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Michael Steele's buffoonery knows no bounds, but I wonder if he's telling the truth this time or just trying to play the race card to save his job.

Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele, who is known for making controversial statements, on Sunday said that white Republicans are afraid of him.

Steele also took aim at some in his own party last week as well, saying that he would "come after" centrist Republicans who support healthcare reform.

The Republican chairman appeared on NewsOne's "Washington Watch" this weekend, a new Sunday political talk show aimed at a black audience. The host, Roland Martin, asked Steele how Republicans could reach out to black voters. Steele responded by talking about issues such as education, small business, jobs and the economy, The rest is in a partial transcript:

MARTIN: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I've always had is Republicans -- white Republicans -- have been scared of black folks.

STEELE: You're absolutely right. I mean I've been in the room and they've been scared of me. I'm like, "I'm on your side" and so I can imagine going out there and talking to someone like you, you know, [say] "I'll listen." And they're like "Well." Let me tell you. You saw in Christie and you saw in McDonnell a door open because they went in and engaged. McDonnell was very deliberate about spending...

MARTIN: Right.

STEELE: I mean, Sheila Johnson was on his team. I mean, that was a big deal. That's because he engaged her and she helped navigate him through that relationship.

Where are the black Congress members?

Michael Steele is saying that because of the color of his skin, his fellow Republicans are afraid of him. He is proving the point that we've been making for a long time. When you look at tea parties, they are predominantly white folks shouting down Obama's race and religion.

If the party Establishment is afraid of Steele, how is there any room for race relations to improve in this country---ever? This poll -- showing that Americans don't think Obama has improved race relations in the country -- first of all makes no sense: How is President Obama supposed to improve race relations when he has white supremacists, birthers, Oathers and militia members filling up the ranks the tea party brigades that are out there in full view of the American people and are smearing non-whites on a consistent basis? How is the president supposed to suddenly ease racial tensions when Republicans and mouthpieces like Fox News are promoting racial division, telling their audiences that the president is a radical black who hates white people? Why isn't Michael Steele using his position in the Republick Party to do something about it himself?

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This post was e-mailed to me by a C&L reader. It's pretty sickening, but Limbaugh is a racist thug, and so is the Conserva-hack named Ken Rogulski -- a lowbrow reporter miscreant who uses the pain and suffering that the people of Detroit are experiencing and turns it into a racist giggle fest for RushBo's audience. Is there no decency in the world of conservative talk radio? Obviously not.

(photo via Detroit News)

King Crimson writes:

It was Wednesday when Rush Limbaugh received an .MP3 from the Desk of WJR Detroit's Ken Rogulski, the white-haired beat reporter, who also occasionally anchors certain top hour newscasts in the conservative talk station's broadcast day. The audio gift would be the gavel with which Rush would pound out hate and bigotry, revelry in personal suffering, and twisting of words and ideas for the rest of the week.

Earlier, Rogulski scurried down to the Cobo Convention Center, locally referred to as Cobo Hall to see what kind of audio he could bring back from the huge crowd developing as the applications for federal aid for the poor and destitute were being handed out. It was to be a brief windfall of assistance to one of the hardest hit cities in the country, where bankrupt auto companies and massive home foreclosure have helped define a new level of pain and suffering for these innocent human beings. But you could hear the hope in their voices flapping in a breeze of unsureness like an untethered sail in a storm, these proud, innocent residents.

The conservo-talk reporter cherry picked through the audio booty until he found the absolute best soundbite that would most perfectly frame the city as one filled with Obama-fawning morons, black Sambos, and greedy welfare grabbers - precisely, as Limbaugh would later argue, the kind of rank idiots who would vote for someone like America's first black president. Surely Ken's heart must have been pounding as he attached the audio to his corporate email and double checked the top-secret "To" address that would land the .MpP3 directly onto the desk of Rush's long time producer, Kitt Carson. JACKPOT!

Carson fast-tracked the audio to the OXYmoron, and by noon it was airing live.

"Where's the money coming from?!" Rogulski quickly quizzes.

"Obama!," the giddy resident chirps, confident the day will end in a bill being paid, or a week's worth of groceries to stuff into the old fridge.

"And where does Obama get it from?!" Rogulski follows up. To the more politically refined in the conservative talk world, the answer is loud and clear - TAXPAYERS. But Rogulski knows full well these "Motown simpletons" will not be so cynical as to believe he's recording them with intentions of caricaturing them later as thigh-slapping morons.

