part One)

A recent post on race elicited several highly defensive and steeped in denial remarks from two of the five people who actually read comments. As is usually the case with conservatives like these gentlemen, they quickly redirected the conversation to me, issuing imperial declarations originating from an unfortunately deep insecurity and an inability to admit fault.

I did take away one thing from their feedback, though, and that's the fact that a more detailed examination of just how exactly Republicans are more racist than Democrats was required. For the next few days, we're going to be taking a look at polling done by a few different outfits on this issue. The main ones are going to be the General Social Survey and Nate Silver's 538 site but before we take a look at the first question, let's examine a fundamental fact about Republican party strength. Take a look at this map.

131 electoral votes come from the Old South and you'll note that today these are solid red states through and through. In the 2012 election, the popular vote in these 12 states was roughly 18 million people which is just shy of a third of the Republican votes in that election. Suffice to say that the South represents a substantial portion of the GOP base.

Given these facts, it's not surprising we see data like this.

A couple of interesting things to note. There are still plenty of white Democrats who have a problem with race. Sadly, some are in my family and, again not surprising, they are from the South. I also think it's interesting to note the uptick after Barack Obama got elected. Conservatives like to downplay the president's race but that's like my 12 year old son trying to downplay his black teeth when I ask him if he got into the Oreo cookies.

The positive to this graphic is that the trend is downward. Much of this has to do with old, white people dying off and taking their bullshit with them. Most people under the age of 40 don't have the same views on race as people over 40 do. Go even younger and it gets even better. We can thank our education system and its commitment to diversity and sensitivity on race for that sea change:)

So, it's clear from this graphic that more Republicans than Democrats think that black people are more lazy than hard working which is a classic racial stereotype. Given that a substantial portion of the GOP base is from the South, this myth about black people is likely more prevalent in those 12 states and drives the number higher for Republicans.

(Postscript: I suspect that this post and the ones on race that follow are going to cause a few bowels to be blown. I'm going to request that when commenting on this and future posts in this series, please offer a counter argument (if you disagree) that is based in reason and leaves me out of it.  I won't ban or delete any comments that are Markadelphia obsessed as they essentially illustrate avoidance and denial of reality thus leading to confirmation of my assertions here. But I at least wanted to offer my usual five commenters the chance to really focus on the evidence presented here and post a true counter argument complete with their own assertions. 

After all, they repeatedly claim that they are superior to me in several ways. Now's their chance to prove this to be true:))

You Are Not President

Uh...Michele?

You aren't president and this is not the result of anything you did.

I'm completely shocked that a conservative doesn't understand fundamental economics.

All Economic Signs Good!

Yesterday's paper had a great piece on how well the economy is doing here in Minnesota and in the rest of the country. Check out this interactive graphic that illustrates the five key indicators (jobs, unemployment, consumer sentiment, gas prices, and GDP) clearly showing just how much our economy has improved during the Obama years.

Any retractions out there yet?

Why Globalization Is A Rising Tide That Lifts All Boats

The video below shows exactly why globalization and capitalism are indeed very good things. Take a look at how the bubbles, even in underdeveloped countries, rise over 200 years. Rosling's stuff is amazing and I highly encourage all of you to check out his interactive graphic where you can track the progress of each country, crunch the data, and be a complete social studies nerd like myself.



Despite what the apocalyptics on both the left and the right tell you, our world is improving every day.

Still On Board The Zimmerman Train?

George Zimmerman has been arrested...again. This time, it's aggravated assault.

I'm wondering if folks are still hitching their wagons to his star.

The Girl Effect

If there was one clear reason why there is inequality in the world, it's this.



This would be exactly why globalization isn't the evil demon that some on the left make it out to be.

The Obummer Destruction of the Economy Continues

Today's jobs report was very positive with the unemployment rate dropping to 5.6% and 252,000 jobs added in the month of December. November's jobs number was revised upwards to over 350,000 jobs. Overall, the economy added nearly three million jobs in 2014.

