Other Than Thinking It's A Dandy Idea, Limbaugh Is Right About This

Rush Limbaugh was interviewed by Chris Wallace yesterday on "Fox News Sunday" and Politics USA's Jason Easley believes

To anyone outside of the Republican media bubble, Rush Limbaugh sounded crazy. The only factual statement in the entire segment was that Republicans won the 2014 election. Everything else that came out of Limbaugh’s mouth was combination of borderline mental illness and fantasy.

Perhaps. But this is the time- shortly after an election- to appear crazy, after which you, and the opinion you propounded, may be forgotten.  The portion Easley finds relevant has Rush stating (video below)


Does that not matter? You keep talking polls to me, and I’ve got the. The essence of a poll is an election, and I’ve got two of them. And we would have won the White House in 2012 if four million Republicans hadn’t have stayed home.
…
What does it matter? They won. The point is that this is a trick. I think the shutdown is a trick. Here is what it really means, Chris. The Republicans want what Obama wants on immigration, and they are using the government shutdown as an excuse to not stop him. Because the truth of the matter is they agree with it. Romney agrees with it. Jeb Bush agrees with it. Chamber of Commerce agrees with it. Obviously, the Republican establishment doesn’t want to stop Obama on comprehensive immigration reform….And very conveniently, here’s this government shutdown. Oh, we can’t act. We can’t act because they’ll blame us for shutting down the government. They’ll blame us for shutting down the government.

I think it’s absurd. I think it’s ridiculous, and the American people are being let down here. They’re voting. They’re expressing their desires. They want this stuff stopped, and the Republican Party’s not listening.










Speaking in December 2014, Limbaugh has two good points. Establishment Repubs are feigning most of their indignation over immigration.  Their donor base is not hostile to immigration reform and the GOP probably cannot legally stop it, anyway.

Additionally, the voters comprising the popular base of the Repub Party want a government shutdown, virtually anything they can be sold as stopping Obama, even if it really damages only the country. Perhaps The Big Money Boyz (as Digby often refers to them) are wary but only because they fear the political backlash. Their concerns are short-lived and a shutdown would do nothing to undermine their faith that the GOP is sympatico with their needs and desires.

It would  hurt the American people, of course, but that is not the concern of the donor base nor the belief of the popular base.  Rush Limbaugh understands the impact upon the nation but realizes that strategically, that's an asset, not a bug. In late August, when Mitch McConnell threatened a government shutdown were the GOP to regain (as it did) the Senate through elections 75 days later, Steve M. questioned the conventional judgement that a threat to shut down the federal government would backfire against the Party. He argued

Hell, even the public-opinion impact of the government shutdown we experienced last year was evanescent -- as soon as the shutdown was over, the Democrats' advantage over Republicans on generic-ballot poll questions began to shrink (and eventually reverse), and it took a lot less than two and a half months.  

He demonstrated this with the graph for which SM explained, "The blue hump in the middle is the fleeting moment when Democrats had the greatest advantage over Republicans; that moment ended almost immediately after the shutdown did."

It's not that Limbaugh hadn't, as Joan Walsh puts it, "brought the lies, claiming 'the only thing that happened in that shutdown was Barack Obama closed (....) the World War II memorial to World War II vets' and 'shut down some White House tours.'"     The shutdown, she noted, "cost $24 billion in lost economic activity," hardly a triviality.

But to the GOP that is mere collateral damage. If few people remembered for even three months the government shutdown of 2013, they're unlikely to remember in late 2016 one which engineered in early 2014. What voters probably would keep in mind is their dissatisfaction with government, exacerbated by the shutdown but which they mostly would not attribute to it.  And the GOP is not considered  the party of government.

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It Should Not Be This Difficult

The establishment left must do better than this.  Fox News' Megyn Kelly went black-on-black crime (without using the phrase) when on Friday night she asked Urban League CEO Mark Morial

Where are the protests -- but where are the protests over the fact that 91 percent of all blacks who were murdered in 2013 were killed by other blacks, seven percent were killed by whites. Ninety one percent of the murders committed against black people were by other black people. 

