I just get a kick out of the Kevin Foley-fixated D.A. King. He really, truly thinks he's an important national anti-illegal immigration authority. Once in awhile he even gets his face on a local TV station or Fox News and equates that to worldwide fame.

 

Over my 30-year PR career I've run into dozens of guys like Mr. King, people with some modicum of minor notoriety who've let it go their heads. Former CNN anchors and ex-TV reality show "stars" come to mind. They adopt this aura of superiority that borders on the pathological until somebody brings them back to earth.

So step right on up here, Mr. King, and let's just see how famous and influential you really are! What?! You have only 105 Twitter followers.

I thought it would be more like 105 million based on your recent attacks on me!

I'll save you the trouble. I don't have a Twitter account. I enjoy a quiet writer's life up here in Kennesaw while offering some thoughtful progressive counterweight to the conservative opinion (or in your case, hateful opinion) in the MDJ at the invitation of the newspaper's editors.

You ARE very famous with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Says here you organized an anti-immigration protest in Atlanta...and when none of your followers showed up, you had to hire a bunch of "day laborers" to serve as your "protesters."

Tell me you did NOT pick them up in front of Lowes!

Here's your old web site, The American Resistance Foundation. Sounds like a group of far right militia yahoos running around the woods in cammo playing soldier. Maybe not:

 

"We have left all pages as they were to make it more difficult for the treasonous and far-left open borders/illegal alien lobby - which profits from illegal immigration and smearing those with the courage to oppose that crime - to present our effort as something un-American." ("Treasonous" would be those Americans who happen to disagree with you, I assume).

 

Apparently ARF is now defunct because you say you "ran out of money"? You mean to say the legions of D.A. King disciples wouldn't pony up the cash to keep your ARF site live?!

 

Here's a little update, Mr. King. The U.S. is on course to become a non-white country in less than a century. Progressives don't give this a second thought. In fact, we celebrate how diversity has benefited America over nearly two and a half centuries.

Then there are others like you who howl "stop!" and nobody pays very much attention.

 

Are there people here illegally? Yes, and by all means secure the borders (if we had only used the trillion wasted in Iraq to do that). But, by all means, let's also stop thinking about gestapo agents demanding papers from people of color and freight cars packed with men, women and children rolling south to the border and start thinking practically about ways to make undocumented workers pay a penalty for their crime and then assimilate them into our American culture.

 

And stop telling us about "Little Mexicos." There've been ethnic communities in America since the days of Virginia Dare.

One of the problems with today's political discourse is the incivility. Nothing positive can happen when you demonize and denigrate those with whom you disagree.

Mr. D.A. King and I have engaged in a back and forth blog discussion on immigration I began some time ago by suggesting Mr. King's inflammatory rhetoric was counterproductive. I noted that proof could be found in the numbers of Hispanics and Latinos, formerly reliable Republican voters, who now support Democrats in overwhelming numbers.

Mr. King, who initially promised to ignore me, has responded by unleashing a series of poorly written personal attacks on me for merely attempting to elevate the debate. He obviously takes comfort and encouragement in the few responses he gets from his cadre of followers.

All his blogs are posted on the MDJ site alongside my blogs. Take a look.

Who's the adult and who's the hysterical reactionary unable to engage in a grown-up discussion? Mr. King is intellectually challenged and lacking the resources to respond civily, he resorts to juvenile nonsense, lamely attempting to embarrass me when it is Mr. King who should hide in shame.

Mr. King, you and your ilk are one of the best things that has ever happened to progressives. In fact, it may well be your own race-baiting that makes the difference for President Obama if he's re-elected.  

Keep up the good work, sir.

The primary difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives believe in "me" while progressives believe in "we."

 

Evidence can be found in the presidential campaign where Mitt Romney insists the individual alone can achieve anything if left alone while President Obama says individuals are only as successful as the people around them, a point the president made the other day in a speech (which of course was distorted by the far right media into "criticism" of small business owners).

 

Having built and owned a successful business for over a quarter century, I agree with Obama. Nobody in business or any other worthy pursuit ever accomplished anything important without help, guidance and encouragement, including Romney.

 

Many of the people who worked for Romney at Bain Capital  were educated in public schools and universities paid for by the rest of us. Romney's business was defended by the military we paid for. To the extent Romney's companies produced any products, they were moved to markets over roads, bridges and interstate highways the rest of us paid for with our taxes. Without the rest of us, there would have never been a Bain Capital.

 

The notion that Romney and Romney alone achieved his success is an Ayn Rand fantasy (the mother of "Objectivism," by the way, never started and built a business).

 

A friend challenged me on this, insisting the Founding Fathers would agree with Romney. I reminded him the Constitution begins with the words, "We the People..."

 

After signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin famously told his co-signers, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Indeed, our nation's motto is E Pluribus Unim. Out of many, one.

 

Mitt Romney sounded like an antebellum plantation owner when he addressed the NAACP convention the other day:

"...if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president."