I look at this graph and I have to wonder, where is the "Obummer Destruction of the economy" I hear so much about from conservatives? Certainly, you can't credit the president completely for the improved economy but his policies have most definitely helped.

As always, I'm still waiting for that "tough history coming." Any day now...:)

Good Words

From my most recent question on Quora...

The Southern Strategy is overwhelmingly the biggest reason for the shift in American politics, and that strategy DOES have its roots in the opposition to the Civil Rights movement in this country. There were residual issues from that era that bled into the '70's-notably Affirmative Action, Busing/educational issues, urban issues, etc. All of these issues essentially had a Black face. 

In addition, other movements were making their mark as well-Cesar Chavez in the '70's started the labor movement among Hispanic/Mexican immigrants, and Stonewall (beginning of the gay rights movement) occurred in the later part of the decade. Hispanics and gays are also next to blacks on the Republican bullseye. All of these things changed America from a white dominated culture to a more multicultural country-and the most conservative, racist individuals in the South reacted by using racial coding to give aid and comfort to a white population that was uncomfortable with the changes. 

You have to remember: after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was passed in the US, many Southern Democrats-called Dixiecrats-left the Democratic party for the Republican party in protest. They were vehemently against the concept of equal rights for blacks. That spirit of the Dixiecrats is still alive thanks to the "Southern Strategy". Starting with Nixon, Republicans took that spirit and fanned the flames of the anti-Civil Rights act movement for political gain. Prominent Republicans have confirmed that the "Southern Strategy" was part of their election strategy. 

And here is an example of the famous "black hands" ad for a Republican Senator in the '80's:RNC Adviser Alex Castellanos Admits That His Infamous Jesse Helms Ad Hurt Race Relations 

There are more examples of race based strategies, coding, baiting, and slips of the tougue as well. One can turn on any right wing media outlet and hear it for themselves. And of course, in the present day, the most notable recent example of the residue of this strategy is one Steve Scalise, who was caught speaking to a white supremacist group, and labelling himself "David Duke without the baggage (whatever the hell that means). 

So, yes, it is not an exaggeration to say that racial animus on the part of conservatives, specifically Southern conservatives, was a huge reason for the shifting of American politics to what you see now. And this history is why nonwhites in this country don't trust conservatives, and don't vote for them in such large numbers.

I'm wondering if any of my five commenters are courageous enough to respond to this and engage in a much larger forum than here:)

Free Speech: Racist Epithets vs. Blasphemy

The massacre of cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris by Muslims outraged by the publication's depictions of Mohammed brings up an important question: why do liberals consider Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of Mohammed, the Piss Christ and The Interview to be expressions of free speech that should not be silenced, while they routinely condemn derogatory racist and sexist epithets applied to minorities?

Is it simply hypocrisy? Political correctness run amok? Or is it a principled stand against the oppression of the weak by the powerful?

Blasphemy is irreverent speech about religious figures such as god, or Mohammed, or Jesus, the Pope, Kim Jong Un, or the books and institutions of a religion. Those institutions are powerful and influential and are completely capable of weathering criticism from cartoonists and late-night comics.

Christians, Muslims and North Koreans are equally free to condemn this irreverent speech. What we cannot abide are threats and physical harm to blasphemers and, not just coincidentally, the persons and property of the religious.

Historically, charges of blasphemy are usually leveled at competing sects from the same religion that consider the very existence of the other sect to be a blasphemy. The Sunni-Shia schism and the Christian Gnostic blasphemies come to mind.

Racist and sexist epithets, by contrast, lump an entire class of underprivileged people together as something less than human, providing justification in the minds of racists for systematic discrimination and personal ad hominem and physical attacks.

More to the point, the people who condemn racist and sexist epithets in public discourse are simply condemning racism and sexism. They may call for racists and sexists to be socially shunned or their companies boycotted. But they're not advocating that the haters be killed or jailed for their hateful speech, except when that speech crosses over into actual threats of violence.