Morial pointed to the Sunday custom of "hundred African-American churches around the country where there's a conversation about violence, police violence, black-on-black violence."  Still, when Kelly claimed she hasn't "seen rallies like this over the black-on-black crime which is 91 percent in New York City and nationally," Morial might have mentioned, as has Slate's Jamelle Bouie, community protests over the last few years in Chicago, New York, Newark, NJ, Pittsburgh, Saginaw, Michigan and in Gary, Indiana.

Of course, blacks commit crimes mostly against blacks as whites commit crimes mostly against whites because most aberrant behavior is directed against a person one knows, associates with, or does professional or personal business with.  Morial's best argument, though, would have been one given by Bouie when the latter writes "Regardless of cause or concern, a community doesn’t forfeit fair treatment because it has crime. That was true then when the scourge was lynching, and it’s true now that the scourge is unjust police violence."

Morial's response to the black-on-black thing was disappointing primarily because the cliche should loom as a hanging curve by now. But the question Kelly initially posed, fundamental to the interview (video here; transcript here), was "What is the evidence that what happened to Eric Garner and what happened to Michael Brown has anything to do with race?"  It was nearly gut-wrenching to listen to the head of the nation's largest civil rights organization flailing about:


KELLY: All right. So, let's start with this, what is the evidence that what happened to Eric Garner and what happened to Michael Brown has anything to do with race?

MORIAL: Well, it's surprising to me that in both of these instances, Prosecutor McCullough and the Staten Island prosecutor deviated from what most lawyers know and understand -- and I am one, who spent 10 years practicing law including criminal law -- deviated from standard procedure when it comes to managing a grand jury. And that is to present evidence and make a recommendation to the grand jury as to what charge should be brought. 

Then secondarily, both in Ferguson asking in Ferguson not even asking but releasing secret grand jury testimony into the public sphere.  And here in Staten Island asking a judge for the release of such testimony.  The judge for the most part denied that request allowing a release of only a limited summary.

KELLY: All right. It's the release, it's a request by the prosecutors for release of information. That plus the fact in Ferguson the prosecutor did not specifically ask for an indictment. Is that your evidence that these two cases have something to do with race?

MORIAL: In those two cases it's surprising as to why that process would be followed where you have a black victim of police -- of a police killing and a white alleged perpetrator of that killing. And so what I ask is, why were these cases handled differently than most cases?  

KELLY: Do you think it could be the national spotlight that was on those cases as opposed to the race of the policeman and the person who died?

MORIAL: But for a good prosecutor who is experienced, that should not really matter. What should matter is fulfilling the responsibility. Also Megyn I look at the history of the Rodney King case where a state court failed to bring about a conviction. And the federal government brought a prosecution and secured a conviction. Ditto for Abner Louima, ditto for the Danziger Bridge case down in New Orleans. Those are just a few examples, and these are five examples, I'm citing here, no doubt there are others. And I think that there ought to be a careful look at why in these cases do these state grand juries --

KELLY: Okay, but no, but wait. Let me jump in. Because you cite a few examples. But the same examples, opposite examples could be cited the other way. I mean, just doing brief research before we came to air tonight I can site for you several examples of a situation where a black police officer killed a white man, and no charges were brought. So, black cops killing white men, no charges resulted in those cases. Is that racism against whites?

MORIAL: And let me say this though.

KELLY: Let me finish my point and I'll give you the floor. Just today a white police chief who fatally shot an unarmed black man in South Carolina back in 2011 was charged with murder. And we could go on. When there are situations where white cops shoot and kill black men and the white cops are charged, there are few and far between where a white cop is killing a black man, but I can say to you examples where it's happened and the white cop is charged. I can also say to you examples where the black cop killed the white man and he's not charged. What is your evidence that the result in these two particular cases had anything to do with the fact that the dead men were black?

MORIAL: You seem to be really hung up on this question, but let's look at the cases.  

KELLY: I'm not hung up on it. But you're hung up on it.

(CROSSTALK)

You, the Congressional Black Caucus that says black and brown lives don't matter, cops can kill with impunity.  

MORIAL: Megyn, give me an opportunity to finish. I'll listen to you.

KELLY: I'm defending the charge you just made--  

MORIAL: Yes. But you're going to have to give me a chance to finish.  