"I dunno! His stash, I dunno. But he givin' to us! We love him!"

Thursday, Rogulski, a small time nobody in comparison to his conservative mentor, decided to use this opportunity and momentum, and keep the mentions of his unimportant name ratta-tatting over the world-famous EIB Network going and sent another one. This one even more sensational than the first.

Rogulski gently pushes the "save" button on his MP3 recorder and slickly slides it into his pocket. Mission accomplished. Limbaugh doesn't poll affiliate stations daily to see if there's any news he needs to know about. He has a team of producers scouring the net daily. So when an affiliate sends something to the Golden Microphone ... it's because the sender knows Rush will want it, and knows precisely how he will use it.

And Rush could not have been happier. No editing necessary for his staff, no double checking, it was packaged, edited and air ready. And for three straight days, the AM Shock Talker pounded the audio candy like he had just been told the funniest joke this week.

Listen to how the first audio soundbite is edited to end with a laugh, which to the racist's ear is a dog-whistle. To a bigot, it is the laugh of bug-eyed Jemima. But to the rest of America, it is the innocent guffaw of a child holding out her hands for a cool drink of water in one of the hottest economic downturns in a century. Note how Limbaugh allows the sound of her laugh to hang in the air for a moment, to let it be the last thing you hear, to let it resonate with the comedic timing of George Burns before going on to the next soundbite. A pause so small and so seemingly insignificant. but silence is a moment as important as a word, that has been practiced and mastered by comedians and even broadcast greats like the similarly conservative late Paul Harvey.

Rush Limbaugh, and the affiliates who support his message of bigotry are not just racists. They are the worst kind of racists. They are the ones who can say the "N" word in code publicly, laugh out loud and hearty, and then argue that you are missing some bigger message if you think it's meant as anything but good, clean fun.

I woke up this morning and turned on ESPN's First and Ten to listen to as I made my coffee. The first thing I heard was that several football players came out slamming Rush Limbaugh over his bid to buy the St.Louis Rams after all his years of racial politics. I hope more black players rally around these two players and throw up a road block to this group that wants to buy the team.
NY Daily News:

Mathias Kiwanuka loves his former defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but the Giants' defensive end says he will never play for Spagnuolo's Rams if Rush Limbaugh purchases the team.

Kiwanuka and the Jets' Bart Scott made it clear Thursday that they would never play for the Rams or any team owned by the controversial conservative radio host.

"All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama's America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting 'right on,'" Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

I am not going to draw a conclusion from a person off of one comment, but when it is time after time after time and there's a consistent pattern of disrespect and just a complete misunderstanding of an entire culture that I am a part of, I can't respect him as a man.

Nicole Belle emailed me this piece from Think Progress that lists some of Boss Limbaugh's racist statements.

Indeed, as CNN reported at the time, ESPN fired Limbaugh from Sunday NFL Countdown for “his statement that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.” But, of course, Limbaugh has a long sordid history with making racist remarks. Some of his more recent lowlights:

– “Look, let me put it to you this way: The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

– “We need segregated buses. … This is Obama’s America.”

– “President Obama is black. And I think he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

– Democrats are interested in Darfur to secure black “voting bloc.”

– “Minorities never do anything for which they have to apologize.”

– Obama’s nomination for president “goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.”

– Obama is a “halfrican-American.”

Take my C&L/AOL Hot Seat Poll that is featured today on AOL which leans right. I submitted this post last night before I heard about players striking back at Limbaugh.

his vorpal sword: Indiana racist email story expolodes

Andy Worthington: Three innocent men released from Gitmo

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Open Left: Post Office zip code change prompts Insurance industry to attempt jacking up rates

Respectful Insolence: Quackery at HuffPo

There's only a few comments on this Meet the Press video, but they are very telling.

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(h/t Heather)

Why is it so hard for the media to discuss the obvious racial overtones of so much of President Obama's opposition? The right-wing fanatics are not even trying to cover it up and still the media try to avoid the obvious by framing it as a pundit problem.

Howard Kurtz wonders why the media is having problems these days with Americans in terms of perceptions about their accuracy. (Pew: Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low)

I understand that calling someone a racist is no small thing, but facts are facts, and I can't deny what I see with my own two eyes. Can you? Can the media? (John Aravosis had a great post last week with plenty of visual examples.)

