Swastikas and Hammer and Sickle Go at it Again for May Day

Didn’t they fight this war once?

 

Seems the Tea Bagger types didn’t get much of a warm welcome

 

 

 

A Fair Trial?

Do you really believe that, if you are a Minority you could get a fair trial out of a Rethugly judge?

Sort of like this one…

Richard Cebull, Federal Judge Who Sent Racist Obama Email, Retires

U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, the federal judge in Montana who sent an email last year suggesting that President Barack Obama’s mother had sex with a dog, has retired following an investigation into his conduct.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit announced Tuesday that Cebull had submitted his retirement letter, effective May 3. A special committee had conducted a “thorough and extensive investigation” and submitted their report to the circuit’s Judicial Council, which issued a confidential order and memorandum on March 15, according to the court.

In the email forwarded by Cebull, a young Obama asks his mother why he’s black and she is white. “Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!” his mother replies. Cebull told recipients of his email that he hoped it “touches your heart like it did mine.”

Cebull, nominated by President George W. Bush, stepped down as chief U.S. district judge in October and took a reduced caseload. He apologized for sending the letter back in the spring.

This is pretty emblematic of what the Bushit filled the courts with.

Republicans (Sort of) Get a Clue

Funny! From the American Prospect Magazine no less…

Ringside Seat: The Angry Whites Liquidation Sale

Let it not be said that the GOP doesn’t know it has a problem. As Senator Lindsay Graham said last year, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” And in the November election, that became vividly clear. Mitt Romney lost Latino voters by 44 points, Asian-American voters by 47 points, and voters under 30 by 23 points. So in the months since, the Republicans have been racking their brains to come up with ways to appeal to voters who do not happen to be older white men.

So how’s it going? Well, this week, not so great. First you had Ben Carson, the Baltimore neurosurgeon who, as a black conservative, has become a hero to the right, getting a bit too frank about marriage in an appearance on Fox News. Heterosexual marriage, he said, is “a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality—it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.” When people became somewhat displeased with this rhetoric, Carson said, “I think people have completely taken the wrong meaning out of what I was saying.” Yeah.

Cut to Alaska congressman Don Young growing wistful about the old days: “My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes.” Like Carson, he apologized if anyone got offended.

And there’s the Republicans’ problem: It’s one thing for party leaders to say, however sincerely, that they want to reach out to minorities. But if people in your party keep popping off with statements like those, you aren’t going to get anywhere.

They missed

Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota  said he didn’t feel safe on Native American reservations because of a provision in the Violence Against Women Act that allows tribal courts to prosecute non-Native American individuals for sexual and domestic violence crimes committed on tribal land. The congressman also berated tribal leaders for being “dysfunctional” and said he wanted to “ring the Tribal council’s neck and slam them against the wall.”

Michigan Republican Dave Agema says he is refusing to resign after promoting an article that said “part of the homosexual agenda is to get the public to affirm their filthy lifestyle.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Monday vowed to continue to use the slur “illegal” to refer to undocumented immigrants. At a town hall meeting in Phoenix, a 25-year-old dreamer asked the former Republican presidential nominee to “please drop the i-word,” according to The Arizona Republican.“Someone who crosses our borders illegally is here illegally,” McCain replied. “You can call it whatever you want to, but it’s illegal. I think there’s a big difference between someone who does something that’s illegal and someone who’s undocumented.”  “I’ll continue to call it illegal,” he insisted.

Rick Perry, miffed at Madonna’s comments about the Boy Scouts …Said Perry, in On My Honor:

…”Even if an alcoholic is powerless over alcohol once it enters his body, he still makes a choice to drink…And, even if someone is attracted to a person of the same sex, he or she still makes a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same gender.”

And we don’t even talk about the Kumbaya at CPAC.

On the good side –  Michael Steele Calls Reince Priebus ‘Numbnuts’ (AUDIO)

Uncle Ben?

The newest conservative Great Black Dope isn’t quite turning out to be the perfect Uncle Tom figure of a Herman Cain or Allen West…

Of course, it’s been a tough year for black conservative lawn ornaments. Herman Cain imploding as a sexual predator, Allen West exposed as a serial abuser. And the black MILF candidate,Jennifer Carroll of Florida, didn’t quite follow in the footsteps of the Sno’ Ho’…first being accused of being a closet queen, and now under investigation for financial scamming resulting in her resigning her job at Lt. Governor.

