Tea Party Republicans Irresponsible Uncooperative, Anti-Obama Racist Mis-Steppings 10 26 2013 Hail Jesse Helms!
Now that the government shutdown is over, $24 billion dollars of taxpayer money wasted, the Tea-Party-led Republicans have decided they will not co-operate with their Congressional brethren and sisters about passing an immigration law, a jobs bill, anything that President Obama champions. We know that there has been a concerted effort from day one of Obama’s first presidency to ensure that his time in office as America’s first(?)** black chief executive would be contested, hopefully to the point of abject failure. But what about the nation, the people? Congress is not there to get representatives rich or have them do nothing. Its members are there in Washington D.C., to work for the people. Initially, when our founding fathers started up our country, they were supposed to serve, without pay.
Ted Cruz has somehow gotten ahold of the ship of state’s wheel and is determinedly steering it off the tracks. He and his fellow Tea Party Republicans blame everything on Obamacare. And moderate Republicans don’t know what to do with this alienating collection of extremists who malign minorities and minimize women. Iowa’s number one Republican fund raising woman, who is pro-choice, has decided that she will not raise funds for what was her political party, as the Ted Cruz crew have arrived early for the Iowa presidential primary, and are overriding the state’s Republicans. Cruz and company oppose birth control and abortion – – Cruz actually equates the two as ‘abortificients.’ Cruz’ home state has passed a draconian anti-abortion law, as has Ohio. Intimidated women already are forced to go to Mexico or Michigan to have their medical needs met, this not being the ideal way to treat a lady. Especially with women outnumbering men nowadays on the nation’s voting registers.
State congresswoman Wendy Davis filibustered against the Texas law, and won the battle temporarily, but the Texas law eventually was passed. She is considering running for governor, but the latest old-boy network comment on her is she is a ‘retard barbie,’ without the intelligence to beat the misogynistic Texas male who might oppose her if she does get the nomination. (She is a Harvard Law School graduate.)
Talking about filibustering and old-boy network, y’all know about Jesse Helms? of North Carolina? The patriot who died on July 4th? 2008? Filibustered for 16 days opposing Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. Said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.” The man that Ted Cruz recently praised, saying “We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.” Cruz shuckishly confessing that as a young boy, he made his first political contribution to Helms’ campaign, of ten dollars.
Was Helms a racist? He has stated that he was not. Though you’d have to convince much of our nation, and the world, otherwise. Why did he protest Nelson Mandela addressing both houses of Congress? Why did he continue to champion the southern Confederacy and its flag? Why did he taunt Carol Moseley-Braun, the first black woman ever elected to the Senate, by singing ‘Dixie’ to her in a 1993 elevator encounter? Telling also-present-in-the elevator, fellow-conservative Utah Senator Orrin Hatch he would continue singing the song to her until he made her cry?
Moseley-Braun had ‘denounced the confederate flag as a symbol of slavery to many African-Americans during a successful effort to stop a Helms-sponsored measure to renew the design patent for the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), (the design includes the Confederate flag). Seventy-five senators voted against the UDC [renewal].’ Although Helms and Hatch minimized the ‘singing’/bullying as a “good-natured exchange,” Moseley-Braun told the press that as the encounter progressed: ”… I looked at him and said, ‘Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry if you sang ‘Rock of Ages.”**
Former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun
That was reckoned by the generic media as a brilliant return quip by Moseley-Braun. Just harmless banter. But going to an interview with the ex-Senator from 1999, I found these words in the transcript about the encounter and the ‘old-boy’ network:
“I think Jesse Helms was being deliberately antagonistic, in a southern kind of way, when he got on the elevator. The action on the floor [concerning the UDC patent] – – I think he was pretty much sticking to the idea that these are nice little old ladies who have a different point of view.”
Interviewer: “After the elevator incident, was there discussion among your colleagues in the Senate? Or was it just something that was quickly forgotten?”
MOSELEY BRAUN: “No, more than one of them came up to me and talked to me or mentioned it. One of the things about having said how the Senate was much easier to deal with because race and gender get to be irrelevant, having said that, the contradiction to that statement is that it is still the “old boys club.” I was never confused, and I hope my now former female colleagues are not confused, that the boys still have their conversations, their relationships, their discussions, that you don’t know about, but you’ll get little outcroppings that will suggest…”
When Moseley-Braun came up for the ambassadorship to New Zealand, the powerful Helms successfully led the defeat of what would usually have been an accommodating approval process.
