By: Jack Blackshear
What a day it was back in Waco, Texas on May 5th 1916! A beautiful spring day and folks were anxious to be outside –a good day to lynch some N-word.

Let’s say you were looking through a trunk in the attic and came across this photo. How would you know what held the attention of the crowd that day? It could be anything — politician making a speech, circus in town, who knows.

The heinous torture and murder of a man would not naturally spring to mind. But that is exactly what these well dressed citizens of Waco were watching that day, and, by their presence, empowering.

I wonder if the mother of the victim managed to get a view the gallows from some hiding place out of sight of the mob. If she did, what went through her mind as she watched the rope tighten and saw the look of horror on her son’s face the second before his neck snapped? Did she think of the baby she suckled, remember the little boy she read to — we will never know.

With only a wardrobe change and the addition of a hundred or so hateful signs this crowd could be transformed into a Tea Party rally. Of course their victim is not hanging from a rope. But the only metaphor for their actions is a modern day lynching. Both crowds, old and new, are conservative, church going people and sure of their superiority.

This is an early photo of Sarah Palin’s Real Americans. Little has changed in the last century except that the N-word on the gallows is now the President of the United States. It is tempting for white Americans to show pride at how far African Americans have come. “Only in America”, you might say. But for a large minority of Americans, it is always a good day to lynch a N-word.

Some 3,446 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1933 by mobs made up of people looking very much like those you see in the photo. This is not the final tally. There were certainly many more carried out under cover of darkness in secluded places and down dirt roads now lost from memory.

When the Civil Rights Movement came along, the lynch mobs made a comeback.

African Americans marched for their rights and endured threatening crowds of racists who showered them with bricks, drenched them with fire hoses and attacked them with dogs. But they persevered and the angry mobs once more faded into history.

Now, with the election of Barack Obama, the horrors of the past are coming back. The culprits are ultra-conservative organizations backed by corporate wealth and a compliant news media. They have been so successful in creating a purpose built organization in the Tea Party that rallies all over the country are now common place. All of them are attended by angry mobs whose sole goal is to demonize President Obama. The participants carry signs, not rope, but their aim is still the same — to do the maximum damage they can get away with.

For many Americans, the fear of blacks in positions of power is normally tucked away in a corner of their minds seldom visited. But when Barack Obama came along as a candidate for President, that fear began to stir. At first it just lay there with its eyes open; then, when Obama was elected, it stood up and became a part of their everyday lives.

Right wing leaders like Dick Armey were crouching in the shadows, waiting to turn this fear into hatred and meld it into the Tea Party.

Just consider their luck. The country was in a historically bad recession and people were looking for someone to blame. The first African American had just been elected president presenting opportunities to exploit racism. Right wing ideologues like the Koch brothers were worried about their profits and willing to bankroll any plan to stop Obama’s agenda. Front organizations like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity stepped in with organizational skills and turned the mob loose in the summer of 2009. Town hall meetings were broken up and speakers intimidated, reminiscent of the bully boy tactics of the Nazis before the Second World War.

Tea Party warriors were heady with victory and wanted more, but none of it would have been possible without help from Limbaugh, Beck and O’Reilly. In 1871 the Ku Klux Klan delivered hatred in person, today Fox and Rush do it over the airwaves.

Excerpts from “The Perpetual American Lynch Mob” by Frank Schaeffer in the Huffington Post on April 15, 2010:

•   ”Who is the “Tea Party”? It’s today’s incarnation of the Perpetual American Lynch Mob.

•   In one generation the Perpetual American Lynch Mob is burning Pequot Indian women and children alive.

•   In another time and place the Perpetual American Lynch Mob string up black men.

•   A few decades pass and they can be found calling President Roosevelt a communist, Jew and the anti-Christ and/or marching on Washington in support of Germany.

•   At another time and place the Perpetual American Lynch Mob call themselves a “Tea Party” and gather to hurl insults and lies at our first black President.”

The harshest rhetoric comes from Rush Limbaugh. A dedicated race baiter, he will tell any lie and distort any issue to his detriment. This extends even to the President’s family. A few of his worst rants:

“Obama wants to get the US out of Iraq so he can transfer troops to the blacks in Darfur and South Africa. His reason is to appeal to the black vote at home that he needs to get elected. Standing behind Nelson Mandela, who was bankrolled by communists, is another idea of his. Then he will move on to Ethiopia and do the same thing there.”

He repeatedly plays a racist song on his radio show; “Barack the Magic Negro“, to the tune of Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon“.

Attacks on the President’s wife and children are common. Mocking her program to fight obesity saying, “White House monitors will report citizens’ food choices to the First Lady.”

“The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.”

