Deconstructing Dinesh D'Souza

Politically speaking, writer Dinesh D'Souza has been Rogue for years. But he seems to be veering off the ranch according to reactions to his September 9th Forbes cover story, which among other things, posits the strange theory that President Obama's domestic policies and foreign policy strategy are shaped by what D'Souza describes as Obama's father's "hatred of the colonial system."

Apparently undaunted by the fact that Obama's own book "Dreams of My Father" makes clear the President was left rather disappointed with the man his father became, or that he was absent through most of his formative upbringing, D'Souza delights prominent conservative media pundits and thinkers by dangling proof that Obama is secretly some kind of foreign radical.

MediaMatters.org has completely dissected the text from the D'Souza piece and clearly identified at least ten claims from the article which are either completely false or stand in total opposition to established facts. Like Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes rushing to defend the tactless televised ramblings of Glenn Beck, Forbes stands firmly by D'Souza's error-ridden article.

Is Forbes magazine Going Rouge? The magazine wasn't always so flippant with facts. My father, a college-educated African-American raised in North Carolina during the Great Depression who went on to become a successful corporate professional and political conservative always had Forbes in his den when I was growing up. He was a long-time subscriber and considered it essential reading.

What's peculiar about D'Souza's cover story is that the Forbes brand, while certainly a bastion of the conservative, pro-capitalist economic mindset, seems to have taken a sharp right turn from the standards set by it's founder Malcom Forbes.

In the article D'Souza repeatedly combines his un-evolved conservative slant with a bizarre mix of his own brand of dime-store psychoanalysis and a rather klutzy distortion of the truth in an effort to provide some sort of intellectually substantive justification for Tea Party anger. It's like he tried to whip up some fodder for conservative pundits to use in the weeks leading up to the November election and no one at Forbes even bothered to fact check it.

D'Souza's conclusions from Obama's book "Dreams of My Father" have puzzled a number of journalists who have reported on the books factual errors.

As MediaMatters.org reports, "Everyone else" who read Dreams "saw Obama burning with disappointment in Barack Sr. In a September 13th review of D'Souza's forthcoming book, Slate.com's David Weigel wrote, "While everyone else read Dreams From My Father and saw Obama burning with disappointment in Barack Sr., D'Souza sees a man burning with 'hatred derived from the debris of the anti-colonial wars.'"

Media Matters also reports that Ryan Chittum described D'Souza's new book as "a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia." in the September 13th issue of the Columbia Journalism Review

But anyone remotely familiar with Dinesh D'Souza's writings and background can hardly be surprised that he's written an error-laden piece trashing the President.

D'Souza's simplistic antiquated observations of African-American culture have long pegged him as being right up there with Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin in terms of conservative media superstars long on wind and short on intellectual substance.

In D'Souza's book The End of Racism, he demonstrated an alarmingly uninformed grasp of American history by making the claim that the "American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."

He wrote a book blaming liberals for the 911 attacks.

But who is he really?

D'Souza is an immigrant from Mumbai, Matashra, India who arrived in the United States in 1978.

Raised in conservative Arizona, according to a 2007 Boston Globe article by Peter Canellos, D'Souza first grabbed headlines as a 20 year-old writer and Reagan disciple who publicly outed members of the Dartmouth Gay Student Alliance in an article for Dartmouth University's Dartmouth Review - D'Souza also honed his writing by attacking Dartmouth's affirmative action policies.

According to the Globe article, "During the 1980s, before and after D'Souza's editorship, the paper was repeatedly in the news for controversies that included taping a Gay Student Alliance meeting, publishing a column in a mocking imitation of black English, ridiculing a class by a black music professor, comparing the university's Jewish president to Adolf Hitler, and falsely asserting that a university chaplain had defended a group advocating sex with adolescents."

I don't know him personally but perhaps D'Souza's ingrained biases are fueled by his conversion to evangelical Christianity? Like Ann Coulter, D'Souza's contempt for non-white, non-Christians is always cloaked in a veneer of intellectualism and so extreme in tone that it suggests that like some immigrants from India, he was quick to adopt the worn cloak of American bigotry and prejudice based on the mental indoctrination of the Indian caste system he was exposed to as a child. Some Indians, certainly not all, come to this country and quickly adopt an open contempt for those they regard as beneath them.

I've explored Indian racism towards African-Americans previously in this blog, but D'Souza genuinely puzzles me. Why was he so quick to adopt such clearly racist views on blacks?

Was he simply eager to demonstrate just how "cultured" he is by adopting negative views of homosexuals and minorities - almost as if to separate himself psychologically from the dark tone of his own skin and his Indian origins.

It's possible he has a need to distinguish himself from those he considers lower on the mental cast system he's formed inside his mind, which is his right to do.

But I'm not sure that excuses bad journalism and sloppy writing - which is exactly what his Forbes cover story is.

Dinesh D'Souza Discovers Karma

D'Souza in NY 2012 - Photo by Bryan Pace - NY Daily News

Far right-leaning commentator and pundit Dinesh D'Souza is back in the media headlines these days, unfortunately for him, this time it's not for scoring points with right wing media for tossing cheap shots at the president.

The bespectacled Mumbai-born Dartmouth grad is under indictment by a Federal Grand Jury for illegally helping to channel individual cash donations well in excess of U.S. Federal election law limits to Republican Wendy Long; a failed challenger for the New York Senate seat held by Democrat Kristen Gillibrand.

The charges have Republicans crying foul (the creepy former candidate for NY governor Carl Palladino suggested the charges against D'Souza amounted to a "liberal witch hunt") but the law is clear on individual contributions to Senate campaigns and D'Souza broke it.

In a statement released by the FBI, the US Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara said, "...this office and the FBI take a zero tolerance approach to corruption of the electoral process."

Honestly though, did D'Souza really think there would be no consequences for spending six years trashing the president? We'll see what the former Ronald Reagan disciple has to say about big government now.

For a guy who's made a career out of stoking the fires of the evangelical Christian conservative mindset through a relentless assault on the moral failings of others, (and a freakish, borderline cult-like obsession with smearing President Obama) Dinesh D'Souza has spent much of the past 16 months discovering what it's like to be publicly outed for having the same human frailties as everyone else.

As Peter S. Canellos revealed in a Boston Globe article back in 2007, D'Souza adopted his petty, bully mentality as a young writer for the Dartmouth Review when he penned pieces and commentaries that attacked affirmative action, mocked African-American speech, outed members of the Dartmouth Gay Student Alliance and made anti-Semitic comments about a Jewish faculty member among other things.   