KELLY: You go ahead.  

MORIAL: So, let's look at these cases at hand. The cases at hand did not yield justice. And that's why I am pleased at the Department of Justice and the attorney general --

KELLY: I get that.

MORIAL: I'm going to conduct --  

KELLY: I get that. You're entitled to your opinion on that and to push for an additional investigation. And that's absolutely -- your right.  But to say that this is a racist situation as Al Sharpton has suggested, as Mayor de Blasio has suggested, as many others have suggested, requires evidence.

MORIAL: What would it take for you to acknowledge -- what would it take for you to acknowledge that race is an issue? Maybe you don't want to acknowledge that race is an issue.  

KELLY: I'd like to know the proof, just tell me.

MORIAL: Let us say this, on this issue we have a difference of opinion. And as Americans we have a right to have a difference of opinion --

KELLY: I'm open minded. I don't have an opinion. I would like to know the evidence.  

MORIAL: -- with respect to how this occurs. And I think there are just too many instances. Yes, there's always other cases and to some extent whether a police officer regardless of his color or her color in a case where they in fact take advantage of a citizen, that case should be handled. Those people if probable cause is met should be prosecuted. And I think the outcry you see, Megyn, is not operating in a vacuum. And it's not just one or two civil rights organizations. This is an organic protest.  


This, then, is the best the center-left could come up with on Fox News: You seem to be really hung up on this question.... What would it take for you to acknowledge- what would it take for you to acknowledge that race is an issue?.... And I think there are just too many instances.

The "professional left" (in the derisive words of then-presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs) recognizes additional issues: broken windows policing; the apparent near-immunity of police officers for violence committed against civilians; and, as almost always, class. But we depend on the center-left (neo-liberals in the economic sphere) to make the case- which is easy to make- that race plays a role. The Urban League is unlikely to probe issues of power, except for race. If that is not a hanging curve ball for their spokespersons, then nothing is. At most,it is a sub-88 mph fast ball.

One way or another, it comes down to this with today's GOP on race: we live in a post-racial nation, though more far more often expressed along the lines of "we elected a black president, how come there is still racism?"  Perhaps the corporate-friendly left talks only to people who agree with it, but it must do better.

Democratic politicians and the civil rights establishment cannot leave effective replies to these basic questions asked by the right to journalists and activists. If they do, the rising numbers of black and Hispanic voters the Democratic Party is depending on won't be enough to avert Republican electoral dominance.

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Stop It. Stop It Now.

Commenting on the death of Eric Garner (video of protesters, below) at the hands of police officer Daniel Pantaleo in New York City's Staten Island (the traditionally Republican part of NYC), Rand Paul on Hardball opined

Obviously, the individual circumstances are important, but I think it’s also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so they’ve driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, ‘Hey, we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos responded "That's right, the guy who claims that 'you'll find nobody in Congress doing more for minority rights than me right now, Republican or Democrat' thinks that the killing of a black man by a police officer was actually about taxes."

Charles Pierce similarly wasn't convinced and remarked

Just last June, a little less than a month before Eric Garner's killing,  a guy in Brooklyn was busted for selling untaxed cigarettes. He was found with almost 900 boxes of contraband and $90,000. He also was not choked to death by the arresting officers so, no, sorry, I think there might have been (ahem) other, more immediate factors in play in the case of Eric Garner, but thank you for your input.

Paul, as you might have guessed, wants us all to imagine Big Government was at fault and blaming everything on "taxes" (income? sales? excise?) never lost anyone a vote in Repub presidential primaries.

Eric Garner wasn't choked to death because of cigarette taxes. Joan Walsh notes

we don’t even know for sure that Garner was selling loose cigarettes at the time he was taken into custody and killed. Also, a lot of folks who sell loose cigarettes buy them cheap, and sell them for more than they paid — but also pay taxes on them. It’s not always a tax dodge. So it’s not even clear if Paul is right about the tax issue.

It's not always a tax dodge, Garner may not have been selling loose cigarettes but the officers (legitimately) believed he was.  And then they moved in to confront and ultimately to apprehend the presumed offender. The choke hold- contrary to departmental policy- aside, the police were following fairly normal policy.

