November 2011 Archives

When Americans elect a president, they want someone whose policies they're going to like, someone who looks nice and doesn't have too many skeletons in his closet. The problem with Newt Gingrich is that he has several that are being revealed by the right and left alike.

It's not his policies that are going to kill it for him. Most people agree that we need to have clean air so that we don't kill off many life forms on the planet, including our own. Most people want safe borders so that those who didn't have the fortune of being born here will have earned the right to be here and appreciate it, and most people want to have a healthcare plan that doesn't break the back of the system.

And we want someone who is at least somewhat easy on the eyes and looks good in a suit, but we don't want is someone who is immoral. It would be hard to justify a man serving his wife with divorce papers while she is in the hospital battling cancer, as Gingrich once did. It would be hard voting for a candidate who led the Clinton impeachment proceedings over the Monica Lewinsky scandal while cheating on his second wife, as Gingrich has done, and it would be hard voting for a man who racked up the $500,000.00 bill at Tiffany's that is under Gingrich's name. It would be hard for even a Kennedy to explain some of that away.

Gingrich with all his experience and ideas has some 'splaining to do if he wants to make it to the White House, though the mammoth-sized skeletons may just rattle too loudly. It's too bad that we can't morph the family values of Obama with some of the ideas of Gingrich to create the most palatable candidate.

I was watching the Iranian "students" storming the English Embassy and I got a blast from the past of the same "students" storming our Embassy 30 years ago. The students then as now are not really students but thugs and militia members. This time around they're from the Basiji.

With considerable trepidation Israel and the United States have watched them as they built up a nuclear program but have been restrained by the belief that they were rational players on the world's stage. With the assassination plot and embassy storming, this is no longer a safe calculation. The experts have to recalculate the threat from Iran since we can no longer count on it being restrained by international norms or even self-interest. This is a dangerous time, indeed.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer •
www.Dobrer.com

(With gratitude to Andy Rooney)

I was in front of the TV the other night basking in the warm glow coming from the screen showing flags burning. This time it was Iranian "students" burning American, Israeli and English flags. This is pretty standard (mis) behavior in the Muslim World--at least as far as American and Israeli flags are concerned. Any little thing goes wrong, any slight, real or imagined, and it is the default fault of the AmericanZionistCrusaders (one word, like OhMyGod in Valley speak).

The idea is pure genius...unless some smart relative of mine is already doing it and I'm too late. Ah well.
©2011Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Dear Miss Kourtney:

Please excuse me for only having second or maybe third-hand knowledge of your dalliances. But I don't currently own a TV because I thought that mine was broken, so I gave it away to someone I know. Turns out the darned thing works perfectly well and is now sitting in a church basement being used in a Sunday school. And I can't ask for it back because it isn't the thing to do.

The mix up meant that I miss the shows that I used to watch like "60 Minutes," when I was being intellectual, and the "Real World" and MTV when I wasn't. So that leaves keeping my ear to the ground, eavesdropping and the Internet, which is where I watch clips of "American Idol" and the like.

And it was on the web that I learned that you were in the family way for the second time. The best thing I can say is that at least it is with the same man so that your children will be fully related.

The question is why are you so proud when you aren't even, pardon the antiquated word, married? Getting knocked up is no great feat because women have been doing it for eons. The challenge is in being married for more than a few months or even one or two years.

I mean you must know what this person is like when he is mad, did any of his past madness lead to a trip down to the precinct, how he feels about his parents, future goals and how he handles money to name a few and not just what he looks like in his undies and how many tattoos he has.

It's like the Japanese say, "Before you are married look with both eyes and hear with both ears. After you are married, hear with only one ear and look with only one eye." And the Japanese are right.

Besides, you have to know someone even better before going and making babies with him, though their guests' antics did make Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer and their sponsors pretty rich. You might say you don't need marriage. Well, you might not, but your children do. Like former vice-President Dan Quayle once implied, marriage is the best social security for children. The late, great anthropologist, Margaret Mead, said it too, and if there was anyone in the know, it someone who spent her life studying people and cultures. Kids from two-parent homes usually spend more time in school and less time in jail.

Besides, you are (sort of) a role model, so the next time you say you have good news let's hear that you are going to have a humble and modest Kardashian wedding, not another bun in the oven.

Someone who gave away her TV and is not getting it back,

Gail-Tzipporah Saunders

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was predictably defiant when a pack of GOP pundits and insiders strongly hinted that he should fold up his candidacy tent. Cain said he was in the race to stay and did his by now patented bizarre, double-speak, Bill Clinton style denial that he did not have sex with that woman. The woman in this case is Ginger White, the latest in the legion of alleged Cain targeted sexual victims to come forth and wag the "inappropriate" conduct finger at Cain. But Cain's defiance and defense was just a sideshow act to cover a candidacy that was never really a candidacy to begin with.

Almost certainly the most surprised guy in the house at his string of straw polls wins in a few states was Cain. But Cain's sideshow trail of wins served several purposes. It fanned the delusion that a man with no money, no political organization, no protracted work in primary states developing crucial party ties and loyalties, was actually a credible presidential contender.

That didn't much matter since Cain gave the media and much of the public something that the GOP presidential candidate's circus team didn't and that was a flamboyant, sound bite spewing, political oddity. Cain spiced things up and that insured that every Cain inanity, gaffe, and malapropism would be the stuff of instant headlines and news bites. The lengthening trail of allegations of sexual harassment and affairs hurled at Cain was the topper. It pushed Cain from political curiosity to a hot ticket item with the media in an eternal hunt for the latest sex, salacious, titillation news peg.

Cain's sexual woes initially made him serviceable in another strange way. He now conferred a sort of respectability on the other GOP contenders that had been stunningly lacking in recent weeks. As the GOP candidates went from dull to predictable to laughable in their debate performances, the great fear was that the GOP's holy crusade to oust President Obama in 2012 would sink in a wash of vitriol, clownishness and the resultant public disgust. However, Cain presented an almost perfectly timed distraction that gave his GOP presidential aspiring counterparts time and breathing space to take the high ground, talk the issues of the economy, budget, and defense, without having to worry that the latest Cain goofball pronouncement or antic would further sully their image.