So conservatives can whine about D'Souza being targeted for political reasons all they want; he's been a smug, insulting, condescending bigot for years - and his arrogance caught up with him when his hatred for Democratic Senator Gillibrand got the better of him and he thought he'd be clever and dump $20,000 into a Republican challenger's coffers (and lie to the Republican challenger about where the cash came from) and no one would be the wiser.

Maybe it just didn't occur to Dinesh that talking and writing smack about the sitting president put him under the spotlight until he was actually caught in the spotlight. Hindsight is 20-20 and like The Who, no doubt Dinesh can now see for miles and miles.

While he entered a not-guilty plea last Friday, news reports suggest both Wendy Long and the two people who channeled D'Souza's illegal $20,000 campaign contribution to her, will all be testifying against him in court.

D'Souza's high-priced defense attorney Benjamin Brafman will probably keep his client from doing jail time, but the damage to his already tattered reputation will probably keep him from being a serious threat to Hillary Clinton's candidacy; unless the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson take pity on him and bankroll another Benghazi book or something.

Truth is it's getting harder to take him seriously.

Lest we forget it was only back in October, 2012 that D'Souza was outed for adultery (at a Christian Values summit in South Carolina no less) after he was discovered shacked up in the hotel with married blogger Denise Joseph; Conservative values indeed.

Karma's a bitch; maybe Dinesh could write a book about that.

Dinesh D'Souza Gets "Ghetto" On President Obama

Conservative commentator Dinesh DSouza

Author Dinesh D'Souza is once again making media headlines for yet another in a long string of dimwitted, racially-tinged comments about President Obama.

As Olivia Kittel of Media Matters reported earlier today, in response to Obama being interviewed on BuzzFeed recently to promote the upcoming deadline to sign up for health care, D'Souza took to Twitter to post a photo of the media savvy President taking a selfie with the following comment: 
"YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO...Watch this vulgar man show his stuff, while America cowers in embarrassment." (Those are his CAPS not mine by the way)

So what does any of that have to do with the Affordable Care Act? Not much, but D'Souza has never been one to let little things like logic, sense, readability or truth get in the way of his fiery conservative prose.

His latest 93-word Tweet is vintage D'Souza (see example below) and pretty much manages to sum up the kind of intellectually void claptrap he writes that makes him such a revered intellectual demi-god among conservative Republicans.

The conservative Indian-American author, commentator and Fox News darling has been peddling his delusional mix of unhinged political opinion, bigotry and right-wing propaganda since his days at Dartmouth College, where he took pleasure using his position as an editor for the monthly student publication The Prospect and as a writer on the Dartmouth Review as a platform for his homophobia, racism and intolerance for virtually anything that falls outside of the spectrum of Anglo-Christian, politically conservative and heterosexual.

D'Souzas's entrenched cultural elitism likely stems from his relatively privileged upbringing in Mumbai, India where he was born to parents who were Catholics; his father was an executive for Johnson & Johnson and his mother was a housewife.

His K-12 education in Mumbai's elite Catholic schools (and his father's influence) served as a springboard for him to study abroad in America; in of all places - Arizona, the land of Barry Goldwater and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio; same guy who harasses immigrants on the taxpayer dime, sued the president and sentences inmates to restricted diets of bread and water for relatively minor infractions.  

So if you consider where he comes from and how he was educated, his Ann Coulter-ish brand of predictable conservatism based on demeaning others actually makes sense.

Sad and pathetic yes, but it makes sense.

D'Souza's November 26, 2013 Tweet

D'Souza seemed to discover his purpose in the wake of the election of President Obama in 2008 as the Republican Party morphed into a breeding ground for right-wing conservative extremism.

The anger-filled Tea Party movement bankrolled by Charles and David Koch became an all-inclusive cesspool of bigoted, misogynist, obstructionist, fear-pandering reactionary philosophy - and D'Souza leaped right in.

He's been there ever since, gleefully yanking the chains of right-wing Obama haters by creating content that demeans the President because of his race; like the Thanksgiving Tweet D'Souza released on November 26, 2013 as millions around the globe struggled to make sense of the death of an innocent black teenager.

Just like the offensive Tweet above, his latest Tweet using words like "ghetto" and "vulgar" to describe the leader of the free world is basically the intellectual equivalent of "Obama has cooties", but again, that's who Dinesh D'souza really is when you get beyond the critically-panned books and paid speaking appearances at conservative think-tanks.

Frankly, a moralizing hypocritical wannabe-Christian theologian who cheated on his wife and is a convicted felon has a lot of gall calling anyone "ghetto" - let alone the President.

      

Dinesh D'Souza Exposed as Adulturer and Moral Hypocrite

Dinesh D'Souza & mistress/"fiancee" Denise Odie Joseph II.

Over the years conservative writer and critic Dinesh D'Souza has delighted Republicans and right-wing media pundits by targeting African-Americans, Democrats, the poor, unions, homosexuals, pro-choice advocates and President Obama with unsubstantiated theories, a long-winded mix of pseudo-intellectual editorializing and uninformed revisionist American history.

D'Souza, a converted Catholic now aligned with the evangelical Christian church, has carved out a career with his self-righteous condemnation of the personal beliefs, political choices and life style choices of people who don't think like him. Now he's crying foul over the humiliating public revelation that he was recently spotted staying in a hotel room during a conference with Denise Odie Joseph II, a significantly younger married evangelical Christian woman; who herself is married according to Jordan Sargent of Gawker.com.   

A recent article by David Sessions on the Daily Beast Website claims the story was broken by World (an evangelical Christian magazine) after two conference organizers learned D'Souza was shacking up in a South Carolina hotel with a woman who was clearly not his current wife of 20 years.
                        
Don't get me wrong, D'Souza's personal life is his own business, but when he writes books and films documentaries based purely on some wildly speculative theory that the President has some kind of secret agenda for the nation based on a seething hatred of colonialism, his own personal life becomes relevant and subject to scrutiny.

Just recently D'Souza had the gall to accuse the President (who regularly attends church, is happily married with two daughters and lives with his mother-in-law) of 'Attacking the traditional values agenda' according to an article posted on the rightwingwatch.com Website. 

Perhaps D'Souza should spend less time obsessing over what he perceives to be other people's moral failings and more time reflecting on just what his own 'traditional values' are. He certainly will have plenty of time for reflection, in the wake of the scandal D'Souza resigned as president of King's College in New York City, a small Christian school funded by Campus Crusade for Christ. Their Website states in part:  
"The King’s College educates students to lead with principle as they aspire to make America better. We prepare students for principled leadership. And nothing else."