And the name of this policy is "broken windows" policing.  Slate's Justin Peters explains

Why was Garner approached at all? Because of the emphasis on “broken windows policing” under NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. As Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s police commissioner in the 1990s, Bratton presided over a surge in petty-crime law enforcement, on the theory that vigorously enforcing the small laws in some way dissuades or prevents people from breaking the big ones. There’s little evidence that theory is correct. Nevertheless, mayor-elect Bill de Blasio brought Bratton back as New York’s police commissioner last December. Bratton’s return meant the return of broken windows policing. “If you take care of the little things, then you can prevent a lot of the big things,” Bratton said in March, spouting the broken windows gospel. It’s that philosophy as much as anything else is to blame for Eric Garner’s death.

The city adopted broken windows and combined it with the computer program Compstat, which monitors crime rates citywide..  Nonetheless,

We do know that the declines in violent crime in New York have been comparable to declines in cities that didn’t use Compstat or broken windows. As criminologist Richard Rosenfeld put it in a 2002 paper, “homicide rates also have decreased sharply in cities that did not noticeably alter their policing policies, such as Los Angeles, or that instituted very different changes from those in New York, such as San Diego.” The takeaway: Crime just keeps going down everywhere. Nobody is sure why.

Since liberal Democrat Bill DeBlasio was elected mayor partly in response to disenchantment with the stop-and-frisk tactics instituted by his predecessor, "broken windows has replaced stop-and-frisk as the controversial police tactic du jour." According to The New York Times, arrests of peddlers and peddlers on the subway, for low-level violations in public housing developments, and for drinking beer in public and riding a bike on the subway have increased. But, Peters continues

This renewed emphasis on misdemeanor “quality of life” arrests has sparked renewed criticisms from community members who are tired of being hassled. These criticisms spiked after Garner’s death in July. Six members of New York’s congressional delegation sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter noting that “Mr. Garner’s death has taken place in the context of a broken windows policing strategy that appears to target communities of color for the enforcement of minor violations and low-level offenses.”

"Communities of color" (colored communities?) are targeted because they are disproportionately economically deprived and thus (surprise!) there are more offenses committed there. But whatever the justification for concentrating efforts in black neighborhoods, the obsession with minor offenses undermines police-community relations and understandably sparks a suspicion of racial intent.

It is destructive and relatively ineffective. Were law enforcement aggresively to implement broken windows, there would be more of the kind of confrontation law enforcement had with Eric Garner (and with Michael Brown, who was unacceptably walking in the street).   When police officers are met with resistance when they attempt to enforce the law, they are not amused.   Confrontation over cigarettes or streetwalking (double entendre intended) is not worth the gamble and disintegration of community relations. End it for the benefit of everyone, inner-city blacks and all of us.












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It's A Family Thing

Never, ever mess with the family.

Elizabeth Lauten has worked for various GOP campaigns and was communications director for Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee when, inspired by a fowl presidential pardon, she wrote on her Facebook page

Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play. Then again your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I’m guessing you're coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department. Nevertheless, stretch yourself. Rise to the occasion. Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar. And certainly don't make faces during televised, public events.

Lauten's remarks were widely slammed and she erased them from her Facebook page. She resigned her position and issued this statement:

I reacted to an article and quickly judged the two young ladies in a way that I would never have wanted to be judged myself as a teenager. After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents and re-reading my words online, I can see more clearly how hurtful my words were. Please know that these judgmental feelings truly have no pace in my heart. Furthermore, I'd like to apologize to all of those who I have hurt and offended with my words, and pledge to learn and grow (and I assure you I have) from this experience.

Among the vociferous critics of the GOP operative's apparent slam of the two children was the Daily Beast's Elizabeth Nuzzi, who nonetheless wrote that Lauten "apparently apologized online on Saturday."

Uh no, she didn't.  Not only did she try to assure us she is truly spiritual ("after many hours of prayer"), a family woman ("talking to my parents"), and that it wasn't really her speaking ("these judgmental feelings truly have no place in my heart"), she tried to divert us from her actual target. Steve M. noticed

this congressional staffer doesn't feel any need to apologize for saying that the president and first lady "don't respect their positions that much, or the nation for that matter." I guess when there's a Democratic president it's not necessary for political opponents who work in the government to concede that, while people may disagree on policy, the president and first lady love their country and are trying to do what they think is best for it...

