David A. Harris: The official GOP fundraising documents revealed Wednesday by POLITICO paint a portrait of a Republican Party reverting to form: when all else fails, turn to fear-mongering.

Based on the right wing’s scare tactics during the 2008 election and last summer’s health care debate, this should come as no surprise. If anything, this confirms what many quietly speculated all along: that the GOP is trying to scare its way back into power by raising money to bombard voters with incorrect information.

All Americans should be outraged that the Republican Party thinks so little of their intelligence. It would be one thing if the GOP was raising money through the merits of its ideas. But their recent conduct demonstrates that they have very few, if any, marketable ideas and real policy alternative for the American public which leaves fear-mongering as their prime fundraising tool.

Time and time again, we see that today’s GOP is committed to catering to its new Tea Party base. That this is as true in fundraising as it is in policy matters should come as no surprise.

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Jonathan Capehart: After flipping through the 72-page PowerPoint presentation from the Republican National Committee Finance leadership meeting, I’m increasingly convinced that Chairman Michael Steele and his cohorts are determined to remain a regional reactionary second-rate party. [ READ MORE ]

Despicable Uncle TOM Michael Steele SPINS GOP Fear Game

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Howard Dean on FEAR TACTICS

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GOP Plays The Fear Game

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Politico: Officials of both parties are sharply criticizing a fundraising mailing from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele they say could be confused with official correspondence regarding this year?s census.

The fundraising letter comes in the form of a “survey,” a frequently used device for partisan fundraising, but this one has a twist: Calling itself the “Congressional District Census,” the letter comes in an envelope starkly printed with the words, “DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT” and describes itself, on the outside of the envelope, as a “census document.”

“Strengthening our party for the 2010 elections is going to take a massive grass-roots effort all across America,” Steele writes in a letter that blends official-sounding language, partisan calls to arms, and requests for between $25 and $500. “That is why I have authorized a census to be conducted for every congressional district in the country.” [ READ MORE ]

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As frenzied Republican sociopaths bask in the victory of “Nudist” Senator Elect of Massachusetts, Scott Brown, some are in an “acute state of longing” for criminal murderer of Iraqi children, George W. Bush’s bloody past. Claims such as: “George W. Bush liberated 60,000,000 Muslims from tyranny,” “Miss Him? 1 Year Later, Bush Still Stands Proud,” “ONE YEAR GONE: President George W. Bush Answered the Calling of Our Time,” ….littered Republican websites. [ MORE ]

   This is What Bush Will Be Remembered For: [ AND THIS ]
   An Iraqi Child With Leg Blown Off — All Because of Bush!

   [ For More Pictures of Iraqi Children Murdered By Bush -- Scroll All The Way Down ]

Bush did not liberate 60,000,000 Muslims, he hanged 1,000,000 in cold blood — based on a LIE! That’s his legacy, etched in stone. These are the same Republican LIARS at work, the same racist crooks who want us to believe that 9/11 did not happen or that Bush inherited it from Bill Clinton.

Rehabilitating Bush: One year later, right-wing media still mourn the loss of Bush — One year after the inauguration of President Obama, right-wing media — in particular Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, Big Hollywood, and Big Journalism — marked the anniversary with a series of articles fondly reminiscing about the Bush administration, in which they often attempted to rewrite the history of Bush’s policies and also attacked Obama. [ READ MORE ]

Rove shelters Bush from any responsibility for 2009 increase in deficit — In his Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove ignored the Bush administration’s responsibility for the 2009 budget to attack the Obama administration over deficits. Rove also ignored several economic analyses that estimated relative employment increases under the stimulus in order to claim that the stimulus failed. [ READ MORE ]

Sicko Glenn Beck falsely attributes entire 2009 debt to Obama — Glenn Beck attributed the entire deficit for the fiscal year 2009 to President Obama, stating that the federal debt was “$10.6 trillion in 2008,” and that since Obama “comes in,” “we’ve gone in the one year, we’ve gone to… $12.3 trillion on the debt.” In fact, only a small portion of the fiscal year 2009 deficit is due to Obama’s policies; in January, before he took office or signed any legislation, CBO projected that, based on policies set under President Bush and economic conditions at the time, the deficit for fiscal year 2009 would reach $1.2 trillion. [ READ MORE

.....and more sickness and lies in VIDEO:

Campaigning on Fox? Huckabee declares tea party movement "most positive thing that I've seen in my lifetime in politics"

FAT Rush Limbaugh calls Obama an idiot for having high expectations on Middle East peace process

...then congratulates himself for stopping Healthcare, for being the "one voice" that spoke out against Obama's agenda

Hannity: Brown's victory "marks the beginning of the great repudiation of the Obama agenda"

Stossel says it's "just false" that "government subsidies" can "create jobs"

NOTE: Politifact.com previously found Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's claim that "in the history of mankind and womankind, government - federal, state, local, or otherwise - has never created one job" was "Pants on Fire" false.

