Berry Craig: But it’s getting harder for me to defend Obama when my union brothers and sisters — who also voted and worked for him — say he’s all but surrendered to the GOP. I’m disappointed in the president. They’re downright mad.
Kentucky Governor Green Lights Noah’s Ark Park
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Berry Craig: The Creation Museum has been rightly ridiculed by scientists and others – including many Kentucky Christians — who don’t think evolution is “evil-lution.”
Rand Paul and Rebel Flag Republicans
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Berry Craig: Paul, who beat moderate Democrat Jack Conway, ran unabashedly as a tea party Republican. In Kentucky and elsewhere, a lot of latter day Johnny Rebs seem to be tea party Republicans.
Only in America
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Berry Craig: Like Reagan, Tea Party candidates are delivering what Tea Partiers want: simple answers to complex issues. Never mind that there never have been simple answers to complex issues.
Kentucky’s Drive By Candidate
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Berry Craig: So, the stark choice for Kentucky voters is this: a moderate Democrat who understands Kentucky’s problems and needs and has a plan for creating jobs versus an ideologue Republican/Tea Partier with no record, no understanding of the state and a chain saw for a plan
Three G Republicans
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Berry Craig: Talk about a close encounter of the worst kind: Imagine a Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a House Speaker John Boehner.
It’s Nonsensical
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Berry Craig: Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much.
“Run, Rand, Run!”
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Berry Craig: Kentucky’s Tea Party-tilting Republican U.S. Senate candidate recently stopped in Louisville and Pineville for “meet and greet” sessions with voters. In Louisville, he pulled a speak and scram. In Pineville, Paul just skedaddled.
Rand Paul Heads for the Hills
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Berry Craig: Of course, not all Republicans are bigots. But Paul and his pals are more proof — as if proof were needed — that the GOP is mainly what the Southern Democrats were in slavery and Jim Crow days: the white folks’ party.
The GOP “Is Alarmingly Unified”
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Berry Craig: Tea Bagger candidates like O’Donnell and Rand Paul in my native Kentucky loathe unions and “big government” as much as the GOP gentry does. Mr. and Mrs. Gotrocks know they can count on Tea Bagger Republicans to keep-government off the backs of the wealthy folks.
Let the “Patriots” Rave
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Berry Craig: So, my leftist fellow traveler, the next time you get one of those Obama-is-a-Kenyan-born-Islamo-Socialist emails, hit the delete button on your computer. Go outside and enjoy these lazy, late summer days that are fast waning. Let the “patriots” rave.
“It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again” in Mayfield
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Berry Craig: This lifelong Mayfield resident hopes the Somalis submit another petition and get a mosque. There are two shopping centers in town with several empty store buildings.
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us
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Berry Craig: Bottom line: It’s plain loco for liberals to punish Democrats for being insufficiently liberal by staying home on election day and letting the Obama’s-a-Kenyan-Islamo-Socialist crowd win.
Republicans Used to Like the Whole Constitution
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Berry Craig: In today’s uber-conservative Republican party, President Eisenhower would be a socialist, too, even a Red, and Nixon would be a liberal.
The New Know-Nothings
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Berry Craig: Of course, the Republicans – and even the Tea Baggers – would have us belief that their beef is with “illegal” immigrants. But they’re not fooling anybody. Most of these neo-Know Nothings are white people who have a problem with Latinos north of the border, period.
It’s the Country, Not the System, That’s Stacked Against Liberals and Progressives
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Berry Craig: The poll numbers hint at the biggest GOP edge: the U.S. is the most conservative country in the Western democratic world. “Liberal” — which means centrist or center-left in other industrial democracies — is as far left as mainstream American politics flows. The U.S. is the only industrial democracy that doesn’t have a significant democratic socialist or social democratic party.
“This Is Really About Tearing Obama Down”
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Berry Craig: A few of the purveyors of this bigoted nonsense might actually believe it. Most of them, however, are merely seeking political gain by inviting white voters to question the motives and good faith of the nation’s first African-American president. This is really about tearing Barack Obama down.
Pistol-Packing Politicians and the Prince of Peace
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Berry Craig: Now one office seeker from the Wild West is appearing in a TV commercial, shooting guns and invoking the Almighty. She’s Machine Gun Gorman, an uber-conservative candidate for Congress in the Arizona Republican primary.
Profiles in Cowardice
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Berry Craig: naysayers can hide at their computer keyboards and snipe away like Wild West back-shooters. The cyber-bushwhackers are safe in the knowledge that nobody knows who they are. My guess is a lot of them wouldn’t write what they write if they had to sign it.
It’s Plain Whose Country the Government-Haters “Want Back”
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Berry Craig: It makes most Republicans and Tea Baggers hopping mad when somebody suggests that outright racism, or pandering to racism, underlies most of their anti-government rhetoric. But there is no denying the GOP is what the Democrats used to be — mostly the white folks’ party.
“Why Is the Media So Anti-Union?”
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Berry Craig: Generally, the smaller a paper or TV or radio station is, the greater its bias against unions. Their anti-unionism is sometimes as plain as their front doors, which are often plastered with decals or stickers proudly proclaiming chamber membership. The fact that the chamber is openly pro-business and anti-union apparently doesn’t trouble local media owners about conflicts of interest.
‘Well, That Freedom Ain’t for Me’
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Berry Craig: The show featured a slave mother’s explanation of the Declaration of Independence to her young son. “…Freedom isn’t something that these men plan on giving us,” she said. “…All of this talk is about them getting their freedom, or more freedom because they’re already free….I told him, ‘Son, these are the same men that will beat Negroes nearly half to death…They call us, who God has created, their property…No, son, these men will not free you. And my son looked at me and said ‘Well, that freedom ain’t for me.’
Return of the Doughfaces
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Berry Craig: The Republicans of the 1850s were democratic revolutionaries. The Tea Baggers are reactionary counterrevolutionaries. Their movement – not coincidentally almost all white — represents some of the worst traits in the body politic, notably racism, sexism, nativism, militarism, jingoism, homophobia, religious bigotry and greed.
Keep Grant on the 50
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Berry Craig: When Reagan said he was a “states’ rights” guy, “he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon” and “tapping out the code,” Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times in 2007. “It was understood that when politicians started chirping about ‘states’ rights’ to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you. And Reagan meant it.”
Chock Full of Nuts
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Berry Craig: The video shows Tea Baggers answering questions about why they are protesting. Almost all of their replies are the usual right-wing rants against President Obama’s “tyranny,” “socialist agenda” and “onerous taxes.”
Party of “Lincoln and Liberty” More Like Party of “Davis and Disunion”
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Berry Craig: My guess is the Tea Bagger-tilting, neo-Confederate GOP is disturbing the eternal rest of some other Republicans. I remember Republicans whose politics were considerably to the left of Dixie Democrats. Some were even liberals to one extent or another.
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A “Good Sign” For My Old Kentucky Home
Berry Craig: A Somali man’s request for a permit to establish a place of worship in a small town in Kentucky was turned down because the townspeople claim there wouldn’t be enough parking spaces.