Instead of Howard Kurtz really taking a look at the racist underbelly that has risen to new heights at the town halls, he frames it like this:

Kurtz: So are the pundits and the press inflaming this debate about race?

To the media, the debate isn't about the racism that is actually happening on the ground and in front of our eyes, but whether it's the media's fault for actually covering the racist a-holes that have taken over the Republican Party.

When a Michael Steele tries to say that it's only one in a hundred who carry around racist signs about Obama at the psycho town halls, that's a LIE. All you had to do is look at the teabagger protests in DC. Even Andrea Mitchell was stunned.

CNN's Reliable Sources:

Kurtz: Eric Deggans, should the media be devoting all of this time and energy to explaining or examining or exploring whether some of Obama's critics are, in fact, motivated by racism?

ERIC DEGGANS, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES: I think it's an appropriate subject just because for a long time people who have been covering these rallies, covering these protests, have an sense that there's an undercurrent of something that goes beyond just opposing the president politically.

And there's been an effort to try and explain that. Why is there such visceral hatred for what Obama's trying to do among the certain core, a certain percentage of people who are at these rallies and then we found that these weird e-mails pop up of photos of Obama looking like a tribesman, you know, weird racial jokes that seem to be passed along by e-mail by some people who oppose him. So we're trying to explain that, and I think it makes sense to try.

KURTZ: Some of that, of course, may come from the fringes. Amy Holmes, is there a danger that journalists are perhaps insinuating or suggesting or implying that many of Obama's critics must be motivated by racism?

We know some of the racism is coming from the fringes, but now it's bubbling up and overflowing from the fringes to the mainstream. Even CNN's Jon Spellman reported that a dark undercurrent has overtaken the tea-baggers: CNN's Jim Spellman on the teabaggers: There really is a dark undercurrent running through them

Spellman:...we saw handguns from time to time, but running through this subculture that's developed around these tea parties is a bit of a dark undercurrent. The bulk of the people are for lower taxes and less government control, but there really is an element that's got these kind of outlandish conspiracy theories about death camps and about this take over, people comparing President Obama to Hitler. It really is a sizable...It's not just a couple of people around the edges. One of the big questions will be if this movement go forward while maintaining this kind of element on the edges...

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Troubletown: Like an old Sidney Poitier movie

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(Time for a conscience check)

With the current situation of racist rants, lunatic fringe incitements and the never-ending realm of fear, I thought it might be a good idea to offer a few words from Dr. Martin Luther King, from one of his Massey Lectures recorded for The Canadian Broadcasting Company in 1967. This one is entitled "The Impasse Of Race Relations".

Dr. Martin Luther King: “I would submit two sentences written a century ago by Victor Hugo. ‘If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness'.”

I can think of several people causing the darkness right at this moment. And they are being paid handsomely for it.

You can always count on Michelle Malkin and Drudge to lie about an issue to try and turn the heat off of her racist friends. I just hope some people don't get hurt because of it. She wrote a story and as usual jumped the gun to make her point: A teachable moment: Racial thuggery in St. Louis;Updated.

People like Malkin are scanning the headlines now for something that will turn the racist light off of the teabaggers, but she can't even get this story straight. Where have you seen that before?

Here's what really happened.

A student on a Belleville West High School bus was beaten for his choice of seat, not because he was white, according to a witness and police.

"The incident appears now to be more about a couple of bullies on a bus dictating where people sit," said Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax, who originally said Monday's attack may have been racially motivated.

D'Vante Lott, 16, said he was on the bus and witnessed the attack by the two black students.

The victim walked onto the bus, looking for an open seat, but students kept turning him down, as D'Vante said happened often with this student.

But Monday, the victim apparently tired of asking for a seat, D'Vante said, moved one student's book-bag off a seat, and just sat down.

She finally updated her story hours later because you know she needs those links and trackbacks, but Sullivan was asking her to change it for a while. You'd figure that a story which she promoted as racially sensitive would be one that she would keep an eye on so that she got her facts right, no?

The Daily Dish says the story in St. Louis was updated with the truth before she even promoted her "racial thuggery" charge.

That is Michelle Malkin's categorical claim about the ugly incident on a school bus in Saint Louis this morning. She wrote that post at 12.02 pm, linking to this story which says it was updated at 11.35 am to rebut the notion that this schoolyard fight was racially motivated. The police chief rushed to judgment and later recanted. Maybe Malkin missed it and will soon qualify her claim.