Sick Beck promises upcoming "documentary" on communist atrocities will show what "progressives don't want you to know"

"Porn-Master" Bill O'Reilly: If researchers "need a bigger sample" of blonde women, "come to Fox News"

   [ ENLARGE ]

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Forty two years after his assassination, Martin Luther King’s dream(s) has not been fully realized. Dr. King would have turned 81 last Friday, had he not met an untimely death, courtesy of assassin James Earl Ray.

Despite solid civil rights strides over the last few decades, marching towards Dr. King’s dream, a section of Republican America is still as fucked up as they were in 1900s. Although systematically dwindling in numbers, it is unfortunate to note that quite a fairly large chunk of “conservative savages” are still roaming this land, spitting venom like trapped cobra’s.

So, where’s the racial progress Obama promised? Polls suggest that one year into the Obama presidency, the country hasn’t made much progress when it comes to views on race.

I concur ….too may tea-bagging goons still living in America.

As I have stated above, as long as race-baiting baboons in the mode of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh ….Fox News, similar Republican Scum, and despicable black apologists like Michael Steele still exist, race relations in America will remain strained for a long time to come.

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President Obama Celebrates MLK Day

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Race Discussion: Town Hall at Texas Southern University

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Panel Discussion: Town Hall at Texas Southern University

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The State of Race Relations in America

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Embracing Obama’s Vision of Change

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Debating Affirmative Action

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Houston’s Mayor on Acceptance in America

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Race, Immigration, Generations

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Relieving Racial Tension Through Humor

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More Questions From The Audience

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Closing Thoughts

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MSNBC’s Ed Schultz is joined by Prof. Michael Eric Dyson

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   [ By: Melissa Harris-Lacewell ]
Joe Biden once remarked that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate.” He is now Vice President. During the Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton invoked Robert Kennedy in a way that implied Barack Obama’s assassination was imminent. She is now the Secretary of State. It is foolish to suggest Senator Harry Reid should step down as Senate majority leader because of his 2008 assessment that Barack Obama’s election was more likely because he is “light-skinned” and free from “Negro dialect.”

If President Obama has demonstrated anything at all, it is that he unperturbed by the racially awkward outbursts of his fellow Democrats.

Republicans hope that reports of Reid’s old gaffe might derail his leadership of the health care reform package. But watching Michael Steele go after Reid is more bizarre than convincing. Steele seems to pride himself on the liberal use of black discursive patterns. It’s hard to take seriously the moral outrage of a self-professed “hip-hop Republican” who explains his tenure as GOP chairman saying “brother still here.”

President Obama may be unconcerned and the GOP may be transparently race baiting, but Reid’s comments did create a legitimate queasiness among many Americans that is worth exploring.

President Obama is a forgiving, beer summit kind of leader, but I am less likely to give Democrats a free pass on issues of racial bias. As I wrote a few months ago here on The Notion, any implication that racism is the sole purview of the Right obscures the continuing and troubling realities of racism within the Democratic Party and progressive political movements.

Still, I remain entirely uninterested in a racial McCarthyism that plays “gotcha politics” with elected officials public utterances. Yes, public officials should be particularly careful when talking about race to media (on or off the record). The opportunities for misunderstanding, divisiveness and assumption of ill intent are heightened in this area of political discussion.

But let’s be honest, if we weeded out every public official guilty of racial insensitivity, the halls of Congress would echo with utter emptiness. The point is not so much public gaffes as it is the creation, support, and maintenance of systemic and structural inequalities. This is why Trent Lott’s wistfulness about a Strom Thurmond presidency is in a different class than Reid’s comments. Lott was longing for a bygone era when structural barriers and entrenched inequality were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening and that America was ready, albeit with caveats, for a new racial reality.

Rather than being worked up about Reid’s awkward assessment of these barriers, we should be asking whether these structural biases actually make academic and political accomplishments easier for light-skinned African Americans. NC State University historian Blair LM Kelley makes this argument in her piece on Salon.com. She points out skin color bias in the 21st century should alarm us. It shouldn’t be a matter of breezy acceptance, as many Sunday morning pundits seemed to suggest. “Accepting this as a matter of course degrades the quality of our democracy.”

Reid’s assertions about “Negro dialect” also should raise structural justice questions far more important than his offensive use of an antiquated term for black Americans. Because of generations of lower class status and legal barriers to quality education, black children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be raised by parents with inadequate literacy skills. But rather than acting as a leveling ground, many public schools only reinforce these disadvantages. These are the same children relegated to schools with fewer expert teachers, larger classroom sizes, fewer educational resources, and fewer literacy support tools.

This is the racism that should worry us: millions of black American children attend and graduate from public schools that leave them utterly unqualified for public office for their entire lives. As adults these children will always be second-class citizens, unable to participate as rule makers rather than simply rule followers in their own country. Not only does this deprive whole group from full participation in government, it also deprives our country of the skills, talents, and ideas that these citizens might have offered, had we not initially deprived them of the capacity to communicate their ideas effectively in the public realm.

Political theorist Nancy Fraser’s describes imagines justice as “a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price for equal respect.” Creating that world is an important task for combating racism.

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