It's not an abrogation of a conservative's right to free speech or "political correctness" when others upbraid him for calling something "gay," or express outrage when he makes watermelon and fried chicken jokes about the Obamas, or call him a dick for telling sexist jokes. They're simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

Just like he did when he spouted that crap in the first place.

Scary!

Dick Cavett on Ayn Rand

From a recent interview with Dick Cavett...

 CAVETT: Oh, well, that’s so, too. You can piss away valuable hours of your life reading Ayn Rand—her wretched appeal to the young, her wretched writing, her wretched person. She was supposed to be on my show; I was kind of sorry she wasn’t, because I was kind of laying for her. I did not succumb, as a kid, to being enthused by Ayn Rand, and that sense of power, as every kid was at one time until they outgrew it. The old bag sent over a list of fifteen conditions for appearing with me, or for appearing with anyone, I guess. One of them was, “There will be no disagreeing with Ms. Rand’s philosophy.” 

GREEN: You’re kidding. 

CAVETT: No! I wrote at the bottom of the list, to be sent back to her, “There will be no Ms. Rand, either.”

No disagreeing with Ms. Rand's philosophy...gee, that sounds awfully familiar:)

The above quote kinda reminds me of another quote...

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” — [Kung Fu Monkey — Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009] ― John Rogers

More Guns In Chicago

One of my favorite bits of fiction peddled by the Gun Cult is that Chicago, a city that heavily restricts guns, is a great example of what gun control really does...create more violence and leave ordinary citizens defenseless.  So, by this logic, if Chicago were to loosen its gun laws and allow more people to have guns, violence would decrease, correct?

I'm curious...what is the basis for this line of thought? And how would a fully armed Chicago look if the laws were indeed changed?

Democrats Still Got More Votes Than Republicans

Across the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections., the current Senate of 46 Democratic Senators got just shy of 68 million votes while the 54 Republicans about to take office only got 47 million votes.

I wonder if conservatives truly understand what this means...

The Southern Strategy Explained

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

For the full interview, click here. 

Yet Another Conservative

I've received several requests to comment on the Steve Scalise story so I guess I might as well say something. I've been reluctant, for the most part, because honestly this is nothing new (yet another conservative has a race problem? Shocking...not). This is one of those stories that has a whole lot of "merry go round" ishness to it. Republican is discovered to have ties to racist organization...people are shocked...other Republicans screech about race baiting, deny to the point of silliness, and blame the liberals (like they do for everything else)...round and round we go.

Most Democrats, including myself, will tell you that they have a much longer history of racism than do the Republicans. That's because, up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the conservatives of today were southern Democrats. They simply switched parties and became Republicans (see: Nixon's Southern Strategy.  So, it's really not surprising that Scalise spoke at a meeting of neo-Nazis. Nor is it surprising that Louisiana Democrats are rallying to Scalise. If I were him, I'd tell anyone who is a southern Democrat to shut the fuck up.

The Daily Beast has an interesting piece on the folks who courted Scalise to come and speak at their little meeting. Check out this photo of their leaders...

Looks like some commenters from Kevin Baker's blog:)

Anyway, it's my view that Scalise doesn't really have much to worry about. His supporters and, indeed, a big chunk of the GOP base (especially in the South) would actually be more in favor of him speaking at a meeting like this. That's because many of them are dreaming of the South rising again and taking back what is rightfully their's.

Exactly what that is, I've never been able to quite figure out.

A Big Test For The Minimum Wage

This year, 21 states will be raising the minimum wage so we will finally get a broad look at how this action affects economies. My hope is that the following question will not be answered: will the rise in low-paid workers' salaries and their increase in spending in the economy (thus creating more jobs) outweigh any costs in slower job creation?

My answer is YES

Kicking Off The New Year With Positivity

I'd like to kick off the new year with some positivity. Check this out.

