Is there a racial bias being used against President Obama?

Is there a racial bias being used against President Obama by these “birthers”?

Does anybody think that if our President were named Herman Hermann, to a German-born father and a white American mother and had a Certificate of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii that we would have all these “birthers” running around?

Scarred Statue

Last year an ugly statue was placed in Phalen Park, north of the picnic pavilion, east of the amphitheater, and within view of the Karl Neid, jr. bridge. I say ugly. Others disagree. That is well. Art is a subjective thing, And I admit that after seeing the statue in person, I concluded that it was not as ugly as the pictures I had seen would have led me to think.

But even though we don’t all agree on how lovely/ugly the statue is, what can be [and must be] agreed on is that the recent racial vandalism and defacement is clearly ugly.

On Friday the 15^th there will be a community ceremony to demonstrate neighborhood indignation at all that has happened there and to serve as a sort of kickoff to the cleanup of the statue scheduled to begin the next Monday. I doubt if I will be there since I already have booked the time for something else, but I do wish to announce it here for your information/edification.

Earlier post on the Karl Neid, jr. bridge: [10/14/07]

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/10/bridge-in-phalen-park.html

ADDENDUM [8/12]: I should have put this in the original post, but this morning's DPP has the infomation phrased concisely.

IF YOU GO: 'UNITY CEREMONY'

What: Unity ceremony prompted by a sculpture being defaced with hate graffiti

When: Friday. Viewing of the sculpture begins at 6 p.m., and the ceremony at 7 p.m.

Where: Phalen Park pavilion, St. Paul

Parking: Available at Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church at Arcade Street and Larpenteur Avenue. It's a short walk to the park; shuttle bus service will be available.

More about the jury system OR And justice for all -- the low-cost way

I wrote about our jury system a bit recently when I posted on the forthcoming reduction of pay for jurors in Minnesota District Courts.

We all know that the jury system is not perfect and I suppose that this reduction will not make it any more perfect.

I recently had the opportunity [??] of serving as a juror in the Second Judicial District [i.e., Ramsey County]. I was not selected to be on any jury.

I did get to fill out a questionnaire for the Foster case, but they managed to select a jury before they got around to interviewing me. It is probably just as well as I suspect that I knew [or at least thought I knew] too much before hand to be a fair and impartial juror.

Now a jury has been impaneled in Kandiyohi County to hear the case against Olga Franco for the accident with the school bus which killed four children and unleashed the expected bigotry from Governor Plenty and Marty Seifert. [Previous posts: first, second]

I wish them well.

When I was in college I studied both American History and American Government and we learned about the various checks and balances in our system. Two of the lesser mentioned ones are the executive pardon and jury nullification. The former usually does not get much mention until January 21 of presidential inauguration years [Scooter Libby, Alfredo Gonzalez and who else next year? Cheney?] and I would bet that many people had never heard of the latter before the O.J. Simpson case. But they are important.

A jury returned what probably was the only verdict it could in the Foster case. Those who are convinced that justice was served poorly can only hope that there will be a Higher Court later on.

Jim Ragsdale of the DPP wrote about the Foster case on Sunday’s editorial page. I commend it to your attention. As he noted,

Aaron Foster was found "not guilty" of third-degree, unintentional murder. That is not the verdict Barbara Winn's relatives wanted, and they understandably erupted after it was read in court. Nor did it fit the "cold-case" narrative the Winn-Foster matter had acquired in the media, including a moving program on "Dateline NBC" in May titled "Justice for Barbara."

But it was a reasonable verdict based on the remaining evidence of Winn's death in her Maplewood home in 1981. It was a splash of cold water on our faces, reminding us the courtroom has its own rules and ethics, chief among them that the prevailing narrative doesn't matter. What matters is the evidence; the presumption of innocence for anyone charged of a crime; and the need to prove a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt" before sending a defendant off to prison.

Those standards protect us all but do little to assuage the pain felt by children who lost a mother and who feel her killer got off.

Some people suspected that the whole matter was brought up so late as a result of Bill Finney challenging Lord Fletcher for sheriff two years ago. There is not doubt that Finney’s reputation has been smirched and this verdict will not clear that up. Ragsdale notes that Finney has said that he feels damaged and that he did nothing wrong.

The final paragraph of Ragsdale’s column seems a fair summary of the whole matter, at least as far as judicial matters are concerned,

That is where the story begins and ends — with the tragic death of Barbara Winn. The cold-case narrative did not end where the momentum was pushing it — to a conviction. But the jury was not part of a TV program. They made a tough call based on the facts presented to them, and that's why we stand when they walk past us.

We can only hope that the folks in Willmar can reach the right conclusion about Ms. Franco.