Unfortunately for D'Souza, I suspect the media (and his current wife Dixie), will be a lot less forgiving than Jesus.

Dinesh D'Souza: The 'Sheriff Joe' of the Conservative Media Movement?

So I'm reading film reviews in the New York Times last Friday August 10th when I came upon a full-page ad for a film called "Obama's America: 2016". The cryptic subtitle read: "Love him, hate him, you don't know him - He is downsizing America."

Uh oh, I thought. I scroll down to check the credits and sure enough this cinematic masterpiece was co-written and co-directed by none other than right-wing writer Dinesh D'Souza (pictured above). For those of you who've been kind enough to follow my blog, you may recall that I wrote about D'Souza back on September 20, 2010 in the lead-up to the 2010 Presidential elections. [Read the blog to get the full story.] Disclaimer: it may be a bit self-serving to link to my own blog, but hey, you do what you gotta do.

Those of you who might not be familiar with D'Souza, don't let that bookish appearance fool you.
Ideologically, this guy is as far right as Ann Coulter and just as nutty as Michelle Bachmann. Two months before the 2010 Presidential election D'Souza penned a widely-panned Forbes Magazine article in which he tried to make the case that Obama, was somehow trying to radically re-shape US foreign policy in an effort to mirror the political views of his estranged Kenyan father.

Well, we've seen how that turned out. Bin Laden is dead, the war in Iraq is over, America has played a quiet but definitive role in the collapse of regimes in Egypt, Libya and soon, Syria; and US troops will soon wind down the war in Afghanistan.

D'Souza, born in India but raised in Arizona, has had nothing but contempt for African-Americans, Jews and homosexuals since he was offending people with his not-so cleverly disguised hate speech in college. Now it seems he's moved on to film.

It would take a psychiatrist to explain how a dark-skinned immigrant would allow himself to be used by American conservatives to bash minorities with pseudo-intellectual theories and baseless assumptions. It's almost like he's the 'Sheriff Joe Arpaio' of right-wing conservative media.

Speaking of media spotlight-loving unapologetic racists, the August 16th Rolling Stone article 'The Long Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe' offers a really penetrating look into the life of notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Like D'Souza, Arpaio has a long history of hating racial minorities in America, RS contributing editor Joe Hagan peels back the layers of this poster boy for intolerance with a must-read profile. Check it out.

Hail Marys From 1600

Rudy Giuliani getting booed in Yankee Stadium

Could White House efforts to try and deflect attention from the mounting evidence surrounding the Trump administration's numerous ties to the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign possibly get any more desperate?

Rudy Giuliani's unhinged appearances on network and cable news programs over the past couple weeks haven't exactly boosted Trump's credibility.

Or his own for that matter.

While attending a Yankees game in the Bronx last Monday, Giuliani was loudly booed by a Memorial Day crowd when he was introduced on the PA system as the camera panned about for celebrities in attendance.

The 74-year-old crackpot Trump supporter / lawyer tried to pass the unmistakeable slight off as the Yankee fans showing him "love", but as I've mentioned on this blog before, I lived in New York City for 14 years and have attended dozens of Yankees games over the years.

Just to be clear, when Yanks fans boo you in Yankee Stadium, it ain't love.

Giuliani's efforts to try and undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation have gotten so bizarre, it's actually getting embarrassing for Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Particularly given that mid-term elections, which are clearly shaping up to be a referendum on Trump's first two chaotic years in office, and the divisive, mean-spirited tone of his administration, are now only four months off.

Top Republicans Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and
Trey Gowdy all support the Mueller investigation

In today's social-media-influenced 24/7 news cycle, that's like a two-minute warning in the 4th quarter of a close football game.

For those nervous, legacy-cognizant Republican members of Congress who haven't already announced that they won't seek another term in office (in an effort to avoid the humiliation of being in the same party as Trump) the stakes are high heading into summer.


The week before last, even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other leading Republican members of Congress, including the dependably right-leaning Hillary-basher, Representative Trey Gowdy, publicly stated their firm support for the ongoing investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller of intentional interference in the 2016 U.S. elections ordered by Vladimir Putin.

In political terms, that's a pretty revealing indicator of how Republican politicians preparing to face  a fired-up voter base are trying to re-position themselves.

But it's more than that.

For example, obviously I don't agree with a lot of the policy positions of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but I respect his mastery of the arcane rules of the Senate chamber.

And don't think for a second that he's forgotten Trump's loudmouth support for failed pedophile Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore last fall - who ran on a platform that was partially based on checking the power of the "Republican Washington establishment", calling out McConnell by name repeatedly.

Trump in Nashville telling one of the 35 lies or
factually-misleading statements he told.

Politically-savvy Republicans running for office in November don't want to get caught calling the ongoing investigation into Russian interference a "witch hunt" as Trump has taken to characterizing an investigation that's already filed more than 100 criminal charges against 19 different people and 3 companies.

Five of those indicted have already plead guilty.

As the New York Times reported, "Thirteen are Russians accused of meddling in the 2016 elections."


True to his bombastic nature, Trump's response to members of his own political party publicly supporting the Mueller investigation even as he desperately tries to undermine it, has been predictable.

He took it as a snub from the same mainstream Republicans that he gleefully eviscerated like dead fish during the 2016 campaign and, as he's done consistently when he's getting bludgeoned by the mainstream press and social media, he took to the road Wednesday night.

Heading down south to try and rally his shrinking, but loyal base of support.

As USA Today and other news organizations reported, Trump used an appearance at a "Make America Great Again" rally in Nashville, Tennessee to meander through at least 35 different false or misleading statements on his favorite topics including provably false statements on the Affordable Care Act championed by President Obama, taking credit for wage growth that began under Obama and of course Trump's central theme - irrational immigrant bashing.

Even the local Tennessean.com caught Trump, once again, lying about the size of the crowd there.

His blundering, back-and-forth foreign policy efforts, including on-again, off-again negotiations with North Korea and the announcement of 25% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from some of America's closest allies - including France, Canada and Mexico - have further fractured already-tenuous relationships with some the country's biggest global trading partners.

To say nothing of the fact that such tariffs will likely increase steel costs for U.S. manufacturers

Dinesh D'Souza being arrested for illegal campaign
contributions back in 2014

Costs which will inevitably translate to higher prices for American consumers.

The tariffs in particular were so reckless, it's possible they were meant to overshadow Trump's decision to help Chinese electronics maker ZTE after the Chinese announced they would invest hundreds of millions in an Indonesian project from which Trump would personally profit.

