Point Man for Maryland Racists

Del. Pat McDonough of Baltimore and Harford Counties always reminds me why I'm glad I live on the west side of Baltimore County.  Our pols are far from perfect, but at least they're not demagogues pandering to the worst fears of constituents.

McDonough is best known for his incessant attacks on Hispanics.  He calls them attacks on illegal immigrants, but his discernment of who's legal and who's not is something he's spent no time honing.  All Hispanics are illegals, so far as he's concerned.  Of course he's spearheaded the crusae to repeal Maryland's effort to make the children of illegals full citizens with strong educations and a likelihood of being productive members of society.  Wouldn't want that.  Better to send them all home.  Of course, you can never catch them all to send home, so that means you just create a sub strata of society that has no chance of advancing on the economic ladder.  Unless they're Cuban, of course.

But McDonough's usual racist attacks on Hispanics isn't today's subject.  No, our hero took the opportunity of the last day of the legislature's specials session to call for martial law in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-mcdonough-race-20120516,0,101275.story

Here's a quote from The Sun about the "news release" McDonough put out.  The title of the release is just so subtle. "'Black Youth Mobs Terrorize Baltimore on Holidays.' In it, McDonough said he had sent a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley urging him to use the state police to help prevent attacks and to declare the Inner Harbor area a "no-travel zone" until safety can be guaranteed."

Let's just think about the stupidity here.  The solution to a few incidents of youths causing fights is to shut down the businesses at the Inner Harbor, and barring that, to scare as many people away from patronizing those businesses as possible.  How's that helping the city? 

Keep in mind that no one has been killed in any of these incidents.  In fact, no one has been seriously injured, viral video of one guy being knocked down, robbed, and stripped naked notwithstanding.  That guy was so drunk he didn't even remember the incident or report it to the police until the next day.

Now, there's no question the police need to be on the scene in large force whenever these incidents occur.  Plentiful arrests of these bands of bozos, who appear to think they're just engaging in some fun, will put an end to it quickly enough.

The real issue isn't misbehaving youths.  The issue is that McDonough feels it's necessary to point out the ethnicity of the youths.  Quoting The Sun again, "McDonough refused to back down, saying he had heard from police that the crowds involved in several recent incidents were all black. Failing to mention the race of the participants, he said, would be 'political correctness on steroids.'"

McDonough, of course, has no first hand knowledge of the ethnicity of the youths and cites no specific person with such knowledge.  He's citing the grapevine.  There's a persuasive source. 

Then there's what he calls "political correctness".  This remains one of my favorite bullshit terms the loons on the right use.  It's so broadly used as to be almost meaningless, but it boils down to a label for anyone who doesn't agree with them and points out the utter baselessness of their assertions.

For instance, what relevance does ethnicity have?  Is McDonough saying that everyone should be forewarned to run away from black people?  It certainly seems that's the only possible relevance.  So, if you run across an NAACP meeting, make sure to run and hide, lest the distinguished members suddenly turn into a violent mob and attack you.  Even if his warning is limited to black youth, I'd have to say he and his adherents avoid Ravens games.  Most of the team is black.  They're young.  They might go charging into the stands to assault people at random.

I would hope the voters of eastern Baltimore County and Harford County would have enough of this idiot and his blatant racism, but he's been there a long time, so I doubt it.  Still, there are more and more black and Hispanic voters living in that area, so his day will come in time.  More power to them.  I'll stay in western Baltimore County, home of the sane.

It's all Evil

At least that's what you'd think if you listen to what passes for conservatism in the US now. If it wasn't written by Antonin Scalia, anything that comes out of the federal government is evil.

Affordable health care? Evil. It's a socialist plot to take away...something. I'm not clear what. Individuals still choose their doctors. Private health insurance companies are the cornerstone of the plan, so they're not being eliminated. People who don't pay for health insurance now are required to pay into the system. Got me how that's different from a tax. Of course, there's the more recent hype that employers are forced to pay for health care to which they have a moral objection. Naturally, the objections are only about women's health care and reporductive choices. Nothing about a moral objection for men's erections or smokers. It's a very selective moral objection that targets only women.

Gay marriage? Evil. The Bible says so. Never mind that gay marriage is only binding on civil authorities, not religious ones. Never mind that gay couples are deprived of privileges extended to hetorsexual married couples. Equal Protection Clause? Commity Clause? Avert your eyes. Those parts of the Constitution are superseded by the Bible.

Taxes? Evil. All of them. Today's conservatives haven't met a tax they didn't oppose. They've completely missed that their messiah, Ronald Reagan, not only didn't oppose all taxes, he actually imposed some. Of course, for this lot, the greatest good can only be achieved by concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. Why, we all have a chance of becoming the few (despite the logical fallacy that relies upon). Don't take money from the 1% because you might be in that 1% someday. Right. All 99% of us will someday have our 5 minutes as the 1%. Not how it works. Taxes help us all. That's what they're for.

Obama? Greatest evil ever to befall the United States. He consipires against each and every American personally in his ongoing mission as a communist/fascist/socialist/radical Muslim. He's spying on you right now. Yes, you reading this at this very moment. Obama is watching over your shoulder. Quick, turn and look. You might just catch him. But maybe you better not. If he knows you've seen him he'll take away... Well, it's your paranoid imagination. You fill in what you think he'll take away.

The sad fact is, the GOP, as controlled by a small, radical element that calls itself conservative, doesn't appear to be for anything, with the sole exception of concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. Everything else is only about demonizing what others favor, even when it's something the GOP used to favor (yes, I'm talking about you, Mitt Romney).

Despite the sound and fury of this movement on the outside, and the daily support of Faux News, this is a recipe for marignalization. It's not just that demographics support Democrats. This agenda of paranoia and anger is bound to turn off the largely white independent voters that are necessary for a candidate to win as President. While gerrymandered Congressional districts will continue to give the GOP a voice in the House, in the end this tack is going to lead to a weak GOP, and that's bad for the US. An opposition needs to have ideas for governance. You can't govern if your core belief is that government is evil. All you're advocating is the dismantling of the government, also known as anarchy (oddly contradicted by an advocacy for unlimited defense spending, a recipe for eventual military coup if ever there was one), voters are not going to flock to your banner.