The rate of violent crimes in the United States has been cut in half during the past 20 years. That’s according to statistics released in November by the FBI. What surprises some criminologists is that the decline has persisted against the backdrop of two other trends long believed to lead to an increase in crime: The US prison population is dropping and the number of young adults, who are considered more likely to commit a crime, has risen.

But why is this happening?

Criminologists say the latest gains against violent crime appear rooted especially in improved law enforcement, rather than a drop in the number of teenagers and 20-somethings. The “community policing” movement has brought beat cops into closer ties with the neighborhoods they serve, for one thing, and a data-driven focus on crime “hotspots” has led to successful prevention efforts in high-risk areas.

Isn't this exactly how the United States is supposed to work? I find it very interesting that this flies in the face of what I see in the mainstream media...

Obama Can't Even Do That Right

We Need a New Word

The English language needs a new word. A word that describes an incident that is tragic and terrible, yet is completely predictable and preventable, the inevitable outcome of carelessness, stupidity, hubris and pride.

This word would be used to describe what happened in Idaho when a 29-year-old mother visited a Wal-Mart in Idaho. Her two-year-old pulled her handgun out of her purse and shot her dead.

We need this new word to replace the phrase "tragic accident" that everyone uses in these cases, to wit:

"It appears to be a pretty tragic accident," [sheriff's spokesman Stu] Miller said.

The victim's father-in-law, Terry Rutledge, told The Associated Press that Veronica Rutledge "was a beautiful, young, loving mother."

"She was not the least bit irresponsible," Terry Rutledge said. "She was taken much too soon."

What sheer nonsense. Of course she was irresponsible. She recklessly left a loaded handgun within the reach of a two-year-old, thinking a zipper would stop a child. She might as well have given the kid a burning kerosene lamp to play with, or a pit viper.

The grieving father-in-law is a victim of the foolish guns-everywhere-all-the-time mindset that results in the pointless deaths and shootings of thousands of Americans every year. To these people it's inconceivable that a two-year-old child would be able to master the intricacies of a zipper and a trigger.

But why does a woman wrangling four children at a Wal-Mart in Idaho think she needs to pack a pistol in her purse? Are there gangs of white supremacists roving the countryside? Do grizzly bears hang out in the Wal-Mart parking lot? It's not like she was going to make a drug deal in Leroy Brown's south side of Chicago.

What imminent threat was she defending herself from in Idaho? Practically speaking, if a mugger did sneak up on her in front of the Wal-Mart, did she seriously think that she could fish the gun out of a zipped compartment of a purse -- while holding a two-year-old, herding three other kiddies and being distracted by their incessant babble -- fast enough to deter him?

A tragedy is an avalanche inundating a sleeping hamlet. A tsunami wiping out an entire island. An earthquake devastating a city. Getting shot by a toddler isn't a tragedy, it's idiocy. If the kid had shot another shopper instead of the mother, by all rights she should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. There's a sort of rough justice that she -- instead of her child or a completely innocent bystander -- died.

Every year hundreds of Americans get shot by a two-year-old, or a five-year-old with his birthday .22, or a nine-year-old with an Uzi, or a dropped pistol in the men's room, or by a gun jostled in purse, or a gun falling out of a waistband.

These aren't tragic accidents: they are the entirely foreseeable and preventable consequences of people who are not competent to carry or use firearms succumbing to paranoia and fear promulgated by the gun industry. These people have been brainwashed into thinking that their lives are in imminent danger unless they have the ability to shoot anyone they don't like the looks of.

It's terribly sad that this young mother died. It's even sadder is that hundreds more men and women and children will be shot next year in almost exactly the same way, and no one is going to do a damned thing about it.

And that's a real tragedy.

Big Things President Obama Did in 2014

Despite having to deal with the adolescents in Congress, the president accomplished some big things in 2014. Among them...