The ZTE decision even irked Republican politicians in Washington.

And it certainly didn't help that the announcement coincided with China approving additional trademarks for profiteering First Daughter Ivanka Trump, who has shamelessly helped herself - as has her husband Jared Kushner - to unabashed financial feeding at the trough during their questionable tenure in the White House as roving "senior advisers" to their quasi-delusional daddy. 

But unquestionably, Trump's most bizarre effort to rally his right-wing base and deflect from the reality of his disastrous presidency, was his decision to issue a presidential pardon last week to the textbook homophobic bigot Dinesh D'Souza (pictured above).

As an op-ed by the New York Times editorial board on Thursday titled "Dinesh D'Souza? Really?"
noted:

"On Thursday, Mr. Trump pardoned Dinesh D'Souza, the right-wing troll known for, among other things, posting racist tweets about President Barack Obama, spreading the lie that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator and writing that 'the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.' "

Trump's decision to pardon D'Souza for funneling $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long back in 2012 seems intended as yet another petty swipe in Trump's bizarre obsession with President Obama.

Particularly given D'Souza's many racist attacks on Obama over the years, including a widely-panned and unsubstantiated book and calling Obama "boy" on Twitter among other assorted classless, low-rent nonsense.

So it's not surprising that Trump used his executive power to pardon someone like that (Hell, he pardoned ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio), anything to distract from the ongoing disaster that is his presidency.

Another Hail Mary pass lobbed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - not to score, but to distract.

Students Lobby For Gun Control - Republicans Hatch A Conspiracy

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel visits 15 YO
Florida shooting survivor Anthony Borges on Sunday 

Today marks one week since 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz left 17 students and faculty members dead during a deadly shooting rampage - one of 34 mass shootings in the United States in 2018.

While it's been seven days since Cruz fired more than a 100 rounds into classrooms and hallways in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, today marks a monumental shift in the polarizing debate over gun control in America.

For most Americans who listened to some of the emotionally-wrenching testimony and comments earlier today at the White House in what was described as a listening session, it was hard not be affected by their words and the emotion in their voices.


With Republican lawmakers on the national and state level being eviscerated by mainstream popular opinion during the past week because of their willingness to place their slavish obedience to NRA gun money and archaic interpretations of the 2nd Amendment over public safety and reason, GOP leaders were forced to do something Wednesday they rarely do.

Listen to advocates of gun control as well as some of the victims and relatives of victims of the epic gun violence (there were 15,593 gun deaths in America in 2017) that is ripping this country apart.

If you didn't get a chance to hear the anguish and anger of Andrew Pollack, the only parent of one of the 17 killed in Parkland, Florida to attend the White House event earlier yesterday, take a couple minutes to check out Julie Hirschfeld Davis' New York Times article and watch the 27-second clip of him laying Trump out, or read his comments.

Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was one of the 17 killed last Wednesday, asked the question that so many different Americans of different ages, backgrounds, ethnicities and faiths have wanted to ask some of the Republican politicians who now control all three branches of the federal government:

"How many schools, how many children have to get shot?"

Thousands of students rallied outside the state
capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida

18-year-old Samuel Zeif, a student who survived the shooting last week but lost his best friend, asked Trump how it was that someone can still just basically walk into a store in Florida and purchase an AR-15 after the deaths in Columbine and Sandy Hook.

He's one of many Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS students who have appeared on mainstream national news outlets or social media to express outrage and dismay over notoriously lax gun laws.


Intentionally-watered down Florida gun control laws that gave us "Stand Your Ground"  and allowed a disturbed individual like Nikolas Cruz to purchase an AR-15, large amounts of ammunition and tactical vests without any red flags popping up.

According to a source that spoke with CNN, investigators say that Cruz purchased at least 10 different rifles; but his adopted parents claim there was nothing unusual about his behavior.

Sadly what's not unusual is the reaction of many conservative far-right extremists, who've taken to social media in droves to denounce the MSDHS students as part of some kind of liberal plot to strip away the rights of gun owners.

It's actually remarkable to watch the loony "pizza-gate" faction of the right-wing conspiracy troll movement become enraged by high school students who just survived the 9th worst mass shooting in U.S. history exercising their 1st Amendment right to free speech.

Remember, these are the same folks who fetishize the 2nd Amendment as if it was hewn into rock by a deity that sanctions the slaughter of thousands of Americans each year.

Republican Florida political aide Ben Kelly fired
for forwarding right-wing conspiracy theories 

Don't think that kind of right-wing nutbaggery was limited to anonymous trolls hanging around in the murky corners of Reddit conservative conspiracy porn pages either.

As Tampa Bay Times reporter Alex Leary reported yesterday, Benjamin Kelly, the district secretary for Republican Florida state legislator Shawn Harrison, was fired after he claimed that MSDHS students Emma Gonzales and David Hogg were not students at the school but "actors that travel to various crisis when they happen." 

Both students, survivors of the shooting, have appeared on TV frequently in the past few days calling for stiffer gun control laws.

So trolls started the rumor that they were actors paid by left-wing gun control advocates and immediately started demonizing them - sound like a familiar tactic?

Frankly that's is right down there with Alex Jones' wacky claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged.

If you can stomach it, check out Travis Andrews and Samantha Schmidt's Washington Post article (reprinted in the Chicago Tribune), which offers a sampling of the right-wing sleaze bag all stars who came out of the woodwork to fan the flames of fake conservative conspiracy theories.

Dinesh D'Souza kibittzing with Steve Bannon

Including ex-Fox News serial sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly and the fake-Christian conservative adulterer Dinesh D'Souza.

Whose windbag conservative pseudo-intellectualism has long since been relegated to the fringes of the Republican Party.

Why would a guy with a life-long Ronald Regan fetish take to social media to dance by the fire of a loony 3rd rate conspiracy theory?

Now that there's no Obama for D'Souza to bash, perhaps he was desperate to kick up a fuss and earn some street cred with the Trump-happy alt-right movement that ironically sees him as a dark-skinned foreign threat.

D'Souza had the gall to to use his Twitter account to mock MSDHS high school students who travelled to the Florida state capitol building to spend the day furiously lobbying over 70 different state lawmakers to enact stiffer gun control laws.

In an effort to show who's the adult and who's the child, when the Florida state House voted down a measure to debate a bill that would ban assault weapons, D'Souza gleefully mocked the high school students who had the guts to try and influence the political process. 