The best example of that is Newt Gingrich. Before Cain's spectacular blow-up, Gingrich's campaign was on bare life support. He wallowed in the lowest single digits in voter support. He was a tired war horse, that was seen as just along for the ride, media attention, and ego boost. Cain's equally spectacular fall helped change that. Gingrich now finds himself the new GOP flavor of the month and going toe to toe with Romney in GOP voter approval. He's labeled the political erudite, fount of policy wisdom, and party respectability. He even managed to get a kind word from Bill Clinton.

With the dice suddenly rolling in his favor, Gingrich moved quickly to pull off the tricky delicate balancing act of trying to appeal to moderate independents with a softer tact on immigration, while at the same time, trying to usurp Cain as the darling of GOP ultra conservatives and Tea Party leaders and followers. Cain's public fall also gives the other candidates added value to pose as the ABR (that's anybody but Romney) alternative. As the perfect pitched blend of businessman, proverbial political maverick, and hard core ultra conservative, Cain for a time seemed to be the most effective at stoking that sentiment among Romney doubters. These are the voters that are the most likely to vote in the official Iowa GOP Caucus in January and a few weeks ago said that they were three times more likely to back Cain over Romney.

Even if Cain officially limped along in the race for a while longer, it wouldn't change things for the GOP mainstream leaders, hard-nosed GOP political operatives, and the big gun financial donors. From the start, they treated Cain's candidacy as the fun and games, amusing, sideshow act that it was; an act that was destined to fade into the sunset, when it came time for the serious voting next year. After all straw polls with a handful of respondents in a handful of states months before the first real ballot is scheduled to be cast in a legitimate primary can hardly be considered to be any bellwether of voter sentiment.

Cain's first reaction to the long term sexual affair allegation was to dig in his heels and say he's in the race for the long haul. He could do that precisely because his candidacy was never about winning the GOP nomination but hyping Cain. A hype the GOP went along with because it kept the press fixated on the GOP presidential hopefuls, revved up a disjointed, disgruntled, and dismayed GOP party faithful, and blunted the withering attacks that the GOP was a pack of unreconstructed bigots and race baiters. Cain drop out of the race? No the GOP simply will close down its amusing but suddenly costly and embarrassing sideshow act.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

By now we should understand that killing even our enemies doesn't win the hearts and minds of civilians. When we kill either civilians or the military of our allies, we shoot ourselves in the foot. We, and our interests, are the collateral damage.

While it is true that Pakistan is not our friend, we seem to be doing everything to make it our enemy.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

There is a piece of ancient wisdom that states "If any man received a telegram* saying, 'All is known. Flee!'" we 'd all be out the door without packing our bags. Most of us are already carrying plenty of baggage. Thus, as we watch the Herman Cain campaign implode with two very different kinds of allegations (one for harassment and assault and the other "merely an affair") we should distinguish between the two.

One is an abuse of power, wholly unconscionable, potentially felonious and criminal. The other is about personal morals--or lack thereof. There is no excuse for the first category. It ought to disqualify anyone from high office. The alleged affair, however, is quite different, and voters will fall along a wide spectrum in evaluating its meaning.

Are private morals good for public fodder? Usually not, but politicians are not private citizens. They put themselves before us to evaluate their intelligence, judgment and increasingly their values. Generally "Family Values" candidates need to be pretty clean. It goes to character and also to judgment. We don't want our presidents to be personally reckless because it might bode ill for decisions of a more public concern.

It is difficult to believe that Cain had no idea what was in his own closet. One hopes that his level of denial was not as egregious as Gary Hart's who invited the press to follow him, they did, and he got caught. Nor does John Edward's judgment seem very sound in hooking up and carrying on an affair while on the campaign trail and thus reasonably under some scrutiny. Whatever the morals, the decision-making was clearly flawed. Nor does Clinton come off looking good in the risk/gains department. We all saw into his closet before his election, and we seemed to look past it. Then he thanked us for our trust by going out shopping for new fleshy skeletons. Now we have Newt, the Platonic form of a walk-in closet. Will values voters care? I don't know.

This history of male indiscretion raises an important series of questions about who would want to run for public office? The choice seems to be between people with no past and people with no judgment. Is anyone good enough and clean enough to survive the public proctoscope?
*The ancient nature of the quote is established by the reference to the telegraph.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Sooner or later presumptive GOP presidential nominee frontrunner Mitt Romney will have to publicly answer which Romney will show up on the issue of race and diversity if he indeed gets the GOP nomination and snatches the White House in 2012. Will it be the Romney that claimed in an interview on Meet the Press in 2007 that he got teary eyed when he heard that his Mormon church's ruling elders publicly declared that blacks would no longer be barred from the Mormon priesthood. Romney didn't directly say it but he strongly hinted that the moment stirred strong emotions in him because he never went along with his church's decade's old racial bar.

"I was anxious to see a change in my church."My faith has always told me that and I had no question that African Americans and blacks generally would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons."

Now contrast that with the Romney that former GOP congressman J.C. Watts, a staunch black conservative, recently ripped for having a virtually lily white campaign staff. Romney was unmoved by the knock and flatly said that he hires the best persons that he can find. He underscored that with the rhetorical emphasis "What's the charge? Is there something wrong with that?"

Nothing, nothing that is if Romney's political ambitions didn't extend any further than seeking to win a GOP seat in a GOP friendly congressional district in the GOP's hard core voter geographic vote base in the Heartland and the Deep South. The presidency is a far different matter. The teary eyed Romney that chaffs at racial bigotry can't trump the Romney that glibly condones it in picking his campaign staff.

Romney's record on diversity as Massachusetts governor gives a strong hint of what his White House would look like. When it came to appointing minorities and women to judicial posts his record was atrocious. The Massachusetts Women's Bar Association repeatedly lambasted him for his near exclusive white male state house. Romney partly in response to the public pounding, and partly with an eye on a presidential run where he knew his state record on diversity would be closely scrutinized made a slew of appointments of minorities and women to the state bench in his last year in office.