Helms also denied that he was homophobic, but ask economist Jim Patterson, who stated in the Bay Area Reporter: ‘Helms attacked me for managing a diversity program for LGBT* federal employees, he called me a “pervert” and a “criminal.” As a result I got death threats for months after the untruthful rant. Helms lied about me and I was faced with fighting the ugly charges. My battle went on for years and eventually curtailed my job as a Foreign Service officer with the government.’ [See http://www.ebar.com/openforum/opforum.php?sec=guest_op&id=175]
So much for Helms’ legacy and integrity and his Center in North Carolina, where the state’s governor James McCrory, enthusiastically attended the 25th anniversary of the Helms Center opening, on the eve of the battle over limiting voting rights with a voter ID requirement that is being contested by the U.S. Department of Justice this week. Back to Jim Crow we go. In some states you can vote with an NRA card, but not a student ID. North Carolina has fallen backwards and backwards, still worshipping Jesse Helms, while ruling white Republicans make ridiculous condescending racist statements just as they open an ‘Outreach’ center to recruit the black and hispanic voter. Nothing like shooting yourself in your old-boy foot.
North Carolina state Representative (Republican) Larry Pittman said on Monday October 21, 2013 to a friendly crowd (and you can see this one on the internet****):
“Someone had posted something [on Facebook] with a picture of Barack Obama and across it said ‘traitor,’ ” Pittman said. “And, you know, I don’t always agree with the guy, I certainly didn’t vote for him but I gotta defend him on this one. I just don’t think it’s right at all to call Barack Obama a traitor. There’s a lot of things he’s done wrong but he is not a traitor. Not as far as I can tell. I haven’t come across any evidence yet that he has done one thing to harm Kenya.”
That was Pittman’s ‘joke,’ with a lot of friendly white Republican racist ‘Yuk-Yuk-Yukking’ as recorded reaction. Birther, denigration, humiliation. Obama as ‘other,’ implying the Tea Party hate-line to the inferior man of color and all ‘others’ like him. What about looking back and seeing how America helped veterans after world war 2 with housing and education, and now when this generation needs the same, the word is nyet or nichst or no? Not when you are not white. But, people of color, come on out and join our lost white-male dominated Republican party and follow us back into the racist woods of exclusion and why not bring back slavery, unequal pay for women doing the same job as a man, abortion=birth control, no minimum wage, no dignity – unless you are white.
Then there was that other local North Carolina racist, a Mr. Yellin, who gaffed galore during his Comedy Channel interview, including stating “lazy black people that want the government to give them everything.”**** He was asked, and did comply, to pressure forcing him to resign his political post with the Republican party within a few days thereafter.
According to a New York Times article: ‘North Carolina’s [contested new voting] law cut back on early-voting days, eliminated the ability of people to register to vote on the same day as casting an early ballot, and prohibited the counting of provisional ballots cast by eligible voters who went to the wrong precinct.
It also requires voters to present photo identification to cast ballots, but does not allow student IDs, public-employee IDs or photo IDs issued by public assistance agencies. Black voters in North Carolina are disproportionately likely to lack identification issued by the State Department of Motor Vehicles, according to state data.’***
We are going through puzzling times, with the Republican party being led not to cooperate in governing our country in a manner that is faithful to the people of the United States of America. A recent poll found that 64% of those polled ‘disliked’ the Republican party. How are you going to win over more voters when you loudly disparage those whom you wish to convert to your cause? When you go back to old segregationist ways? Like when good old boy Strom Thurmond of South Carolina said, when he was campaigning for president:
“I want to tell you, ladies and gentleman, that there’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.” (After his death it was revealed that Thurmond had secretly fathered a daughter with his family’s underage black domestic decades earlier and had financially supported his daughter for years, including during his anti-integration rhetoric.)##
Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower – Ike’s Mother – wedding picture 1885
**As black historians tell us, President Eisenhower, and possibly President Lincoln were part black/Negro/other. But the generic media and racist America does not want that to be widely revealed or proven true. Just as we know that all human life comes initially from Africa, and that all our human DNA is basically African DNA with a few pings and pongs of mutations making us the different shades we phenotypically display today. It is time for survivalist racial hate to be over by this 21st century, and the brilliance of welcomed enlightenment to shine on this planet, before we greedily ignorantly destroy all that is good about the only place we have to live in our mortal state.
*Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
**** http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/10/25/north-carolina-legislator-obama-not-a-traitor-to-kenya//?print=1
## http://www.theroot.com/blogs/blogging-beltway/gop-senator-praises-infamous-racist