Sadly, these shameless conservative attacks on these high school students (who have the nerve not to want to be shot and killed in their own school because of shitty gun control laws) were not to promote a rational policy position or anything, or offer substantive debate on the merits of the 2nd Amendment.

No, it was just to try and paint high school students who witnessed 17 classmates gunned down in cold blood in the halls of their school seven days ago as liars and opportunists.

Ladies and gents, I give you the modern Republican Party; whose tone-deaf actions in Florida over the past couple days probably just recruited a whole new generation of Democrats.

Social Media's Magic - Rudy Questions Obama's Love For America

The reach, power and value of social media may be debated in some circles even as it evolves, but the tangible impact it's had on grass roots progressive issues like wage inequality in this country is not in question.

The announcement that Walmart will increase wages for a half million workers, alter the way it currently haphazardly schedules employee hours and actively seek to overhaul it's brand as a crappy employer that systematically underpays it's workers, owes much to the various social media campaigns that have relentlessly targeted the nation's biggest employer for years.

Just think about the past few holiday shopping seasons.

News about Walmart's own employees (and supporters) picketing the stores around the nation over wages and worker's rights, or disturbing stories about the numbers of Walmart employees forced to seek public assistance benefits and food stamps, have made bigger headlines than news about holiday spending at the stores themselves - and the brand has suffered.

Walmart's decision to spend over a billion dollars to restructure it's employment policies and revamp it's image is a huge statement that could serve as a major influence on other large US companies finally moving to increase lower and middle class wages after years of record corporate profits.

Economic policies paid for by US taxpayers, including huge bailouts to banks and allowing companies to borrow at zero interest have pumped enormous amounts of money into the system and allowed American corporations to stockpile massive cash reserves overseas ($1.45 trillion and counting by spring of 2013...) without paying Uncle Sam his share, or worse; using it to expand hiring here at home.

Does Walmart deserve a measure of credit for making the decision to start paying it's workers more than the federal minimum wage? Sure. But if not for the relentless social media campaigns calling Walmart out, it never would have happened.

Plus I'd venture that Walmart execs recognized the long-term strategic risk of the company inadvertently serving as the spark for a resurgence in pro-labor union movements; which it wants no part of in it's stores.

Besides, a billion dollars is a drop in the bucket for a company like Walmart, even if they did anticipate the need to raise wages collectively across the board, kudos to social media for helping to make it happen sooner.

Social media is also proving to be an effective counterweight against the juggernaut of right-wing media channeled through mainstream media outlets like Fox News.

Limbaugh looses ground

As Time's Brian Rosenwald reported yesterday, social media is also having a tangible impact on the grass roots public backlash against hate speech broadcast on public radio airwaves.

His excellent analysis shows how multiple social media campaigns against Rush Limbaugh are steadily eroding his sponsors as well as the radio stations willing to broadcast his show.    


Rush doesn't like it, but the Constitution (like social media) is a complex creature that does not serve one master.

In the same way Limbaugh uses the 1st Amendment as a license to justify his using radio as a platform to spread his misogynist, racist, homophobic beliefs; millions of people are now using online petitions, e-mail campaigns and other online sources to raise awareness of what he says on the air.

In doing so they're making it increasingly uncomfortable for companies that sponsor his show to be associated with the kind of content he creates.

And like Walmart's recognition that it had become THE poster-company for greed, wage inequality and unfair treatment of workers, the cost to the brands of the companies that sponsor Limbaugh's show are starting to outweigh any increased market share or sales volume those commercials may have reaped.

America's authority on who loves America?

Finally I had to follow up my blog yesterday about Dinseh D'Souza's empty political rhetoric after hearing about another ignorant comment made about the president based not on any kind of fact or policy; but on his race.

Over the years it's been interesting watching Rudy Giuliani's metamorphosis from a politically centrist right-leaning mayor of a major northeastern urban city, to the divisive, quasi-delusional right-wing figurehead he's become.

As Justin Baragona reported on PoliticusUSA earlier today, when Giuliani stands up in a pricey Manhattan restaurant in front of a group of well-heeled Republican donors and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and says things like, "I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up in the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country." as he did last night, I'm not sure whether to laugh or just feel sorry for him.

Anyone who suggests that the same president who authorized US Special Forces to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden, risked his political legacy to fight for all Americans to have reasonable access to health care and is presiding over one of the most sustained periods of job creation on record does not love his country is not firing bullets out of the business end of the barrel.

The whole "He wasn't brought up in the way you were brought up" reeks of a weak attempt at the kind of coded racism that fuels the Republican Southern Strategy.

Worse it's classless and totally unprovable.

I lived in NYC for 15 years and though I frequently disagreed with Giuliani as a mayor, (particularly on heavy-handed police tactics) I generally respected him as a leader and you always knew where he stood on the issues.

So it's sad to see him relegated to appearances on Fox News to toss low ball cheap-shots at the president from the safety of the sidelines of the political arena where he once wielded influence.

A guy who once lead the greatest city in the world now reduced to referencing debunked birther theories and dredging up Dinesh D'Souza's discredited cornball ideas about Obama's issues with "colonialism" shaping his foreign policy decisions? Sad.

As Mitt Romney learned, in this day and age what's said in a closed-door dinner filled with wealthy Republican backers will be breaking on social media within hours.

Rudy should have known it wasn't just 60 Republicans in the room when he questioned the president's love for his country, there were millions of us listening - and holding Hizzoner accountable for what he said.

Dr. Ben Carson Emerges As The Official Republican Black Guy At CPAC 2014

Dr. Ben Carson

There's little question renowned pediatric neurosurgeon and author Dr. Ben Carson is an exceptionally intelligent and accomplished physician, which makes his willingness to be used as a pawn by the right wing conservative movement all the more puzzling.

You may recall Carson made headlines last fall at the Voter Values Summit when he took the stage and compared the Affordable Care Act to slavery.

Republicans absolutely love a black guy who will say crazy $#%! like that; I'll bet you Dinesh D'Souza jumps up, claps his hands and runs around the room dancing a little jig every time Carson unleashes one of those nuggets of extremist nonsense.

On Saturday the good doctor placed 3rd in the CPAC straw poll of GOP presidential front runners with 9% of the vote; Texas Senator Ted Cruz came in 2nd with 11% and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul came in first with 31% of the vote - poor Chris Christie finished 4th with 8% and is realizing Bridge-Gate is a liability to the GOP's chances in 2016.   