Andrew, you know she knows the truth, but needed the traffic, dude.
And Dan Riehl is a horse's ass. You gotta read it to believe it.

Digby has an enlightening post on this.

Keep in mind that these are the same people who were just carrying signs calling Obama Hitler and saying that Acorn groups and his arrogant wife should be sent back to "their own" country and be stripped of their rights. I'd say those so-called thugs were the polite ones.

More seriously, these people are a perfect example of the modern racists. They don't go around calling black people "boy" (to their faces) and they certainly don't think of themselves as bigots. But in their minds, racial minorities are dangerous barbarians who are threatening to destroy their way of life. Hence, when they find themselves in a group of loud teenagers, they see it as a test of their own manhood to "put them down." (Of course, that's why they need all those guns.)

A black president is threatening to them, even if they don't really understand it, because while he is unquestionably a very accomplished individual in anyone's estimation, the loyalty he inspires among African Americans frightens them --- and his sometime feints to popular culture and black solidarity make them very, very uncomfortable. That's why this obsession with ACORN has such resonance. The black army is forming. We are living in a new world where racism is a minority position. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it doesn't find political expression is some powerful ways. It behooves liberals to be vigilent about this and keep these impulses in check with frequent reminders that it is not acceptable in modern America to be a racist.

It's also obvious that nativism and immigration are the great racial undercurrent of the moment and they have long been the animating feature of toxic right wing populism. We ignore this stuff at our peril.

Racism is a minority position, but it's a lot bigger problem than one would think after all this time. A black president is too much to handle for many of them. We see it every day on our TVs. The racism being exhibited by the teabaggers is astounding to me, and the media are doing their best to not inform America about it, even as they show it. It's like watching an action movie, but the dialogue doesn't match the action. And I will never ignore this hatred. I never have and I never will.

UPDATE: Pam Spaulding finds a possible hate crime: GA: white man beats down black woman in front of her child at Cracker Barrel

Police are investigating a possible hate crime as a white man, Troy Dale West of Poulan, GA, put the beatdown on a black woman, Tasha Hill. He did so in front of her daughter when Hill told West to watch out for her child as the mullet-sporting West swung open a door to leave a Morrow, GA Cracker Barrel...read on

I checked out Drudge to see if he flagged this report and guess what? There's no mention of it. And neither did Malkin.

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On the roundtable discussion via ABC's THIS WEEK, the last few minutes were dedicated to the Gates/Crowley Beer Summit story. If you watched most of the news shows on this issue, they told us that that President Obama was the big loser because more people sided with the police officer. However, Gerald Seib from the Wall Street Journal made the most honest statement about the incident and used the WSJ poll to do so. Seib said what the poll really revealed was the people who are predisposed to have racist tendencies voted against President Obama.

Seib: I don't know whether this opened up any new racial rifts or just showed that they're pretty much the same way they've always been. To go back to our poll again, George, if you look at the question we asked about who's more at fault, the professor or the cop. The people who thought the professor was more at fault tended to be older people, not younger people -- they tended to be people from the South, they tended to be more Republicans than Democrats. A lot of the same divides that you would expect to find ten years ago.

Conservatives had hoped that the Gates/Crowley story would open new wounds for Democrats on the race issue, but all it did was tell us that nothing has changed.

The same people who voted against Obama are the same ones who backed the cop. Wow, what a shocker. You can draw your own, unbiased conclusions on that one. It does help to look at the demographic breakdown of a question that has racial overtones, wouldn't you think? Well, it's the media, so that wasn't the case.

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If you didn't watch Rachel Maddow's debate with Pat Buchanan Thursday night, you missed an outstanding display of corporate media-financed white supremacy.

Pat Buchanan repeated the same exhausting argument that Judge Sotomayor is unqualified for the Supreme Court and therefore doesn't deserve the nomination -- in fact, she's been elevated, in Pat's estimation, based solely on race and not intellect. He said to Rachel:

I don't think Judge Sotomayor is qualified for the United States Supreme Court. She has not shown any great intellect here or any great depth of knowledge of the Constitution. She's never written anything that I've read in terms of a law review article or a major book or something like that on the law.

Oh.

So qualifications are suddenly important to Pat.

While pissing all over Judge Sotomayor's qualifications, judicial record, accomplishments and achievements, Pat Buchanan thinks Sarah Palin! is qualified to be President of the United States.

Sarah Palin -- who couldn't accurately describe the duties of the vice president during a nationally televised vice presidential debate. Remember this?

