TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE 1970 KENT STATE MASSACRE

My friend Thrasher runs the world's best Neil Young fan site. Since today is the anniversary of the Kent State shootings, he decided to ponder the question of why students today aren't protesting the Iraq war. Is it because there is no draft? Or is it because they're afraid that Bush will have them murdered the same way Nixon did?


OHIO: WHY TODAY'S STUDENTS DON'T PROTEST THE IRAQ WAR

-by Thrasher

Is this why today's students don't protest the Iraq war?

On Monday, May 4, 1970 at 12:24 PM, twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen began shooting into a crowd of student anti-war protesters at Kent State University. In thirteen seconds, the guardsmen had fired sixty-seven rounds and four students lay dead.

Immediately after the Kent State shooting (sometimes referred to as the "Kent State Massacre"), Neil Young composed the song "Ohio" after looking at photos appearing in Life magazine. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young went to the studio and recorded the song which was released to radio stations shortly after the killings. Soon, the lyrics "Four dead in Ohio" became an anthem to a generation.

In the liner notes of the Decade album, Neil wrote:

"It's still hard to believe I had to write this song. It's ironic that I capitalized on the death of these American students. Probably the most important lesson ever learned at an American place of learning. David Crosby cried after this take."

The Four Dead in Ohio

Allison Krause - Age: 19, 110 Yards
William Schroeder - Age: 19, 130 Yards
Jeffrey Miller - Age: 20, 90 Yards
Sandra Scheuer - Age: 20, 130 Yards

The four killed and nine wounded were all full-time students.

Over the years, Thrasher's Wheat has received more mail and comments on this song than almost any other Young song. Comments like this from Jodi:

"I just would like to say that I am a 23 old student and I am doing a speech on CSNY during the protest era, mainly the song 'Ohio'. I would have to say that this song has touched me and it has become one of my favorite songs. It is tragic what happened to the students, especially when I read two of those who died were just walking to their next class. This song puts me in a time I was never in and I appreciate the music as well as the students."

Students and National Guard Clash at Kent State, Ohio

The events of May 4, 1970 have been extensively detailed since that day and there still remain many unresolved inconsistencies surrounding the activities of the Guardsmen and students.

"Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago."

Jimmy McDonough writes in the Neil Young biography Shakey about the song "Ohio": "In ten lines, Young captured the fear, frustration and anger felt by the youth across the country and set it to a lumbering D-modal death march that hammered home the dread."

"Tin Soldiers" & President Nixon

Crosby once said that Young calling Nixon's name out in the lyrics was 'the bravest thing I ever heard.' Crosby noted that at the time, it seemed like those who stood up to Nixon, like those at Kent State, were shot. Neil Young did not seemed scared at all.



When asked about releasing the song "Ohio", Graham Nash respnded:

"Four young men and women had their lives taken from them while lawfully protesting this outrageous government action. We are going back to keep awareness alive in the minds of all students, not only in America, but worldwide…to be vigilant and ready to stand and be counted… and to make sure that the powers of the politicians do not take precedent over the right of lawful protest."

A video collage of still images commemorating the 36th Anniversary of the killing of four college students by National Guardsman at Kent State in 1970

Start and end sequence of a 1 hour documentary special by Germany's WDR-TV. Coverage originating from major U.S. networks. TV Teams of NBC, ABC and CBS had been present.

YouTube video- In 1970, in response to Nixon's widening of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, students throughout the US protested. Nixon sent the National Guard to restore order to the Kent State campus. The resulting consequences changed the course of the war.

Student video project of the Kent State Massacre May 4, 1970.

"Ohio" music video.

Annals of American Ingenuity: Term-limited memorials -- for when we get tired of remembering!

Tired of remembering, you know, lots of old stuff that just takes up space in your brain and you didn't really care about that much to begin with? College of DuPage (COD) could be just the place for you!

by Ken

Just last week we were remembering the slaughter of students protest the American incursion into Cambodia at Kent State University by panicked (and carelessly -- or worse -- commanded) National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970. Our friend Bil has called attention to a wonderful little substory, from the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, with this note:

COD, College of Dupage in Illinois is arguably the largest junior college on the planet (Jim Belushi attended here) and they just CUT DOWN 4 trees planted as Kent State Memorials to MAKE WAY for a $225 million new project/building for "Homeland Security Training." CREEPY. They say the trees were "sickly" from some previous underground work, I don't believe it. And I suggest that aging trees were PERFECT MEMORIALS to the 4 who were cut down.

Here's the story:

College of DuPage removes Kent State memorial trees

By Jake Griffin | Daily Herald StaffContact writer
Published: 5/11/2010 11:22 AM

Four trees planted 40 years ago at the College of DuPage to honor students killed by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio were recently removed.

College officials said the silver maples were dying and will be replaced. They were located next to where the college's new Homeland Security Education Center is being constructed, but college officials said Tuesday the trees' removal were not necessitated by the construction.

"Our landscaping team had found previous underground work had damaged their root structure," said Joe Moore, COD's associate vice president of external relations.

The college removed the trees three days after the 40th anniversary of the shootings that galvanized the country.

The trees were about 20 inches in diameter at the time they were cut down, Moore said. The homeland security building is the first phase of a proposed $225 million complex intended to make COD a public safety training hub.

Moore said COD President Robert Breuder met with three art faculty members to discuss using the trees to create a more permanent memorial. Moore added the college has committed $10,000 to pay for the creation of a new memorial and will match up to $5,000 more as well as plant four new trees to memorialize the May 4, 1970 tragedy.

The trees were planted on the western edge of the college's Glen Ellyn campus by COD faculty members following the shooting deaths of four unarmed Kent State students protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The Ohio National Guard also wounded nine others after being called in to quell the campus unrest by then-Gov. James Rhodes, according to the university's website. More than 60 bullets were fired in a 13-second period. Kent State students Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Williams Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer were slain.

Plans for the permanent Kent State memorial at COD are in the "initial planning stages," said art professor Chuck Boone.

Boone and others were asked to find an artist to create the memorial that will use the wood from the silver maples. They will also help decide where the new memorial will be displayed. Boone said this is the first time the college has commissioned a sculpture or art piece with requirements on what material is to be used. Creation of the memorial is expected to begin in the fall.

Boone said the memorial itself will be a teaching tool.

"It's important to remember what happened at Kent State, not just the four people's lives that were lost, but what brought us to that shooting," he said. "That shooting was based partly on fear of dissent and that's something we need to teach to."

We humans aren't really all that good at remembering, nor are we by and large all that keen to remember. The COD people are pioneers here. Just think how this might resonate through history.

"Remember the Maine -- for a while"

"December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy, leastwise for a few years"

"Never forget . . . uh, what were we talking about?"

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From Kent State to Dien Bien Phu (OK, so that's backwards -- sue me)

DIEN BIEN PHU 3 days/2 nights by plane: This trip enables you to enjoy the beautiful scenery and popular hill town of Dien Bien close to the Laos border. The trip includes a visit to the historic battlefield of Dien Bien Phu, where the French, after nearly 100 years of colonization and nine years of war, were defeated in 1954 by the Viet Minh, lead by Ho Chi Minh. Also included are the hill tribe villages of the Tai, Thai and H'mong peoples.

by Ken

Of course "From Kent State to Dien Bien Phu" is backwards. Do we Americans know any other way of looking at history?