• Sweeping changes to immigration enforcement
• Actual progress on climate change 
• Remaking the federal courts for a generation 
• Beginning to transform U.S. relationships with Iran and Cuba 
• Greater protections for federal contractors

Hmm...must be why his approval ratings are on the rise...actually doing something and solving problems as opposed to stomping your feet and foaming at the mouth about wacky, ideological nonsense seems to be a better path.

Will the new Congress (controlled entirely by the GOP) follow suit?

War Crimes?

Protected!

My liberal friends like to complain an awful lot about the "raping of the land" and how government is ineffective in protecting it. Yet this recent piece from CSM states otherwise.

Since 2012, more than half a million square miles of land have come under protection. Now more than 15 percent of terrestrial and inland water areas around the globe are under protection, toward a United Nations target of 17 percent by 2020, according to a recent report by the UN Environment Program. 

I'd say that's pretty impressive. Why are they complaining so much?

Good Words

The Police Aren’t Under Attack. Institutionalized Racism Is.

Amen

All That Kenyan Socialism

White People Aren't That Crazy Anymore

I've always loved Chris Rock. I think he is every bit a comedic genius as Jerry Seinfeld or Bob Hope. The intelligence in his wit is a big reason why I think this and a recent interview in New York magazine illustrates this quite clearly.

“Here’s the thing,” Rock said. “When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.” 

“To say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president,” he continued. “That’s not black progress — that’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.”

“You know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children,” Rock said. “There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.”

“We treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through,” Rock said. “Like flared legs and lava lamps – ‘Oh, that crazy thing we did.’ We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down.”

Yep. Pretty much.

Mitch Didn't Get His Christmas Wish

Christmas Eve Tradition

Pop Quiz: Who Kills More Cops?

Boy, people sure do have short memories.

Remember this past June, when man and a woman entered a Las Vegas pizza joint and gunned down two cops having lunch? The shooters then went into a Walmart, killed another person and then committed suicide.

Remember this past September, when Eric Frein, a white, right-wing, anti-government survivalist, killed one Pennsylvania state trooper and wounded another?

Remember when an anti-tax whack job crashed a plane into an IRS building in his own mini-9/11 and killed a government employee a few years ago?

In 2010 Time reported on the rise of right-wing militias, some of whose members have plotted killings against entire police departments, notably in Michigan, Minnesota and Alaska. In most of these case the plotters were acquitted on the conspiracy charges, apparently because when white guys plan cop killings it's free speech, but when blacks and Muslims do it, it's terrorism.

The Anti-Defamation League has been tracking who's been shooting cops, and it turns out that right-wing nut jobs -- white supremacists and anti-government extremists -- have committed 90% of the ideologically motivated cop killings from 2009-2013.

But when people say that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing hate machine incite this kind of violence against the police and the government, they look shocked, I tell you shocked, that anyone could possibly think what they've said might have incited anyone to violence, even when they mention "Second Amendment solutions" in the same sentence.

In the conservative mindset, whenever a black man, or a Muslim, or some other member of a minority does something awful, it's automatically a grand conspiracy, and all other members of that minority must be involved and must be responsible.

But when a right-wing conservative does exactly the same thing, it's because he's a kook, an aberration, or mentally ill. And then they start to rationalize it: you can't really hold that person responsible, they say, because of the terrible injustices that the Kenyan socialist communist dictatorship of the Obama administration has forced them to rebel against. They're just patriots watering the tree of freedom with the blood of their oppressors.

There's no excuse for the killing of two cops in New York by a black man. There's no excuse for the killing of two cops in Las Vegas by a white man and woman. There's no excuse for the killing of Eric Garner by cops in New York.

These acts were committed by the people who did the killing. Not the demonstrators. Not Fox News.

In 2012 Wade Michael Page killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. He had mistaken them for Muslims because they wore turbans. Giuliani, Limbaugh and Fox News have been on a tirade against Muslims for years.

By Fox News logic, if black protestors are responsible for the deaths of the cops in New York, then Fox News and their conservative anti-Muslim ranters are responsible for the deaths of the Sikhs in Wisconsin.