(Whatever Lauten really believes about Barack and Michelle Obama) the notion that the president and first lady hate America and its institutions is widespread on the right, and is reinforced by a steady stream of assertions like this, big and small.  

This incident demonstrates an important principle in American politics.

It has been said that former North Carolina senator John Edwards is the most unpopular person in the nation, a claim seemingly borne out in polls, even as surveys indicate a growing recognition of the great American income divide, the theme (expressed as "two Americas") of Edwards' ill-fated presidential campaign.   Approximately a year ago Edwards' daughter Cate Edwards (photo- from Lance Rosenfeld/Prime/for the Washington Post- below), as the Washington Post's Neely Tucker writes, " turned her two-lawyer firm in Dupont Circle into the Washington office of Edwards Kirby." John Edwards has joined the firm, which includes an office in Raleigh, North Carolina.

But even though Ms. Edwards evidently is an accomplished, loyal, and relatively unpretentious individual, it is a little much to read Tucker remark

Given her privileged start in life, Cate Edwards is pretty low-key. Yes, she bought her $1.3 million home while still in law school, but she doesn’t come off as upper-crust. She’s good company, doesn’t bother much with makeup and lets her long brown hair fall loose. She loves “Veronica Mars” so much she contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for the movie and obsesses over her home-state University of North Carolina basketball team. She and Trevor have Luca, an Italian water dog, and a Vespa. At dinner at Il Canale in Georgetown, they are a fun couple.

If one wishes to understand what the future might hold for Cate Edwards, then one must consider the trials that shaped her and, thus, why her close relationship with her father endures.

Make room on Mount Rushmore! Gosh, she doesn't flaunt her wealth and is so down-to-earth she "doesn't bother much with makeup" (though tastefully provocative in that she "lets her long brown hair fall loose.") She loves animals and her husband, with whom she forms"a fun couple."  And most important- she's true to her school!

(That brings to mind an old bad song, below, by an overrated group. The lyrics were not meant as sarcasm. Watch and listen at your own risk.)

If Elizabeth Lauten had remembered to confine herself to a snide remark about the President of the United States and leader of the Free World (similarly, no sarcasm), she would still have a plum job.










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A Whole Lot More Than Race

It is said that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile... and that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

So it should be of no surprise that even one of America's foremost bloggers (one of whom is featured on the right side of this page) would be wrong once in a while.  Heather Digby Parton, skeptical of the professed interest of Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee(photo below from AP/Reuters/J. Scott Applewhite/Yun Gripas/Rick Bowmer) in criminal  justice reform, notes in one of her regular Salon columns crime "is the evergreen Republican go-to election attack. We saw it just recently in the fall campaign."  Unfortunately, along the way she misinterprets a study which        

.... involved a number of interesting tests of random people. This is just one of them:

Their first experiment unfolded at a train station near San Francisco. A white female researcher asked 62 white voters to watch a video containing mug shots of male inmates. Some of the participants saw a video in which 25 percent of the mug shots were of black men, while others saw a video in which the percentage of black men among the mug shots rose to 45 percent. The participants then had an opportunity to sign a real petition aimed at easing the severity of California’s three-strikes law. “It seemed like a great opportunity – a real-life political issue – to test this question of whether blacker prison populations lead people to accept these more punitive policies,” Eberhardt said. The results were clear. Over half of the participants who’d seen the mug shots with fewer black men signed the petition, whereas only 27 percent of people who viewed the mug shots containing a higher percentage of black inmates agreed to sign. This was the case regardless of how harsh participants thought the law was.

She concludes "That unfortunate result was repeated in other experiments. Informing people that our prison system is racist leads many white people to support it."

Uh, no, not necessarily. A subscription is required to get access to the study, published in the journal Psychological Science. But whatever the conclusions the researchers came to, the study is entitled merely "Racial Disparities in Incarceration Increase Acceptance of Punitive Policies."  That conclusion is warranted- or perhaps we may say "proven beyond a reasonable doubt."