But the anniversary (40) of the massacre of students Kent State University in northeastern Ohio happened Tuesday, while the anniversary (56) of the defeat of the French by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in northwestern Vietnam is today.

OOPS, SEEMS WE CAN'T SAY "MASSACRE"

Oh wait, I see in Wikipedia that apparently we're not supposed to refer to what happened at Kent State as a "massacre." "Kent State shootings" is apparently the acceptable term. After all, no less a figure than the Ohio National Guard's adjutant general "told reporters that a sniper had fired on the guardsmen."

Wikipedia adds, "[This] remains a debated allegation." I gather than "debated allegation" is a fancy way of saying "fairy tale," or "lie."

The following sentence in Wikipedia is: "Many guardsmen later testified that they were in fear for their lives, which was questioned partly because of the distance between them and the students killed or wounded." And then as now, there are many Americans whose hearts went/go out only to the fraidy-scared National Guardsmen -- you know, the guys with the guns, as opposed to the DFHs (fairly well-scrubbed DFHs, but then, this was northeastern Ohio) protesting the Vietnam War.

I was rightly chided for letting the Kent State anniversary pass unnoticed. All I could say in my defense was that it's not an anniversary I've got on my regular holiday schedule. The defeat at Dien Bien Phu either, except that I heard was quite a long report this morning on NPR's Morning Edition. Featured in the report was Ted Morgan, who has written a book on the subject, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War.This is good news, because Morgan not only is an excellent author-reporter but once upon a time was Sanche de Gramont, and presumably brings to the project a French-educated historical awareness of his native country's involvement in Southeast Asia, a perspective that most of us Americans conspicuously lack.

Dien Bien Phu may be only a name now, but for Americans it was pretty much only a name when we were getting sucked into that pointless hell of a war. My understanding is that President Eisenhower, after all a trained military man, indeed had some sense of the hopelessness of the French colonial position, and was appropriately wary of an American military commitment in Vietnam. And then came, in David Halberstam's immortal phrase, "the best and the brightest" who advised Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Making it just a matter of time before Richard Nixon came along, claiming to have a secret plan to get us out out of Vietnam, which he couldn't share because then it wouldn't be secret, and of course he couldn't share his real secret: that he was ensuring that no peace accord could be reached before he could be elected. It wasn't the crimes he was committing that he was so shy about. It's more likely that he thought his election prospects might have been adversely affected if voters knew that he was actively conspiring to prolong the war.

Is it any wonder that Nixon died in disgrace in prison? (What? You mean he didn't? You're kidding me.)

Since Tuesday I've been asking myself what I would have written if I had written something about Kent State. And it always comes back to the same one story: It was the horror that turned my parents against the war in Vietnam.

At the time I was, if I recollect correctly, still a prime draft-eligible college graduate, having graduated from student-deferred draft status the previous June. And I knew that my mother in particular had two seemingly incompatible attitudes toward the war. On the one hand, as an ordinary American, she supported the foreign policy of the president, even if the president was the reviled Nixon. (And, I should add, as long as that foreign policy was sufficiently pro-Israel.) However, when it came to the subject of my personal participation in that war, she was an absolutist: uh-uh, no way. (This is, of course, why the war enthusiasts who like taking the country into undeclared wars will never allow reinstatement of the draft. Voters whose offspring are on the war profiteers' chopping block tend to be less pliable on the subject.)

And then on the evening news she had to watch uniformed Americans shooting and killing and injuring American students. Quite rightly, she allowed no mitigation. This was an America she had no possibility of recognizing or acknowledging.

And so began Richard Nixon's inexorable march to disgrace and prison.

He didn't? Are you absolutely sure? How can that be? What I'm being told is that in fact Nixon went right on with his "secret" plan to end the war, which seemed to consist of getting us in deeper and deeper. By the time he did leave office in disgrace, owing to his being not only evil but insanely paranoid, he was able to hand the war off proudly to his successor, Jerry Ford, leaving it to poor Jerry to preside over the turning of American tail that Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had worked so hard to make inevitable.

So the lessons of Kent State remain deeply confused. Whereas the lessons of Dien Bien Phu we continue to do everything we can -- as in Afghanistan -- to ignore. "Know what you're getting into before you get into it" doesn't sound like a controversial proposition. However, it's apparently deeply un-American.

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AfghaniNam-- Were Students Neutered By Abolishing The Draft?

When you think about the iconic scenes in American history, a few that probably come to mind are Paul Revere's ride, the American insurgents at Lexington & Concord, George Washington crossing the Delaware, Mary Pickersgill stitching an American flag for Ft. McHenry, Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg-- dedicating our country, for the first time, "to the proposition that all men are created equal"-- FDR reassuring a nation freaked out by the Republican Depression in his first inaugural address that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, Americans landing on the moon... There are lots more, from Sherman's thrilling and triumphant March to the Sea to the Battle of Little Big Horn and our soldiers hoisting the flag over Iwo Jima to Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. But one that that is fading into history, but which belong up there with the aforementioned, is the pictorial that describes the massacre at Kent State.

Rick Perlstein has one of the most moving-- if stubbornly unemotional-- descriptions of Kent State in his brilliant latest book, Nixonland, although I expect more people who know about the tragic incident know about it via CSN&Y. Here's an excerpt (from Nixonland, not "Ohio"):

On the Kent State campus there were bomb threats at fifteen-to-thirty-minute intervals. Eleven a.m. classes were cut short; the commotion outside was too great. The university radio station and intercoms announced, “All outdoor demonstrations and gatherings are banned by order of the governor. The National Guard has the power of arrest.” But when a class session let out on a major university campus, it looked all the world like a “gathering.” Only a fraction of students had heard the radio and intercom announcements anyway. University administrators could have told law enforcement that. But the governor had banned university administrators-- quislings-- from the operation’s planning.

Fifteen minutes to noon. Students made their way toward whatever it was they did on an ordinary
Monday. A general saw what looked to him like a mob. Three minutes later, someone rang the Victory Bell and started rousing rabble for a noon rally. A minute after that, a campus police officer shouted the riot act into a bullhorn. He was standing by the ROTC rubble; now the military’s staging area, its ashes a constant reminder of what these students were capable of. Hardly anyone could hear the announcement.

A jeep made its way across the common: another hail of rocks.

At 11:55 guardsmen were ordered to load and lock their weapons and prepare to disperse gas. Two
columns of troops moved out in a V, one directly east, another northeasterly. The eastbound company had to summit a steep hill south of Taylor Hall, a major campus building-- the kind of slope, on college campuses, useful for wintertime sledding on cafeteria trays. As they trudged, they dispensed tear gas from their M79 canister guns. The boldest demonstrators picked up the hot metal cans and threw them back. Under suffocating gas masks, their visibility limited, the guardsmen pressed forward, determined to push the students into retreat. The militants hustled beside Taylor Hall for cover. The soldiers were unaware that they had only about a hundred yards to go before they would run into a fence. The fence curled around to keep them from moving east or north; a gymnasium kept them from moving south. They were trapped, with nothing to do but turn around-- a retreat under fire, the most dangerous of military maneuvers. Sixty or seventy soldiers, trapped. What was it President Nixon had said about the “pitiful, helpless giant,” faced with “the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy”?

