Morning Coffee--New Guinea Dark Roast

Yesterday Drudge ran a piece headlined "Obama Plays Race Card". Anytime you read something like that watch the other side because that's what they're doing. The Race Card is question was the video sent by David Plouffe with Obama appealing to Organizing for America people that for such high takes mid-term elections there must be an effort to get out the Black, Latino and Women vote. In short, everyone Republicans are counting on not to show up. But I thought the one interesting twist to Obama's statement was his assertion that he wants first-time voters--in this case a 29-year old woman--to cast their second vote in the mid-term elections. This follows the Obama strategy to enlarge the voting base--which is diametrically opposed to the decades old strategy of Karl Rove to shrink the voting base by using wedge issues. This is the President who went out of his way to campaign on Indian reservations.

Meanwhile, the Arizona immigration law has spurred a wild array of responses. Civil rights leader and Hitler-admirer Pat Buchanan writes in "Whose country is this?" that illegal Hispanics are taking jobs away from blacks. He then goes on to say Barack Obama is failing his constitutional duties of upholding the law--which Pat says requires sending the 12-20 million illegals back home. He accuses Obama of being too beholden to the Hispanic lobby to uphold the law and condemning black Americans to poverty. Pat quotes Ronald Reagan as saying "a country that can not control its borders is not a country anymore." He laments the Balkanization of the country into ethnic enclaves like say white gated communities (no, he did say that.).

Governor Brewer of Arizona claims that the state will not suffer any economic consequences from boycotts. San Francisco passed a resolution to sever all business contracts with firms based in Arizona. The Arizona Republican opined that the real damage is done to the public's belief that the law is color-blind and you have a presumption of innocence. New York Times Supreme Court report Linda Greenhouse is so infuriated with the law that she claims she is not going to back to Arizona as long as it's not a "police state".

I received an e-mail from a rightwing Arizonan who wrote his friends that La Raza is pouring people into the state to protest and they're even bringing in Koreans! He protests that the media coverage of the law deflects attention away from the tea party movement and the huge national deficit. He also worries that the state will be sued and suffer financially. He hopes the law will be ruled unconstitutional since it really is bad. I guess so La Raza will stop busing people in from California.

The Arizona Indian nations have weighed in led by the Navahos. "So the squatters are trying to kick out the foreigners, how ironic?"

Some Latinos are reacting with good humor. One car read "I'm Mexican. Pull Me Over." Some vandals drew swastikas on government offices with refried beans.

Rachel Maddow gets kudos for tracking down the authors of the bill and establishing that they were funded by a New York C,Milton Eisenhowity foundation that encourages eugenics and the preservation of the bloodlines of early American settlers. The group is another one of these front organizations claiming to argue for immigration reform.

Kudos again to Rachel Maddow for her segment on the rehabilitated John Birch Society. Unfortunately, it seems that like Scott Brown the John Birch Society is using her name in vain to raise money. But Rachel solved one of the longest outstanding mysteries in American history. No, not flouride in the water. Who was Dwight David Eisenhower's Communist control officer? After all the John Birch Society maintained that Ike was an overt Communist agent. The answer is--none other than his brother Milton. Another mysterty solved--the anti-Christ is Javier Solana and Ike's control officer was brother Milton.

One aspect of the segment was new to me. The John Birch Society was created in 1958 for the expressed purpose of carrying on the legacy of Joe McCarthy. What Rachel doesn't mention is how the John Birch Society got rehabilitated. She had on as a guest Sam Tenenhaus, author of The Death of Conservatism ( random House, 2009), who suggested that conservatives no longer had any major thinkers to keep the movement honest and that the fringes dominated because there are no enemies on the Right. For a follow-up, she should have on Frank Schaeffer who can tell her that the John Birch Society came back through the Religious Right, especially Tim Lahaye and his Left Behind series. LaHaye was a long-time, high-ranking member of the John Birch Society.

Barack Obama almost went black on us at the memorial service for the coalminers in West Virginia. He even got some call-backs from the all white audience as he started to get into his preaching rhythmn when he talked about God. In mid-eulogy, he started into his preaching cadence and came back to it at his finale. I still believe one of his best speeches during the campiagn was at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Georgia when he preached about the Walls of Jericho. I wish he would do more of this but then he would only invite more angry reactions.

The real non-news story is about Obama's own poll numbers. He's been clocking about 50-51% in Gallup's tracking poll, some 20 points above any other person in our political system. What's interesting is that going back to last April, he's consistently maintained the same approval rating.

In the breakouts of the polling data, there are no great surprises. Obama has large approval ratings across the country, except in the South where he is about 40%. The Northeast continues to love him at about 67%. His approval rating among women far outstrips that among men. Everybody under 60 give him above 50% approval ratings; the youth most of all. But over 60, he slips, particularly among white males. Among whites in general, he is at 44% and among white males of the teabagger movement he drops dramatically. But remember he won only about the same 44% among white males last time--which correlates with past Democratic nominees.

Now in Sunday New York Times Democrats admitted they could lose the House this year. This piece was followed up by various talking head reports and the usual woe is us. The House changing back so soon? Hasn't happened in quite some time. If we were in a normal situation where one party was Center-Left and another Center-Right, I could see it as a reaction to keep the system in check. But Center-Left and Radical Right, I'm skeptical. As we've seen, the situations in states are galvanizing voters, especially among the demographics who usually don't vote in by-elections.

But let's say it happens. Bless Michael Steele. He's recruited over 20 African-Americans to run for the House. Some of these candidates admit it's opportunism because they would be farther up in line than their Democratic counterparts for committee positions. Now, let's say 15 of these candidates win and the margin for Republican control in the House rests with these new members. Can anyone believe that with their Democratic Black Caucus members nagging them that they could go along with "Hell No" John Boehner? Could the Republicans really maintain their authoritarian discipline in this situation? They had to have two people stand next to Rep. Cao the last session to make sure he didn't vote for healthcare reform. Things could get interesting.

Over the weekend another potential assassin was arrested in North Carolina. A nerdy white male with rifles and diagrams of scopes was apprehended at the airport because he wanted "to meet President Obama." He had police emergency lights in his car and scanners to monitor police radios. His website showed he was a music technician and a member of A Million Republicans, a group created by Tom DeLay. He had driven from Ohio to North Carolina for the occasion. All of this is giving white people a bad name. I wish they would cut it out.