GDP Revised Upward

Third Quarter GDP was revised upward to 5%, making this the strongest growth our economy has seen in 11 years.

“There is a positive feedback loop going on at the moment,” Mike Jakeman, global analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, said in a note. “Job creation is running at the strongest rate for 15 years. More people in work means more income, which means more private spending, which means more business investment, which means more hiring.”

Early estimates are lower, however, for the fourth quarter with numbers in the 2.5-3.0% range. Of course, none of this indicates the destruction of the economy by Obama that I was promised by conservatives.

As I always say (and they always deliver:)), I'm sure they can find something wrong...somewhere...there just has to be something...

Old Cold War Policies

Obama Fulfills Michele Bachmann's Campaign Promise

Remember when, briefly, Michele Bachmann was a frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president back in 2011? She reached that lofty height by promising 

Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again. That will happen.

She and all the Republican whiners bitterly complained that the high price of gas was all Obama's fault.

Well, now gas is less than $2 in parts of the country.

But, strangely, I don't hear Bachmann and all the other Republicans singing Obama's praises for bringing gas prices down. Despite the demonic machinations of the EPA, the banning of fracking in New York, Obama's stalling on the Keystone XL pipeline, and six years of Kenyan socialist communist diktats, somehow, miraculously, gas is less than two bucks a gallon.

The price for crude is now less than the break-even point for many of the fracking wells across the country. But producers can't stop pumping, because they'll lose their leases if they do. That means many of them will start losing their shirts and going bankrupt. But the more they pump, the more they lose.

Drill, baby, drill!

Of course, the president has little or no control over the price of gas. It has to do with lower demand in China, a slow European economy, higher fuel efficiency standards in the United States, a generational shift away from cars in US driving habits, greedy American oil billionaires buying the governor of North Dakota, and Saudi Arabia having large reserves that still cost almost nothing to tap.

Low gas prices won't last long. They'll go up again, when this glut has been burned through, but if this fling with two-dollar gas lasts very long a lot of Americans will have bought cars that are too big. And then they'll start whining again when gas hits $4 a gallon.

On the plus side, low gas prices are putting the hurt on Putin. Several months ago Republicans were swooning over his manly actions in Ukraine. On Fox News Rudy Giuliani said, "He's what you call a real leader." Why? Because he invaded Ukraine and killed innocent Ukrainians. His terrorist shock troops shot down a Malaysian airliner, killing 298 people. Yeah, that's a real leader.

What does it say that so many Republicans had an unseemly mancrush over the Russian dictator who has run his country's economy into the toilet by invading foreign countries and basing his economic development policy solely on oil and gas drilling?

Now the ruble is worth half what it was, and Russia's central bank has jacked interest rates up to Carter-era levels. The Russian economy is in free fall. Bankruptcies are endemic. And the poor oligarchs can't afford to buy $100 million flats in London anymore!

But at least Putin doesn't wear mom jeans.

The "Power" of the Private Sector

The complete capitulation by theater owners and Sony to North Korea has left me somewhat puzzled. I thought that the private sector shit gold and any sort of government involvement inhibits from being all of the glory that they are entitled to be.

Yet here we have the president and the federal government once again riding to the rescue of sniveling buffoons just as we saw in 2008 when they collapsed the world economy. The first step will likely be some sort of counter cyber attack (which sounds really cool, btw) followed by some extra military exercises in the area. Yet I have to say that I'm very weary of North Korea and would like to see the president take a stronger stance with that stain of a country. They are a relic of a bygone time and, like Cuba, need to be brought into the 21st century and it's likely that it's going to have to be the hard way.

Obviously, this is a job for the federal government because it's quite clear that the private sector isn't up to it. I wonder what Ayn Rand's reaction would be...

Sony And The Caving

I still can't believe that Sony caved to...who?....cyber terrorists? Seriously, what kind of a message does this send? It's not just Sony, of course. It's also theater chains around the country who have decided to pull the film from viewing because they are worried about terrorist attacks. Where, exactly? Iowa?