Romney's successor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and the state's first African-American governor, wasted no time in knocking Romney for his blatant race and gender blind spot on appointments. In his inaugural address he made it clear that he would make diversity and inclusion a huge part of his administration. Romney, not surprisingly, did not attend Patrick's inaugural.

Late night comedian-talk show host Jay Leno was bothered enough by Romney's blind spot on diversity to ask him point blank in an interview during the 2008 GOP presidential primary campaign what he thought about diversity. Romney gave the GOP formula answer and said that he supported it in government and corporations. Leno wasn't satisfied and pressed him on what his administration would do to promote diversity. Romney wouldn't budge from the stock retort that discrimination is wrong. That's even less than the bare minimum response to racial bigotry that any candidate for public office is required to give.

The embarrassing litany of Romney race tinged gaffes that include the metaphorical reference to hanging Obama, a joke about Obama's birth certificate, using the racially offensive word "tar baby" to describe a public works project, and an animal reference in a pose with an African-American doesn't tag Romney as a racist. He apologized or pleaded ignorance in every case. But it does touch off warning bells on race.

The loudest bell is what Romney will have to do, or more particularly who he'll have to satisfy, to seal the GOP nomination. Romney will have to do a massive sell job to Christian evangelicals, ultra-conservatives and Tea Party leaders that he's really at heart one of them. To appease them, he has little wiggle room on race. The mere mention of race, let alone diversity, emblazons red flags among conservative hardliners. They relentlessly bait him as a flip-flopper and closet moderate who will not dump conservative principles at the drop of a hat. There's no likelihood that Romney would pick the nettlesome Watts as his VP running mate as the influential ultra conservative blog redstaterusa.org dared him to do in 2007 when Romney was fighting hard for presidential nomination. The Watts for VP call though was done more to needle Obama than any serious interest in promoting diversity in a GOP White House.

Romney's actions, not tears about Mormon Church bigotry and protestations against discrimination, tell much about what to expect with a Romney in the White House. And that's not much.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

As a confirmed news junkie, I am scanning various web sites this Black Friday, and I'm a little disturbed. At this season of Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday season of Christmas and Chanukah, we seem to have lost perspective and failed to inventory those things--and people--for which we should be grateful.

First of all, it is not true. The great bargains are loss leaders in limited supply and hence the pushing and shoving. In truth, different goods are at their greatest discount at different times (most around the second week in December and then immediately after Christmas). But the greater trick and deception is our being lured away from both the ideal and reality of Thanksgiving AND Chanukah and Christmas, as they become an unholy trifecta of commercialism and we forget what they are really about: Gratitude for life, for friends, for family. We forget that the greatest gift we can give those whom we love is our time--being with them, eating with them, celebrating with them. Our holidays and holy days are about what we value, what we truly care about and whom we truly love. We show our love not with toys but with what is truly precious and limited, more precious and limited than money--our time.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Even though I taught for many years, that doesn't mean I have the courage to venture out on Black Friday, or on most other days during the holiday shopping season, for that matter. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's from reading too many Huffington Post crime articles online, but there's just too much that could go wrong. I could battle for a parking space like my car and I are pieces on a "Battleship" game. I could forget where I parked my car and wander to and fro hours searching for the nondescript Toyota, or I could end up in a nosedive with another shopper as we both go for the last item on display.

And with this year's crop of subversives like the Walmart shopper with the pepper spray, the near Waffle Iron Riot and the mall shooting. I'd rather watch endless loops of "Roseanne" with electrodes glued to my head. But for those who must venture out, I have created the "Holiday Shoppers' Survival Manuel."

Pre-Shopping Prep: Planning for the event starts in May or June when most merchants are eyeballing their holiday decorations. After drinking some protein shakes, start with jogging around the mall and around the aisles. It should be well under way in August when the first store hangs its first ornament and tree. You may want to take ballet to learn about leaps, twirl jetes, port de bras and other moves in order to snare that first toy or even a waffle iron before twirling and leaping back before security descends upon you. It may also help to take Krav Maga, Jiu Jitsu or any other self-defense program to deal with anyone who wants to put you in a half Nelson or to get yourself out of one.

Attire: Dress is important all year round but no more so than during Black Friday and other days in the holiday shopping season. For extra heavy shopping days, invest in army gear with a gas mask, to have protection against any copycat pepper spray incidents. Women may don stilettos, though I recommend army boots or sturdy jogging shoes for quick exits from seamy characters or events.

Transportation: Before venturing out, I recommend renting an army tank, if you don't already have one. Making turns and parallel parking may be a little hard at first, but it will almost guarantee you a parking space or two, and will keep other drivers at bay because they know that you can always roll over them.

Defensive Measures: Being hauled away in a black and white shouldn't a problem so long as you obey all turn signals, say please and thank you and are doing your best to help bolster our sagging economy.

I am more outraged and truly sickened by what the police did in Davis than anything I have seen or experienced since the Civil Rights movement and the hoses, clubs and dogs loosed on people who only wanted to be treated as people.

We applaud the brave Egyptians taking to the streets and risking their lives for freedom. We argue that the Syrians should not kill their own people who simply want freedom. We fought for the right of the Libyans to overthrow their long-time monster in residence. We feel for the people of Yemen and Bahrain who demonstrate against their governments. We are very assertive in protecting people in other nations from violent overreaction of police. We decry the beating and gassing of demonstrators--peaceful and not so peaceful--as long as it isn't here.

What I didn't see was any rage on the part of the police. What I didn't see was any fear or panic. I saw only a cop doing his job without any interference from his fellow officers. I'm sure, they thought this was all very "professional." It wasn't personal. It wasn't angry. They weren't out of control. And that's what so disturbs me. They might as well have been spraying a lawn to get rid of bugs. But people are not bugs. Those Davis cops were, without either passion or pity, only following orders. Like the cops in the south, they didn't see the humanity in the demonstrators. Chilling.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The charges that the Super Committee and Congress failed to act are patently false. Of course, they acted and are acting now. They are acting, as in pretending, that they are grown-ups. They are acting the parts of idealistic followers of the only philosophy that will save the nation. They are acting like they believe the words that come out their mouths and are reflected in their truly amazing press release:

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

There are a lot of complicated issues and ironies involved in the Pollard case. On the surface, it is as Gail Tzipporah Saunders says: He stole secrets and gave them to our ally Israel. Surely we should be able to discern the difference between giving away secrets that would be used to harm our interests, as against advancing them. He was not giving them to Syria or Egypt, nor to the Soviet Union (This is how old this case is. There was a Soviet Union back then). Further, Israel's position is that intelligence sharing agreements between Israel and the United States, in their view, required the information be shared.