Romney, whose Bain Capital apparently had no African-Americans in its management ranks during his tenure and whose church discriminated against blacks for decades, now knows what's in the best interests of the black community.

"If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him," announced Romney with a straight face. "You take a look!"

They did look and it earned the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee hoots of derision. But Romney's loudest boos came when he proclaimed to the crowd he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, evidently unaware that ACA will help some 7 million uninsured African Americans, many of them children.

Of course this announcement wasn't made for the benefit of the NAACP audience. Instead, it was intended for the radical far right fringe who the Massachusetts Moderate thinks will sweep him into the White House. "I am going to give the same message to the NAACP that I give across the country," Romney told his reliable media outlet, Fox News.

Republican Party leader Rush Limbaugh went further: The "express reason" for the NAACP's existence is to "make sure that blacks don't vote Republican."

Actually, the NAACP's "express reason" to exist is the right to vote, which Republican state legislatures around the country including Georgia's are assiduously trying to prevent with draconian voter suppression laws, but that's another blog for another day.

Romney's is a continuation of the strangest presidential election strategy ever seen. Having already alienated women and Hispanic and Latino voters, he now appears intent on a trifecta, sending those few black voters who may be on the fence running to the Obama camp.

D.A. King who promised to ignore me, seems instead to have become fixated on yours truly. Should I be honored, threatened or just amused? I do appreciate the extra readers!

Let's take it from the top. Some weeks ago, I invited Mr. King to elevate the immigration debate and refrain from using a slur many Hispanic and Latinos find offensive to describe undocumented immigrants. I thought he might be a reasonable fellow, open to constructive criticism politely delivered. 

My bad.

Mr. King is a bully with a lot to say, but a man of scant substance. While he blusters on about the evils of undocumented immigrants, the parade is passing him by. America is moving on in search of reasonable and humane solutions to the immigration problem while Mr. King shrieks "stop!".

First, the Georgia State Legislature failed to pass SB 458 in its last session. Then the president announced some 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children may stay here legally. Finally, the Supreme Court struck down most of Arizona's draconian SB 1070 except the "show me your paper provisions" that so enrages Hispanics and Latinos.

Mr. King's approach has backfired big time with the political pay-off undeniably accruing to Democrats. The crucial Hispanic-Latino voting block, once solidly GOP until the anti-immigrant dead enders like Mr. King, Jan Brewer and Joe Arpiao shooed them off, now supports President Obama over Mitt Romney by wide margins.

Mr. King, you have my sympathies, sir. It must be terribly frustrating to see your crusade become irrelevant.

Just how low will a GOP candidate go to hold onto his office? Meet Rep. Joe Walsh (R, Ill.).

Walsh, a deadbeat dad who never served in the military, recently went after his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth…that’s Lt. Col. Tammy Duckworth, a Purple Heart recipient who lost both legs and part of her arm when the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting was shot down in Iraq. She later served in the Department of Veterans Affairs, helping our wounded warriors.

Walsh, speaking to a crowd of GOP supporters, accused Lt. Col. Duckworth of exploiting her service to win office, a false and disgraceful attack, but something you'd expect from a guy who fails to make his alimony and child support payments for his five kids.

Some of his audience chuckled at his "amusing" comments.

There are just some things you leave alone in politics, things that aren’t funny, and this is one of them. But GOP hacks like Walsh, always quick to hoot about their own patriotism, have no respect for propriety, of doing and saying the right thing.

Just imagine the far right firestorm if Obama had made a similar remark in 2007 about John McCain exploiting his service. But we get utter silence from House Speaker John Boehner and the other so-called leaders of the Grand Old Party when the victim of Walsh's verbal assault on an American war hero is a Democrat, not to mention a woman.

If you are a veteran or a woman or both and you’re thinking of voting Republican, I hope you think again.

 

Conservatives are always whining about "activist judges legislating from the bench" except when its their conservative judges attempting to legislate from the bench.



Thus, right wingers were rubbing their hands together as they counted on the five conservative Supreme Court justices act on their partisan convictions and strike down the Affordable Care Act. A Washington Times columnist even predicted the Court's ruling on immigration earlier in the week was designed to set up the president for a stinging rebuke.



So it was with great trepidation progressives watched the Supreme Court hustle to rule on Obama's signature achievement, duly enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president. I and many others were 99 percent certain the conservatives on the court would deal the president an embarrassing and costly political defeat just in time for the 2012 election.



Well hush my mouth.



Chief Justice John Roberts refused to be part of a plan to undermine the American democratic process. He voted with the four liberal-leaning justices to uphold most of ACA. Not only that, Roberts made a correction to the original legislation. He rejected the commerce clause argument offered by Obama, but called the penalty of those who failed to comply a "tax" that falls well within Congress' bailiwick.



The timing is splendid. Here we go into July 4 holiday with a rousing affirmation that, indeed, our democracy and the separation of powers created by the founders works.