I'm actually pretty disappointed in our nation today. I guess anyone on the internet who makes a threat about something is going to make us all shit our pants.

The President Does It Again

I guess Barack Obama is not going to go gently into that good night for the last two years of his 2nd term. Once again, a giant FUCK YOU to the old white men who continue to blather about communism (see: right wing bloggers).

What really cracks me up about conservatives' reaction to this is that they are calling it a loss. Of course, they don't really think this because they know that within a decade Cubans are going to be fiddling on social media as America's soft economic power exerts its hegemonic will on one of the few remaining nations that hasn't really joined the 21st century global marketplace. They will become "Americanized" to one degree or another just like the rest of the planet. Conservatives know this will end up being (gasp!) yet another success for the man their inferiority complexes simply won't allow a win so they're pissed off about it and waxing "ideological nonsense."

I look forward to what the next two years will bring. Let's remember that Barack Obama was a community organizer so his faith in improving lives comes from his heart and soul, not his ego.

And now his community is our entire country...indeed, the world...

Being Gay Is Not A Western Invention

Clinton versus...Bush?

Jeb Bush Forming PAC to Explore Presidential Bid 

Well, this is going to cause some mouthfoaming...

Holy Crap!

I simply can't believe how many people hang out on Quora. I get between 150-200 hits a day on here...sometimes more if Nikto posts because he has a bigger following than I do. Being retired, he has more time to construct articles with nifty graphics!!

Yet, check out this question I posted about Ayn Rand on Quora. Nearly 60,000 people have viewed it with 73 answers. My answer alone has been viewed over 1200 times. Wow!

All Dogs Go To Heaven?

First there was this...

Dogs in Heaven? Pope Francis Leaves Pearly Gates Open

And then now there is this...

Reports Wrongly Suggested Pope Francis Said Animals Go to Heaven

Ah well....

The Tide Continues To Turn

From recent New York Times article...

At the global climate change negotiations now wrapping up in Peru, American negotiators are being met with something wildly unfamiliar: cheers, applause, thanks and praise. It is an incongruous moment, arriving at a time when so many aspects of American foreign policy are under fire. But the enthusiastic reception on climate issues comes a month after a historic announcement by the United States and China, the world’s two largest polluters, that they would jointly commit to cut their emissions. Many international negotiators say the deal is the catalyst that could lead to a new global climate change accord that would, for the first time, commit every nation in the world to cutting its own planet-warming emissions.

The tide continues to turn...

Friday Humor

You Are Not A Scientist

Remember All That Stuff About Torture?

Yeah.....

Behind Every Woman...

Good News

Time for some good news on Monday and I think it's time we realize that Africa is not just about Ebola!

I've always said that if you teach a village to fish, you create an economy. Well, how about dairy farming?

As part of the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative, the USAID Agricultural Growth Program-Livestock Market Development project seeks to improve nutrition and boost incomes, through training and investments in commodities like dairy, meat, and live animals. The project targets both men and women, with specific interventions to integrate women entrepreneurs into the broader livestock value chain. For example, the project developed a specific female entrepreneur training package designed to enhance the business capacity of women. Moreover, to better facilitate the participation of women in the offered technical trainings, the project provides innovative daycare services for the children of women participants.

That would the "evil" federal government, folks:)

Burkina-Faso poor farmers are outsmarting climate change.

Lenhardt said information about the ever-improving sustainable techniques, which include using ditches to collect water, had been disseminated by farmers' groups and national organisations to great effect.

Yay!

And Somalia is now at a pivotal point in its history, according to a recent UN report.
Speaking to reporters as he touched down in the city, Mr. Ban acknowledged that after two decades of internecine conflict and humanitarian crises, Somalia was finally waking from a “long nightmare,” reaching a “pivotal moment” as militant group Al-Shabaab appeared to be on the wane and political progress had finally seemed to take root as the country’s institutions were steadily strengthened.

