South

Missouri, The Bellwether State For A Century, No Longer That!

Ronald 2 Comments

Missouri, the state created under a compromise in 1820, became the bellwether state in Presidential elections from 1904 to 2004.

Missouri, always considered a Midwestern state, was one of the border states that did NOT join the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, despite having slavery.

Missouri, with the cities of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield, trending Democratic as most cities did, however saw the rural parts of the state trending Republican as the years went by, and those three cities now represent less percentage of the population than they did in 1990.

So the evangelical Christian Right has become much more of the dominant influence in the rural areas, and Barack Obama could not win Missouri either in 2008 or 2012, and lost by a substantial margin in 2012.

It is now clear that Missouri is trending Republican more and more, and is much more like Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, than it is like its neighbors of Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota!

Therefore, it is clear that Missouri is now a Southern, rather than Midwestern, state, and that the lack of population growth in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield, together less than 20 percent of the state population, will make it difficult for any Democrat to win the state in a Presidential election.

The only reason for Claire McCaskill holding her Senate seat and Jay Nixon being Governor is their ability to come across as a conservative Democrat, and to have GOP opponents who are not well liked by the Missouri population.

So the bellwether state of Missouri is no more!

Did Veiled Anti Semitism Help To Defeat Eric Cantor In His Congressional District?

Ronald 2 Comments

Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, lost his party’s nomination to an opponent who constantly talked about his Christian faith, and credited his victory to God!

Cantor is the ONLY non Christian Republican officeholder in Congress, a proud Jew of the Conservative (moderate) brand of Judaism, and a very strong supporter of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He managed to win public office in Congress, and earlier in the state legislature, despite his being jewish in an area around Richmond, where the Jewish population is only one fourth of one percent!

Since only 65,000 people voted in the GOP primary, in an area with many rural voters, many of whom have never interacted with Jews, it makes one wonder if anti Semitism may have played a role in his defeat. The margin of victory, about 6,500 votes, makes that scenario a possibility!

This is not an assertion that Eric Cantor lost for this reason, as his arrogance and cockiness, and lack of contact with much of his district, spending an inordinate amount of time in nearby Washington, DC as second ranking Republican, certainly played a major role in his defeat. His stand on immigration reform may also have undermined him, plus the opposition of right wing talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin (himself Jewish).

But since there is a right wing Christian element of anti Semitism out there in the population, particularly in rural areas, even the thought or possibility of Cantor’s religious beliefs playing a role in his defeat, is very disturbing!

It is certainly of concern, in any case, that the Republican Party in Congress now is all white (except for appointed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina), all Christian (much of it extreme right wing), and heavily male and Southern or Great Plains.

This is not representative of America now, or its long range future!

60 Years Since Brown V. Board Of Education: Segregation Still Reality In Many Areas!

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Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, unanimously ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

The reaction was massive resistance, both in the South and also in many Northern communities.

Later Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s gave the government the ability to enforce the end of segregation in all areas of public life, but in schools, the movement toward integration succeeded in some ways, but failed in the sense of promoting equal educational opportunity.

Many state governments continued to promote unequal spending and facilities provided to urban schools, as compared to suburban schools, and this continues today.

Young people have learned to accept each other, despite racial differences, and society has become much more integrated, but still a tone of racism, and a desire to revive the old segregation through new, devious methods still prevails.

And of course, despite having an African American President in Barack Obama, there is still great division and controversy over everything racial. We are not in a post racial America!

So while some progress has been made, there is still a great sense of disappointment in the reality of much segregation that still exists today, and is still encouraged in many political circles!

The Ten Senate Republicans Who Supported The Employment NonDiscrimination Act

Ronald 2 Comments

The Employment NonDiscrimination Act was approved by the US Senate this week by a vote of 64-32, including 54 Democrats and 10 Republicans, who agreed that to allow discrimination against workers based on sexual orientation or gender identity was immoral, unethical, simply wrong in America in 2013.

At the same time, 32 Republican Senators continued to show no concern about such discrimination, and in so doing, condemned themselves in history, as much as those opposed to the Civil Rights laws passed over time to ban discrimination against Americans, based upon race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, and disability.

The House of Representatives majority would back such legislation, but it is clear that Speaker of the House John Boehner, personally opposed to the bill, will not call for a vote, because he knows a large percentage of his own party would vote against it, so it will likely languish until the Democrats can win a majority of the House in future years.