Given the definition of disparity, the claim of racial disparities in sentencing proves nothing other than that per capita there are more black people sentenced to prison than white people.

It is possible the researchers demonstrated far more than that.Nonetheless, in a paragraph Digby quoted from a summary of the study,  Shara Tonn observed 

Although African-Americans constitute only 12 percent of America's population, they represent 40 percent of the nation's prison inmates.

But informing the white public of this disproportionate incarceration rate may actually bolster support for the very policies that perpetuate the inequality..

To conclude that a disproportionate incarceration rate encouraging respondents to support punitive measures is synonymous with "informing people that our prison system is racist leads many white people to support it" is a leap worthy of an Olympic broad jumper.

Survey participants, from what we can tell from Digby, were not informed our prison system is racist. According to Tonn, "white people were told about these racial disparities."  It is highly unlikely they were told the system is "racist" and only slightly more likely they were told there is no rationale for disparity in prison population other than race.

One of the researchers concluded "ironically, exposure to extreme racial disparities may make the public less, and not more, responsive to attempts to lessen the severity of policies that help maintain those disparities."   Though ironic, it may be explainable. Many white people associate blacks with violent crime committed upon a stranger.  Show them a mug shot of a black inmate, they think not of simple theft, harassment, loitering, domestic violence, or drug possession but of far more serious offenses.  Hence, greater support for punitive measures will be expressed.

When we learn more blacks than whites (per capita) are in prison, it ought to trigger the conclusion that somehow we have gone astray. But just as we have gone astray, so has progressivism when one of our most insightful and incisive observers concludes that this state of  affairs proves primarily "the system is racist."

Racism in the criminal justice system was neither the focus of the survey nor clearly demonstrated by it.  Whatever its racist elements, there are other factors, such as familial dysfunction, inferior education, poverty, joblessness, and relative deprivation, which play a greater role than "racism," however one defines it.

Those other factors once were issues in the progressive world; now, not so much. Conservatives, fetishizing states' rights, assume that left alone, a state will do what's best for its residents. But progressives ought to be aware that standards, outcomes, and a sense of fairness differ widely from one jurisdiction to another, one state to another. Recognizing this, and that racism is but one part of  the criminal justice puzzle, is a place to start if the left is to regain its populist principles.

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Not Much Enthusiasm For That

Charles Pierce isn't all right (although he's alright).  Slamming a column by The Washington Post's Dana Milbank criticizing what the latter believes has been President Obama's passive approach to Ferguson, Pierce argues "We should make him do things, not the other way around. That's been the fundamental challenge of him from the outset. He's left the hard and necessary work of self-government to a country that simply is no longer up to the job."

That's giving Obama a free pass, given that he is, after all, the President.  During a presidential nominating campaign characterized by little ideological difference, candidate of hope and change Barack Obama emphasized the importance of progressive effort from individuals such as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., to which Senator Clinton responded "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights  Act. It took a president to get it done." Barack Obama had foreshadowed his "make me do  the right thing" approach to the presidency.

Milbank writes

The grand-jury decision not to charge the white police officer who killed an unarmed black teenager in Missouri has given Obama another opportunity to show strong and decisive presidential leadership. And, once again, Obama is using the bully pulpit like a 98-pound weakling. If any more chin-stroking goes on at this White House, the president’s advisers are going to have chafe marks on their jawbones....

Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed their wish that Obama go to Ferguson. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, preaching in Portland, Ore., on Sunday, said Obama should go to Ferguson, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Obama ally Deval Patrick, the Massachusetts governor, said on NBC that Obama “wants to go” to Ferguson but faces a “quandary” because of an ongoing Justice Department investigation.

Pierce responds

Jesus H. Christ On Human Growth Hormones, can we stop already with the wimp business? Thoughtfulness is not weakness. Prudence is not cowardice. The way I know this is that, for eight years, we were subject to the Leadership (!)tm of an ignoramus whose gut told him what to do, and his gut was even dumber than he was, and the whole country nearly fell apart. Given the choice between that and chin-stroking, I know which way I'm leaning....