Even his run of the mill racism is vile in the extreme: “New York Governor, Patterson, is a ‘Massa’” — “Obama is uppity” – “Obama is more African in his roots than he is American and is behaving like an African colonial despot; Obama is an angry Black guy.” – “Obama is a Halfrican American.” – “We need segregated buses — this is Obama’s America.” – He responded to a call to his radio show by an African American woman; “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” – “The NAACP should have riot rehearsals. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”

Almost psychotic in nature, Glenn Beck twists news into a fantasy world of lies and fake conspiracy theories. His escapade at the Lincoln Memorial taunted African Americans by demeaning Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beck attacked Michelle Obama on his radio show by discussing her breasts in what he called her shimmery, sapphire colored gown at the state dinner for Mexican President Calderon. “She looks positively like she’s trying to be some Greek statue. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the First Lady with her, excuse the expression, but with her breasts all smooshed up.”

He attacked Michelle Obama’s program to draw attention to obesity with this taunt, “Will lead to a food nanny state”; and, at an appearance of the Right Nation he taunted her again; “Get away from my French fries, Mrs. Obama. First politician that comes up to me with a carrot stick, I’ve got a place for it. And it’s not in my tummy.” (The remark drew loud applause.)

An attack on the President’s daughter: “Obama remarked yesterday during his press conference that Malia asked him about the Gulf oil spill: “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” then affected Malia’s voice: “asking Daddy why he hates black people so much” and demeaning the intelligence of his children: “That’s the level of their education – that they’re coming to Daddy and saying ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?”

Tea Party types swan every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth. As with the rumors, they could care less if any of it makes sense.

Since the 2008 election, Sarah Palin has traveled the country attacking the President. Just as in the election, she is so vague and nonsensical that it is hard to know exactly what she is talking about.

“Death Panels”, is a Sarah Palin original. Whether or not she is actually telling a lie or believes what she is saying is unclear — anyway, with her it really does not matter.

“Don’t tread on me”, is the Tea Party’s standard. It was a worthy flag in the American Revolution when the “me” in the flag was America itself. Now, the flag bears are the ones doing the treading — and the President is their victim.

Excerpts from “Rage, Racism and American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post on September 14, 2009:

“We have entered what columnist Kathleen Parker calls “a political era of uninhibited belligerence,” that is finding expression in sermons, at town hall meetings, on radio talk shows, even on the floor of Congress. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times told it like it is in her op-ed column Sunday, when she said that the real meaning of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s health care speech was not “you lie” but “you lie–boy. Many Americans spent a good deal of time last November patting themselves on the back for having elected an African-American president. What we are seeing now is the bitterness of an un-reconciled minority that will never accept the legitimacy of that election.”

Signs carried by this un-reconciled minority prove Ms. Jacoby’s point:

The zoo has an Africa lion and the White House has a lyin’ African – Impeach the Muslim Marxist – Obama Bin Laden — No, No to Anti-Capitalist Congress = Slave Owner Tax Payer = N-Word – Hey Big Brother, show us your real birth certificate – Obama’s Plan, White Slavery – President pictured as a witch doctor – Obama, Monkey See, Monkey Spend – Cap Congress and Trade Obama back to Kenya – The anti-Christ is living in the white house – Gimme Yo Change (Obama pictured as a Rapper) - Obama is a destructive unpatriotic black Muslim – Barack Obama, the new face of Hitler – Obama is the Anti-Christ, Oust Obama

Images of Right-Wing Terrorism in America: [ VIDEO ] [ PICTURES ]

Conservative warriors frustrated by their inability to thwart social progress and backed by the Religious Right saw the election of Barack Obama as a call to battle.

His election was the catalyst that molded these forces into the phalanx of opposition the President faces today. Terrified at the specter of a black President being carried to Washington on the shoulders of a majority of adoring Americans was just too much for them to bear.

Their reaction was visceral. Enraged enough to rally in the streets and follow anyone they thought could lead them out of their perceived danger. Reason was abandoned and there was little they would not do or believe to get rid of Obama: unbelievably silly rumors — “no problem”; nonsensical rants by Sarah Palin — “no problem”; gutting most of the social progress of the twentieth century — “no problem”; letting their racist colors show through — “no problem”; lynch the President of the United States “hell yes”.

Having gotten away with racism, the Tea Party has evolved into an ideologically radical political platform. Right wing radicals use it to launch attacks on all the social progress made during the last century.

Jim DeMint: “Conservatives might have to ‘take to the streets’ to stop America’s slide into socialism.”

Sharron Angle: denounced “domestic enemies” in Congress and called for the use of “Second Amendment remedies” if not elected.

Rand Paul: Should owners of privately owned business be able to segregate? Rand Paul’s answer is yes.