Still, had he sold it to the Soviets he would be free--or as free as you get as a Jew in Russia. Oh, the ironies abound.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The Free Jonathan Pollard movement is starting to sound as old as a drumbeat in the distance. But why shouldn't Pollard, who was convicted of passing "secrets" along to Israel our ally be released?

As a naval intelligence officer, Pollard came across information that the State Department had that Syria, Iraq, Libya and Iran were developing nuclear and chemical weapons to use against Israel, so he did what any reasonable person would do; he passed the information along to the Israeli government that they were legally entitled to anyway.

After the story broke, he and his wife tried to seek asylum in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Although they were originally accepted, they were later turned away. Although it isn't my style to publicly criticize Israel, I think the Israeli Embassy should have granted Pollard and his wife asylum rather than using them as pawns and hoisting them into the waiting arms of the FBI.

He was convicted of treason for passing along information to an ally and given a life sentence. Clinton was supposed to pardon him but reneged on his agreement. Yet George W. pardoned those convicted of embezzlement, income tax evasion and falsifying firearms records. Obama pardoned those convicted of offenses like selling drugs and moving stolen property across state lines, so you'd think someone could pardon Pollard for passing information along to an ally in the name of self-preservation. Besides, he is ill and needs to spend his dying days in peace rather than continue to be used as an example.

I called the White House and asked President Obama to pardon him and may send an email as well. Hoping you will do something, too.

202.456.1111

http://www.jonathanpollard.org/

If Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was not Justice Thomas but an ordinary Thomas he'd be behind bars. He is the ultra-conservative's equivalent of the Mafia "Made Man." The tag confers untouchability on the bearer. Thomas wears the tag for his rock solid ultra conservative views, his showcase value to cover GOP and Tea Party bigotry, and most importantly his knee jerk vote on the High Court against civil rights, civil liberties protections and to expand corporate power. A cursory checklist of Thomas's financial manipulations, abuse, and duplicity, and outright illegality complete with the legal statues and codes that he's violated confirm his made man tag, meaning hands off from investigators and prosecutors.
Thomas has received cash, gifts, and foundation donations totaling more than $2 million during the past decade. Since 2004 he has declared none of his largesse to the IRS.
The gifts are improper, could constitute or be perceived as bribes, and may violate
the honest services statute, 18 USC 1346. These gifts could also be considered taxable income and his failure to report them would constitute a clear violation of the tax code.
Thomas' wife, Ginni's big paydays from assorted right wing foundations and think tanks have been well-documented. Thomas did not disclose her earnings initially. He refused to acknowledge her involvement with Liberty Central, her political lobbying group. Thomas at fist claimed ignorance about the filing requirement, and after savage media exposure amended the forms.

Thomas was not ignorant of the requirement to disclose spousal income as he initially claimed. When he chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he dutifully filed his financial disclosure forms and that included his wife's employment from 1987 to 1997. He continued to disclose income as a federal appeals court judge and for his first few years on the Supreme Court. Thomas also stated that his wife had no non-investment income. This was a falsehood. It was not a memory or ignorance of the law lapse. By failing to file, Thomas violated the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that requires all federal judges to file yearly financial disclosure forms including sources of income from their spouses. Making false statements on the forms can be prosecuted as a felony under the federal false statements statute, 18 USC 1001 -- knowingly making false statements of material fact to a federal agency. In 2007, Congress increased the civil and criminal penalties for false income statement filings.

Then there's the issue of conflict of interest. The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 that Thomas backed conferred "personhood" on corporations and allows them to ladle out any amount they want with virtually no reporting requirements directly to candidates and campaigns. Thomas did not disclose that the rightwing Citizens United Foundation, the driving force behind the case, spent as much as $100,000 on commercials that lambasted those senators that opposed his High Court nomination in 1991. Thomas ignored calls for him to recuse himself from the case.

Then there is the strong hint that Thomas perjured himself in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his court confirmation hearings in 1991 and that he compounded that by lying under oath to Congress during the hearings.
Thomas was asked directly by Utah senator Orrin Hatch during his confirmation hearings about Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct and whether he used sexually suggestive language. Thomas answered: "I deny each and every single allegation against me today that suggested in any way that I had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill, that I ever attempted to date her, that I ever had any personal sexual interest in her, or that I in any way ever harassed her."

Thomas was emphatic, "If I used that kind of grotesque language with one person, it would seem to me that there would be traces of it throughout the employees who worked closely with me, or the other individuals who heard bits and pieces of it or various levels of it." This was stated under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thomas' sworn testimony was clearly contradicted even then in public statements by witnesses. The witnesses were not called to testify.
In 2010, Thomas' apparent perjured testimony to Congress was back on the legal table when another Thomas intimate confirmed that he engaged in sexual harassment, was addicted to pornography, and talked incessantly and graphically about it and women.
It's also clearly established that a public official -- whether the president, presidential appointees or judges -- can be punished for giving false information (and that's any false information of any nature) to the House or Senate.

A legion of House Democrats has again demanded that Thomas be investigated by variously the Justice Department and the Judicial Conference. The strong suspicion is that there may even be more dubious ethics and legal violations that Thomas may have committed in the nearly three decades that he has been a public official. That makes it even more imperative that Thomas be put on the investigative hot seat. But if Thomas weren't Justice Thomas that would have long since been done, and he'd likely be in jail.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

is here on wordpress. G. Tz.

Two articles are next to each other on the front page of a once mighty Los Angeles newspaper. They tell our sad story in their headlines and represent our lack of direction, priorities and values. In California, our budget woes may make us cut the school year yet shorter, and nationally we are sending troops and establishing a military presence in Australia.

Let's act expensively and symbolically. Let's make problems for no real purpose. Let's spend the money we borrow from the Chinese to annoy the Chinese, but not help out our states, our schools our own people. Yeah, that's a winning plan.

