The year 2011 meanders and waddles and lurches to its end. True to form, we have gotten revelations that Congressman Ron Paul’s newsletter occasionally launches into racist rants – and he doesn’t know anything about it. Bank of America agrees to pay a $335 million dollar fine for enticing barely creditworthy minority customers into purchasing homes that they couldn’t afford. In addition to precipitating the bursting of the housing bubble, Bank of America has managed to damage and destroy communities all across this country. And finally, a nonentity of a congressman in Wisconsin thought that there was nothing wrong about him referring to the First Lady of the United States in appalling and disrespectful terms. Only in America.

Will the Real Ron Paul Please Stand Up?

Congressman Ron Paul is one of the leading G.O.Tea Party presidential candidates. Indeed, we shouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be the winner of the Iowa Caucus.

Being a leading candidate has its disadvantages. One of them is that reporters actually take the time to find out what you stand for and believe in. It turns out that Ron Paul has been publishing a newsletter for over 20 years which has had interesting statements such as:

• The Martin Luther King holiday is “Hate Whitey Day”
• The riots in Los Angeles only stopped when blacks had to pick up their welfare checks
• In Washington, D.C. 90%-95% of African American males are criminals or engaged in criminal activity

When questioned about these outlandish and purely racist statements Congressman Paul copped out. He said that he didn’t write (or read) the newsletter and that such scrutiny by the press is unfair.

There are strains and threads of racism all throughout the G.O.Tea Party fabric. Ron Paul missed an excellent opportunity to play to his base by owning up to these statements.

The Un-American Bank of America

This past week Bank of America agreed to pay a $335 million fine in connection with its outrageous practice of enticing minorities who were not credit worthy into purchasing homes with the assistance of so-called sub-prime mortgages.

The collapse of the housing market in 2008 was due in no small part to these piratical banking practices. These predatory lending practices have also resulted in the wholesale evisceration of neighborhoods and communities that had been stable until some executives at Bank of America started to put on their thinking caps.

We might think that $335 million is a lot of money. That is, until we compare it to the cost of destroying homes, lives and communities across this country. Indeed, Bank of America is very un-American.

The Bottomless Pit

The slime that has been directed at the Obama Administration started being hurled on January 20, 2009. Political attacks are part of the process but the partisan vitriol has been extreme. President Obama has been called a socialist, a fascist and a Kenyan anti-colonialist. There are still millions of Americans who will never believe that he was born in the United States and if nothing else, the
G.O.Tea Party has been unified in its dedication to seeing that he “fails” and is reduced to being a one term president.

But this past week a new low has been reached. Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, a virtual nonentity from Wisconsin, was quoted as saying that Michelle Obama has a “large posterior” for someone who advocates healthy foods and exercise.
Of course this idiot gave the classic “if I offended anyone” non-apology.

During all the political battles involving Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton – and I am referring to classical wars over policy and vision – I cannot recollect a single word that referred to Lady Bird Johnson or Pat Nixon or Nancy Reagan or Hillary Clinton in such a stunningly disrespectful manner.

Barack Obama is a man possessed of considerable restraint not to respond to this vulgar attack on his wife and the mother of his children. What is incredible is that this disgraceful disrespect is not out of the ordinary in the United States of Stupid.

Have a great weekend!