A letter to the editor was published in the Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal on Monday, August 16th, with the heading "Racism targets Obama":
Racism is alive and directed at our president.
Two very offensive racist bumper stickers were sent to the Johnson County Democrats PO box in Warrensburg. One had the donkey symbol with a strike-out mark and the words "2010 - Don't renig." The other had the initials BP above an oil blob and a photo of President Obama, with the words "Slickest and blackest disaster in US history." I turned the second one in to post office staff to register a complaint with the post master, and kept the first in case people didn't believe me.
I hope that local republican and conservatives are as offended as I am, and will speak out publicly to disavow these racist bumper stickers. Some people believe conservatives are closet (or not) racists and this is why. Please prove them wrong by speaking out against racism.
Jane VanSant, chair, Johnson County Democratic Committee
[with permission of the letter writer]
Curiously, the letter doesn't appear to be available on-line.
It turns out that a local republican office holder did speak out and then some:
...The letter to the editor regarding the bumper stickers called for local Republicans to speak out against racism, which I will gladly do, Rep. Hoskins said...
...No one has taken credit for sending the bumper stickers Rep. Hoskins continued, I was offended that the tone of the letter clearly implied that conservatives tend to be racists and therefore must have been the ones responsible for sending the bumper stickers. I have friends, business acquaintances, House colleagues, Johnson County Central Committee members and family of different colors. While I am clearly a conservative Republican, I am confident that I am the norm and not reflecting the attitude implied by the letter to the editor. Its ironic the very narrow-mindedness the letter speaks against is the same narrow-mindedness it projects by stereotyping conservatives as racists...
That's right, because liberals and progressives would have every reason to anonymously send bumper stickers to the local Democratic Party post office box.
And, apparently, when victims ask others to speak out it's their fault.
"...I hope that local republican and conservatives are as offended as I am, and will speak out publicly to disavow these racist bumper stickers. Some people believe conservatives are closet (or not) racists and this is why. Please prove them wrong by speaking out against racism..."
Uh, you did say you were offended and you did speak out. So, according to the letter writer you proved some people wrong. Is this a problem? Just asking.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
...But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. (Applause.) And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure...
...No doubt the president's advisors would much have preferred not to address this at all, wish it had never come up. But it's difficult to imagine any president doing otherwise. We learn again that saying you're for "democratic values" and freedom actually means being for "democratic values" and freedom. Are we in the tradition of the opening and plural societies of Amsterdam and London and America? Or the closed and authoritarian ones of Madrid and Moscow? The infrastructure of the Republican party has chosen to hoist its sail to religious bigotry. There's no other way to put it. The president has done the only thing he could possibly do which is to state clearly that we're Americans and we don't discriminate on the basis of religious belief...
The chair of the Johnson County, Missouri Democratic Central Committee went to the Warrensburg post office to check the committee's post office box for mail today.
In the mail was a a plain envelope with the address of the committee and no return address. There was a 37 cent Ronald Reagan stamp and a 10 cent stamp for postage.
Contained in the envelope were two bumper stickers:
What passes for subtle racism from right wingnuttia in post-racial America.
The second bumper sticker, as described by the chair, had an image with "BP" and an oil slick on the left, Obama's image on the right, and the legend, "Slickest and Blackest Disaster in U.S. History" in the center.
The chair turned over the envelope and the second bumper sticker to a post office employee at the counter who told her he would turn the materials over to the local postmaster. She retained the first bumper sticker.
"....Public schools are closing. Teachers are being laid off by the thousands. First class jails and second class schools. Today there is a plan, a plan for comprehensive immigration reform. A plan for Afghanistan, we commit resources, a hundred billion dollars for a hundred Al Qaeda. A plan, don't ask, don't tell, for gays. A plan for national reform. But no plan for the investment for urban policy to put America back to work. So, we bail out the predators, the bankers that drove us in this hole. The victims remain on the sideline desperately looking for a job...." - Reverend Jesse Jackson, NAACP National Convention, July 14, 2010.
"....Suddenly, Republican leaders want to change that. They say we shouldn't provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they've finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed. They've got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don't need them and didn't even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help. And every day this goes on, another 50,000 Americans lose that badly needed lifeline...."President Obama, weekly address, July 17, 2010.
Oh, the republicans have a plan for November 2010.
President Obama's weekly address for July 17, 2010:
President Obama traveled to Kansas City Thursday to speak on the economy at an electric vehicle plant and later as the headliner at a fundraiser for Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's U.S. Senate campaign. Blue Girl covered the fundraiser (one of two) held at the Folly Theater in downtown Kansas City and I covered the speech on the economy at Smith Electric Vehicles next to Kansas City International Airport.
In the lead up to and during the President's speech at the plant I took over 420 images. A few examples follow:
The view from the media riser before the audience was seated.