©2011Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

GOP presidential candidates have been loose lipped on any and every public policy issue imaginable. But suddenly they have all have lost their speech on the Penn State scandal. They have uttered barely a peep about the scandal. The closest that any name GOP figure has come to speaking out on the scandal is fast faded, non-candidate Sarah Palin who lambasted accused and indicted sexual predator Jerry Sandusky.

The scandal is seemingly made in heaven for the GOP to score moral talking points on. It's chock full of their favorite themes on the perils of moral decay, and permissiveness, sexual deviancy, violence and the threat it poses to family and religious values. But as has so often been the case with the GOP when it's one of their own that's dumped on the legal and morals hot seat, mute silence quickly sets in. That's been true with the dozens of sexual abuse, rape, child molestation, and sex harassment cases that legions of GOP political notables and boosters have been implicated in or jailed for over the past two decades. In the case of Penn State there's an extra special reason for the GOP's deafening silence. The culprit on the hot seat is Joe Paterno, a GOP made man.
But Paterno's high place in the GOP celebrity pantheon goes much deeper than donating thousands to the party, his giving a seconding speech to George H W Bush at the 1988 GOP convention in New Orleans, his tout of W. Bush at a campaign rally at the York Expo Center in 2004, or even prepping his son Scott in his failed bid for a GOP congressional seat. Paterno's unabashed enthusiasm for the GOP rose above and beyond the normal bounds of political propriety. Hs 1988 convention speech gave the first real glimpse of Paterno as the consummate GOP pitch man. The speech was less than three minutes and was only one of seven seconding speeches for Bush. Yet it was the one that drew headlines not because he gave it, but because in the words of reporters at the convention, he "ripped" the Democrats.

Bush campaign officials fell all over themselves gushing over Paterno's speech. They excitedly called it "a great thing for us" and "a great thing for George Bush." A handful of Pennsylvania Democratic state officials including then Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey screamed that Paterno was using his prestige and position at a state supported institution to spew partisan politics, and that it could even jeopardize state funding for a public university and have an adverse impact on the ability to raise private contributions. They accused him of trading on his name to blatantly boost the GOP. A defiant and unapologetic Paterno shrugged it off as much ado about nothing and said he would say what he pleased about a "guy I like very much." Paterno had spoken, but the case wasn't closed. Paterno couldn't resist reminding the critics and the public that his tout of the GOP was "an honor" for the university and Pennsylvania.

Paterno didn't stop there. He rushed to New Hampshire to campaign door to door for Bush and along the way endorsed a local Republican congressional candidate. In the next two decades Paterno kept a close eye on local and national GOP politics. GOP officials though ever protective of Paterno gave the stock answer that Paterno was not directly involved in party policy issues and decisions but rather was simply a celebrity endorser. But Paterno didn't have to be involved in party politics or operations to have an impact. His name as a celebrity and sports icon was gold with an admiring public and that added priceless sheen and luster to the GOP locally and nationally.
Paterno certainly had a right to follow his convictions and endorse, campaign for, and bankroll GOP candidates. But his political right to be a GOP preppie was never the issue. The issue was the party that he went to the barricades for time and again. A party that has been the poster party for the past four decades of scandal, cronyism, corruption and most damaging of all, a party with a marked propensity to keep silent on racial and gender racist gaffes, digs, slander and abuse by GOP officials and notables. It's been especially adept at the art of silence and the cover-up on scandals that embroil its own.
Paterno's self admitted failure to "do more" as he put it to stop the abuse when his name, reputation, and the sports program that he put nearly five decades into turning into his personal fiefdom was in mortal danger of crashing down around him was a page straight out of the playbook the GOP on cover-up that it has so deftly turned into a studied art over the years. It is no accident then that the GOP presidential candidates could lose their tongue when one of their own is again on the moral firing line.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I don't know if the Democrats play a dangerous game, by shunning Obama, but it would be a no-no in the "Emily Post Guide to Political Sanctity," had she ever penned one. It relates to an old expression, "nations have neither permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests." And the same goes for politicians. They can't shun Obama because they want to be good party people, good comrades and no one wants to yell "chicken" first.

Yet, Obama got himself in this pickle. One reason is that he is not assertive enough with Congress and foreign officials. I can understand the need to all get along, but bending too far has made some wonder whether he has a backbone. Another is that he has approached the Middle East with rose-colored glasses while looking at the Arabs and now sednign troops to Australia. And the third is bailing out those who little deserved it did not make him look very wise in retrospect, nor did it give the economy the shot in the arm it needed. And with his approval ratings tanking, he is treading water to keep his job. Interestingly enough, many of those polled said they like him but they don't think he's doing such a wonderful job, and I agree.

He might do a better job now that he has gone through a learning curve, though I don't know if the voters and the unemployed will be so forgiving come election time.

Both left and right often make the same mistakes. We over interpret election victories as mandates and therefore overreach. We also, way too easily, form circular firing squads to shoot our own when they disappoint us. We both act as if the good were the mortal enemy of the perfect.

The strategy of sabotaging your own--whether on the right or left--in the hopes of profiting from the wreckage is morally wrong and pragmatically doesn't work. Perot elected Clinton while Nader Elected Bush. In an imperfect world with imperfect candidates smart Republicans will support Romney and not a third party and smart Democrats will support Obama and not sit on their hands and wallets.

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a bientot and Shalom,

G. Tz.

The excuses some Democrats give for their chill toward backing President Obama's reelection bid would fill up a legal pad. He's made much too nice with the GOP. He's put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block. He hasn't pushed aggressively enough for a full blown FDR style jobs program. He let Wall Street and banks off the hook with a placid, terribly compromised financial reform bill. He hasn't done enough on home foreclosures. The Blue Dog and moderate Democratic congresspersons and senators that represent shaky swing and conservative districts are scared stiff that if they rub shoulders too close to Obama they will be signing their political obituary for reelection.
Their frost toward Obama is far more worrisome than the pesky, nuisance rants of Ralph Nader about finding some progressive, pro labor Democrat to run against Obama. This is, of course, beyond ludicrous, and not much more than a cheap momentary headline grabbing ploy to feed the naive and delusional thinking of some radicals that a challenge to Obama would somehow shove him and the Democratic party to embrace an unabashed anti-corporate, anti-war, anti-poverty, pro-union, bank and financial crackdown agenda.