Lots of roofs: from which one would the sniping begin?

They were afraid they were out of tear gas. Radicals who thought their adversaries only armed with
blanks shrieked insults, threw rocks, waved strange flags. “Pigs off campus! Pigs off campus! Pigs off
campus!” The guardsmen couldn’t tell, but felt like they must have been surrounded. They looped around for their humiliating return journey.

Then, at 12:24 p.m., several guardsmen stopped, turned almost completely around, dropped to one knee, and took aim at a cluster of students far away in a parking lot beyond the fence.

Sixty-seven shots in thirteen seconds.

Thirteen students down, mostly bystanders.

One was paralyzed. Four were killed: Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Jeff Miller, and Sandra Lee
Scheuer, ages nineteen, nineteen, twenty, and twenty. The Associated Press’s dispatch went out. The Dow dropped 3 percent in two hours-- the most dramatic dip since John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Two Students, Two Guardsmen Dead, the local paper reported. Those two students had it coming, much of Kent decided.

A respected lawyer told an Akron paper, “Frankly, if I’d been faced with the same situation and had a
submachine gun... there probably would have been 140 of them dead.” People expressed disappointment that the rabble-rousing professors-- the gurus-- had escaped: “The only mistake they made was not to shoot all the students and then start in on the faculty.”

When it was established that none of the four victims were guardsmen, citizens greeted each other by flashing four fingers in the air (“The score is four / And next time more”). The Kent paper printed pages of letters for weeks, a community purgation: “Hurray! I shout for God and Country, recourse to justice under law, fifes, drums, marshal music, parades, ice cream cones—America—support it or leave it.” “Why do they allow these so-called educated punks, who apparently know only how to spell four-lettered words, to run loose on our campuses tearing down and destroying that which good men spent years building up? ...Signed by one who was taught that ‘to educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.’” “I extend appreciation and whole-hearted support of the Guard of every state for their fine efforts in protecting citizens like me and our property.” “When is the long-suffering silent majority going to rise up?”

It was the advance guard of a national mood. A Gallup poll found 58 percent blamed the Kent students for their own deaths. Only 11 percent blamed the National Guard.

A rumor spread in Kent that Jeff Miller, whose head was blown off, was such a dirty hippie that they
had to keep the ambulance door open on the way to the hospital for the smell. Another rumor was that five hundred Black Panthers were on their way from elsewhere in Ohio to lead a real riot; and that Allison Krause was “the campus whore” and found with hand grenades on her.

Many recalled the State of Ohio’s original intention for the land upon which Kent State was built: a
lunatic asylum. President White was flooded with letters saying it was his fault for letting Jerry Rubin speak on campus. Students started talking about the “Easy Rider syndrome,” after the Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda movie about hippies murdered by vigilantes. Townspeople picketed memorial services. “The Kent State Four!” they chanted. “Should have studied more!”

“Anyone who appears on the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes, or barefooted
deserves to be shot,” a Kent resident told a researcher.

“Have I your permission to quote that?”

“You sure do. It would have been better if the Guard had shot the whole lot of them that morning.”

“But you had three sons there.”

“If they didn’t do what the Guards told them, they should have been mowed down.”

It was the end of the American war against Vietnam. It was all over but the evacuation after that. It was iconic. But it ended that war of aggression and buried the idea of a draft but it didn't end the idea of wars of aggression in general, not by a long shot. American corporate interests still needed to externalize costs in order to internalize profits in the form of security for their business and that's just what the U.S. military has been reduced to. Yesterday I read an essay by Michael Cohen in the New Republic, All Silent on the Lefty Front, subtitled, "Why haven’t progressives mounted more of a challenge to the war in Afghanistan?" As I interview Democratic challengers-- let alone incumbents-- I've found myself asking that over and over and over. And for every Bill Hedrick or Regina Thomas or Doug Tudor who understands why the occupation of Afghanistan is as futile and immoral as the occupation of Vietnam was, we have dozens of candidates-- Democratic ones-- who feel Obama knows best. Cohen, a Senior Fellow at the American Security Project:

Earlier this month, the Pentagon released a 152-page report outlining the increasingly grim situation in Afghanistan. The paper highlighted the Afghan government (and its security services) lack of capability; the enduring challenge of endemic corruption and poor governance; and the Taliban insurgency’s ability to maintain influence-- often via intimidation-- across broad swaths of the country. These challenges have already undermined U.S. military operations in Marjah, and could threaten the upcoming summer offensive planned for Kandahar, the heart of the Taliban insurgency.

The entire U.S. mission in Afghanistan, which is predicated on extending the legitimacy of a flawed Afghan government, bringing good governance to the country’s most insecure regions, and degrading the Taliban insurgency militarily to smooth the path for political negotiations is becoming eerily reminiscent of the flawed American strategy in Vietnam four decades ago.

While no one can be sure how escalation in Afghanistan will turn out, the warning signs are blinking red. Yet the reaction from many of the president’s liberal and left-of-center supporters has been
acquiescence and even silence. The Pentagon report-- like much of the recent bad news out of Afghanistan-- caused barely a ripple on the left. It’s a familiar pattern. The American Prospect, along with Salon, has devoted enormous and laudable energy to covering civil liberties issues related to the U.S. war on terror, but has run only one major article on Afghanistan since Obama’s December speech at West Point... [W]hy are so many liberal voices muted? Why after so many liberals aggressively asserted themselves in criticizing the foreign policy conduct of the Bush administration-- and in particular the war in Iraq-- have they ignored the war in Afghanistan? Over the past several weeks I asked a number of prominent progressives why liberals have been so silent about the war in Afghanistan. Several themes emerged.

First, is the obvious information gap. There are fewer reporters in Afghanistan than in Iraq-- and little in the way of TV coverage. As a result, it is difficult to get a clear sense of what is happening on the ground and what is working and not working. It is for many liberal publications simply easier to write about the debate over health care reform or other domestic issues. Mark Schmitt, executive editor of the American Prospect told me that it is “tough to produce something well-informed on Afghanistan” because of financial constraints and the challenge in finding knowledgeable writers on the ground to do actual eporting.

Second, in contrast to the war in Iraq, liberals generally support the objectives of the war in Afghanistan-- and for a good part of the past seven years have been calling on the U.S. to devote more attention to the war there, rather than Iraq. They recall Afghanistan’s role in the planning of September 11 and are aware of the continued presence of al Qaeda in the region. And many fear that a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan would subject Afghans, and in particular Afghan women, to
a return of the human rights abuses that defined previous Taliban rule. That makes even those with serious misgivings about the Obama administration’s strategy more willing to give it the benefit of a
doubt.