And along comes Dr Ben Carlson… The latest in a long line of Toms… Or is he?

The Faux News commentator, Megan Kelly here tries her best to get Ben to buckdance. Carlson largely doesn’t rise to the bait. She looks at one point that if he will don the black conservative victim meme, she’d strip off her clothes, open her legs and have her way with him. About the best she gets out of him for hr breathless prodding is a single “plantation” meme, which completely discredits his argument about dropping name calling and sitting down to talk like adults. For anyone unfamiliar the “plantation” analogy is racist conservative speak for the N word.

Carlson at one point discusses poverty, at which point Megan near  orgasmically immediately zooms in to the inner city, black population, ignoring the fact or rural and suburban poverty which fits in every other social dysfunction … but isn’t primarily black. After all, Carlson is black – so he must be speaking about those dread Negroes in the ghetto!

That’s not what he said.

Let’s hope for Megan’s sake she got a chance to change clothes, and the set crew swapped in a dry chair before the next segment.

Why You Here if You Didn’t Come to Buckdance?

Conservatives, CPAC, and that racism thing again…

Interesting the mind convolutions where people will go to to deny the truth, and make the opposite fit their racist views. Frederick Douglass as a “conservative”?

These people are a joke. An evil joke – and typical of this segment of conservatism.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King Jr.
US black civil rights leader & clergyman (1929 – 1968)

D’Souza Exposed By Christian Magazine

It would seem that it’s not only “evil” liberals seeing through conservative pundit and trash writer Dinesh D’Souza’s act. It appears Dinesh is dumping his wife of 20 years for a Trophy Girlfriend half her age…

Dinesh D’Souza Fiancée Scandal Rocks The King’s College

Conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, riding a wave of attention for his successful anti-Obama documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, suddenly finds himself swamped by a different sort of attention, this time over his alleged relationship with a 29-year-old woman with whom he shared a hotel room and described as his “fiancée” despite still being married to his wife of 20 years.

The evangelical magazine World reported Tuesdaythat D’Souza, who is also the president of The King’s College in Manhattan, shared a hotel room with Denise Odie Joseph at a conference in South Carolina in September and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée. A conference organizer confirmed to World that D’Souza and Joseph had both checked in to the hotel and left together, and D’Souza confirmed to the magazine that he and Joseph were engaged. But California court records show that he only filed for divorce from his wife on Oct. 4, which means he will be married for at least another six months. D’Souza later sent a text message to World’s reporter saying that he had decided to “suspend” the engagement.

Joseph graduated from high school in 2002, according to her Facebook page, and attended Georgetown University’s law school. Her website, I Denise Lust After, appeared to be taken offline, but a blog she authors on the site Smart Girl Politics remains active.

D’Souza moved from California to New York in 2010 to become the president of The King’s College, a small evangelical school with headquarters in Manhattan’s financial district, leaving his wife behind in California. According to former staffers who worked closely with D’Souza, his wife didn’t want to move, and the distance put a strain on their marriage. In early 2012, Joseph began showing up at the college, which was then headquartered in the Empire State Building, where students and staff eventually noticed her inexplicable presence. A former student said people would ask about Joseph, whom he described as “pushy,” but would be met with “weird smiles” and evasive answers. That student said one of his friends, a staffer who worked closely with D’Souza, was tasked with creating an official response to the speculation, which was that she was “a good friend of Dinesh.” The student said staffers he knew believed Joseph made her presence known at the college because she wanted to be more than D’Souza’s “road tail.”

Melissa Harris-Perry Calls Out Clarence Thomas

This is a good one. One of the reasons it is critical that Obama win this next election is the opportunity to replace at least 2 justices on the Supreme Court and clean up the cesspool the Rethugs made of that institution.