This talk quickly faded into the news dust bin. But it was revived for a hot moment when it seemed that Occupy Wall Street might actually become an organized movement with visible leadership, tangible goals and might actually target Obama as much as protestors targeted the corporations and GOP for aiding and abetting corporate pillage. This didn't happen. But the talk and action by entrenched, well connected Democrats is another matter. If even a handful of the Democrats that express wariness of the president don't give Obama their full campaign support, endorsements, and a voter platform for him in their states and districts during the campaign it would be tantamount to an endorsement of the GOP. The effect would be to create party paralysis and division at worst, and uncertainty at best. This would be disastrous to a presidential campaign.
This was amply proven when Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford in 1976 and when Senator Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Their challenges weakened both presidents, divided the party, and ultimately helped make possible Carter's win over Ford and Reagan's win over Carter possible. At the lower rung on the political ladder, a Democrat congressperson or senator that refuses to vigorously push their constituents to support their party's presidential standard bearer sends the strong message that the party's standard bearer's policies and actions are questionable or outright harmful to their constituents.

The inescapable conclusion that voters would draw from this is that Obama's GOP opponent might actually have something better to offer voters on the crucial make or break issues of the jobs and the economy. This is especially dangerous with polls consistently showing that a solid majority and that includes a lot of Democrats give Obama a low mark on his handling of the economy. The other great danger in the Democrats push back from the president is that it waters down even more the critical enthusiasm level for Obama. This was the biggest factor that powered him to the White House in 2008. Independents and youth voters were fired up by Obama's message of hope and change, and fed up with the GOP's corruption, bungling, blatant cronyism and scandals, and Bush's fumbles and ineptitude. They stampeded to the polls in droves to back Obama. This made the crucial difference in the must win swing states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and Virginia. Bush won three of these five states in 2000 and 2004. Obama won all five in 2008. In 2012 they are up in the air. Obama and his GOP opponent will fiercely fight over them. The slightest stoke of voter disillusionment by wary Democrats would further damp down enthusiasm from the very same voters that Obama will again need to turn out in back numbers.

The burden on an incumbent president is terrible, and unfair, but real, and that's what Obama will have to contend with. He will have virtually no margin for error to ward off the distraction of Democrats that have a beef with him and threaten to fold up their tents and not fully support him. It's not enough for Obama and Democrats to bank on the GOP self-destructing in rancor and division to ease Obama's path back to the White House. It will take tight-fisted unity by the Democrats behind the man who is their party's presidential standard bearer. Anything less than that by Democrats is playing a dangerous game.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com

Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Enough of the ghoulish, sordid facts are known about the Penn State University child sex scandal to say this. The alleged child rapes were known by some athletic department members, up to and including the football program boss, JoePa, Joe Paterno. The rumors, or worse, knowledge of the rapes may have been known by or at least heard of by others still unnamed that could eventually be a winding tangle through university staff, faculty, administrators, trustees, and corporate donors, and politicians.
The two prime offenders charged with the crimes were not some causal locker room jocks and hangers on, but long term, respected, and highly positioned athletic department mainstays. The Second Mile Foundation that served as a cover for the alleged rapes by its founder, the disgraced and accused child rapist Jerry Sandusky was not some fly-by-night, drive by, fast buck operation, but a well-established foundation that had been in business for more than three decades. Sandusky was with the Foundation from the start in 1977 until just last year. Even as the scandal unfolds, it is still in business. It has a big, impressive, full bodied website that boasts of its accomplishments, has three offices, and is actively soliciting donations. The reporters that have tried to get a comment from foundation officials have been summarily hung up on.
There will be more sordid facts and cases to emerge in the coming days and almost certainly more alleged victims will come forth and tell their stories. This poses the question that's bantered about, agonized over, and reams of opinion written, and that's why those who knew didn't blow the whistle on and insure that the cuffs were slapped on the offenders years ago? The stock answer is that it was a case of fear, protectiveness, ego (Paterno's), football deification and prestige, decades of institutional sports cronyism and the bushels of money that Penn State and other big time Division 1 schools haul in every year from their flagship football programs. This is all true.
But with the strong hints and now the public finger point by a parent of one of the victims that the victims were in her words " Blacks about 10-12 and had a tall slim muscular build." The Second Mile Foundation's founder and accused Jerry Sandusky openly bragged that it was in the business of helping "underprivileged" youth, always the polite code word for poor, at risk, young blacks and Hispanics, it's hardly a stretch to connect the dots to race.

Put bluntly, if Penn State officials kept their yaps shut for years in the face of open knowledge of and strong suspicions of the child rapes and the victims were young black males, than the last dot connected is the charge that black lives are routinely devalued when it comes to officials taking action to protect them. This charge has repeatedly been leveled in serial murders, inner city gang carnage, and against child service agencies that ignore or downplay repeated reports of abuse when the victims and the abused are black. That's only part of the problem. Race can't be separated from poverty or "underprivileged" in the parlance of Sandusky's The Second Mile Foundation. A study in the March issue of the Journal Pediatrics, "Racial Bias in Child Protection? A Comparison of Competing Explanations Using National Data," found that poverty was a huge determinant not only of levels of abuse. The study predictably found that a disproportionate number of the reported child abuse cases in 2009 which spanned the gamut from neglect to child rape were African-American children. The study directly linked the abuse to poverty. Parents and caregivers that are desperate to provide their children with a pathway out of harm's way from any and every type of abuse that comes with poverty latch on to organizations that promise to provide resources, mentoring, nurturing, and a protective environment for at risk black children.
The Second Mile Foundation that so persuasively and passionately marketed itself under its accused founder Jerry Sandusky, and with the resources, clout and national name recognition of Penn State University's premier football majordomo Joe Paterno to boot, as just such an organization would be hungrily grabbed at as the ticket out of the ghetto for the kids. Given the name and the prestige of those behind this Foundation, why would anyone in their wildest nightmares ever think or suspect that colossal evil lurked underneath the façade of its alleged unadulterated philanthropic and do good aims?
In the days to come as more details unfold about how the Foundation under Sandusky used its good name to commit alleged serial heinous crimes, all with the tacit blessing of Paterno and university officials, the hard suspicions and hints that the target of the crimes were young black males may well be confirmed. If that's the case, then the deep soul search that university and others everywhere that turn a blind eye to child abuse must undergo will be rudely forced to confront one more horrifying possibility. And that's that race was one more reason for that blind eye.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I remember the smell of teargas in the morning. Almost like Swann smelling the Madeleine in the next room and tripping back over time, the sight of UC Berkeley cops beating peaceful protestors sends me back to the 60s.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