Third, is the hangover from Iraq. According to Michael W. Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, progressives “have yet to come to grips with the dominant surge narrative, which suggests that it was
largely responsible for turning the tide in Iraq.” Hanna noted the factors that brought stability to Iraq were largely indigenous to Iraqi society and were only partially the result of President Bush’s decision to increase troop levels. But the misunderstood “success” of the surge has led many progressives to now “feel chastened about speaking out against Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan.” Many seem to
feel that if they were wrong about escalation in Iraq then, perhaps they are wrong about escalation in Afghanistan today.

Behind all these factors, however, are the familiar (and very tricky) questions that have bedeviled progressive foreign policy thinkers for years-- namely, how do you balance humanitarian aspirations with actual U.S. capabilities and interests, and how and when should the United States utilize military force? Liberals are discovering that it was relatively easy to criticize an unpopular, incompetent war in Iraq and a foreign policy agenda that promiscuously squandered U.S. power and goodwill. But finding a solution for Afghanistan or a national security strategy that moves the country away from the post 9/11 “war on terror” narrative is far more difficult.

In fact, the lack of good alternatives for Afghanistan seems to be a major stumbling block for progressives. Many told me that it was difficult to criticize the president’s strategy without a clear sense of what should be done differently. But for the left to argue that there are still no good alternatives on Afghanistan is an implicit indictment of their own failure to come up with one.

Members of left-leaning, DC-based think tanks and advocacy organizations have either tacitly supported the Afghanistan strategy or offered tactical suggestions to improve a policy that some
privately believe is irredeemable. These are the groups that should be providing the policy ammunition for liberals to speak more authoritatively on Afghanistan.

There are a few congressmembers who are speaking up-- basically the 30 or so Democrats who opposed Obama's supplemental war budget last June and a small handful of Republicans (very small). Barney Frank, as Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has taken an interesting approach.

A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

...Frank on Friday warned that if he can’t convince Congress to act in the “general direction” of the task force recommendation, “then every other issue will suffer.” Not cutting the Pentagon's budget could lead to higher taxes and spending cuts detrimental to the environment, housing and highway construction.

The acceptance of the recommendations would depend on a “philosophical change" and a “redefinition of the strategy,” Frank said at press conference on Capitol Hill.

He said the creation of the deficit reduction commission offers the best opportunity for the reduction recommendations. Frank wants to convince his colleagues to write to the deficit reduction commission and warn that they would not approve any of the plans suggested by the commission unless reduction of military spending is included.

Neil Young-Alan Grayson Contest Ending-- "They Can't Kill Us All"

Our Alan Grayson-Neil Young contest ends this evening at 9 PM (PT), midnight on the East Coast. The randomly selected winner get a really beautiful double platinum RIAA-certified award plaque that was awarded for Neil Young's 1972 masterpiece, Harvest. It's very rare and would make an amazing Christmas present for the Neil Young fanatic in your life. (Yes, this triple digit weather will be ending in the not too distant future.) This page will explain how to win-- although it;'s easy: just qualify by contributing any amount to Grayson's campaign on that same page and then pray your name gets randomly selected.

Another way to access that contest page, is by clicking on the ActBlue HARVEST thermometer on the right. I've worked with both Neil Young-- when I ran Reprise Records, where he was one of our top artists-- and with Alan Grayson, here at DWT while he was the best member of Congress. A couple of years ago Grayson gave up his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate. He didn't win and now he's running for his old Orlando-area House seat. The current incumbent, Darren Soto, is a nightmare who voted against women's Choice and for the NRA over and over again. He doesn't stand for anything at all except his own career-- the polar opposite of the kind of leaders we need in Congress.

Alan and his wife Dena are committed Neil Young fans. "Neil Young and I," Alan wrote to his supporters on Friday, "were both deeply moved by the tragedy at Kent State, when the National Guard shot and killed four anti-war students.  And we both felt compelled to say something about it, each in our own way. In Neil’s case, he wrote 'Ohio,' one of the most famous political songs in American history":

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
“Should have been done long ago.”
What if you knew her,
And found her dead on the ground?
How can you run, when you know?

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
“Should have been done long ago.”
What if you knew her,
And found her dead on the ground?
How can you run, when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

"In my case, I gave the following speech. (A blogger who wrote about it said 'break out the tissues.')

Earlier today, we voted on memorializing the events-- the tragic events-- that took place 40 years and one day ago at Kent State University. Americans today, most Americans, are too young to remember what happened then, but I think that those of us who lived through that time and many others who thought about it, or saw afterward what happened, have this picture in their mind. This is Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller at Kent State that terrible day, when four students were shot by American soldiers. I think we would honor them by remembering how and why they died, and that’s what I propose to do now.

In 1968, Richard Nixon ran for President. He said he had a secret plan to end the war.  That plan was so secret that apparently even Nixon himself didn’t know what it was; because when he was elected, he simply expanded the war.  In November of 1969, the My Lai massacre exposed to the whole world, not just to Americans but to the whole world, the sheer brutality of the war in Vietnam. The following month in December of 1969, the draft was instituted. American college students and others, everyone of a certain age, everyone knew that they would have to serve in Vietnam unless the war was ended.

And then on April 30th of 1970-- the first war ever announced on TV-- President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia by US forces. Almost immediately, there were protests at universities all around the country, including at Kent State.  And those protests grew and grew day-by-day. And the right wing immediately mobilized against these protests. In Ohio, the governor, Governor Rhodes, said quote, “They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”-- these students protesting against the war-- ‘I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained militant revolutionary that’s ever been assembled in America,’ and President Nixon chimed in by saying that the anti-war protesters were ‘pawns of foreign communists’.

And so it was that four days after the announcement of the invasion of Cambodia, there was a protest that took place at Kent State University, Ohio.  20,000 students collected-- assembled peaceably-- to protest, and the National Guard was called in to drive them away. First, the National Guard attacked them with tear gas. The students took the tear gas canisters and threw them back at the National Guard. The National Guard drew its bayonets and charged the students, and forced them to a different location, but they still didn’t disperse, so at that point they shot them.  Four Americans died that day, including Jeffrey Miller.

The protests continued.

In fact, they grew.  Almost a thousand universities were shut down all across the country. For the only time in American history, we had a national student strike, everywhere in the country.  And at Jackson State ten days later, two more students were shot by the National Guard.  Shot dead.  And the thing that I remember most from that time is this sign written on a bed sheet and dropped from a dormitory window outside of New York University in New York, this noble sign: ‘They can’t kill us all.’

Let’s take a closer look: ‘They can’t kill us all.’

Now, then as now, together both times, there are people all around the world, and especially people in America, who want to live in peace-- who think that no war is better than two wars, who think that we voted to end war, not to continue it.  And after all, we know in our hearts, they can’t kill us all.

There are people who think that we should be concentrating on education and not war, and we know they can’t kill us all.  There are people who think that we should be concentrating on our health, our own bodies, improving our living standards, rebuilding America instead of war, and they can’t kill us all.  There are people who believe, not only in America but all over the world, that we should be striving every day toward peace…toward peace-- not toward war-- and they can’t kill us all.

