The 2012 election may have come and gone – but Republicans across the country are already laying out their plans to rig the 2016 Presidential election. What needs to happen in this country so that everyone’s right to vote is protected from the Right’s never-ending war on voting.
The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV “live” 9pm and 11pm check http://www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings.
Hilary Shelton, NAACP Washington Bureau, joins Thom Hartmann. Now thanks to the nationwide efforts by Conservatives to keep Democratic voters away from the polls and rig the election for Mitt Romney – foreign election observers will be on hand to make sure that the voting rights of minorities in America are protected come election day.
More than 44 observers with the UN-affiliated Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will be deployed at polling stations around the nation to monitor the election and potential disputes at polling stations.
These observers were asked for by civil rights groups in the United States who’ve raised concerns over systematic efforts to restrict the votes of minorities ahead of the election – including Voter Suppression ID laws.
As we already know, Pat Buchanan has been out there pushing a new book of his Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? Buchanan showed up on Hannity’s show earlier this week where he was treated to the softball interview I posted about here – Pat Buchanan: America is Disintegrating Because White America is an Endangered Species.
Needless to say, he didn’t get quite the same treatment when he appeared as a guest on Thom Hartmann’s radio show this Thursday. The relevant portion of the interview starts at just over three and a half minutes into the video above and the portion quoted below is about eight and a half minutes in.
Yesterday, radio host Thom Hartmann challenged guest Pat Buchanan over his recent writingabout minorities and test scores. Hartmann said that “a lot of people are taking what you’re saying as code for inferior genes” and twice pressed Buchanan to disavow that theory. Buchanan did not, instead claiming that he doesn’t “know anything” about the topic.
From The Thom Hartmann Program:
HARTMANN: A lot of people are taking what you’re saying as code for inferior genes. Please tell me that’s not what you’re talking about.
BUCHANAN: Well look, I’m not — don’t know anything about what genetics or something like that. What I’m saying is, is these are the test scores and we haven’t been able to –
HARTMANN: So do you disavow that?
BUCHANAN: Pardon?
HARTMANN: Do you disavow that idea, that concept –
BUCHANAN: Well, I don’t know anything about being — look. The Coleman Report –
HARTMANN: I mean, you’re being quoted over on –
BUCHANAN: The Coleman Report, and I think I’ve got in my book, the Coleman Report said what a child brings to school is far more important than what he finds in schools, in other words, heredity and home environment, nature and nurture. Do I know the differences, or what percentages, or this and that, of course not. I’m not going to get into that. I’m saying is here’s the test scores now, and this is the problem, and in our future, quite frankly, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans, because of test scores, because of the dropout rate is fifty percent, they’re going to be in the service economy and the rest of us are going to be up there in the knowledge industry and that doesn’t make for a united America.
Much, much more that in the Media Matters post with details following this statement up so go read the entire post, but as they noted, Buchanan is actually fully aware of what Hartmann was asking him about, so his denial that he doesn’t “know anything about what genetics or something like that” is just flatly false.
While Buchanan didn’t disavow the idea, he’s written about the matter throughout his career and was forced to clarify a controversial memo regarding the subject he wrote to President Nixon.
The Boston Globereported in a January 1992 article that as a White House aide, Buchanan “suggested in a memo to President Nixon that efforts to integrate the U.S. might only result in ‘perpetual friction’ because blacks and the poor may be genetically inferior to middle-class whites.”
At the time of the report, Buchanan was running for president and under criticism for his history of controversial racial statements. The Globe reported that “Buchanan said yesterday he does not believe blacks are genetically inferior to whites and did not have that belief in the past. Buchanan said he sent the memo to Nixon as a routine matter of intellectual curiosity.”
They wrapped the post up by noting Buchanan’s praise for some of the writings of white supremacist Sam Francis on the same topic he denied knowing anything about to Hartmann here:
Near the conclusion of his section on race and education, on page 224, Buchanan quotes the writing of white supremacist Sam Francis, in which Francis writes that “the doctrine of equality is unimportant, because no one save perhaps Pol Pot and Ben Wattenberg really believes in it, and no one, least of all those who profess it most loudly, is seriously motivated by it…. The real meaning of the doctrine of equality is that it serves as a political weapon.”
Buchanan eulogized Francis in a May 2005 column, writing, “When God created him, He endowed Sam with a great gift – one of the finest minds of his generation. Sam did not waste it.” In Buchanan’s book State Of Emergency, as noted by Think Progress’ Judd Legum, Buchanan lamented that Francis was fired after he suggested that only whites have the appropriate “genetic endowments” to keep America from collapsing.
Russia Today host Thom Hartmann once again slammed the growth of big business power in America, asking the nation’s citizens to “abolish the institution of corporate personhood.
On his show Monday morning, the liberal host also added how the number of lobbyists has more than doubled from the last Congress, under Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leadership, to the current one led by John Boehner and the Republicans.
I’ve noticed that some in this country, usually the far right fringe element, would like to do away with certain amendments in the Constitution. Of course the second amendment should be enshrined like The Shroud of Turin to most of them. However, the rest of the amendments are fallible and should be taken away as “nuisance” amendments. Rest assured the 1st, 13th and 14th amendment would be among them, IF they had their way.
It’s subscription only but you can read more about Kaufman and his work at his blog AmericanStomach.com.
Thom shared a little of the article during his interview with Kaufman.
Hartmann: “The history of food took an ominous turn in 1991, at a time when no one was paying much attention. That was the year Goldman Sachs decided our daily bread might make an excellent investment.”
And then towards the end of the story, just a couple of sentences here. “Bankers had taken control of the world’s food, money chased money and a billion people went hungry.” Remember the food riots of a couple of years ago around the world?
“The world wide price of food had risen by 80% between 2005 and 2008 and unlike other food catastrophes in the last half century or so, the United States was not insulated from this one.” Could it be because it was our banksters that were doing it?
“As 49 million Americans found themselves unable to put a full meal on the table, one in five kids came to be dependent on food kitchens. In Los Angeles nearly a million people went hungry. In Detroit, armed guards had to watch over grocery stores.” And then the question, “Could this happen again?”
Really great interview. Too bad our “mainstream media” isn’t touching this one. As they noted during the interview, it looks like there’s nothing that these bankers won’t exploit to make a buck. Really disgusting. And all we’ve got going on in the United States is some half-baked sorry excuse for “reform”.
