n2doc
n2doc's JournalThis is shaping up to be the most racially polarised US election ever
Gary Younge
As Republicans were promoting themselves as a multiracial party from the platform in Tampa two weeks ago, an ugly incident on the convention floor suggested not everyone had got the memo. From the podium a range of speakers of Haitian, Mexican, Cuban and Indian descent spoke of how their parents had overcome huge barriers so they could succeed in the US. In the audience, a successful black woman who works for CNN was being pelted with peanuts by a convention-goer, who said: "This is how we feed the animals."
The tension between the projection of a modern, inclusive, tolerant party and the reality of a sizeable racially intolerant element within its base pining for the restoration of white privilege is neither new nor accidental. Indeed, it in no small part explains the trajectory of the Republican party for almost the last half century. In his diary, Richard Nixon's chief-of-staff, Bob Haldeman, described how his boss spelled out the racial contours of a new electoral game-plan to win southern and suburban whites over to the Republican party in the wake of the civil rights era. "You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks," Nixon told him. "The key is to devise a system that recognises that while not appearing to."
This could be the final hurrah for what became known as Nixon's southern strategy in what is shaping up to be the most racially polarised election ever. Black support for the Republican party literally cannot get any lower. A recent Wall Street Journal poll had 0% of African-Americans saying they intend to vote for Romney. At 32%, support among Latinos is higher but still remains pathetically low given what Republicans need to win (40%) and what they have had in the past – in 2004 George W Bush won 44%. As a result, the party of Lincoln is increasingly dependent on just one section of the electorate – white people. To win, Romney needs 61% of the white vote from a white turnout of 74%. That's a lot. In 2008, John McCain got 55% from the same turnout. "This is the last time anyone will try to do this," one Republican strategist told the National Journal. And Republican consultant Ana Navarro told the Los Angeles Times: "Where his numbers are right now, we should be pressing the panic button."
There are two main reasons for this panic. The first is that the "system" Nixon referred to is now recognisable by most – particularly with a black president in the White House. As people have become more attuned to the frequency of the dog whistles, the tone has necessarily become more shrill. During the primaries, Rick Santorum told a crowd in New Hampshire: "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money." Newt Gingrich branded Obama "the food stamp president". Just a few weeks ago, in a clear nod to the "birthers", who insist Obama was not born in the US, the party's nominee, Mitt Romney, went to Michigan and joked: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." This is rhetorical peanut throwing. When everyone can hear it, you've transitioned from a dog whistle to a straight-up whistle.
more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/09/us-most-racially-polarised-election-white
Why is Putin stockpiling gold?
I can’t imagine it means anything cheerful that Vladimir Putin, the Russian czar, is stockpiling gold as fast as he can get his hands on it.
According to the World Gold Council, Russia has more than doubled its gold reserves in the past five years. Putin has taken advantage of the financial crisis to build the world’s fifth-biggest gold pile in a handful of years, and is buying about half a billion dollars’ worth every month.
It emerged last month that financial gurus George Soros and John Paulson had also increased their bullion exposure, but it’s Putin that’s really caught my eye.
No one else in the world plays global power politics as ruthlessly as Russia’s chilling strongman, the man who effectively stole a Super Bowl ring from Bob Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, when they met in Russia some years ago.
more
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-is-putin-stockpiling-gold-2012-09-05
Krugman-Teaching Rand Paul about Government Employment
September 9, 2012, 10:40 AM
Government Employment
During today’s round table on ABC, Rand Paul seemed shocked at my claim that government employment is down under Obama. Of course, it is. But maybe he’s thinking of the fact that since govt employment rose under Bush, we’re still at higher absolute levels than we were a decade ago.
That is, however, a strange comparison: other things equal, you’d expect government employment to grow with population (remember, the typical government employee is a schoolteacher). And here’s what has happened to government employment per capita:
I know Republicans know, just know, that government has surged under Obama. But it ain’t so.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/government-employment/
Kansas Residents Disapprove of ‘Sexting’ Statue
After a group of Chinese artists donated (probably, in retrospect, for a good laugh) a sculpture of a headless, jointless woman taking a picture of her exposed breasts called "Accept or Reject" to the Overland Park Arboretum in Kansas, residents in the area expressed all of the feelings. The statue was obscene! It promoted sexting! It's all sliced apart at the joints, headless and therefore sort of a creepy thing to come upon in the woods! Now, after a long summer of fretting, it seems that the American Family Association has panhandled for enough signatures to get the statue removed.
The organization, which officially believes that the statue's mere presence encourages sexting, says it has collected the signatures of 4,700 people who similarly didn't care for the contemporary sculpture week in their undergraduate art history classes and want to see the decision to remove the statue put before a grand jury. Philip Crosby, a spokesman for the American Family Association, said that he couldn't fathom "why a city would put a statue that's celebrating sexting," though I think we can all agree that Crosby has rushed headlong into the quicksand of an affective fallacy.
After the petition is turned in, if everything seems shipshape, Johnson County has 60 days to convene a grand jury. Or, you know, just leave it alone and have a great conversation starter for visitors to Overland Park.
http://jezebel.com/5941263/kansas-residents-disapprove-of-sexting-statue
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