"When I read this myself, I feel that Neil Young is my brother from another mother.  I want you to know what an honor it is, for me, to have this platinum award, this symbol of Neil Young’s greatness be part of our campaign. Please make a contribution and show your support for Neil, for me, and for PEACE."

The contest for the platinum record award ends in a few hours. Meanwhile... WARNING: wonderful in its own way but absolutely not Neil Young music, not even close:

Republicans Are Giving Themselves COVID-19 In Mississippi And Tennessee

The two without masks both contracted COVID-19. One is the Mississippi House Speaker and the other is the Lt. Gov-- and, of course, they're both Trumpists

Tennessee is an overwhelmingly Republican state. All statewide elected officials are Republicans. The state Senate has 28 Republicans and 5 Democrats and the state House has 73 Republicans and 26 Democrats. Both U.S. senators are Republicans-- one a vaguely mainstream conservative and the other a full-on fascist. Only two of their nine members of Congress are Democrats, one representing Nashville and one representing Memphis. The Republicans in the state legislature have drawn up plans to split Nashville up between several red districts and eliminate a safe Democratic seat.

The governor, Bill Lee, is a far right Trumpist and he has refused-- even as Tennessee's pandemic has spiraled out of control-- to issue a statewide mask mandate. 9 of the 10 most populated counties-- Davidson (Nashville), Shelby (Memphis), Knox, Hamilton, Rutherford, Williamson, Montgomery, Sumner and Wilson have mask mandates, as do a handful of smaller counties. 7 crackpot counties where most people marry their siblings have announced there will be no mask mandates. The percentage next to the counties' names is the 2016 Trump win score:

• Cheatham- 71.4%
• Dickson- 71.0%
• Maury- 67.8%
• Putnam- 70.4%
• Hickman- 73.2%
• Marshall- 71.6%

Just sayin'.

Tennessee reported 2,553 new cases yesterday and another 2,555 today bringing the state's total to 99,004. They will likely cross the 100,000 mark tomorrow. There are 14,503 cases per million Tennesseans. The state is expected to see it's 1,000 death this weekend.

Yesterday, The Tennessean reported that in the state legislature there are now 10 members and staffers who have COVID. Kent Calfee, a Kingston Republican, was the first to contract it, about two weeks ago. His wife also has it.

Unlike the legislature, Gov. Bill Lee's administration is refusing to provide positive case totals to the public.

A spokesman for the governor declined to answer The Tennessean's questions about how many employees in the executive branch, including the governor's office, and people working at the state Capitol have tested positive for COVID-19.

...Earlier this year, a member of Lee's senior staff had to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19.

The administration's refusal to release such information comes months after state officials initially rejected calls to provide county-level COVID-19 fatality data, citing federal health privacy laws. The administration ultimately reversed course and began releasing the data.

Although Lee has expressed his support for open government and transparency, his administration has frequently rejected requests for public records, citing "deliberative process" and "executive privilege."

The rise in cases in the legislature comes as COVID-19 has reached record levels in Tennessee in recent weeks and as the governor and lawmakers hope to hold a special session, potentially in August, to take up coronavirus liability protections for businesses.

The Tennessean also reported (last night) that Dr. Deborah Birx went to Tennessee yesterday and personally appealed to Gov. Lee to shut the state's bars down. He refused. "It is at this very moment," she said, "where we could change the trajectory of the epidemic before it goes into full… of what we call logarithmic spread, as we’ve seen across the South."

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Mississippi legislature-- where mask-wearing is considered something only Democrats do-- 26 legislators are sick with the coronavirus. the governor, Tate Reeves (R), has warned the public to get tested for coronavirus if they have been in contact with a state lawmaker. Many politicians flouted recommendations to wear a mask inside the Capitol in recent weeks. Now, about one in six of Mississippi state lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus."

The leaders of both chambers-- Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann-- have tested positive for coronavirus. On Wednesday, the Enterprise Journal reported that Rep. Sam Mims, R-McComb, had tested positive for coronavirus. Mims chairs the House Public Health Committee.

...Reeves said at a press conference it would be too dangerous for lawmakers to come back to Jackson within the next two week to "that fishbowl of the Mississippi Capitol."

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

Mississippi is worse off than Tennessee, running out of ICU rooms and unable to care for sick people. There are 18,245 cases per million Mississippians, 6th worst in the country. They added 1,342 new cases today bringing the small state's total to 54,299. There is no statewide mask mandate, although several counties have them because, you know, COVID-19 respects borders between counties. The far right loon of a governor says he won't issue a mask mandate statewide because that might discourage people from wearing them. No, he really said that.

Nine hospitals in the state were without any open ICU beds Monday as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter Mississippi, and Reeves has been imploring Mississippians to wear masks while in public.

Reeves has ordered mask mandates in some-- but not all-- counties and has said his executive orders regarding social distancing are difficult to enforce. He has put the responsibility on individual Mississippians to make safe decisions.

"I know a lot of you think we can snap our finger and all of a sudden 100% of the people will comply and everything will be great," Reeves said at a Monday press conference.

But Reeves said the opposite might be true.

"If you live in Tishomingo County and there’s a statewide mask mandate you can’t help but say, 'Well, that’s probably for those folks in Hancock County,'" Reeves said. "If you put a statewide mandate, the folks in Hancock County are going to say, 'That’s for the folks up in Tishomingo County, they can’t possibly be talking about me.'"

...The Mississippi State Medical Association, an organization of nearly 5,000 doctors and medical students, called for a statewide mask mandate two weeks ago, saying early data shows face coverings significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Reeves, too, wants every Mississippian to wear a mask, but said the messaging and reasoning behind his orders is more important than the order itself.

"We have to be very smart about convincing Mississippians that wearing a mask is the right thing to do. Now, keep in mind that back in March, the World Health Organization and a lot of otherwise really smart people said that wearing a mask would do you no good," Reeves said. "And so that being the case, there's a segment of our population that is naturally skeptical that this or any other measure will actually have any effect on the spread of the virus."

Maybe the governor knows his citizens better than anyone else. After all...

Dispatch From The Inferno State: Ethnic Cleansing In Arizona Public Schools

Spanish accent, you’re fired. Sound like Ward Burton? No problema!

-by Doug Kahn



The Wall Street Journal had the initial report on the firing of teachers, on April 30th. I talked to people in line at the Joe Biden/Democratic Heritage Dinner here on May 1st, and got an unexpected serving of attitude from more than one person when I mentioned I’d read about it. I was wearing the button I got at the State Capitol protest earlier in the day. Almost everyone in line who saw it was spontaneously talking about SB1070, and very critically, as we waited for the security line to move. A few made frosty remarks, annoyed, as if I were inventing a new outrage. 


It wasn’t the defensive attitude I’ve noticed among Democrats here about the SB1070 issue. (They’re feeling beset because people are, after all, boycotting Arizona, not Arizona Republicans and/or racists.) It seemed more like the grim, who’s-this-troublemaker stare I got when I started videotaping the Doylestown Township Supervisors’ meetings in 2001. That was Pennsylvania suburban Republicans, though, not loyal Arizona Democrats contributing to the Party campaign account. 