Joe Miller: on social security — “But longer term there is no question there has to be a transition”.

Prior to the Civil War, “States Rights”, was used by the slave owning states to justify their position and has reappeared in American politics every time the Federal Government enacts legislation expanding social programs. The better off whites see this as a give-away to undeserving minorities — money that will be taken from them in higher taxes.

The mob will use this argument to not only repeal and radically dilute social programs, but to limit the Federal Government’s right to make such laws in the first place. Once again, the ruse of states rights is being called on to advance a racist agenda.

Only two years after taking control of the executive and legislative branches of government, Progressives find themselves on the defensive and struggling to hang on. Why?

The short answer is the economy. A longer answer would include the disproportionate impact on the electorate of the Tea Party and the new funding landscape created by the Citizens United case. But, as important as all of these issues are, they do not fully answer the question.

Would the Democrats be in the shape they are in now, if, for example, Joe Biden had been elected president? He would still have had the economy to contend with, but the outrage factor would be much less — in my opinion. I also doubt that the Tea Party would exist in its present form — again, in my opinion.

Although the classic confrontation of conservative vs. progressive continues, the election of Barack Obama has heightened the awareness of race and class in America and, in particular, the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

In the midst of a deep recession and the public concern that there may be a permanent restructuring of the economy, especially with regard to employment, many Americans are beginning to question the sanctity of these programs. And not just conservatives, Independents too are having second thoughts. As baby boomers retire, this concern may deepen.

In the near future, Progressives may have to fight just to hold on to the social progress achieved over the last century, much less expand that progress. This will likely not be a gentlemanly fight and Barack Obama will not be the last person the mob will lynch in America.

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References:
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•   The ‘White American Brain’ Finally Goes Haywire in Spectacular Fashion

•   The Coming Obama Reich: 10 Things That Terrify Right-Wingers

•   What The Tea Partiers Really Want: A Whites ONLY Country …’Dang It!’

•   The Right’s Search For a Black Racist.

•   Fear of An Intelligent Black Man — White Intimidation By Black Male Intelligence Still Exists To This Day

•   Republicans and the Art of Racism: Obama is Dealing With an Aggressive Covert and Fascist Operation in Congress, in The Media and On The Streets

•   Rise of The ‘Angry White Male’: Desperate & Insecure Whites See Years of Unfettered Privilege Slipping Away

•   The Tea-Bag “Terrorist” Suckers Are The New “White Power Movement“

•   Disguising Hate as Heritage: The Neo-Confederate Tradition Of Refighting The Civil War

•   An Anatomy of Projected Racism

•   Images of Right-Wing Republican Terrorism in America

•   Living Under Obama: White Male ‘Conservative’ Victimhood and The New Realities of ‘Black Privilege’

•   The Pathology of White Privilege: What If The Tea Party ‘Tea-Baggers’ Were Black?

•   The ‘Destroy Obama’ Game Plan: A Single-Minded and Vicious Enemy Stalks The Democratic President

•   On Negrophobia: Psychoneurotic Obstacles to Black Autonomy (or Why I just love Michael Jackson)

•   The Politics of Mosques and Qurans Show America Tto Be in The Worst Spasm of Paranoia and Bigotry Since The Cold War.

•   Fanning Fears of Muslims Has Never Made Better — Or More Cynical — Political Sense. — Until the advent of the Obama presidency, Republicans had no reason to scapegoat Muslimsor demonize Islam — and indeed, they could not have inflamed those prejudices without damaging their own leaders, especially George W. Bush. The political and cultural messaging that Republicans and conservatives accepted quietly from Bush is today considered tantamount to treason when promoted by Obama.

•   The Great ‘Tea-Party’ Fear: Pollution of The White ‘Stock’ — The Strange Sexual Obsessions Driving the Tea Party Movement: The great white fear of interracial “pollution” has found its most acute expression with Obama as president. He is the offspring of not simply an interracial relationship, but an international coupling as well. He is the child of 21st century globalization, the symbolic representation of a hope for a world without borders, without race prejudice, without white privilege. — [ READ MORE ]

•   America Just Can’t Deal With Reality Any More.

•   The Real ‘Un-Americans’ and Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘Summa Idiotica’.

•   White Civil-War: The Intra-Racial Struggle Over America’s National Identity and Belonging.

•   NAACP Report Ties Tea Party to Militia and Racist Republican Groups; Tea-Bagger Group Calls Obama ‘Angel of Death’.

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HuffingtonPost: A stunning incident of police brutality in Paris, Texas, was caught on tape and has led to ramifications. Cornelius Gill was slammed up against a car in the town about 90 miles northeast of Dallas, and his friend was grappled alongside him. [ READ MORE ]

Paris, Texas, was also the site of state police breaking up outbreaks of racial riots a year ago.