Let those "Democratic lawmakers" show themselves or shut up. Let them go march in Ferguson. Nothing's stopping them. And would anyone like to guess what the reaction would be if the president went to Ferguson on the advice of Jesse Jackson? The president -- who did, as we have been endlessly reminded by the people who worked the hardest to sabotage his entire administration, promise to make us one country again -- doing the bidding of the Mayor of Hymietown? Marty Peretz would have a stroke.

And Marty Peretz, former neo-con publisher of The New Republic, is a Democrat.  By the time Republicans got through with Obama for taking Jesse Jackson up on his suggestion, they'd have half the country convinced Henry Louis Gates Jr. (he of the "beer summit," which photo is below)) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright are Barack Obama's gay parents. (O.K.; only Pierce can write like Pierce.)

Admit it. You knew it was coming- the national conversation on race thing. Milbank adds

They’re not going well, and Obama, by going to Ferguson and talking about Ferguson elsewhere around the country, could start the conversation about race we always talk about but never seem to have. The nation’s first black president is in a unique position to quell protests, but also to give voice to legitimate grievances about the justice system.

The only thing most conservatives want less than a conversation about race is an opinion about why we don't want a conversation on race.  It was that way when in the year after Senator Obama was elected President, Attorney General Holder noted "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been, and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”  

Five years later the sentiment remains, and Pierce responds to Milbank's reality-starved suggestion by commenting

In which Dana Milbank proves that the weather's lovely on the moons of Neptune, where he apparently has spent the past six years. Here's the simple truth. The country doesn't want a conversation on race, especially one led by the blah president whose simple legitimacy has been under assault since the moment his hand came off the Bible. The country doesn't want a conversation on race unless it is sure from the outset that white people will "win" it. The idea that the president could jump-start this conversation, let alone "give voice" to black people's complaints about (largely) white policemen who are killing them, and not be greeted with the shitstorm sharknado of all time, is so fantastical that it makes me wonder whether I even read Milbank correctly. Jon Stewart put together a helpful survey of the shitstorm already raging on the right, and that's while the president is only stroking his chin on the topic. If the president actually did what Milbank is suggesting, any conversation on race that might begin would quickly be drowned out by the din of the thousands of tiny hammers that fashion the ideas in Sean Hannity's skull. We're not having a serious conversation about race because, as a nation, we're a bunch of chickenshits who aren't interested in being citizens ourselves, let alone extending that title to people whom we consider less than we are.

The less honest conservatives argue we proved we have no race problem by electing a black president whom they didn't vote for and now want impeached. 

The more honest  conservatives are afraid of being called "racist" if  there is a discussion about race per se, and so speak around it, as in the push to suppress the votes of the people they have proven they have no bias against.  They play the victim enthusiastically but to be fair (and accurate), it is analogous to "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me." 

Recall that Milbank himself  maintains "The nation’s first black president is in a unique position to quell protests, but also to give voice to legitimate grievances about the justice system." The outcome is already decided.  The response of the black community of Ferguson constitutes "legitimate grievances about the justice system."  If Dana Milbank genuinely longed for a fair and open conversation about race, "legitimate grievances about the justice system and the dangers of policing in communities in which relationships with law enforcement are strained" would suggest at least a modicum of objectivity.  (Of course, most conservatives still would want no part of that discussion.)

As it happens- and whatever Obama's real views are about the controversy- that was largely the tone of the President's remarks after announcement that the grand jury had decided not to indict Officer Wilson.  Focused on the need to "make more progress," the President stated "there's never an excuse for violence.... but those who are only interested in focusing on the violence and just want the problem to go away need to recognize that we do have work to do here, and we shouldn't try to paper it over."    That is genuinely fair and balanced.

Attempting to stay positive, President Obama emphasized both preventing crime and "working to train officials so that law enforcement conducts itself in a way that is fair to everybody. "  He did not mention a need for an honest, national conversation on race. Alas, the constituency for that is distressingly small.

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The Muddle Of Black On Black

Appearing on Fox and Friends (video below) a week ago, former New York City mayor  Rudy Giuliani stated 

The danger to a black child is not a white police officer. That’s going to happen less than 1 percent of the time. The danger to a black child — if it was my child — the danger is another black, 93 percent of the time they’re going to be killed by another black...