Of course they won’t be able to do that unless the lawyers on both sides give their best efforts and the judge keeps things fair.

And those $10/day jurors will be earning their pay.

Is Wright wrongfully wounding Obama? And does America appreciate context?

I actually watched Dr. Jeremiah Wright jr.’s speech at the National Press Club live on C-SPAN last Monday. I had been up all night and I guess that maybe I missed its significance.

Parts of the speech seemed like something you might expect a black leader and/or United Church of Christ persoin to say. I did figure that the more Dr. Wright stayed in the background, that the better the chances for the Junior Senator from Illinois becoming president.

As I noted before, crazy ideas come from the denomination with which I am connected. There is a firm belief that everybody needs to learn divine truth[s] for him/herself and feel free to express what they have discerned to be such truth[s].

I have been hearing ever since Monday that Dr. Wright seems to be bringing Senator Obama down, almost as if that is what he wants to do. The Senator has had to pretty much renounce the man. Some speculate that the Junior Senator from New York or people close to her have been keeping Dr. Wright in the spotlight to damage the Obama campaign.

So now I reluctantly suspect that Dr. Wright’s comments may now have that affect. What bothers me is that I am not sure that it is because of what he is saying or because the American public just cannot put the comments into perspective.

There are always conspiracy ideas going around, from the Illuminati of a previous era and the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve of a later era to the Reichstag-September 11^th or the Government invented HIV theories of the present age. I haven’t signed on to a lot of them, but they stay in vogue because there seems to be just enough fact around to make them credible to many.

I doubt if the government invented HIV. However, I am not sure that they haven’t made good use of it since by being overly passive.

I have not signed onto the Obama wagon, but it is no secret that I have little admiration for Senator Clinton. [Senator Rodham would have had more, substantially more.] But regardless of who you and I like, the public is entitled to have its choices better framed with irrelevancies like a nattering clergyperson kept out of things.

Leonard Pitts, jr. is harder on Dr. Wright than I am. But perhaps the summary of a recent column he wrote summarizes the situation well. Noting that a cousin of his held Dr. Wright in awe and lamenting his disappointment and disagreement, he noted

He had his chance to walk on water but - sorry, cousin - he fell in instead. The only remaining question is whether he will pull Barack Obama down with him.

Earlier post: Observations on Obama, his mosque, and his imam [3/23/08]

Truly a Scandal Sheet

When I was in junior high school, I had a teacher who referred to all pieces of paper, but particularly newspapers, as “scandal sheets.”

Fortunately for whatever current affairs minded students he had, his advice on newspapers probably did not carry a lot of weight since he taught industrial arts.

But there is an article in today’s DPP that makes you wonder about what he said.

The first sentence of an article titled, “Two teens shot on West Side, "reads

“Two teens were wounded by gunfire Saturday night on St. Paul's West Side as the city's Cinco de Mayo celebrations ended nearby. Two teens were wounded by gunfire Saturday night on St. Paul's West Side as the city's Cinco de Mayo celebrations ended nearby.”

That’s it. There is no mention anyplace that there was any reason to believe that Cinco de Mayo had any connection to the shooting. We may find that out later, but except for the sensationalistic opening, the article gives no hint that the neighborhood celebration would have any connection with the story.

Using that kind of thinking, any crime that takes place anywhere in the city in late January or early February could be connected to the Winter Carnival. Of course, the Carnival is run by the rich and white for the rich and white and for downtown, not by minority people in a neighborhood.

Just think what crimes might be connected with the Republican National Convention.

Methinks that Ms. Leslie Brooks Suzukamo needs to examine both her work and her motives.

UPDATE -5/5/08

In an article today St. [sic] Paul / Four teens, adult held in shootings, Nick Ferraro notes way down in the sixth paragraph,

[Police spokesperson] Panos said the shootings had nothing to do with the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta celebration that had just ended nearby.

Considering the placement that the paper and Ms. Leslie Brooks Suzukamo gave the matter Sunday, this should have been given better placement.

Quote of the Day – April 4, 2008

"Better late than never." Rev. Jesse Jackson, on John McCain’s admission that he was wrong to vote against the Martin Luther King holiday when in the House of Representatives in 1983.

[Today is the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, but you have probably already learned that.]

Rosario: Seifert is "Sir Punisher"

In a Sunday column DPP columnist Rubén Rosario has pronounced Marty Seifert, the immigrant-baiting, mind our party line Republican leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives to be “Sir Punisher.”

He comments on his past attempt to take dessert away from prisoners and his recent role in demoting Republican representatives who broke with his bowing-to-Tim leadership by voting to override Plenty for a Chamber of Commerce transportation bill.