 

Bill Maher eviscerates Dinesh D’Souza

Damn! – With room to park a brand new bus sized RV in his shiny new azzh…

 

The New Jim Crow – White Right Superpac Plays RaceCard

These are the same yo-yo’s who under the Bushshit…

Spent 8 years after invading the Department of Justice Civil rights Division, trying to find cases of “reverse discrimination, ignoring the over 12,000 complaints of real discrimination by black folks, Hispanics, and other groups – to find exactly one (1) case of provable discrimination by a minority against white folks in 8 years…

Fought tooth and nail to pass  Voter ID Laws in states like Pennsylvania disenfranchising largely black and poor minority voters – despite there only have ever been 2 cases of individual Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania in the past 30 years…

And, are convinced that the presence of two unarmed black men wearing berets on the street by a polling place in Pennsylvania traumatized millions of white voters nationwide into voting for and electing a black man for President.

Racism will indeed …

Make you stupid - and stupidity will make you a conservative.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King Jr.

“Stand Your Ground?” – Not So Fast!

This one should be interesting. The US Civil Rights Commission became a joke under the Bushit Administration when the Bushit stacked it with the usual conservaracist ideologues, provided racial cover by the Usual Uncle Tom black conservative.  Unless the Comissioners have changed, then about the only thing that will come out of this is a recommendation to put a statue of George Zimmerman in front of MLK’s statue on the mall as a “National Hero”.

The New Jim Crow legalizes the murder by gun of black folks, unlike the Old Jim Crow, which just didn’t prosecute it.

The George W. Bush, US Comission on Civil Rights

US Commission on Civil Rights to Investigate “Stand Your Ground” Laws for Racial Bias

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced it will launch an inquiry into so-called “Stand Your Ground” legislation for racial bias. The laws, which gained notoriety after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, eliminated the duty to retreat from a confrontation that has existed as part of the common law for hundreds of years.

According to the Commission, there are “some indicators of racial bias” in how the laws have been implemented. From the release:

Data compiled by the Wall Street Journal shows a near-doubling of justifiable homicides from 2005-2011 in states where SYG [Stand Your Ground] has passed. Moreover, their data shows that while white killers of black victims comprises only 3.1% of all homicides, such cross-racial killing constitute 15.6% of justifiable homicides.

A separate study by the FBI found “34% of cases involving a white shooter killing a black person were deemed as a justifiable homicide. Meanwhile, in similar situations, when the shooter was black and the victim was white, the homicide was ruled justifiable only 3.3% of the time.”

The committee plans to hold hearings and release the findings of their study within one year.

In the last 7 years, 23 states have adopted “Stand Your Ground” legislation at the urging of the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council.

Florida Governor Rick Scott has also convened a committee to study Stand Your Ground but has stacked the group with supporters of the law.

Southern Baptists Punish Racist Hayta

Well…At least someone in these here United States has the courage to stand up to the anti-Christian haytas and bigots!

The Southern Baptist Church, the largest evangelical denomination in the country – decided that it had heard enough racist moron talk – and lowered the proverbial boom…

From the Southern Baptist Covenant -

We further engage to watch over one another with brotherly love, to remember each other in prayer, to aid each other in sickness and distress, to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech, to be slow to take offense, but always ready for reconciliation, and mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure it without delay.

Southern Baptists reprimand top official over Trayvon Martin remarks

The country’s largest evangelical Christian denomination on Friday announced it is reprimanding one of its top officials over comments he made regarding the Trayvon Martin case, pledging to cancel the official’s national radio show.

The trustee committee of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission announced two reprimands on Friday for Richard Land, who leads public policy efforts for the Southern Baptists, according to the official press arm.

The first reprimand was for remarks Land – one of the country’s most powerful evangelical leaders – made about the Martin case. The second was because Land lifted some remarks from another source on his radio show without using attribution.

The commission will move to terminate Land’s radio program, “Richard Land Live!” because of the controversy, the Baptist Press reported.

In March, Land spoke of African-American activists and the Rev. Al Sharpton as “racial ambulance chasers” in the Martin case, in which the 17-year-old was shot to death in Florida by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

“When there is violence it’s going to be Jesse Jackson’s fault,” Land said on his show, according to the Religion News Service. “It’s going to be Al Sharpton’s fault. It’s going to be Louis Farrakhan’s fault, and to a certain degree it’s going to be President Obama’s fault.”

On Friday, the trustee executive committee said in a statement that Land’s comments were “very hurtful and offensive to the Trayvon Martin family and too many in the African-American community, including hundreds of thousands of African-American Southern Baptists.”