The transcript (compiled from my audio recording and a White House transcript):
President Obama: [applause] You don't need to do that. It's good to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Everybody, everybody have a seat. Uh, usually they announce me with some fancy thing, I think I messed up and I just walked out. [laughter] So, I hope you didn't mind. But on the way out, if you want, we can play the Ruffles and Flourishes and all that
Uh, I, I want to, before I start, acknowledge, uh, some people who have just done a wonderful job for this area, but also a wonderful job for the country. First of all, one of the best governors that we've got, uh, in the United States of America, Governor Jay Nixon. [applause] uh, one of my, not just my favorite senators but one of my favorite people, uh, and a great friend of mine who is fighting every day for the people of Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill. [applause] We have two outstanding members of Congress, uh, one from this side and one from that side, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver [applause] and Congressman Dennis Moore. [applause] And finally I just want to acknowledge, uh, all the wonderful people at, uh, Smith Electric, uh, Vehicles and their energetic and outstanding staff.
It is outstanding to be here, and I'm not going to take a long time. I just want to spend some time shaking hands and thanking you for the great work that you've done. I just had a chance to get a tour and saw some of the battery powered trucks that you're manufacturing. I had a chance to talk to some of the folks who build them. But the reason I'm here today is because, at this plant, you're doing more than just building new vehicles. You are helping to fight our way through a vicious recession and you are building the economy of America's future. Now, it's not easy. We've gone through as bad a economic situation as we've had since the Great Depression. And this recession was a culmination of a decade of irresponsibility, a decade that felt like a sledgehammer hittin' middle class families. For the better part of ten years, uh, people have faced stagnant incomes, skyrocketing health care costs, skyrocketing tuition costs, and declining economic security. And this all came to a head in a massive financial crisis that sent our economy into a free fall and cost eight million American jobs, including many in this community....
We'll be covering President Obama's visit to Kansas City tomorrow, both at the Smith Electric Vehicle plant and at one of the fundraising events for Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's U.S. Senate campaign. As a prelude to tomorrow's activities the White House offered a media conference call with administration officials this afternoon on the Recovery Act event:
The White House
Office of Media Affairs
For Immediate Release
July 7, 2010
CONFERENCE CALL: Administration Officials to Preview the President's Upcoming Visit to Kansas City, Missouri
WASHINGTON- Today, at 1:00 p.m. EDT Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist to Vice President Biden, and Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Chu will hold a conference call to preview the President's upcoming visit to Kansas City, Missouri.
In Kansas City on July 8, President Obama will visit Smith Electric Vehicles where he will tour the facilities and deliver remarks on the economy to workers. Smith Electric Vehicles is an all-electric, zero emissions commercial truck manufacturer that received a $32 million Recovery Act grant to build all-electric trucks. The award, which is part of the $2.4 billion in Recovery Act advanced battery and electric vehicle grants the President announced last August, is helping Smith Electric establish operations at a re-purposed jet engine overhaul facility at the Kansas City International Airport, the first of as many as 20 regional assembly plants Smith Electric plans to open in the U.S....
The transcript:
Matt Lehrich, White House Communications: Hey everybody, it's Matt Lehrich, in White House Communications, thanks for joining us today. We are joined by Jared Bernstein who is chief economist for Vice President Biden and by Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Chu. Gonna talk a little bit about, uh, what the President's gonna be talking about tomorrow as well as the Recovery Act more broadly, and some of the specific programs under Department of Energy. And with that I'll turn it over to Jared Bernstein....
...And so the president's [George W. Bush] poll numbers dropped down to where they are now, twenty seven. Satan is at twenty nine. [laughter, applause] Some of the lowest poll numbers in the history of the republic, since we've been keeping poll numbers...
....a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 44% of U.S. voters think civilian control of the military is good for the country.
Twenty-eight percent (28%) think it's a bad idea to have civilians with the final say over military leaders. Another 28% are not sure which course is best....
....The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on June 23-24, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence....
[emphasis added]
That just may be about right, given the number of batshit crazy people in America right now.
....The fishing industry will be devastated in the Gulf and to add to the mockery our very own president (did) not attend ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. Obama should be ashamed that a sports game is more important.
Our soldiers and sailors have died for this audacity of arrogance.
....Last year, President Obama kept with tradition and attended the ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. But this year, he chose to attend a ceremony at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois.
The move is not entirely unprecedented. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, was in France on Memorial Day in 2002. He traveled with a bipartisan delegation, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to American Cemetery in Normandy to pay respects to those who gave their lives on D-Day.
His father, the first President Bush, never attended Memorial Day ceremonies at Arlington, and even Ronald Reagan missed two such events there, though for one of those missed ceremonies he went to speak at West Point....
[emphasis added]
I don't recall similar letters to the editor concerning this issue in the local paper when daddy bush and dubya were in office, do you?
"I am deeply disappointed that Senate Republicans voted in a block against allowing a public debate on Wall Street reform to begin. Some of these Senators may believe that this obstruction is a good political strategy, and others may see delay as an opportunity to take this debate behind closed doors, where financial industry lobbyists can water down reform or kill it altogether. But the American people can't afford that. A lack of consumer protections and a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly brought our economy to its knees, and helped cause the pain that has left millions of Americans without jobs and without homes. The reform that both parties have been working on for a year would prevent a crisis like this from happening again, and I urge the Senate to get back to work and put the interests of the country ahead of party."