Rosario notes that Seifert

“is shrewd enough not to violate one of the cardinal rules of bad politics: Never let the facts get in the way of a bill that will pocket easy votes but actually make things worse.”

And he notes that Seifert’s latest attempt to make local police and sheriffs into immigration officers was likely not done with any input from the local police in our largest cities and certainly not with Saint Paul Chief John Harrington, whom he quotes as saying,'

It's a bad idea. We depend on people providing information and victims coming forward in cases that may involve terrorism, prostitution, human trafficking and domestic violence. We are dependent on people to help solve problems.

"We've heard from women who say they will rather take a beating before they call police if they think they or their kids will be deported. That's not what we are about. The community is better served and safer when people have the trust in us to tell us what is going on instead of hiding from us.''

His final suggestion that Chief Harrington might want to have somebody start his car from now on is probably hyperbole, but his article does generally seem to be right on the mark.

Let’s watch out for this guy. If Pawlenty doesn’t go to Washington and calls it quits after eight or twelve years this guy may want to become a resident of 1006 Summit Avenue. He’ll have his own security so having the Saint Paul PD tied up doing immigration duty won’t affect him.

Earlier posts: Observations on the Override [2/27/08]; Well, now we know how much time [3/3/08]

Well, now we know how much time

As I noted in a post on February 23:

Were gambling legal in this state [yeah, sure] it would be interesting if somebody made book on how long it will be before Pawlenty or one of his allies, hot-dogging politically to appeal to others' [and likely their own] bigotry uses this as justification for more cracking down on aliens [which also inherently means darker-skinned people who might be thought of as aliens], especially as to regards driver license labeling.

Well, now we know. House Minority leader Marty Seifert whose area the accident took place in, today introduced the idea of penalizing local taxpayers whose police agencies fail to check the legal status of people they contact.

I know that I carry neither birth certificate nor passport [which I have never even had] with me, so if I am ever in a traffic stop, I could be putting the taxpayers of our city in jeopardy. I could suggest that they just decide to never stop me, that it isn’t worth the hassle or risk to the city, but that is not the responsible approach.

What would be responsible is to learn that immigration problems are national problems, if they are problems at all, and to let the local authorities, police and others, work to keep our neighborhoods.

We all learn bigotry when we are young and most of us spend the rest of our lives fighting to unlearn it. To that we are continually and mutually educating each other at every age that people are people and that strangers are people also and that just they have different pigmentation or speak differently doesn’t mean that they are an exotic species.

This education would happen a lot easier were people like Seifert and Pawlenty willing to play less to the bigotry we all fight, willing to pass up the chance to hot dog it for a vote or two.

The Name Game

We don’t name ourselves. We live with the ones we are given. We can change them when we become of age, but that causes a lot of confusion in itself. And it will make people wonder why you changed.

Barack Hussein Obama did not choose his name. The middle name has implications of Arab heritage and to the many people who are trying to put a Muslim label on him, this seems to be something to be fixed on, as if fixing on it somehow attaches a connection either with terroristic Islam or the deposed dictator of Iraq or both. [Hussein is a common name, just not around here. Our current president shares his first name with the British king we had to fight to get our independence, but nobody plays on that much. Our last president shared his first name with four British monarchs. Same comment.]

But the Senator has been a member of a congregation in a Protestant denomination [specifically Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago] for many years. The name of the congregation and the denomination would seem to exclude Muslims.

Nobody notes the Hebrew origin of his first name. It doesn’t fit in.

And think of it another way:

Had the senator changed his name, people would have been saying that it was part of an effort to hide his roots. He cannot win either way on the middle name matter.

And as Jim Wallis concludes in a God's Politics post [link to full Wallis post]

Like his politics or not, support his candidacy or not - but don't disparage Barack Obama's faith, his church, his minister, or his credibility as an articulate Christian layman who feels a vocation in politics. Those falsehoods are simply vicious lies and should be denounced by people of faith from across the political spectrum.

So can we just look at the person and his record?

It's just a matter of time

It was revealed quickly that the van-school bus accident near Cottonwood this week was caused by inattentive or otherwise defective driving on the part of the van driver.

Now it seems that the van driver, although not yet identified, may have been a person illegally of this country, likely a woman of Hispanic heritage.

Were gambling legal in this state [yeah, sure] it would be interesting if somebody made book on how long it will be before Pawlenty or one of his allies, hot-dogging politically to appeal to others' [and likely their own] bigotry uses this as justification for more cracking down on aliens [which also inherently means darker-skinned people who might be thought of as aliens], especially as to regards driver license labeling.


Just remember folks: This driver had a license. It just wasn't hers. But effective and even-handed enforcement isn't really what they care about anyway.

Well, we always have to have somebody to feel better than.