“Damage was done to the state of race relations in the Southern Baptist Convention,” the statement said.

The Religion News Service reported that many of Land’s remarks about the Martin case were lifted from a March column in the Washington Times.

“As a Christian, a minister of the Gospel of our Lord, and as President of the ERLC, Dr. Land should have conformed to a higher standard,” the statement from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said.

The statement went on to say that “plagiarism occurred because of Land’s carelessness and poor judgment.”

In announcing the planned termination of Land’s radio program, the committee said “the content and purpose” of the program are “not congruent with the mission of the ERLC.”

In a statement to the Baptist Press, Land – who earlier apologized for his comments – said he believes in “trustee oversight and governance” and that “this whole process was conducted in a Christian manner by Christian gentlemen.”

 Too bad Mr Land isn’t one of those Christian gentlemen.

The New Jim Crow – The Conservative “Race War”

The present blooming fantasy of white victimization has roots in the peculiar violent institutions of the 19th-century American South. In the distant mirror of history, it’s easy to spot the irony and the guilt: even before the Civil War began, whites worried that their slaves would rise up and repay their masters in kind — filch the fruit of their labor, rape them, and beat them, sometimes to death. As soon as the balance of power shifted and news of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse circulated throughout the former slave states, those fears ran amok. 

A common recruiting method of white supremacist groups is to play on their potential member’s percieved “victimization” by minorities. Ergo – that they are failures in life because black/brown/yellow/green folks were “given” jobs or opportunity over them because of race. As I have said before the conservative side of the American political spectrum has absorbed a lot of ideas from the racist right, and mainstreamed them into conservative mantra and consciousness.

The narrative is pretty much laid out in the video below -

One of the most flagrant results of this was the perversion of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division under the Bushit Administration as a vehicle to track down and prosecute incidences of “reverse discrimination. That is, discrimination against whites by minorities. The problem being that after 8 years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money…

Only one verifiable case was ever found by said lawyers. This despite over 13,000 cases of classical discrimination being filed a year by minorities.

Reality and logic play no part in this from a group of folks who believe the presence of two, self styled “Black Panthers” at a Pennsylvania polling place during the 2008 Presidential Election was enough to sway voters across the country to vote for a black man – and that such constituted a “massive” level of voting fraud…

Despite consistent and massive efforts by Republicans in 2000 and 2004 for limit minority voting though denying the availability of voting machines, and “erasing” large number of minority voters from the rolls in Florida based on “faulty” data.

The right wing’s “racial services machine” though the “7 Sisters”, a group of right wing foundations which pour hundreds of millions of dollars a year into conservative think tanks and causes – supports this sort of racial narrative to the tune of an estimated $100 million a year. These groups have funded the publication of books by folks such as Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray “The Bell Curve”, Sowell’s contributions to  Townhall, WorldNetDaily,OneNewsNow and the Jewish World Review,  Dinesh D’Souza whose book “The End of Racism“ oddly enough inadvertently makes the case for racism’s continued existence, and Jared Taylor’s “The Color of Crime” using faulty logic and fake statistics to make the case for black on white crime. Fox News advances these narratives though such commentators as Sean Hannity, and as of late Bill O’Reilly.

Black conservatives are well funded to support the narrative that whites are under attack by “Speakers Bureaus” such as Project 21, and trusty, safe black conservatives like Sowell, whose recent article fully supported the existence of a “war” by black folks against white folks based on anecdotal evidence…

The problem being, just like the “New Black Panther Party” (having nothing to do with the original Black Panthers and consisting of perhaps 50 members nationwide) controversy, and the “Reverse Discrimination Controversy” – there is no statistical evidence to support that in any way that whites are being targeted by roving gangs of black or brown folks attacking white folks in any numbers beyond random.

Conversely – spending $100 million a year in investing in racist narratives…

Totally deconstructs the idea that racism is no longer a factor in American life.

The “white victimization” industry promoted by right wing media, and their well paid quasi scientific cohorts has very real consequences.

