Jack & Jill Politics

Cross-posted on MyDD

Hi, I’m Jill Tubman, a thirty-something living on the East Coast. On my blog, Jack and Jill Politics, I talk about politics from the perspective of the increasingly influential Black middle class. You see, I didn’t grow up on the mean streets of East L.A. or East Harlem. Like a lot of people, I grew up in a (relatively) diverse and prosperous suburb, post-integration. MyDD has invited me to offer you a roundup of the week’s notable events at the intersection of minorities and politics.

This week, it’s almost as if the Republicans got among their usual talking points — “say something racist, semi-factual and offensive to many, preferably involving Islamofascism.” Only time will tell if the “war on brown people” strategy will be effective with their conservative base, but playing the race card so bluntly threatens to activate progressive opponents and alienate moderate supporters.

* Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), running for re-election in Montana, wins the prize for Republican race-baiting this week. He has recently managed to offend multiple ethnic groups in recent statements. Check out this video which shows him warning more than once that Americans are threatened by a faceless enemy who drives taxis by day and kills at night. Then take the poll — who’s a bigger threat to the U.S.: taxi drivers, 7/11 workers, macacas in general, or idiot Senators?

He has also described his personal enforcement of tighter immigration controls in asking his house painter for his green card calling him a “nice little Guatemalan man.” In 1999, let’s not forget he apologized for calling  Arabs “ragheads” in discussing oil prices.

* The Washington Times, D.C.’s conservative leaning newspaper, ran a front page article attempting to give cover to pro-corporate, conservative-friendly Black Democrats like Al Wynn and Bobby Rush under attack from progressive candidates.

“My general view is that the Democratic Party used to be the big tent party where everyone is allowed to express their views; now it is being taken over by these bloggers and purists who can only see one way of thinking,” Mr. Wynn said.

FireDogLake and MyDD received a special mention for supporting Donna Edwards’s campaign, who got a Washington Post endorsement this week.

Evidently, supporting non-corrupt, solid candidates like Edwards is a racist attempt to destroy the Democratic party. Uh oh, the Washington Post had better watch their step!

The GOP’s love affair with racism this week continues after the jump.

* Beyond Macaca – Running for the Senate in Virginia, George Allen’s links to the racist Council of Conservative Citizens are revealed. CCC is the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council and ranked with the KKK as one of America’s largest and most venerable white supremacist groups. He’s shown gripping and grinning in a photo with their leaders.

* Congressman Bob Beauprez (R-CO) and pro-life Senate candidate claims that 70% of African-American pregnancies or more end in abortion. Disturbing news, if true, but the number is closer to 33%.

* Pat Buchanan is promoting his recent book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America and sharing his racist beliefs with audiences around the nation. In his book, Buchanan writes:

Those who believe it doesn’t matter from where they come will turn America into something she cannot survive, becoming a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual Tower of Babel.

BlackProf provides the transcript of his appearance on CNN’s Situation Room where he defends that statement and adds that even legal immigration from non-white countries, especially Mexico, is dangerous. ThinkProgress has the video where Buchanan describes on Hannity and Colmes the urgency needed to keep America white.

What I would like is — I’d like the country I grew up in. It was a good country. I lived in Washington, D.C., 400,000 black folks, 400,000 white folks, in a country 89 or 90 percent white. I like that country.

Buchanan’s factoid sounds wildly inaccurate to me, by the way. Perhaps MyDD readers can set Buchanan straight.

* Today is the anniversary of President Bush’s arrival on the Gulf Coast after five days of lies and inaction after Hurricane Katrina. ThinkProgress has a full timeline that shows clearly that Bush administration officials continued to go shoe-shopping, enjoy long vacations and watch baseball games as hurricane victims waited in vain for food, water and rescue. The face of human suffering on TV was most often black and poor, people Barbara Bush implied with an ironic chuckle that the hospitality of the Houston Astrodome was “working very well for them”.