Pretty darn cool!!

Thomas Jefferson on a Sunday Morning

Obama Still Destroying Economy

Job Gains Put US on Pace for Best Growth Since '99

"These were boom-like numbers," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "They indicate that the U.S. economy is on very solid ground." Friday's report also raised hopes that Americans' pay might finally be starting to increase after barely budging since the Great Recession began seven years ago. The average hourly wage rose 9 cents to $24.66, the biggest gain in 17 months.

I'm sure conservatives can find some sort of bad news in here...there has to be something!

It's Art

Putin Caves

So much for for the "all-powerful" Putin whose thunder makes the earth quake.

President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that he would scrap Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline, a grandiose project that was once intended to establish the country’s dominance in southeastern Europe but instead fell victim to Russia’s increasingly toxic relationship with the West. It was a rare diplomatic defeat for Mr. Putin, who said Russia would redirect the pipeline to Turkey. He painted the failure to build the pipeline as a loss for Europe and blamed Brussels for its intransigence.

And so much for the always weak Barack Obama...

The decision also seemed to be a rare victory for the European Union and the Obama administration, which have appeared largely impotent this year as Mr. Putin annexed Crimea and stirred rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

As I have stated previously, the long run will not be kind to Vladimir Putin. This is the first of many examples.

Future Climate Change Debate

Pondering Ferguson and Cliven Bundy

I'm having trouble today figuring something out. Why is it that the government force used by Darren Wilson against Michael Brown was justified and yet the government force against Cliven Bundy is not justified? The former has seen howls of support from conservatives and the latter shrieks of government intrusion. Both men broke the law yet one is dead and the other is still getting a pass.

So, I'm wondering how conservatives would react if the black people of Ferguson took up arms against the police as the "freedom" fighters at Clive Bundy's ranch are doing right now.

Good Words

From a question on Quora regarding why Republicans hate the president so much...

My list is based directly on the comments I've heard the most from dozens and dozens of republicans over the last eight years; Not just the garbage that Faux News and their pinheads broadcast, or what I read online, but stuff that I hear fall directly out of the mouths of republicans, face-to-face :

1) He's black, with an "Un-American"-sounding name. ("Black" usually isn't the word they use, either, and they HATE being reminded that they're bigots.)

2) He's not just black - He's a smart, successful - "Uppity" - black man who doesn't beg their permission before he does stuff. They resent this.

3) He's beaten them. Twice. Modern republicans value winning an election more than they value the toil and sweat and sacrifice that comes after winning an election, and Obama "took that away from them" too, that big MEANIE.

4) Republicans feel entitled to rule America, forever, and all of this "Obama" stuff goes against what they expect and demand. They resent this.

5) Obama's cleaned up most of the carnage they caused for eight years. They don't feel a shred of shame or guilt for the damage they did to the country and the world, and they resent being identified with the carnage in the first place.

6) Obama's victories and accomplishments remind republicans that they still have to live in the real world, where they don't always get their way. They resent this.

7) He doesn't conform to the stereotype of a black male being dangerous, violent, dumb, sexually irresponsible and prone to substance abuse and criminal activity.  His simple existence reminds so many republicans that, again and again, they're just plain wrong, wrong, wrong.

8) He steadfastly refuses to be a bloodthirsty muslim who mass murders white christians. He only kills muslims. And just never mind that he's mass-murdered more muslims than Bush ever DREAMED of. He's still somehow managed to hide the "undeniable fact" that he's ONE OF THEM, even though he GOT THEIR LEADER.

9) He gives "their" money away to people they don't like, and just never goddamn mind that they're almost all, to a one, better off than they were when Bush left office. He just CAN'T be given credit for any of that, he just CAN'T.

10) He's from Chicago. Whatever THAT means.

Dave echoes my answer on this question but does hit some different notes that fold in quite nicely:)