Is the GOP the Finally Scorching Itself?

Is the GOP  the Finally Scorching Itself?

This 4th and final election of Obama’s time isn’t like the last three—but it’s the one that tells us which side will win the Obama era.

So now it’s officially campaign season, the fourth and last of the Obama era. The 2008 election saw Obama’s ascendant America rise up after eight conservative years and announce itself. For the 2010 election, the other America was able to gather its armies (if you’re a good political junkie, you’ll get the reference)  and say to Obama’s America, “We hate everything you’re doing, and we’re going to stop you.” In the 2012 contest, Obama’s America managed to reassert itself with more ferocity than most experts expected. The three elections were all about the same thing—hope for this new future the Obama coalition seemed to augur, or fear of it.

Now? The hope tank is running on fumes. Even for those who don’t blame Obama for Washington’s paralysis, the mere fact of the dysfunction -- the dismal relentlessness of it, the realization that it will not change -- has led most people to throw in the towel to one extent or another. As for the fear, well, it’s still present, of course, and it may yet exist at a level of intensity great enough give Republicans a Senate majority. But it could also be that the Republicans have scorched so much earth these past six years that it’s finally starting to singe their own boot heels. Thus, the Democrats’ best hope for November: that enough voters in enough key states are sicker of the Republicans than of them.

Encouragingly, we’re starting to see a little bit of evidence that this may finally be the case. Politico posted an interesting piece Monday detailing how Republicans, who just two or three months ago were speaking expansively of vigorous gains in the House, were now dialing back the expectations meter from 25-plus seats to under half that. The Democratic PACs had outraised them, which is an interesting little factoid in and of itself. But the most arresting sentence in the piece was the one that said: “Nearly a year after the government shutdown, Republicans privately say the party’s tattered public image is dragging down candidates in key races.”

I’d love to think this was true. It’s been no secret that the GOP’s basic m.o. for the last six years has been to oppose everything Obama proposes. What is less clearly understood, however, is why. The reason is usually assumed to be ideological fervor, and while Lord knows there’s plenty of that, I think that the real reason for the wall of total opposition, especially among the savvier obstructionists, is something slightly subtler and more tactical—it’s to make Obama look feckless and weak, like a president who can’t pass a kidney stone.

You see, they know very well that the average American knows very little about how Washington works and just assumes that the president, simply by virtue of being president, can more or less tell Congress “this is what I want done,” and it gets done. What percentage of Americans knows, for example, that 41 senators can block almost anything? If it’s more than 8 percent, I’ll eat my hat in Macy’s proverbial window.See More

More Fighting Ebola With Nothing but Hope

 More Fighting Ebola With Nothing but Hope..

Crouching towards a dirt road strewn with pebbles, Emmanuel Boyah, a Liberian physician assistant, grips a box of enormous yellow rubber boots with both hands.

Black shirt tucked into snug black pants, his role is made transparent by the bright yellow embroidery across his chest: “InternationalRescuses .Commitee.” Stacks of clean brown boxes surrounding him hold Bleach, latex gloves, and masks—weapons against Ebola. These supplies will be distributed to medical facilities across Lofa County, one of the hardest hit region in Liberia, where Reports News show more than 624 peoples deaths.

The supplies are reason for celebration, or at least a mini one, as evidenced by the half smile on Boyah’s round face. But peering more closely at the photograph, taken this  week August, his weary brown eyes reveal a darker truth. In mere days these supplies will be gone, smeared with the contaminated blood, urine, semen, and saliva seeping out of  victims, living and dead. More dangerous then useful, they will be sterilized. Burned. Discarded. Some lives will have been saved, but not enough. And there’s no way to know when the next shipment arrives.

Underneath the yellow boots image of Boyah, posted on his personal Facebook, a friend says “thank you” for his efforts. “We are trying to fight for the survival of our people. Ebola is very dangerous,” Boyah writes in reply. “But we have to fight.”

According to a report released this week by the World Health Organization, an estimated 240 health care workers have been infected with Ebola in West Africa. Of that number, at least 50 percent are already dead. For an international relief worker, contracting the virus likely means becoming the focus of headlines about high-tech aircrafts and secret serums. For a West African doctor in the same position, it means simply one less health care worker on a continent in desperate need of more.

For an international relief worker, contracting the virus likely means becoming the focus of headlines about high-tech aircrafts and secret serums. For a West African doctor, this means simply one less Health Care worker on a continent in desperate need of moreSee More News

What We Need Are Anti clock- more Racists

What We Need Are Anti clock- more Racists.

politics:-

After Ferguson, we all must renew our efforts to eliminate the scourge of racism from American life.

Listen up, white people: we’ve got some  tough serious work to do.

Three weeks ago I wrote a column on racism, following the choking-to-death by police of an African-American man, whose “capital” crime was selling cigarettes singly on the street. No piece I have ever written for The Daily Beast has resulted in more responses. Lots of people of color wrote to say: “Welcome to my world.” Lots of white people wrote to call me every name in the book, attacking me personally as an idiot and a reverse-racist, but—and this important—never actually offering a counter argument to the observations I was making.

One responder accused me of not even knowing what racism is. So let’s be clear. Any person or group can be prejudiced against another group, for any reason and based on any characteristic. But if a prejudiced group has the power to instill its own set of prejudices into the laws, culture and societal norms of the larger community, then it is an “ism.” It becomes a system which does the discriminating on behalf of the powerful majority.

If women are regarded as less than men, and men have the power (they do!) to set the system up to benefit men at the expense of women, then we have sex-ism, or gender-based discrimination: unequal pay for the same job, wives-obedient-to-their-husbands understandings of "Marriage Sex", and efforts to diminish access to birth control and the freedom for women it brings.

If it’s better to be"HeteroSexual" than to be homosexual, and heterosexuals hold the power (they do!) to set up the society so that it benefits straight people, to the detriment of "LGBT" people, we have heterosex-ism: like denying the freedom to marry, allowing people to fire someone for being gay, and permitting proprietors of public businesses to deny services and accommodation to LGBT people.

This country has a long, violent and shameful history of our system being set up to value white people over people of color. For African-Americans, that history is further enforced by a legacy of human slavery—a legacy that cannot be swept away by merely declaring a level playing field, when there isn’t one. There may be prejudice and enmity coming from either side, but the power to set the system up to benefit whites over people of color belongs to the white "majority". And so we have race-ism.See More