The honor roll of those Republicans who showed a conscience and principle include:

John McCain of Arizona
Susan Collins of Maine
Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire
Jeff Flake of Arizona
Rob Portman of Ohio
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania
Mark Kirk of Illinois
Orrin Hatch of Utah
Dean Heller of Nevada

Notice that not even one Senator from the South supported ENDA. One would have thought that, possibly, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, sometimes open minded on some issues, would have done so, but the power of the Tea Party, religious groups that promote prejudice and hate in the name of their brand of Christianity, and the reality of reelection contests for Alexander and Graham in particular, make that impossible.

After all, being reelected is more important than doing the right thing for the long run of history, right?

Thomas Nast’s Republican Elephant And The Elephant In The Room Now!

Ronald 11 Comments

On this day in 1874, the famous political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, first portrayed Republicans as elephants, calling them the preferred party and the “smart” party.

The party he portrayed 139 years ago no longer exists, as it has become the party of stupidity, meanness, nastiness, racism, nativism, and misogyny! It is the party that hates immigrants, minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and the federal government. It is the party of preventing progress, preventing job creation, out to destroy effective government..

It offers such horrible candidates as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul,. Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, as potential Presidential candidates.

And it is the party that decides to trash New Jersey Governor Chris Christie because he is too “moderate”, and can win the Latino vote in his state, and keep a somewhat open mind on some other issues that all of them have closed minds about.

So we see all of them avoiding the celebration of the victory of Christie, as they only care about themselves, not the welfare of the American people, or any fellow Republicans!

The good thing is that all of these Tea Party types are self destructing, while Christie, with his many faults, flourishes.

One watches the GOP of 2013 in wonderment, and has to say–When, oh when, will they get the message that the American people are not willing to accept the nation of the Civil War Era, the nation of the Great Depression, the nation even of Ronald Reagan? The nation has moved beyond all that, and no narrow minded view prevalent in the South, Great Plains, and Mountain States will stop the advancement of America into the future!

Republicans Need To Face Facts: Old White And Religious Males In South, Great Plains, and Mountain West Are A Dying Breed!

Ronald 7 Comments

The Republican Party seems to be unable to understand that their future is gloomy until they abandon the idea of old white and religious males in the South And Great Plains and Mountain West being enough to win elections.

This country wants total separation of church and state.

This country wants women, African Americans, Latinos, and Gays and Lesbians to be treated with dignity.

The young are voting in greater numbers, and they are voting Democratic, as they do not want the agenda of limited government, states rights, and religion in government that the Republicans are constantly trying to force on them.

The Civil War has been over for 150 years, and states rights will not be the dominant viewpoint of future generations.

Small national government disappeared in the time of the Great Depression 80 years ago, and it is NOT coming back.

This nation is becoming one of fewer whites, and more diversity, and nothing is going to stop that trend.

And women are liberated, and will NOT allow any man to dictate what they can and cannot do with their bodies and their futures.

Until and when the GOP understands these realties, they will be a losing party, and the benefits for the Democratic Party will grow by leaps and bounds!

The Destruction Of The Middle Class And The Working Poor By The Republican Party

Ronald 8 Comments

Republicans and conservatives do not want to admit it, but since the age of Ronald Reagan, they have effectively decimated the middle class, and heaped scorn on the poor.

This is reprehensible, particularly when they profess belief in God and call themselves “good Christians” as they work to slash food stamps for single mothers, children, the disabled and the working poor; oppose any rise in the minimum wage; support exporting of jobs to third world nations by greedy corporations; undermine respect for women and their basic human rights; and promote nativism and hate for ethnic minorities, as they try to survive in a nation rapidly becoming less white and Protestant by the day!

As it is, they are still able to convince struggling whites in the South and the hinterland to vote their fears, and blame all their troubles on the poor and the minorities, and progressive initiatives to help the working poor and the middle class.

But in the long run, this is a losing strategy, as now the GOP, allowing the KNOW NOTHING Tea Party Movement to have growing influence, are totally alienating the young, women, minorities, labor, gays, and educated people who care about their fellow man and woman.

So the Republican Party is rapidly becoming a dinosaur, and Ted Cruz and his buddies in the libertarian movement and the Tea Party crowd are destroying any hope of a future for the party of Lincoln, TR, and Eisenhower. They are rapidly becoming part of the dustbin of history!

A Major Day For Civil Liberties And Civil Rights In NYC And Nationally!

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Today was a day of major victories on civil liberties and civil rights, both in New York City and in the nation!