Carson used his speech to lambaste the "PC police" and "liberal media" for trying to silence him in the wake of his comparing homosexuality to bestiality while defending the "traditional definition" of marriage as being between a man and a woman in a recent Fox New Interview.

I can't speak for all liberals, but the idea that there's some kind of liberal plot to silence Carson is simply delusional. Nothing improves the chances of another sweeping Democratic presidential victory in 2016 than another right-wing nut-bag like Carson trying to use Christianity as a shield for narrow-minded bigotry - it's his own mouth that's bringing media attention down on his arcane views.

But there's no need to get into his attempt to compare the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, one of the worst crimes against humanity in history, with an act of Congress designed to ensure that all Americans have access to decent health care; and remember that's coming from a former brain surgeon who is a professor emeritus at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.

And how is it you operate on the human brain using techniques at the forefront of medical knowledge and technology and claim you don't believe in evolution?

Political views like his are so crazy they're far outside the boundaries of the mainstream political spectrum where the 2016 presidential election will be won or lost. And the sad truth is Carson has nothing original to say.

Instead of standing up and offering a different vision for the country, he just rants on about liberal plots to silence him, misquotes Vladimir Lenin and makes bizarre observations about Nazi Germany.

That fact that this guy placed third in the CPAC straw poll pretty much tells you all you need to know about today's Republican party.

No, liberals don't have to do anything about Dr. Carson, his own extremist views will be the cause of his political implosion in 12 to 14 months when the Republican race gets serious and he confronts the reality that this Republican party will never nominate a black man to be president; just ask Colin Powell.

After a brilliant medical career Carson is content to play the buffoonish and intellectually demeaning role of the "Republican Black guy" the GOP likes to hold up to demonstrate that they're really not the party that actively tries to strip away the voting rights of minorities, fights against a minimum wage hike and openly embraces the bigotry of an idiot like Ted Nugent.

Just give it time, Carson's political flame will extinguish itself and he'll quietly go the way of Allan Keyes, Herman Cain or Armstrong Williams.

Or maybe he'll just wake up one day and have a Michael Steele moment and realize the Grand Old Party was bamboozling him all along.

But for now, hang a sign on the door because the Dr. is definitely in the house.

 



 

Upset In The Bayou - Democrats Take Back the Louisiana Governor's Mansion

John Bel Edwards raises the victory umbrella last night in LA

It was a pretty festive Saturday night down in the French Quarter for Louisiana Democrats after Democratic state representative John Bel Edwards defeated Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter in a runoff race for governor.

With 56% of the vote, Edwards broke a seven year loosing streak for Democrats in a solidly Red State that hadn't elected a single Democrat to state office since 2008.

There's little doubt that last nights results will reverberate around the country and have national political implications for the 2016 elections too.

You can bet your Thanksgiving Day leftovers that the current crop of Republican presidential candidates were huddling with their respective brain trusts this morning to reevaluate their own campaign messages in light of last nights election results in Louisiana.

In many ways, the governors race in Louisiana served as a political temperature gauge for 2016; one that warmed the hearts of Democrats and left Republicans feeling a little chilly.

A decisive majority of voters in a deep south state that voted Republican in the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential elections have just soundly rejected the failed extremist, partisan hyper-conservative policies of two-term Republican Governor Bobby Jindal.
  

Fiscal policy twins? Chris Christie & Bobby Jindal

Like other Republican governors, (we see you Chris Christie) Jindal's ill-advised embrace of the disastrous conservative "Starve The Beast" economic theories has left the Louisiana budget $1.6 billion in the red for 2015.

Despite his fiscal mismanagement, he still lavished $1 billion a year in tax breaks for corporations and the state's wealthiest citizens that have left Louisiana State University, public schools and the state's health care system facing deep cuts.

To get a true sense of the litany of ways that Jindal has failed the people of Louisiana and made problems far worse during his tenure, check out Alice Ollstein's article that was posted on ThinkProgress.org back in June of this year.

When you understand what an unqualified disaster Jindal's administration has been for Louisiana, it's easy to understand why a significant number of Louisiana Republicans crossed party lines and voted for Edwards in the runoff election for governor.  

From the cultural perspective, it's of interest to note that when he first started out in politics, Jindal was well liked and highly-regarded by members of the Indian-American community across the nation; including both Republicans and Democrats.

As reported in a revealing NPR segment last Thursday, after accepting their generous political donations to help propel himself to the Governor's mansion in 2008, Jindal began to surf the wave of conservative resentment over the election of President Obama and morphed into a far right reactionary figure who had a polarizing effect on politics.

His controversial official governor's portrait (pictured below) symbolizes the peculiar dichotomy between how he sees himself, and who he actually is. And yes, that image on the left is his actual official portrait.
   

Wait. Who 'Dat?? Bobby Jindal's official Governor's portrait

Jindal, who changed his first name from Piyush to Bobby and converted to Christianity in high school, started taking his political cues from the Tea Party and tax policy advice from from the fringe anti-government tax-dodger Grover Norquist. 

He began to embrace the rigid social ideology of the racist zealot, conservative "thinker" and author Dinesh D'Souza and disappointed many in the Indian-American community during his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination by trying to score points with primary voters by demonizing immigrants and publicly rejecting the hyphenated term Indian-American.

He displayed a quasi-delusional hypocrisy by using the derogatory term "Anchor Babies" even though his own mother was three months pregnant with him when his parents immigrated to America from India 45 years ago.

But Bobby Jindal's record as governor is just one of the factors in Democrats taking back the Louisiana governor's mansion for the first time since 2008.

By all accounts Governor-elect John Bel Edwards stuck to running an issues-oriented campaign even as Republican candidates squabbled amongst themselves; reflecting broader philosophical divisions within the Republican party taking place in Washington.

David Vitter (w/ his wife) faces the media in 2007 scandal

The unfortunate scandal surrounding Senator David Vitter's highly publicized 2007 tryst with a prostitute certainly didn't help his cause either in a state haunted by the specter of a long history of sketchy political ethics.

In contrast, Edwards military background, conservative Catholic upbringing and deep family ties to law enforcement played well to Louisiana voters across the political spectrum.

Any way you cut it, Edwards has certainly got his work cut out for him with all the fiscal wreckage and budget short falls left behind by Bobby Jindal and a Republican-dominated state legislature.

But keep your eye on this guy folks.

From a political standpoint 2020 isn't that far off.

And as both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have shown, being a popular Democratic governor from a southern state who can appeal to conservative-leaning swing voters in traditional Red States can be a pathway to the White House.

Just sayin'.