These cases are similar to the hue and cry raised over the “Central Park Jogger” case in the 90′s – where gangs of black youth, supposedly “wilding” were convicted of the brutal beating and rape of a woman jogging in Central Park. The tragedy of the victim was compounded by the fact that the courts convicted 5 innocent kids of the crime, adding additional victims to the carnage - who had been convicted largely due to the media hype, and assumption of guilt by the media and police who beat “confessions” out of the youths…

And of course, most recently the Trayvon Martin murder.

In Conservative Media, A “Race War” Rages

It was near midnight on April 14 when the Chevy Cavalier carrying Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami rolled to a stop at a red light in Norfolk, Va. As the pair waited, one of a crowd of teenagers on the sidewalk threw a rock at the passenger seat window, prompting Forster to get out of the car and confront the aggressor.

That’s when the beating began.

Conservative Fired for Article Criticizing Black Scholars

The (not so) strange case of the conservative who let her racism get the better of common sense.

It’s perfectly OK to tell someone in Academia they are full of isht, or their work is substandard…

The problem being that then you have to back up your assertion with fact.

Maybe the reason so few people of high academic achievement are conservatives is the bar that you have to prove what you say – unlike gibbering on talk radio.

Why this woman chose to attack 3 PhD candidates solely on the title of their Dissertations pretty much establishes the fact that conservatives are too stupid to be trusted with Higher Education. This conservatwerp hadn’t even read the Dissertations she was criticizing!

Naomi Schaefer Riley, Chronicle Of Higher Education Blogger, Fired For Calling Black Studies ‘Claptrap’

The Chronicle of Higher Education dismissed one of its bloggers after outcry over a blog post she wrote questioning the legitimacy of black studies as an academic discipline.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, a lecturer and author who wrote for the Chronicle’s blog, Brainstorm, was let go after readers pushed back on an essay she published last week titled “The Most Persuasive Case For Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations.” Riley’s essay responded to a sidebar of a story in the Chronicle which profiled several up-and-coming black studies scholars in the process of writing dissertations. Riley looked at the titles of the dissertations — on subjects like the role of race in housing policy and the history of black midwifery in the United States — and called them “left-wing victimization claptrap.”

Nearly 6,500 people signed a petition calling for her dismissal from the blog. Yesterday, Liz McMillen, the site’s editor, wrote a note apologizing for Riley’s post, and said that the publication had decided to part ways with the author, who is also an affiliate scholar of the Institute of American Values, a conservative think tank based in New York.

President Obama – About that Dogcatcher Thing…

Uhhhh…Pres…

The primary results in West Virginia yesterday were not good. A convicted felon serving time in jail got 41% of the vote!

While it isn’t time yet to circle the wagons…

I do think it is (long) past time to start hanging some foot up Republican derriere.

You need to do 3 things to get the Moderate and Progressive Dems to turn out and vote:

1. Get the rhetorical Louisville Slugger out of the closet and apply it liberally to Republicans every time you speak from now until the election.
2. Turn Harry Reid loose to exercise the “Nuclear Option” on baseless filibustering by the Reprobates. Get those Judges appointed immediately.
3. Make it very clear to the electorate that simply electing you to office isn’t enough. They need to get behind their local Democrat politicians to throw the scumbags out – else watch their states suffer as Wisconsin has.

No matter how intransigent and crooked the Republicans are – YOU are the man in charge, and one seen as having the responsibility ultimately to make the system work. The General gets the blame for losing the war – not the moron soldiers who loaded cases of liquor instead of artillery shells in their trucks.

Harry Truman faced the same issue – as did FDR.

There are some folks in this world you just can’t reason with other than at the receiving end of a baseball bat.

Ouch! Obama loses 41 percent of W.Va. primary vote to federal inmate.

Inmate Keith Judd

In an embarrassment to President Obama, Federal Inmate No. 11593-051 – otherwise known as Keith Judd – won 10 counties and 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.

Mr. Judd is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, where he is serving a 210-month sentence for extortion, according to TheCharleston Gazette. Judd had paid the $2,500 filing fee and submitted a notarized “certificate of announcement” to appear on the ballot.

He is even qualified to have a delegate at theDemocratic National Convention, because he won at least 15 percent of vote. However, no one has stepped forward to fill that role.