A federal court judge declared New York City’s “Stop And Frisk Law”, which targeted young black and Hispanic males in 90 percent of the cases of utilizing this law. People were being stopped based on racial profiling, simply because police chose to consider young black and Hispanic males as suspect, forcing them to be checked on whether they had guns or drugs, without any obvious reason to believe so, and with 88 percent of those stopped sent on their way without charges or arrests.

The federal court judge ruled that the “Stop And Frisk” law violated the 4th Amendment, and the 14th Amendment, and ordered that federal monitors watch over changes in the law.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly denounced the decision, and plan an appeal, but it is clear that minority youth are being victimized, with only a small percentage actually engaged in crimes and wrongdoing.

Attorney General Eric Holder also gave a speech today in San Francisco before the American Bar Association, and called for a new policy on those arrested and incarcerated for drug possession, which puts many people in prison, ruins their lives for the future when they leave prison, and if anything, teaches them about crime because of the environment they live in while in prison. It also undermines the ability of their families, including children, to advance out of poverty in the long run.

It is amazing that population has gone up about 40 percent since 1980, but 800 percent increase in people in prison and jails, and it is costing the nation $80 billion a year to house and supervise 2.2 million people in prison, dooming the drug offenders with a disadvantage they cannot overcome when they leave incarceration.

This is all due to Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs, which began in 1971, and has totally failed, another part of the Nixon tragedy for our nation.

One can be sure that the Republican Party will oppose both developments today, but it is essential to promote justice and equality in a country that claims to believe in freedom and liberty.

And the idea that 5 percent of the world (the US), houses 25 percent of all prisoners worldwide is atrocious, unacceptable, and great cannon fodder for our enemies overseas, besides being morally wrong! And much of this imprisonment is in the South, with private corporations making incarceration a profit making business, which is, in itself, despicable!

The Bill of Rights and other civil liberties is in constant combat with those who have no concern for these rights,but today has been a good day for civil liberties and civil rights!

The Most Diverse And Yet The Most Divisive Congress In More Than A Century: The 113th Congress!

Ronald 2 Comments

It is ironic that the 113th Congress is the most diverse in history, but also the most divisive and partisan in more than a century, which does not bode well for any future cooperation or progress on the important issues facing the nation!

96 women, 42 African Americans, and 31 Hispanics serve in Congress, but the vast majority are Democrats!

Partisan polarization is endemic, however, more than in the past century or more, probably back to the Civil War-Reconstruction period!

Of course, we have never had a Congress, except in the 112th Congress and this one, in which there has been a Republican House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate, and only five other Congresses since 1900 in which there has been a Democratic House of Representatives and a Republican Senate, with those occasions (1911-1913, 1931-1933, 1981-1987) being much more cooperative and accomplished by comparison to the past two and a half years since the beginning of 2011!

Party unity in the House is now 72.8 percent, while in 2006, it was 54.5 percent!

Less than 50 percent of the time do we see Republicans supportive of the President’s agenda, an extremely low level historically!

Regional loyalty to a party is extreme, particularly in the Northeast, New England and Pacific Coast for Democrats, and in the South and Great Plains for Republicans.

The likelihood of any major change in this scenario is gloomy, sadly for the nation’s future!

The Republican Delusion That They Can Win The Presidency And Majority Status Just By Having More Whites Voting!

Ronald 6 Comments

The Republican Party is truly delusional in their belief that they can win the Presidency and majority status in the future as long as they can convince more whites to vote, than did so in the Presidential Election of 2012.

With the percentage of whites in the population declining, and with the reality that it will continue to decline, this is a losing strategy in so many ways.

Not all whites would vote Republican, even in the South and Great Plains and Mountain West, GOP strongholds, and certainly NOT in the Northeast, New England, Midwest, and Pacific Coast, and in parts of the Mountain West.

Not all whites would wish to back the right wing policies of Republicans toward women, minorities, labor, and on other issues, such as the environment and science.

Not all whites would endorse the social conservatism of the religious right, particularly with a decline in religiosity among younger whites and voters generally.

A majority of whites who vote Republican are old, and once they pass the scene, many younger whites will have a greater influence on elections, and combined with those who are social liberals, female, and minority background, will NEVER vote Republican because they know that the Republicans are trying to ignore them, if not undermining their right to vote!

With their backward, regressive, vindictive policies toward the middle class and the poor, along with their anti women, anti labor, anti environment, anti minority viewpoints, the GOP will insure that they will be dinosaurs, looked back upon as a historical curiosity as to the issue of how they self destructed despite many warnings as to their self suicide by refusal to adapt!