There were shouts of “white power” and “go back to Africa” on the streets of Paris, Texas. Troopers moved in to keep apart blacks and white supremacists during protests over the handling of the dragging death of a black man last year.

[ The African Holocaust Album ]

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US special forces “tried to cover-up” botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan: US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims? bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

   Orphaned Children Look at The Graves of Family Murdered By U.S. Soldiers

A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The Times: “I think the special forces lied to McChrystal.”

“Why did the special forces collect their bullets from the area?” the official said. “They washed the area of the injuries with alcohol and brought out the bullets from the dead bodies. The bodies showed there were big holes.” [ READ MORE ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In another incident, in 2007, the WikiLeaks Web site yesterday released a harrowing until-now secret video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007, repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver — and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

In the video, soldiers can be heard celebrating their kills:

“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” says one soldier after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A soldier begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”

Two soldiers share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one soldier can be heard saying: “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.” [ READ MORE ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Reference: Video Shows American Killing of Photographer — Wikileaks.org released a video of a U.S. helicopter killing a Reuters photographer and driver in 2007 in Baghdad.

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Experts have indicated time and again that torturing prisoners almost always yields wrong information, and that there are other more effective methods of interrogation.

But, the duo of Dick Morris and Sean Hannity being what they are — media terrorists, prefer to go straight to the LYNCHING! The same thing [they] did to the Indians, Blacks, Mexicans, Non-Anglo Saxon Immigrants, …..more recently, Iraqi mothers and their children.

Meanwhile, Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests have called for profiling of Muslims by airport security personnel. But, several national security experts have termed such policies ineffective, with Bush administration secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff stating that “relying on preconceptions or stereotypes is actually kind of misleading and, arguably, dangerous.” [ READ MORE ]

Dick ‘FAT’ Morris: “If we don’t take our country back in 2010, it’s not going to be there for us to take back”

Dick ‘FAT’ Morris: “The reason 9-11 happened is that Bill Clinton treated the ’93 bombing of the [World] Trade Center as a crime”

Sean Hannity on Abdulmutallab: “We ought to be waterboarding this guy“

STUPID Steve Doocy ignores Bush policies to claim Abdulmutallab criminal charges “takes us back to the days of the Clinton administration“

Bonus Video: Americans Funding Terrorism

A new report in The Nation details how U.S. tax dollars are being used to “pay off” Taliban killers to keep them from bombing and shooting at U.S. convoys. Robert Greenwald, director of “Rethink Afghanistan” discusses.

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From The Innocence Project:

Cameron Todd Willingham: An Innocent Man Executed in Texas — Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004. Willingham was convicted of murder in 1992 after his three young daughters died in a fire at his Corsicana, Texas, home.

The prosecution claimed he intentionally set fire to his home in order to kill his own children. Willingham, who was asleep in the home when the fire started, always said he was innocent. He was convicted based on the testimony of forensic experts who said the fire was intentionally set and a jailhouse informant who said Willingham had confessed to him.

In the days leading up to Willingham’s execution, his attorneys sent the governor and the Board of Pardon and Parole a report from Gerald Hurst, a nationally recognized arson expert, saying that Willingham’s conviction was based on erroneous forensic analysis. Documents obtained by the Innocence Project show that state officials received that report but apparently did not act on it.

Months after Willingham was executed, the Chicago Tribune published an investigative report that raised questions about the forensic analysis. The Innocence Project assembled five of the nation’s leading independent arson experts to review the evidence in the case, and they issued a 48-page report finding that none of the scientific analysis used to convict Willingham was valid. [ READ MORE ]

An investigation into claims that faulty evidence led Texas to execute an innocent man in 2004 was at a “crucial point” when the state’s governor replaced three of its members. Gov. Rick Perry’s shake-up of the Texas Forensic Science Commission came two days before it was to hear from the author of a scathing report in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. That Friday session has been postponed indefinitely in the wake of Perry’s new appointments, and critics of the governor accused him of trying to quash the Willingham probe.

Perry, who faces a Republican primary challenge in his bid for a third term next year, refused to issue a last-minute stay of execution for Willingham in 2004 and has said he remains confident that Willingham was guilty. So have authorities in Corsicana, south of Dallas, who prosecuted Willingham in his daughter’s deaths.

It is very evident that Rick Perry let an innocent man be put to death for political purposes — to please his Republican base of RACISTS, TEA-BAGGERS, and KILLER ARMED WHITE CHRISTIANS. [ READ MORE ] [ MORE ] [ TRIAL BY FIRE ]

Innocent Man Executed in Republican Gov. Rick Perry’s ‘The Hanging State‘ – TEXAS

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