Democrats here want me to support the state party, and their legislative candidates (many of them Blue Dog types), even though their standard-bearer, AG Terry Goddard, won’t come out and directly oppose Joe Arpaio’s goons. I guess he’s waiting for an indictment from one of the federal grand juries, so he can avoid antagonizing Republicans and Independents who might vote for him in the Governor’s race. I think it’s a legitimate question: exactly what does a Democrat stand for, if not protecting the defenseless against institutional racism and oppression?
 
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (former AZ Governor and before that Attorney General) could, if she wanted to, immediately cancel Immigration and Customs Enforcement certification for Arpaio’s lockup. Current Attorney General Terry Goddard could, if he wanted to, indict Joe and his goons for a number of things. If you’re saying to yourself ‘Kahn doesn’t know what he’s talking about’: let’s check back together when United States Attorney Dennis Burke, someone with a real appreciation for the Rule of Law, brings charges against Joe. 

I’ve got another prediction: when Arpaio gets indicted, Goddard is going to say he would have spoken out against Arpaio’s MCSO, but it would have been unethical because he’s the State Attorney General. You understand, don’t you? The state’s chief law enforcement officer is prevented from doing anything about a criminal running a fascist militia because said protector of the public is thinking about getting ready to start preparing a process of drafting a plan to do something about it. For 18 years. Bill Clinton appointed Janet Napolitano US Attorney for the District of Arizona in 1993. Elected AZ Attorney General in 1998. Elected Governor in 2002, when Goddard was elected Attorney General. The current year is 2010. 

Today a good-hearted and hard-working local Democrat, someone who’s doing everything she can to make changes here, said she was confident that Goddard would, as soon as he’s elected Governor, step up and do something about Arpaio. But shouldn’t he keep quiet about it during the campaign, so as not to antagonize certain voters? 

No. He should not keep quiet. His silence is shameful. It’s a dark shadow on the reputation of every Democrat in the State of Arizona. 

I’m not much of a writer. Mike Lux explains this better: 

“Democrats need to pull themselves together, do the right thing, and then confidently sell what they have done to the American people, not give in to the fear mongering.”
 
The Arizona Department of Latino Removal
 
The State Superintendent of Education is sending around ethnicity inspectors, with the aim of ridding English classes of teachers who aren’t ‘fluent’ in speaking English. I’m sorry, I mean, to fire Hispanics who sound like furriners. When the Democrat running for Governor is gutless, this is the kind of thing that goes unanswered.
 
How do you get from the idea of English teachers being ‘fluent’ in English (and Math teachers knowing math etc.) to firing teachers who, by some unwritten and therefore arbitrary standard, have an accent that makes them difficult to understand? Hop on Interstate 10 and drive from the United States of America over to the Inferno State.  

First of all, I think you have to pay careful attention to the words and phrases people are using. What does ‘fluent’ mean, anyway? “Able to express oneself readily and effortlessly.” (From the American Heritage Dictionary.)

“This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state," said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research.
 
Margaret Dugan, deputy superintendent of the state's schools, disagreed, saying that critics were "politicizing the educational environment."

In the 1990s, Arizona hired hundreds of teachers whose first language was Spanish as part of a broad bilingual-education program. Many were recruited from Latin America. 

Then in 2000, voters passed a ballot measure stipulating that instruction be offered only in English. Bilingual teachers who had been instructing in Spanish switched to English. 

Ms. Dugan said some schools hadn't been complying with the state law that made English the only language in the classroom. "Our job is to make sure the teachers are highly qualified in fluency of the English language. We know districts that have a fluency problem," she said.

[Dugan, you have a grammar problem yourself: ‘qualified in fluency of the English language’? Go stand in the corner.] 

Arizona's enforcement of fluency standards is based on an interpretation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That law states that for a school to receive federal funds, students learning English must be instructed by teachers fluent in the language. Defining fluency is left to each state, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education said. 

"The teacher obviously must be fluent in every aspect of the English language," said Adela Santa Cruz, director of the Arizona education-department office charged with enforcing standards in classes for students with limited English. 

The education department has dispatched evaluators to audit teachers across the state on things such as comprehensible pronunciation, correct grammar and good writing.

[Crib notes for AG Goddard: just cheat off this statement from Superintendent Kent Scribner, Phoenix Union High School District: "Student achievement and growth should inform teacher evaluations, not their accents.”] 

As to Dugan’s statement about politicizing the educational environment. Margaret Dugan is a candidate for State Superintendent of Education. Let’s have a look at Deputy Dugan’s website. 

3 recent Facebook status updates:

April 11: “Great time at the Paradise Valley Women’s Republican Club Forum on Saturday.”

April 13: “What a great night I had last night at the Ronald Reagan Republican Action Club in Sun City.”

April 15: “Terrific time at Saddlebrooke Republican Club yesterday. I was able to get many signatures and collect 5 dollar contributions to help my campaign.” 

Events:

May 4 2010, 6:30pm: Scottsdale Tea Party -- Fox Sports Grill, 16203 N Scottsdale Road

May 6, 6:30pm: Daisy Mountain Tea Party Patriots Meeting -- 3901 W Pioneer Road, Phoenix
 
Dugan’s boss is Tom Horne, the current State Superintendent. He’s running for AZ Attorney General.
 
Linda Valdez, from her column in the Arizona Republic: 

“They’re off and running to the hard right in the GOP contest for Arizona attorney general.
 
Would-be AG Tom Horne is using his position as Superintendent of Public Instruction to show he’s tough as tough can be on Arizona’s favorite scapegoat: illegal immigrants. Even pint-sized ones.
 
Associated Press reports that he’s telling Ajo Unified School District to return nearly $1.2 million in state funding because he says the schools provided free education to Mexican students who don’t live in Arizona.”

Pop quiz for Terry Goddard, and for every Democratic candidate for office in the state of Arizona. Who said this:

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

OHIO REPUBLICAN BOSS PUSHES THE ANTI-GAY AGENDA BY DAY, SUPPORTS GAYS BY NIGHT-- AT LEAST THE ONES HE GETS INTO HIS CLUTCHES

Bush owes his second illegitimate presidency to a lot of people in Ohio-- many of whom he'll be able to repay when he pardons them just before leaving office. Certainly the Diebold guys deserve a lot of the credit blame, And we all know about Thomas Noe by now. And Bob Taft, the least approved of governor in the history of anywhere... ever. And then, of course, the crooked Secretary of State who, like Katherine Harris in Florida before him, put it all together. But I wonder how many of you non-Buckeyes have heard of Alex Arshinkoff. Don't worry; no one else has either-- unless you're a Republican power player. Then you definitely know who he is. According to the CLEVELAND SCENE Arshinkoff has been "head of the Summit County GOP for 25 years, he seems to burnish a reputation as the county's Dark Lord, a man who consumes politics and plays to win. To many insiders, he is Don Corleone in the flesh, with a dose of Machiavelli's Prince thrown in for good measure."

Since two failed runs for city council more than two decades ago, Arshinkoff has never been the guy on the ballot. He's not a politician, as he'll tell anyone willing to listen.