But those are just details. The Republicans are having a field day with this slap at the president. Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular in West Virginia and was already certain to lose the small mountainous state in November. But the fact that enough people bothered to turn out in an uncontested primary to register a protest against the incumbent is telling.

“Just how unpopular does someone have to be for this to happen?” says Joe Pounder, research director and deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee, in a statement.

He notes that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia wouldn’t say whom he voted for in the primary. “Apparently, it’s a smarter political calculation to let people believe you may have voted for the guy in federal prison over the sitting president of your own party. Just saying,” Mr. Pounder writes.

West Virginia’s Democratic governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, has also not revealed his vote. Energy is a big issue in his state – America’s second-biggest producer of coal – and the Environmental Protection Agency’s handling of mining-related permits has angered the local industry, writes theAssociated Press.

In addition to being a convicted felon, Judd is also a serial presidential candidate. In the 2008Idaho Democratic primary, he finished third behind Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton with 1.7 percent of the vote, per The Charleston Gazette.

The Death of America – Conservatism

This one from Author E.L. Doctorow. An apt description of what conservatives and conservative have done to America…

It wasn't a foreign enemy that destroyed America..

Unexceptionalism: A Primer

TO achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following:

PHASE ONE

If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election. Appoint the candidate of your choice as president.

If you’re the newly anointed president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a nonterrorist country. Despite the loss or disablement of untold numbers of lives, manage your war so that its results will be indeterminate.

Using the state of war as justification, order secret surveillance of American citizens, data mine their phone calls and e-mail, make business, medical and public library records available to government agencies, perform illegal warrantless searches of homes and offices.

Take to torturing terrorism suspects, here or abroad, in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. Unilaterally abrogate the Convention Against Torture as well as the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. Commit to indeterminate detention without trial those you decide are enemies. For good measure, trust that legislative supporters will eventually apply this policy as well to American citizens.

Suspend progressive taxation so that the wealthiest pay less proportionately than the middle class. See to it that the wealth of the country accumulates to a small fraction of the population so that the gap between rich and poor widens exponentially.

By cutting taxes and raising wartime expenditures, deplete the national treasury so that Congress and state and municipal legislatures cut back on domestic services, ensuring that there will be less money for the education of the young, for government health programs, for the care of veterans, for the maintenance of roads and bridges, for free public libraries, and so forth.

Deregulate the banking industry so as to create a severe recession in which enormous numbers of people lose their homes and jobs.

Before you leave office add to the Supreme Court justices like the ones who awarded you the presidency.

PHASE TWO

If you’re one of the conservative majority of a refurbished Supreme Court, rule that corporations, no less than human beings, have the right under the First Amendment to express their political point of view. To come to this judgment, do not acknowledge that corporations lack the range of feelings or values that define what it is to be human. That humans can act against their own interest, whereas corporations cannot act otherwise than in their own interest. That the corporation’s only purpose is to produce wealth, regardless of social consequences.

This decision of the court will ensure tremendous infusions of corporate money into the political process and lead to the election in national and state legislatures of majorities of de facto corporate lobbyists.

PHASE THREE

Given corporate control of legislative bodies, enact laws to the benefit of corporate interests. For example, those laws sponsored by weapons manufacturers wherein people may carry concealed weapons and shoot and kill anyone by whom they feel threatened.

Give the running of state prisons over to private corporations whose profits increase with the increase in inmate populations. See to it that a majority of prisoners are African-American.

When possible, treat immigrants as criminals.

Deplete and underfinance a viable system of free public schools and give the education of children over to private for-profit corporations.

Make college education unaffordable.

Inject religious precepts into public policy so as to control women’s bodies.

Enact laws prohibiting collective bargaining. Portray trade unions as un-American.

Enact laws restricting the voting rights of possibly unruly constituencies.

Propagandize against scientific facts that would affect corporate profits. Portray global warming as a conspiracy of scientists.

Having subverted the Constitution and enervated the nation with these measures,  portray the federal government as unwieldy, bumbling and shot through with elitist liberals.  Create mental states of maladaptive populism among the citizenry to support this view.

PHASE FOUR

If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, decide that the police of any and all cities and towns and villages have the absolute authority to strip-search any person whom they, for whatever reason, put under arrest.

With this ruling, the reduction of America to unexceptionalism is complete.