Chase Austin Tapped as A.J Foyt's Driver for 2013 Indy 500

Between GOP Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's comments about rape  and my last blog about Dinesh D'Souza's crazy ass I gotta switch gears, so lets talk auto racing. You wouldn't know it from most of my posts here but I'm a true gear-head who's loved fast cars since I was old enough to know that they were loud and went fast.

So when I read an Associated Press article about a young African-American race car driver prodigy named Chase Austin, I had to blog about it. That's Chase pictured in the box and I'm a bit jealous because he looks like the age I was when I was still playing with my prized Hot Wheels collection.

As reported by AP sports writer Rusty Miller, Austin, 22, has been racing different types of cars including go-carts, sprint cars, stock cars and Indy Lights, since he was 8-years old. He inked a development driver deal with the prestigious Hendricks Motorsports when he was just 14.

Austin caught Foyt's attention after Chris Miles, a principal with Starting Grid, Inc., (an organization that promotes minorities in racing motor sports) helped promote Austin as an Indy Lights driver for Willy T. Ribbs Racing. Racing legend A.J Foyt (himself a 4-time Indy 500 winner) recently tapped Austin to drive his A.J. Foyt Enterprises racing teams Indy car entry next year. If he can qualify for the race in 2013, he's poised to become just the third black driver to compete in the prestigious Indianapolis 500.

Willy T. Ribbs raced at Indy in 1991 and 1993 (backed in part by comedian Bill Cosby), and George Mack raced in 2002.

For guys and not a few women, race car drivers occupy a special place atop the apex of popular culture. You don't need to know a lot about cars or auto racing to recognize names like Jackie Stewart, Michael Schumacher, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt or even one of my childhood favorites, the mysterious animated Racer-X from the classic Japanese cartoon Speed Racer; which I watched religiously as a child. Was there anything cooler than the Mammoth Car?

Growing up I watched races like the Indy 500 and Daytona 500 but rarely saw people of color involved with the sport. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton of England has emerged as one of the best drivers in the world in a sport where few people of color had any real presence until he came on the scene. But as Formula One broadens its reach past it's Euro-centric origins with drivers of many different nationalities and new Grand Prix races in places like Abu Dubai, China, Malaysia and Singapore, popular drivers like Hamilton have come to symbolize auto racing's efforts to diversify it's ranks.

There's little question the world of Indy racing recognizes it's own need to follow suit. Time will tell if Austin has the right stuff, but either way it's an exciting moment for auto racing and a special moment for American race fans. Kudos to A.J. Foyt for giving a young talented brother a chance too; that's big.

Somehow I doubt the mainstream media will fawn all over him the way they do Danica Patrick.

Heather Mac Donald's "Common Sense" - Sheriff Joe Arpaio Just Can't Stop Profiling Latinos

Conservative urban affairs expert Heather Mac Donald

Clearly not everyone is going to draw the same conclusions from statistics and data presented in a report and that's fair; after all this is America and the 1st Amendment applies to all.

In my previous blog comments on the disparities in how discipline is meted out to students in American schools, I referenced some alarming statistics from the Department of Education showing some gaping differences in which students were more likely to receive harsher punishments from teachers and administrators.

It seemed to me reflective of the same kinds of disparities seen in sentencing and incarceration in this country and might offer insight into perception issues that impact the "school-to-prison" pipeline problem where some US states spend more on prisoners than they do on students.  

Evidently conservative author, essayist and political commentator Heather Mac Donald (pictured above) looked at the same data from the DOE and came to a much different conclusion.

As reported by Media Matters on Monday, in a piece in the National Review Online, Mac Donald dismissed the DOE study, instead positing that a combination of single parent homes, broken family structure and non-specific genetic behavioral differences specifically inherent in black children were the more likely cause for the disparities in discipline.

Mac Donald's conclusion? "Given the black-white crime disparities it is equally common sense that black students are more likely to be disruptive in class as well."

Exactly who's "common sense" she is referring to probably isn't hard to figure out, and as Media Matters reported, her totally unsupported conclusions go against the findings of more balanced experts and research on the subject of discrimination impacting discipline standards in schools.

Such flagrantly opinionated conclusions are hallmarks of Mac Donald's numerous columns which have appeared in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, National Review, USA Today and of course the always-balanced NY Post. 

Mac Donald has carved out quite a career as a Buchanan-esque sociologist railing against victim-hood, entitlements, welfare, crime...you get the picture.

The kind of thinker today's right-wing conservatives salivate over, she wields her academia-cred as a product of Andover, Yale, Cambridge and Stanford to offer views on race, urban affairs and crime cut straight from the Dinesh D'Souza school of thought. She wrote a book in 2003 with the intriguing title, "Are Cops Racist?" She was born in 1956 so one assumes she did grow up in the same America of Bull Connor and former LAPD chief Gates; perhaps she was just permanently scarred by the race riots of the 60's.

Given her contempt for non-whites she chooses to reside in New York (she recently defended the NYPD's Stop & Frisk policy) which makes her even more of an enigma to me.
 
Perhaps she harbors political ambitions? This concerns me. She's obviously more intelligent than Sarah Palin, and more nuanced than Michelle Bachmann but is only slightly less-detached from mainstream American reality than Michelle Malkin so it's hard to know what she would be like as a candidate; or God forbid, Chancellor of New York City's schools.

Speaking of "Are Cops Racist?" did you hear about Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff Joe Arpaio?

He was hauled back into Federal court on Monday with a top deputy for ignoring a court order to stop intentionally using the resources and man-power of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to target, profile, harass and arrest Latinos and function as an anti-immigration vendetta force.

He just can't stop! Sheriff Joe is the 81-year-old six-term sheriff famous for housing prisoners in open-air tents under the baking Arizona sun and forcing them to wear pink prison garb.

According to Fernanda Santos of the NY Times, Arpaio and his chief deputy Jerry Sheridan not only refused judge G. Murray Snow's order to stop targeting Latinos at their places of work and pulling them over; the two men were caught on video openly mocking the Federal court order issued last year and were laid out (and sternly warned) in court today by the judge.

I've got nothing against Heather Mac Donald or Sheriff Joe, they just confuse me. Despite their respective experience they seem hopelessly locked into a narrow, one-dimensional view of America where I view diversity as a strong point of society and a linchpin that defines America.

I suppose some people just can't get past their own common sense.
  

"1,000 Years of Darkness"? Chuck Norris: Portrait of a Tea Party Extremist

In the ideological, political and cultural sense, the Republican party has certainly come a hell of a long way since George H.W Bush first talked about his "1,000 Points of Light" and his idea for a unified society during his inauguration speech on January 20, 1989.