He's far more powerful, and he knows it. He picks the candidates. He runs their campaigns. He tells them what to do. Who to hire. Who to fire. If they don't play ball, they're out. Just like that. He's done it to top Summit Republicans. He did it as a University of Akron trustee.

He was on George W. Bush's campaign finance committee. Karl Rove is said to call him for advice. When the first President Bush visited Akron in 1990, he started his speech by thanking Alex Arshinkoff.

"He's a master of the nuts and bolts of politics," says state Senator Kevin Coughlin (R-Cuyahoga Falls). "He is just one of these old-school political leaders."

Arshinkoff lives for the job, calling up candidates at all hours of the night with advice and exhortations. When he's not being compared to Machiavelli, he gets Boss Tweed.

"Even those who don't like him have to admit he's as shrewd as they come," says Republican County Councilman Mike Callahan.

He's made himself wealthy. He's on Senator Mike DeWine's payroll as a consultant; he also began a lobbying business in 1997, harvesting the ties he developed as party chairman. He represents nine companies, from FirstEnergy to Playhouse Square, offering his advice and pushing their interests in Columbus. He has a $200,000 home in Hudson, an antique Chevy Bel Air, and two Corvettes -- in addition to the Audi paid for by the party.

Shrewd, ok. Wealthy (and corrupt), of course; why be a Republican poobah if not for that? But sometimes even the shrewd slip up. You see, the Akron vice police know who he is too. Senator DeWine's consultant, Karl Rove's advisor, George Bush's financial backer is also a closeted homosexual predator. Don't worry; he's not for gay marriage. He's not even gay! (He's a respectable married man. He just likes to have furtive sexual encounters with young men in the dark.)

The next couple of paragraphs may be too descriptive and shocking for you, so if you don't go for stories of fat, desperate old perverts picking up boys and groping them, please skip down a couple of paragraphs.

It was late at night, couple days after Christmas, snowy streets, cold and the 21 year old kid was home from Kent State. The bus wasn't coming and he decided to hitch a ride. He got picked up by a big fat white man in a new Audi. "The man started rubbing his thigh. 'Are you gay?' he asked. 'Are you bi? No? Are you sure?'"

The kid was quite sure but the fat white man was unfazed. The kid unbuckled his seatbelt and tried to escape at a red light but the light turned green and the Audi took off. "What are you doing? Are you nervous?"

Wasn't that thoughtful of the 450 pound man to ask? I mean he was "caressing his thigh, grabbing at his crotch." And he wanted to know if he was nervous. Would you be? Someone did that to me once when I was hitchhiking, long before I knew I was gay-- or even knew what gay was-- and I pulled a Boy Scout utility knife on him. And he didn't even weigh half of 450 pounds! Look at that photo. Would you be nervous if that started groping you in a speeding car at 2AM?

"Do you want to make some money? " was the last thing the man said to him before the car stopped at a light long enough for the kid to bolt and run down the street. The Audi sped away. A cop had been watching and turned on his siren and pulled the car over. A second police car pulled up. The kid went back over and noticed the ARA 1 vanity plate. The second cop told him the driver was Alex Arshinkoff. "He's the chair of the county Republican Party."

Summit County has a 3-2 Democratic registration edge. But you wouldn't know that from looking at which of Arshinkoff's boys get elected (and appointed). Most of the judges are Repugs as are the sheriff, both state reps and the state senator. Republicans do a lot better in Summit County than they should. "A relentless fund-raiser, Arshinkoff gets $100,000 checks from lawyers and $1 million donations from CEOs. He also collects from the little guys: A list of campaign contributions shows bailiffs, magistrates, low-level county flunkies and their spouses -- all chipping in their $100 or $1,000 when asked. He's a great motivator. 'He has always kept the heat on, kept the pressure on,' says state Representative Bryan Williams (R-Akron). 'He keeps people prepared and primed and ready to go.'"

The County Executive, a Democrat, doesn't paint a nice picture. "It all has to do with raising money, contracts, pay-to-play. If you don't give money to his party, you're not going to get jobs from the county-- or state contracts." And when Republicans don't follow his orders-- elected officials-- he runs candidates (with plenty of financial backing) against them. He's relentless and he's vicious, really vicious. He revels in hurting people as badly as he can and in destroying their families. He's a power-monger of the worst sort feared and loathed by the many local Republican enemies he has made over the years.

Ashinkoff has raised mountains of money for Taft and Blackwell and the state's crooked Auditor, Betty Montgomery. He raised over $2.5 million for Bush/Cheney in 2004 and almost as much for other Republican candidates that year!

Now, back to the molestation. The police report never went anywhere. The kid is too scared to press charges. Every politician in the state is aware of the incident. And other incidents. When he was caught at the Leather Stallion, a gay bar in Akron, he offered to make sure 2 local Democratic judges were never opposed by a Republican in return for silence. And a former employee of the Municipal Court claims Arshinkoff "sexually harassed" him. By day, he pushes anti-gay legislation and violently homophobic candidates (like the current maniac running for Governor, Ken Blackwell) and by night he's looking for young men to fellate.

Beginning Noah's 2011 in Review: Republicans Raised the Ante with Their Racism

YES, IT'S TIME FOR NOAH'S 2011 IN REVIEW!

One good thing about the arrival of the holiday season is that it means not just that another year is about to disappear down the crapper but that Noah will be here, overflowing with his usual holiday cheer, to give it the finger as it flushes out of sight, if not out of mind. Who can forget 2009's "12 Days of Christmas Scorn"? Last year's "2010 in Review" consisted of six installments of "Random Musings," three of "Quotations of a Party on Crack: Republicans in Their Own Words," plus more!

To see what special fiendishness he has in store for the farewell to 2011, tune in Monday morning. -- Ken

by Noah

In their efforts to turn our country ever deeper into a fascist dictatorship comprised of a few lords with the rest of us in the role of serfdom, Republicans are continuing to push the envelope when it comes to using the racism that is seemingly part of who they are, right down to their DNA. That they are doing this as they keep pushing further and further into their world of Neo-Fascism shouldn't come as a surprise. One is part of the other. Fascism, neo or not, has always needed a scapegoat or a punching bag. To gain traction, fascists need to set people against each other. It's divide and conquer. They need an object of hate for the masses to focus on while they're going about screwing them in every way imaginable.

Now that Republicanism has made itself synonymous with fascism, as exemplified by what governors are doing in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, and Ohio, you would have to be willfully blind not to see how much more and more open Republicans are about their nasty vision for the future of all of America. That vision has always been there. Certainly Nixon had it. So did Ronald Reagan when, as Governor of California, he focused on students and called for a bloodbath on the nation's campuses; a blood bath that became horribly real at Jackson State and Kent State. Fascists don't mess around. One day it's pepper spray. One day it's fire hoses. One day it's bullets. One day it's jackboots.