Blacks are basically killing other blacks, and these people are spending millions and millions of dollars demonstrating. They have every right to do it. Why don’t they spend an equal amount of time trying to figure out that horrendous crime problem that exists?









The  ex-mayor was supporting the argument he had the previous day with Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson on Meet The Press (video below).   Giuliani was intent on railing against the demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the individuals appalled at the killing of Michael Brown, Jr. and the exoneration of then-police officer Darren Wilson.








"Why don't these  people (the demonstrators) spend an equal amount of time trying to straighten out this horrendous crime problem that exists," Giuliani emphasized on Fox and Friends.  Incensed at Dyson, on MTP he had charged "how about you go reduce crime?" Dyson noted that he was not an elected official but a few moments later (at approximately 2:30 of the video), Giuliani went a little ugly, admonishing "why don't you people" do something about the problem. He didn't explain exactly to whom "you people" referred.

"Ninety-three per cent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks," maintained Giuliani, twice on Sunday, once on Monday, citing a statistic Politifact believes is borne out by US Department of Justice statistics. 

To his credit, the ex-mayor evidently got through both interviews without using the hoary "black-on-black crime" cliche. He also was not quite as daft as Dyson, who claimed "black people who kill black people go to jail." Though likely accurate, it is not analogous to the situation of a police officer killing someone who was suspected of having earlier committed a theft- as in Ferguson- or to police officers (who get, if not a free pass, one quite inexpensive) in general.  Less accurately, Dyson maintained "most black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail."

Largely because some crimes simply aren't serious enough to warrant jail, it doesn't happen exactly as Dyson suggests. It is disconcerting, further, that the professor appeared to be aghast at the thought that someone who commits a serious crime against another might be removed from the community.

Dyson's evident  hostility toward law enforcement and acceptance of what once was termed "inner city crime" led Giuliani to suggest if crime between blacks is reduced "so, so maybe white police officers don't have to be in black areas," Dyson shot back "they don't have to be, it's a matter of the state occupying those forces."   To the contrary, the police are not an occupying force, notwithstanding the military armor some departments possess and (very) occasionally deploy. Nonetheless, Dyson politely  ended his preposterous statement by respectfully calling Giuliani "sir." There always is a silver lining.

The major problem with police in minority neighborhoods is that their presence is infrequent and when requested, response times often are excessive.Not surprisingly, neither Dyson nor Giuliani went there, the latter because as a career politician, he won't admit it, the former because he doesn't want them there.

But the remarks of Giuliani, who once thought himself sufficiently qualified to be President that he was a declared candidate in 2008, should be viewed critically. Jamelle Bouie (in a post brilliantly entitled "Rudy Giuliani Doesn't Understand Crime As Well As He Thinks He Does") noted the mayor was prone "to treat these facts as racial problems inherent to black people."  This apporach, Bouie recognizes, "collapses a whole world of distinctions, circumstances, and situations into a single frame, where crime in Prince George’s County, Maryland, is the same as crime in Gary, Indiana, is the same as crime in Houston, and all are part of a nebulous 'black crime' problem."

Conservatives reacted similarly to the killing last year of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Then, Bouie explained

There’s no such thing as “black-on-black” crime. Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime—86 percent were killed by white offenders. Indeed, for the large majority of crimes, you’ll find that victims and offenders share a racial identity, or have some prior relationship to each other.

What Shapiro and others miss about crime, in general, is that it’s driven by opportunism and proximity; If African-Americans are more likely to be robbed, or injured, or killed by other African-Americans, it’s because they tend to live in the same neighborhoods as each other. Residential statistics bear this out (PDF); blacks are still more likely to live near each other or other minority groups than they are to whites. And of course, the reverse holds as well—whites are much more likely to live near other whites than they are to minorities and African-Americans in particular.

A crime committed upon a black person is no more (no less) outrageous than one committed against a white man or woman. Nor is a crime committed by a black person more (or less) awful than one committed by a white person. The emphasis upon "black-on-black crime" crudely overlooks that reality.






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