Year: 2007
The Confederate Flag Still Flies in the South and the North
The mayor of Columbia, S.C., the capitol of the state that led the rest of the Confederacy off the cliff of secession in December 1860, has a letter in the local paper in which he pleads with racist conservatives who still run the state to remove the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds:
To the rest of the world, the Confederate flag has become a symbol of racial hatred on par with the Nazi swastika
The presence of the Confederate flag in front of the State House … is an obstacle to economic development, and in particular to South Carolina’s and Columbia’s efforts to enter the knowledge economy. The flag creates an unnecessary, negative image of South Carolina to the world.
My experience is that outside of South Carolina, the flag creates a controversial and uncertain image of South Carolina that ties current state policy of flying the flag on the State House grounds to our history of racial segregation and intolerance. This negative image exists even though I readily accept the fact that most of the advocates for the flag do not intend to convey that message. Unfortunately, in today’s world of the Internet and national and international media, the Confederate flag, fairly or not, has become a symbol of intolerance.
The mayor, Bob Coble, is courageous for speaking out. He risks having a cross or two burned in his yard, at the very least. He could also be facing the end of his political career and, at worst, risking the safety of himself and his family.
He’s right about the battle flag. To the rest of the world, it has become a symbol of racial hatred on par with the Nazi swastika. As such, the flag at the South Carolina statehouse is one of the most lurid examples, since it was first raised in the Civil Rights era as a middle-finger salute to the United States Dept. of Justice, African-Americans, Yankees and anyone else who opposed Jim Crow.
There are still Southerners who cling to the delusion that the Confederate flag is symbol of the valiant cause of Southern independence. Whatever it once was, from the moment the North claimed victory, the Confederate flag became the symbol of a lost cause — and rightly so.
As long as the Confederate flag flies at its state house, South Carolina deserves its reputation as a backwater, with rankings in education, health care and productivity among the lowest in the country. And every multinational company that moves facilities there should be tarred with the same brush — especially including the German automaker BMW that saw no problem with a swastika, er, Confederate flag flying in the capitol when it opened a plant in Greenville.
As my colleague Trish often points out, stupidity about race is by no means a Southern trait. In Michigan, the Rapid City Businessmen’s Association flew a special KKK branded Confederate flag at its family picnic over the weekend:
Romney’s Mexico-Born Father Made Quixotic Run against Nixon and Reagan in ’68
Like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney is an Eastern elite whose father was a famous political figure. George W. Romney had a high-profile private sector job, as C.E.O of American Motors, manufacturer of the Rambler, before serving as governor of Michigan for three terms.
In 1968, Gov. Romney ran for the Republican nomination against Richard Nixon, who won that year, and Ronald Reagan, who went on to win in 1980. But what George Romney is best remembered for is being tripped up on a statement about his support for the Vietnam War:
Romney told a news reporter that he had been “brainwashed” by the military and the diplomatic corps into supporting the Vietnam War. As the year 1968 opened, Romney was opposed to further American intervention in Vietnam and had decided to run as the Republican version of [antiwar Democrat] Gene McCarthy. Romney’s support faded slowly, and he withdrew from the race on February 28, 1968..
But even if he had won the presidency, George Romney would have faced a constitutional question before he could be sworn in. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution, which says “No person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the office of president”* prohibits people born in foreign countries from serving as president, and he was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, into a renegade sect of polygamous Mormons.
George Romney’s grandfather, Miles Park Romney, had five wives, and had moved the family to Mexico when polygamy became a federal crime in the United States. (It was a crime in Mexico, too, but was largely ignored in remote areas.) However, when the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, when George was about three years old, the famly returned to the United States, eventually ending up in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In 1969, Pres. Nixon appointed Romney as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a post he held until 1973.
*Update: Corrected citation from the Constitution that prohibits foreign-born presidents. H/t: Bob Sakowski in comments.
When Will Bush Wake Up on Global Warming? Stardate Unknown
“The market-based approach seems to work.” — White House Spokesperson Tony Snow, commenting on the anti-strategy employed so far by the Bush Administration to fight global warming, which has brought natural systems around the world to the brink of collapse.
Remember the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise crew is in an alternate universe and everyone is lusty and mean, wears midriff t-shirts, and Spock has a beard?
Is Tony Snow living there? Because back here in this universe, I cannot conceive how anyone could look at the market-based approach to global warming and see something that comes anywhere close to “working.”