Think about it. Fascism has always been enabled when the corporate world and government become one. That's what happened in 1930s Germany and Italy and it's what's happening now, for example, in Wisconsin, a state whose Governor is openly financed by the multi-billionaire Koch Brothers and the corporate money raising machinations of Bush's brain, Karl Rove. For Walker and other Republican governors and legislatures, stripping workers of their rights is just the beginning. They will go as far as the people let them.

Over in Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder can now, if he doesn't like the result of the vote of the people, simply overturn any town election he pleases. Previous governors were allowed to appoint emergency financial managers: as was done in the town of Ecorse by former Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2009. But the new radical Snyder law, known as Public Act 4, goes much further. In its broader powers, Snyder can and does insert his own party cronies in the place of or over any local officials, and sell things like local police departments, management of school systems, and even the physical assets of a city to out-of-state corporations, all while he hypocritically whines on TV about out-of-state influences and out-of-state agitators.

It's no coincidence that the municipalities that Snyder is targeting are cities and towns with very high proportions of African-Americans and other minorities. In the towns he has singled out, such as Benton Harbor (92.4% African-American), the population effectively has no representation. Even the city of Detroit is in his sights. If Snyder gets away with this, look for other Republican politicians to feel emboldened enough to repeat the process in their own states, and if a Republican gets to the White House, look out! The light-to-moderate fascism of the worst of the Democrats will look like a nice day in the mountains by comparison.

************

Wherever Republicans have power, they are working feverishly to return every aspect of modern life to the bad old days of the 19th century, and rigging the outcome of elections while they still have power is now even more of a priority than it has been since those days. The people in Repug-controlled states can still vote, at least the ones that aren't being booted off the voter rolls outright or disenfranchised at record paces by such things as fewer voting machines, shorter poll hours, demands for driver's license IDs for people who don't drive or have a car, etc. But the results of their votes can and have been taken to the great Republican shredder when elected officials can just be summarily replaced with "team players" by a fascist dictator. Governor Snyder and others have radically expanded the Republican mechanics of voter disenfranchisement. Snyder's Michigan now might as well be Khrushchev's Russia.

Arizona, as we've all heard, can now stop any of us on the street and demand to see our papers. This is no World War II movie. It's Arizona in 2011.

To achieve their sick dreams, the Republican Neo-Fascists need those scapegoats I mentioned, and it's no coincidence that workers, Muslims, and Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal alike, are targets. But the harsh reality of the nation's first African-American President sitting in the White House has given Republicans a special dark focus and someone to point to. Reluctantly casting aside the cover of Herman Cain (let's face it, had Cain been an old white guy, his campaign would have disappeared faster than Rick Perry's, right after his 9-9-9 fiasco, instead of being propped up artificially for another 2 hideous and inexcusable lie- and stupidity-filled months). The Repugs will continue to zero right in on Obama, using him and promoting him as someone worthy of the most intense fear and hatred their followers can muster. Even now, the "born in Kenya" nonsense of party leaders like Huckabee, Trump, Perry, and so many others persists. They won't give it up and, very sadly, it's safe to say that the whole Murdoch media empire won't be happy until someone takes a literal shot at President Obama. Only then will the drumming stop, for a few minutes anyway.

Since the election of President Obama, Republicans have really lost their minds. They have snapped. If you went back and looked at the last 3 years of FOX, you would see a steady digression into utter madness. It's more than their tightly narrow little minds can handle. Fits of desperation and off-the-charts fear-mongering have gotten progressively worse and worse as the months go by; as they just can't come to terms with a country that accepts a dark-skinned man as President in their country. It got even worse after Seal Team 6 got Osama bin Laden and dulled the "soft on terror" argument. The Republican frustration is palpable.

There is no difference between the irrational Republican reaction to an African-American President in the White House and the irrational reactions of Republicans who awake one day to find out that an African-American family has moved into the house next door. "It just can't be!" "There goes our neighborhood." "What if their kids want to date our kids?" "I want my country back!" Well, guess what. No one took your country. If you really believed in it and you really believed in the Constitution that you raise in your sweaty frightened fists, you would be proud that your country saw no problem in having a lovely African-American family as the (horror of horrors) First Family, but you will never see them as "first" anything, except maybe first family of a non-US born President or first Muslim President -- or, as Newt Gingrich said earlier this year, as first in being a "food stamp President." Instead, Republicans would rather run that family out of town and burn down the whole damn neighborhood, if that's what it takes; hence, their mighty fights to delay economic recovery as long as possible. It's berserker nihilism. They are using the very face of the President in their quest for ultimate power. It's not just about policies, which, frankly, to date, haven't been so different than theirs. "To hell with people, even white people getting hurt." "It must be done." "To restore order." "To restore God's plan!"

************

John Wilkes Booth and others like him had similar thoughts about another President, a man who freed the slaves instead of pushing beloved policies that created more slavery. The Wilkes types, too, wanted their country back. They, too, were willing to "burn down the whole neighborhood." The ironic thing, of course, is that Lincoln was a Republican. Republicans were obviously different then. So were Democrats, well into the 20th century. But now, it's the Republicans who, while they don't own racism, have become more and more overt about theirs, to the point of wearing it with pride. They have chosen to be defined by it.

It's clear that many in our country were not ready for a black President and never will be. The ugliness has really come to the forefront this year. When Obama was running, it got pretty bad, and each year it's gotten worse. It's obvious every time a Republican uses the words socialism, communism, Kenyan, affirmative action, untraditional, food stamp, tar baby, witch doctor, whatever, that they really just want to scream the N-word from the rooftops as loud as they can. They've pulled out every stop but two, so far.

Will 2012 be the year that some Republican politician somewhere forgets himself just for a second while the camera is running and uses the N-word? I've personally witnessed FOX cultists call President Obama "our (N-word) President." Less than half an hour later I heard that Obama had a secret factory in Indiana where they are making chips to insert in all of us. Republican voters believe these things, and there is no discussing it. They either just glaze over or they start yelling idiocy they heard on FOX or CNN or "got from the Internet." All that's left now is for some Republican higher-up to accuse Obama of having sex with an underage white intern.

Would it shock me if either happened? Not in the least. You just have to consider the kind of people we're dealing with here. They are unglued as unglued gets.



Over the last year, Republicans, guided by their innate bigotry and their desperation have spoken in an ever-louder code. From Newtie's "food stamp" quote to Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado calling the President a tar baby to Pat Buchanan referring to the President as "your boy" right to Al Sharpton's face on air, their cancer just grows and grows. Just the other day, FOX wacko Peter Johnson breathtakingly referred to President Obama's speech in Kansas as "A Smooth Jazz Liberation Theology Speech" while Bill O'Reilly went off into his dark little crazy world about President Obama daring to reach out to the African-American community. God forbid that any President should! What has the world come to?

Bill-O even managed to invoke Soul Train as if it was some sort of nasty, scary TV show, let alone that the show has been off the air for years. Oh well, what should we expect from a man whose mind lives in 1962 Birmingham and had a great deal of trouble grasping his experience at Sylvia's restaurant? Hey, Bill-O, I've got some more words you can chill your viewers with. How about Afro? Harlem! Cleopatra Jones! You go M-Fer!

"Smooth Jazz" indeed! What a total FREAKSHOW.

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