These endless and entertaining debates, that are actually joint press conferences, are the best thing on TV. This is the triumph of cheaply produced Reality Television. We tune in to see who is doing well, who is making a fool of himself and who will get voted off this Fantasy Island. (Okay, I mixed two TV genres, but you do understand)

He is off the Island by December and Perry cannot long survive as an object of ridicule. Absent a scandal, this season is over. The money will reluctantly start pouring in for Romney.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The real cliffhanger in this soap opera is who the GOP is going to nominate. Unlike Earl, I do believe that the sex scandals are going to be the nail in Cain's political coffin. His comments about putting up a moat equipped with alligators, which I don't think is a bad idea aside from its political incorrectness, will barely be a blip across the screen. It's the sex scandal that will bring him down.

For if there are two things that run this great democracy of ours, it is sex and money. And if there are two things that are going to ruin it, it is sex and money. Besides, although Arnold was already in office when the scandal broke, though most people know that his marriage vows could have come from a Bazooka wrapper, for all he cared. It would have been a tougher call had he dallied or sired more offspring before the election. He might have won anyway because narcissists have a way of letting things roll off them.

Clinton was already in office when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke and was impeached by Congress over it, though he still finished his term. Did he recover? Of course he did, but that doesn't mean that Bob Dole wouldn't have jumped for joy over the news.

I only hope and pray that the GOP puts up a moderate Republican that isn't just another bonehead, if one exists.

Once upon a time, college was a place for the more hoi polloi. Sure, the lower class could also attend, but we expected certain behaviors from our college students, for we considered them to be the bearer of the torch, the ones who would produce advances in science, literature and medicine. We did not expect them to murder each other, rape one another or riot when they do not get their way.

But those were the good old days.

Now they are just like the other barbarians who do whatever their cerebral cortexes desire. The latest was a riot when Penn State coach for his role in the 2002 cover up for now retired his assistant who was accused of sexual abuse. Rather than going to the police, Parerno went to his bosses instead and for this, he was fired, though his bosses should have been as well for their role in this.

What is shocking is not only that this man was allowed to keep his post but that he has any support in the community. Yesterday night, thousands of Penn State co-bullies took to the streets chanting, "We want Joe!" And they didn't stop there. They flipped over a news van and kicked out its windows to express their emotions.

Maybe it relates to the overall drop in high school students' ACT and SAT scores, which could also relate to a drop in judgment.

Earlier in the day, Penn State quarterback Paul Jones told the Associated Press that Paterno wept as be told his team that he planned to retire.

"All the clips you've seen of him, you never saw him break down and cry," the quarterback said, "and he was crying the whole time today."

Probably because he got busted more than over any harm he caused. Narcissists are just like that. It's their agenda front, line and center. I don't know what's more shocking, that an adult would take advantage of others who have less authority and power or that they all didn't get fired fot their role in the cover up.

Someone should take an MRI scan of these college students' brains, provided they have any.

GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain was emphatic when asked at his Scottsdale, Arizona press conference whether he'd drop out of the race over the lengthening sexual harassment charges against him. "No way" he said. He's right about sexual harassment not being the torpedo that will sink his presidential hopeful ship. But he's wrong about his candidacy's eventual sink.
Sexual harassment is a vile, dirty and disgusting business. But it's also the business more time than not that's earmarked by he said, she said accusations and allegations that are rarely witnessed and verified, has little hard proof, and subject to a wide world of interpretation and innuendo. Scores of prominent men from former President Bill Clinton to Clarence Thomas, as well as legions of noted business leaders, athletes, entertainers, and would be politicians have been slapped with the label of sexual harasser, and had or been threatened with lawsuits, demands for settlements and pay offs. But in most cases, Clinton and Thomas, being prime examples, the sex charges aren't enough to sink their careers.

Cain is fresh proof of that. During the first days of the scandal he bagged more campaign dollars than he had previously and polls showed that his support didn't slip much downward. Cain like the others that have been slapped with the tag of sexual harasser did the predictable. He ducked, dodged, denied, probably lied, and then slandered his growing number of accusers. That got lots of press ink and more shrugs from his most impassioned backers. That confirms why Cain soared to the top and stayed at or near the top of the GOP heap of presidential candidates in the first place.
He has remained there even with the sex scandal dogging his every step for cynical practical and political reasons. He provides feel good relief for Tea Party leaders and followers and ultra-conservatives that have been pounded from pillar to post with the charge that they're racist and hateful baiters of any and every thing black, starting with their favorite target President Obama. The wild eyed backing Cain's gotten from them in straw polls in conservative bastions in the Deep South seemed to refute the notion that they're a cabal of unreconstructed bigots.

He's a businessman, and not a career politician. In this era of rabid public loathing and disgust of politicians, Cain is like the proverbial man on the White Horse who can make everything in the Beltway right by bringing his brand of corporate time clock efficiency to the White House. He brings wit, a crude charm, and most importantly entertainment to what has been a dull, lackluster, and pedestrian field of GOP hacks, retreads, and borderline zanies that have plopped themselves before GOP voters as the men and women who can take out Obama. None of them before Cain dashed onto the scene registered much of a pulse beat among the GOP rank and file.