....What McConnell did not mention was that, last week, he traveled alongside National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. John Cornyn (TX) to New York City for a private meeting with elite hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives. The purpose of the meeting between the top Republicans and the financial executives was to enlist "Wall Street's help" in funding Republican campaigns in the fall and killing any tough financial reform...
"...we're going to put in place new rules so that big banks and financial institutions will pay for the bad decisions they make - not taxpayers. Simply put, this means no more taxpayer bailouts...." - President Barack Obama
Senator Kit Bond (r - lame duck) and all of the republicans in the Senate signed on [pdf] to block that financial regulatory reform (you know, the lack thereof which allowed a wealthy few to almost collapse our economy by virtue of their high risk and other behaviors).
...Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue...
...[republican Senate Leader] McConnell's Wall Street meeting, in other words, is quickly becoming one of the central aspects of the debate. Perhaps the Minority Leader would be willing to shed some additional light on what transpired? Who, exactly, did he meet with? How much money did he collect? What did the Wall Street elites demand, specifically, and what did he promise?
I wonder what the reaction might be if Senate Dems raised the prospect of some kind of investigation into the meeting, complete with subpoenas for attendees....
President Obama called out the republican obstructionists in today's address:
"....Now, unsurprisingly, these reforms have not exactly been welcomed by the people who profit from the status quo - as well their allies in Washington. This is probably why the special interests have spent a lot of time and money lobbying to kill or weaken the bill. Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue.
Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we've proposed. In doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts - when he knows that it would do just the opposite. Every day we don't act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place - with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities. And if we don't change what led to the crisis, we'll doom ourselves to repeat it. That's the truth. Opposing reform will leave taxpayers on the hook if a crisis like this ever happens again...."
....Tea Party identifiers are more likely to believe President Obama has already raised taxes this past year. Most Americans think the President has kept them the same.
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS ALREADY...
Raised taxes
All - 24%
Tea Partiers - 44%
Lowered taxes
All - 12%
Tea Partiers - 2%
Kept taxes same
All - 53%
Tea Partiers - 46%
....This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1084 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone February 5-10, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher....
President Obama Cut Taxes for 99% of Working Families in Missouri in 2009 The 2009 federal income taxes that come due on April 15 have been cut for nearly all working Americans, including Americans at all income levels, by the Recovery Act signed by President Obama last year. No legislation enacted during the Obama administration increased taxes for 2009....
There are some very interesting tables in the report.
So, why are all those teabaggers angry that Obama raised their taxes? Just asking.
For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.
President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama's remarks last night from the East Room after passage of the historic bill:
At St. Charles High School in suburban St. Louis this afternoon, Barack Obama laid out the argument for the health care reform bill. He was thorough. He was clear. He made that audience understand that we must have reform and that we can, even in these recessionary times, afford it. Indeed, we can't afford not to have it.
I'll write more tomorrow about how he laid out that argument, but right now, I wanted to offer you the end of his speech. It's the kind of stirring rhetoric that kept John McCain from becoming president. It's the kind of rhetoric we should have heard regularly these last few months. Here it is, better late than never.
....Since she [Robin Carnahan] also has a couple of campaign fundraisers scheduled while she's in the capital, Zakula said the campaign is paying for the trip.
Still, the president is not the most popular guy in Missouri, lately. He only had a 40 percent approval rating in the state last month, according to a Rasmussen poll.
But Zakula denied that Carnahan was leaving town to avoid sharing a stage with him.
"She appreciates the support from Sen. McCaskill and the president and she's looking forward to seeing them on the campaign trail this year," he said....
"...He only had a 40 percent approval rating in the state last month, according to a Rasmussen poll..."
....I want to stress that the only point I'm making in this post is that at least in national tracking polls, in any given timeframe, a Rasmussen poll is overwhelmingly likely to show better news for the GOP than any other poll.
To illustrate this point, I generated a series of scatter plot charts using pollster.com's index of polls. Every poll in pollster.com's index is represented on each chart by a dot, plotted horizontally by the date of the poll, and vertically by the results of the poll.
Rasmussen polls are in red; every other poll is in green. Shaded red areas on the charts represent areas where results would favor the GOP.
I think you'll see that Rasmussen polls literally stand out from all the others and they almost always deliver good news for the GOP....
You'd think the Kansas City Star might mention that. If they even knew or bothered to try and figure it out.
The pool report forwarded this evening by the White House Media Affairs Office:
Air force one landed at lambert-st louis international airport at 323 pm local time (423 east coast time).
No gaggle on the flight to St. Louis. But Reid Cherlin stopped by to chat, and says, on the record, that Robin Carnahan had already scheduled her trip to Washington when Potus decided to come to St. Louis. "Her people have asked if President Obama would please appear with her in a future event soon," Mr. Cherlin said. "We are working on that now."