Quote du Jour
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
— Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President
Stand By for Change of Subject
ABC is reporting that Bush will speak at 1:25 p.m. EST, imploring Congress to implement his stupid, corn-fed, greenhouse gas belching, Big Ag buddies enriching, global warming worsening energy plan that no one paid any attention to during his State of the Union address because it does absolutely nothing to fix the problem.
But hey, maybe it will get people to focus less on his endless failings, his neocon attempts to overthrow our republic, and his incitement of the world’s animosity toward each and every one of us.
Or not.
Bush Admin Creates Big Buzz for Michael Moore’s New Film By Trying to Censor It
Just before Al Franken’s book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” was ready for publication in 2003, Bill O’Reilly became unhappy with the way he was portrayed in the book (even though Franken based the material on direct quotes from O’Reilly himself), and demanded that his employer, Fox News, sue Franken and the book’s publisher.
“The timing is amazing. You would think that we originated this. It reads like a fiction best-seller,” Weinstein said.
The lawsuit was ridiculous. It was also a magnificent backfire, generating the sort of publicity that book publishers cannot buy — turning “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” into a bestseller, thereby simultaneously exposing and underscoring O’Reilly’s fatheadedness. If only he had followed his own advice: Shut up!
The White House political office, having apparently found nothing instructive in Fox’s experience four years ago, is pursuing a nearly identical strategy today. They are threatening serious civil sanctions against Michael Moore, one of their fiercest critics, charging he violated the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba when he filmed scenes from his new movie there.
The Cuban segment of “Sicko,” Moore’s new critique of the American healthcare industry, hits Bush hard and where it hurts. It follows a group of emergency response workers who contracted respiratory and other illnesses at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks as they travel to Cuba seeking medical attention that no one will provide them in the United States. Ouch.
On the face of it, the government investigation appears to be naked retaliation against Moore, with the clumsy tactical brutality and distinct odor of authoritarianism that has become the Bushies’ trademark. On the bright side, the timing couldn’t be better. The film debuts at the Cannes film festival in about two weeks. Harvey Weinstein, the film’s distributor, can’t believe his luck:
“The timing is amazing. You would think that we originated this. It reads like a fiction best-seller,” Weinstein said. Weinstein said the investigation would only help publicize the film.
If it pursues the case against Moore, the Bush White House may well turn “Sicko” into a bigger hit than “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore’s skewering of Pres. Bush’s response to the terror attacks, or his Oscar-winning film, “Bowling for Columbine.”
Another unintended consequence of going after Moore on this issue is that it could reawaken interest in companies with Republican ties that have done business with embargoed countries. Particularly, when Vice Pres. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, one of its subsidiaries had dealings with Iran.
Quote du Jour
In comparison with monarchy and other heirlooms from the cannibals and cave-dwellers, democracy is of course a great conquest, but it leaves the blind play of forces in the social relations of men untouched.
My First $50 Tank of Gas
And the tank wasn’t even completely empty. Fortunately for me, I don’t drive often, maybe once or twice or week, and rarely go more than 10 miles even then. (And, yes, I live in the Los Angeles sprawlplex.)
What is really going on here is a multi-billion-dollar shakedown of the American people by Bush’s cronies.
It’s tempting to think that high gas prices in 2007 were part of the Bush-Cheney-Halliburton agenda when they invaded Iraq in 2003. But like most conspiracy theories around these clowns, that idea gives them way too much credit.
I doubt they invaded hoping to lower gas prices, but the fact that we’re on the brink of $4 a gallon is just another result of their incompetence at both war-making and domestic governance — combined with the fact that George W. Bush doesn’t give a damn.
Rightly or wrongly, Americans used to blame their presidents for high gas prices, and normal presidents would take action, or at least appear to, as a signal of solidarity. But Bush is impervious to public opinion — not just because he’s not up for reelection but because he was born into the aristocracy, and fancies himself a business tycoon. As such, he sees suffering by the little people as simply collateral damage to the greater good of corporate profitability.
Profitability is the salt in the wound, of course. Big Oil’s profits are through the roof. What is really going on here is a massive shakedown of the American people by Bush’s cronies.
The ultimate irony is that Republicans who hate paying taxes don’t feel a similar sense of outrage over paying extra to Big Oil for no reason other to line the pockets of fat cats.