Cain appeared to be the most effective among the GOP presidential contenders in posing as the ABR (anybody but Romney) alternative. The Iowa poll conducted by the Des Moines Register in which Cain ran neck and neck with him among GOP voters reconfirmed that Romney has what's charitably called "serious vulnerabilities" meaning that ultra conservative don't like him and what they perceive he represents. These are the voters that are most likely to vote in the official Iowa GOP Caucus in January and they said that they were three times more likely to back Cain over Romney.
Cain has one more asset that fascinates a celebrity chit chat and gossip star struck media that guaranteed him a star place on the national media and political gab show circuit. He could spew out a catchy, goofball, sound bite or gaffe. His botching the name Uzbekistan, as Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, calling for an electrified border fence complete with alligators and moats, branding blacks that back the Democrats as brainwashed, and botching the issue of trading prisoners at Guantanamo for hostages presumably that meant dealing with Al-Qaeda, were laughable. And these amused stumbles and bumbles made political featherweight Sarah Palin look almost like the second coming of FDR and Lincoln in comparison to him. That just made him even more a marketable curiosity item for the media and the much of the public.
GOP mainstream leaders, hard-nosed GOP political operatives, and the big gun financial donors have mostly treated the Cain candidacy as a fun and games, amusing sideshow act that is doomed to fade into the sunset long before it's time for serious primary politicking and voting. The sex charges are just the playful icing on the Cain circus act. It's an act that would fold in due time anyway. Despite Cain's defiant pronouncement that sex won't derail him and he's in the race for the long haul, his drop-out time is close at hand, sexual harassment allegations, or no.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com

In only one year America will hold another national election. I am, as a news junky, excited and eager to cover the conversation, the process, the hopes, promises, lies, distortions and the ugliness. As a civilian and a citizen, I am, however, sometimes disgusted and subject to a cynicism that borders on depression--wondering if elections really matter. After all, we all want to vote for change we can believe in and we all, left, right and center, have to learn to live with disappointment.

It's a year away and, as always, nothing less than everything is at stake. Elections have consequences and so do our efforts--efforts made in good faith across a spectrum of ideas and ideals.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

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Forever Yours,

G. Tz.

President Obama and national and GOP officials agree on one thing. The battle for the White House in 2012 will likely again come down to who wins the handful of election deciding battleground states. At the top of that list are Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Virginia. These are the states that have swung back and forth between the GOP and the Democrats for the past quarter century. Florida arguably and very dubiously put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000. Ohio did much to put Bush back in the White House in 2004. In 2008, both switched party hands, and along with the other three Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Virginia did much to put Obama in the White House. The GOP is bound and determined to make sure that doesn't happen again in 2012. It has for the most part dumped the crude stuff to suppress votes that got a lot of media attention, a slew of legal challenges, and stirred public outrage. That included making sure there was an absence of polling places in minority neighborhoods, ballot and vote machine irregularities, using lists of foreclosed homes to challenge voter's residences, rigid time lines for filing voter applications, the lack of information, misinformation or deliberate disinformation about voter registration forms and materials. Courts ruled that these blatant and naked efforts to torpedo minority voting were illegal, and Democratic Party officials were vigilant and aggressive in challenging these ploys.

But the GOP has gone back to its dirty campaign playbook and found a rash of new playbook schemes to insure that as many voters that are most likely to vote Democrat and for Obama stay home on Election Day in the must win states. This time around they have powerful new weapons to try to pull off their voter scam with GOP governors and GOP dominated state legislatures in the driver's seat in the states that Obama won in 2008. The GOP state officials have expanded the scheme that they unveiled a few years back and that is the rigid requirement that voters produce a government-issued identification, such as a driver's license, a passport, or a state or military ID card as proof of their identity to be eligible to vote. Months before the 2008 election, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's rigid voter registration law that required such proof. Since then nearly twenty other states require either photo or non-photo IDs. Other states have jumped on the bandwagon and require iron-clad proof of identity. Florida and Ohio are among those states. North Carolina came within a hairs breath of passing a similarly restrictive voter ID bill. The bill was vetoed by the state's Democratic governor. The cover excuse for this vote suppression scheme is that this is a bona fide measure to prevent voter fraud. This flies squarely in the face of several studies that debunk the myth that tens of thousands of mostly poor, ineligible black and Latino voters flood the polls and illegally skewer the vote total toward the Democrats. Estimates put the number at more than 20 million possibly eligible voters that through lack of time, money, or access to documents were unable to get the required ID proof.

GOP officials in the two key election deciding states, Florida and Ohio, didn't stop at requiring hard-nosed voter ID proof. Both states knocked out voting on Sunday before the election. In the absence of any employer paid time for voting on Tuesday, Sunday voting was a huge boost for black and Latino voters. Both states also radically shortened the early voting time frame from 14 days to eight in Florida and from 35 days to 16 days in Ohio. Black voters accounted for nearly one out of five of the early return voters and nearly one of three of the Sunday voters. Latinos accounted for nearly one out of five of the Sunday voters. In North Carolina, more than half of blacks voted early.

Obama also got a huge election shot in the arm from students and other youthful voters. A number of states now prohibit the use of student IDs as voter eligible proof. In Wisconsin, students now must have a new student ID with a two year expiration date to be eligible. In Virginia, Governor Bob McDonnell's Republican-controlled State Board of Elections proposed tightening rules that make it easier for election officials to disqualify absentee ballots for even the most trivial mistake such as a misspelling on a signature.

GOP officials have not scrapped the old tried and true methods of voter suppression. They include: district gerrymandering, tightening felon bans, skimping on the number of polling places and machines in mostly black and Latino neighborhoods, stationing police at the polls, and challenging citizenship papers where they can get away with it.

The GOP vote suppression schemes are aimed at one thing and one thing only and that's to hold onto the White House or in the case of the 2012 election hijack the White House from Obama. Democrats will again pull out all legal stops to fight the schemes. They'll need to the battle for the White House hangs in the balance.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

about vets and animals.
Shalom and a bientot,

G. Tz.

The Greeks have thrown Europe and the Eurozone into a panic. After negotiating half-a-dozen half-hearted bailouts to avoid the appearance of a default on their sovereign debt, the Greek leader (is this an oxymoron?) is putting this last best offer to a public referendum. With 65% of the Greek population polling against the conditions of this bailout, there is a good chance it will fail and all of Europe will slip further into peril.

©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com