It is human nature for us to divide into “us” and “them” and the powers that run a society always seem to find it helps to keep those who are not running the society making the distinction and making it incorrectly. As cynics have noted, the robber barons have worked this well for a long time, keeping groups of different white ethnicities on guard against each other, and when that didn’t work, pitting Chinese or blacks against whites. And now the Republican governor is out against illegal immigrants again. And he probably would not mind if his action scared away some legal ones too.

The target is being redirected again. In a Community Voice post on Minnpost.com, Barb Kucera notes

Remember the heavily hyped myth of the "welfare queen" in the Reagan era? She's disappeared — replaced by those "illegals" who are trying to take your job. As long as workers of different backgrounds view each other with suspicion and even hatred, we can't get together to solve our problems.

She concludes by noting

We live in a global economy where millions of people are forced to leave their homes and their countries to find work to feed their families, while millions more are witnessing steep declines in their wages, benefits and working conditions. Meanwhile, corporations pile on the profits, destroying communities, the environment and people's lives with impunity.

Is this the kind of world we want? As long as working people stay mired in name-calling, they'll never ask that question.

We need to resist the temptation to get so carried away with us v. them that we forget that we all are pretty much the same.

A Note On Immigration

Immigration is already becoming an issue for next year’s elections.. I suppose you could say that I am pro-immigrant. It somehow just seems what this country is about: people coming here for a variety of reasons trying to better themselves. Some people are concerned because the new arrivals, legal or otherwise, speak different languages or worship other gods.

Some say that they are not opposed to illegal immigration, just illegal immigration. Some may come from a legitimate fear about terrorism, but there really is not much correlation between terrorism and illegal immigration. Timothy McVeigh was native grown. Almost all of the September 11^th hijackers got in here legally. I suspect that most people who say they are only opposed to illegal immigration are really more concerned about immigrants whose skin is darker than theirs.

Although Spanish was being spoken in this country a century before Jamestown we panic when people use the language and start wondering who is up to what. We put far more border control personnel on the border with Mexico than we do the much-longer border with British North America [aka Canada]. The northern border, much longer and more porous, is an open invitation for people with less than good intentions to come in. And there is history for being concerned about the northern border. Remember the Millennium Plot? For that matter, remember whose shelling of Fort McHenry our national anthem was written about? Despite the history and the opportunity, we concentrate on the south.

If national security is the reason for Border Control and ICE [which are parts of the Department of Homeland Security], Border Control and ICE are looking the wrong way.

And so are so many of the rest of us.

Vaya con dios.

One Word and LIberation

The word “bitch” is being thrown about a lot lately. It used to be an offensive term thrown at females. Primarily it still is, but I know of several recent episodes where it has been thrown at male persons also lately. I guess that is equal opportunity.

But it is still offensive. And because it is offensive and is still in disproportionate frequency toward women, its use needs to cease.

Leonard Pitts, jr. in a recent column notes a recent incident in Iowa where a woman asked the senior senator from Arizona a question about the junior senator from New York, using that word.

Pitts notes

Can you imagine if the Democratic front runner were Sen. Joe Lieberman and the woman said, ``So, how do we beat this Hebe?''

Can you imagine if it were Gov. Bill Richardson and the woman said, ``So, how do we beat this spic?''

Can you imagine if it were Sen. Barack Obama and the woman said, ``So, how do we beat this coon?''

I guarantee you, McCain would not have laughed and if he had, we would now be writing his political epitaph.

I think he has a good point. Senator McCain may well be taken to task for this.

Pitts goes on to note that women who have succeeded in politics and in business have taken on the traits traditionally associated with men.

We demand certain ''feminine'' traits from women -- nurturing, caring, submission -- and the woman in whom those traits are either not present or subordinated to her drive, ambition and competence will pay a social price

.

When I first began hearing of “women’s lib” about three and a half decades or so ago, I wondered if it might be an opportunity to liberate men also. I wondered if opening opportunities for women would create a world in which men did not always have to do the things which seemed to make them men. Ideally nurturing and caring would be gender-neutral qualities and not regarded in lower esteem than drive and ambition and would be manifested in persons of both genders.

It obviously has not happened. We have made more opportunities available to women, but only if they seem to be more like men. There are successful women in almost every area of life now, but they are still considered successes only if they do not seem what we have somehow behave in ways we think feminine.

And we still regard men in what were women’s professions and trades with a strange eye. Men who are nurses, flight attendants, or elementary school teachers are not seen as totally male.

It doesn’t mean that “women’s lib” is a failure. It has indeed been a success, even if only a partial one. But it still means that we are a long way from liberating everybody.

And “bitch” is still not a nice word, except perhaps in certain dog-owner groups.