I'm not going to criticize Chuck Norris for expressing his political beliefs; this is America and everyone has the right to their own opinions. When I caught wind that Norris, a well-known former action-film star, had posted a short anti-Obama video on youtube with his wife, I wasn't surprised.

Between Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan's uninspiring appearances at the lackluster GOP convention in Tampa and Bill Clinton's amazing speech during last night's Democratic National Convention - it's clear that the Republicans are desperate to do anything to try and prevent President Obama from winning a second term.

I respect Chuck Norris, before I decided to blog about him I checked out his Wikipedia page and he's given a lot to charitable causes, carved out a career as an action star and is arguably a Hollywood icon in his own way. But he's also an outspoken evangelist Christian activist who believes in creation theory and campaigns for prayer inside public schools; he campaigned for Mike Huckabee in the 2008 Presidential race and endorsed Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries.

This video is getting a lot of media buzz, but what's really sad is that in the end, Norris gets in front of the camera with his wife and doesn't say anything of substance. He doesn't spend one second talking about a specific issue that he's concerned about, or a policy that he disagrees with.

Instead, Norris clutches his wife's hand and essentially "Eastwoods" his way through the video, rambling earnestly about worn-out Tea Party rhetoric about the horrors of Obama's "socialism". He quotes Edmund Burke and Ronald Reagan, offering up baseless, irrational fear-mongering about the consequences of Obama being reelected leading America into "1,000 years of darkness."

About the only thing Norris manages to do in this laughable online video clip is to demonstrate a remarkable detachment from fact and reality. It's almost as if he's totally retreated into his own strange "John Wayne-like" netherworld where he no longer distinguishes between reality and fantasy; and has come to actually believe he IS the fictional action-hero he played so many times in movies and on television.

Norris' foray into political infomercials is so much more sad and pathetic than Clint Eastwood talking to a chair because he really looks like he means what he's saying. Like if Obama wins the election he and his wife (she's got those "crazy eyes" like Michelle Bachmann) are going to just pack up all their gear and move up into the hills and live "off the grid" in some kind of extravagant bomb shelter compound to ride out the Armaggedon of a presidential administration ruled by fact, reason and a sense that Americans don't have to be ruled by fear, ignorance, division and delusional ideas.

So no, I wasn't surprised by this video at all, in fact, how typical, when Americans need leadership and ideas, right-wing conservatives offer up fear and ignorance. Frankly Norris and his wife look like they're the ones locked into a "1,000 years of darkness." Did Dinesh D'Souza direct it?

Tea Partier Tim Scott Appointed to US Senate as Spielberg's 'Lincoln' Paints a Different Portrait of the Republican Party

Rep. (now Senator) Tim Scott (R-SC)

I finally got to go see the movie 'Lincoln' last night, what a vivid examination of a pivotal moment in American history; exceptional film making, great script and an amazing cast.

I think there are some fascinating and very relevant parallels between Steven Spielberg's brilliant portrayal of the intense philosophical/political debates surrounding the passage of the 13th Amendment banning slavery, the current identity crisis facing the Republican party and the growing cries for more assertive gun control legislation.

Enter newly-appointed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley's decision on Monday to appoint conservative Congressman and Tea Party poster boy Tim Scott to replace Senator Jim DeMint certainly represents a watershed moment for the GOP, but it's also historic for the nation as a whole.

The 47 year-old Scott, who rose from poverty in North Charleston, SC to become a prominent hard-line conservative member of the House of Representatives, is the first African-American Senator from a southern state to join the US Senate since Mississippi Republicans  Hiram Rhodes Revels (who served from 1870-1871) and former slave Blanche Bruce (who served from 1871-1885) as part of the wave of 23 black Congressmen elected during the Reconstruction Era beginning with John Willis Menard of Louisiana in 1868. 

While Haley rightfully and enthusiastically asserted Scott's qualifications for the Senate seat, in terms of political strategy the move is no surprise in the wake of the pasting the GOP took in the last Presidential election amongst African-American, Hispanic and Asian voters. With a stunning 90% of black Americans casting their votes for President Obama (and overwhelming Hispanic and Asian votes as well) this past election was as much a warning as a wake-up call for today's Republican party.

It's hard to ignore the ties between the historic significance of Scott's election to the Senate and the lofty dialog between politicians debating a post-slavery America in 1865 in  'Lincoln', which interestingly enough, is in nationwide release at the very moment the Republican party is reeling from it's unwavering support of the NRA in the wake of the shootings in Newton, the ongoing battle over raising taxes on the wealthy and the impending fiscal cliff in Washington.

Spielberg scores not just with a revealing portrait of Abraham Lincoln, but by carefully reminding his audience that the Republican party weren't always characterized by the ideologically rigid, culturally intolerant extremists who control today's GOP.

In this nation it was Republicans who were once the ones who fought tooth and nail for passage of an Amendment to the Constitution that would outlaw slavery and establish the difficult pathway towards citizenship and equal rights for the millions of African-Americans struggling to escape the horror of generations of indentured servitude in this nation.

In the same way Republicans in the late 1860's and early 1870's sent black Congressmen and Senators to Washington as duly elected representatives of the people in an effort to cement the gains won by hundreds of thousands of Americans during the Civil War, I get the sense today's GOP leaders looked at the results of the 2012 Presidential elections and quietly decided there's no future in being a political party that cannot appeal to and serve ALL Americans.

Maybe (just maybe), in the appointment of African-American Congressman Tim Scott to one of the two US Senate seats of South Carolina, (the very state where the first shots were fired by the Confederacy against Union forces entrenched in Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 to begin the Civil War), there are voices within the Republican leadership seeking to reconnect the GOP to it's roots as the Party of Lincoln as it was once known.

Is it possible the appointment of Scott signals the start of a different kind of battle for the soul of the Republican party? Maybe. There's no question that right now the GOP itself seems enslaved; to Grover Norquist, the NRA, to the rejection of science and reason; to an ideology that seems increasingly out of step with mainstream Americans.

No matter how conservative you are politically, it's got to be hard to reconcile the party that once led the fight to pass the 13th Amendment with the slew of intolerant polarizing extremists like Rush Limbaugh, Dinesh D'Souza, Pat Buchanan, Donald Trump or even some of the Senators who will serve with Tim Scott that define today's Republican Party.     

Maybe somewhere, the great American statesman and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens is allowing himself just an inkling of hope that what once was might someday come to pass again; and the nation will be the better for it.