I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

Sarah Palin -- a politician who's less intellectually curious than George W. Bush, has less experience and fewer credentials than the worst president in American history. And Pat Buchanan thinks she's the best Republican ever. Presidential material.

But Judge Sotomayor is intellectually unqualified for the Supreme Court, right? And Sarah Palin is qualified for the highest office in the land.

What conclusion can we draw from this inconsistency? Easy. Pat Buchanan hates brown people. Read his latest awful editorial and tell me this isn't true. If he doesn't hate brown people, he simply, then, believes white males are far superior in almost every way (to be fair, he admits to Maddow that blacks can run fast).

He continues by complaining that white people are being discriminated against and this is a terrible crime. What Pat Buchanan will never admit is that for every one Frank Ricci, there are literally thousands of Americans with dark skin or "exotic" names who are being held back or punished or imprisoned for no other reason than their race or ethnicity. It's been that way for hundreds of years here.

This naturally doesn't make discrimination against white people "okay." In an imperfect system, though, correcting our massive racial imbalance means that, unfortunately, a few Frank Ricci types fall through the cracks. But if people like Pat Buchanan would embrace the spirit of correcting the imbalance, we'd be able to fix these cracks.

Ultimately, however, Pat Buchanan is an old white man who is clinging desperately -- and desperately is the appropriate adverb -- to the past, as Rachel pointed out. He fears the inevitable browning of America and so he's lashing out more and more often with this venomous, divisive, hate-mongering language.

The serious question here is whether MSNBC will continue to finance his clearly white supremacist views. If there's anyone in America who doesn't deserve more air time, it's people like Pat Buchanan. They had their time and they failed. Their reign was destructive and a blight on American history. They have no place in the discourse anymore.

Time to step aside, Pat. For the good of the country.

(Cross posted at BobCesca.com)

Cenk takes apart Pat Buchanan's op-ed at Human Events on Sonia Sotomayor.

I'm endorsing this move because the truth is the truth. Presente Action (a new Hispanic organization) and the PCCC are going to run ads in Florida called: DenunciaRush.com to highlight the anti-Latino sentiment that permeates the right wing Republican base, and how that bias is bubbling over with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Adam explains:

We've been pushing hard for health care reform recently, but another big thing is happening this week: The hearings to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as our first Latina Supreme Court Justice are starting today. And it's already ugly. First, congressional Republicans refused to denounce Rush Limbaugh's racist attacks on Sotomayor.

Then just yesterday, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee went on CBS and questioned the role of her "ethnic background" in her judicial work. Really? In 2009? Enough! It's time for Republicans to pay a political price for their blatant racism. That's why our friends at Presente Action are going on offense, running Spanish radio ads in key congressional districts -- starting in Florida. These ads will expose Republican racism for voters.

And Blue America's Alan Grayson is also getting big props for stepping up and bashing Limbaugh:

Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson -- also from Orlando -- did take on Limbaugh, despite representing a long-time Republican district. He said, "We have an African-American President and, soon, a Puerto Rican Supreme Court Justice. I'm proud of that. You're proud of that. And if Rush Limbaugh doesn't like it, that's just too bad." Grayson is a bold progressive in Congress. He successfully prosecuted Iraq war profiteers before defeating a House Republican last year and earning a reputation for grilling Wall Street execs this year. Grayson's outspokenness has made him a top Republican target in 2010. When you chip in to help air the radio ads, we've added a place where you can help Grayson's re-election as well. Please consider it.

You can also donate to Alan Grayson's campaign via Blue America here.

FOX Nation has a little problem....via emailer Marco

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Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh said that he wasn't backtracking on calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist like Gingrich did, but now he's saying that he might possibly support her because he likes Catholics and she may like "life" or some nonsense. Now all the rats are running for cover from their racist rants against Sonia.
I imagine some GOP internal polls came out saying that Gingrich and Buchanan and Limbaugh were going too far in their attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" and they are all pulling back.

Limbaugh:You know she would be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court and there are a lot of people worried about that, that does not bother me at all. I know a lot of Catholics and I love Catholics, but Sotomayor is a Catholic and she doesn't have a clear record on abortion and I'm, youuuu....overturning Roe vs Wade, that would be huge. I don't know if it will ever happen. I can see a possibility of supporting this nomination if I could be convinced if she does have a sensibility towards life.

Hahahaha, what a joke.