I Wasn't Going to Say Anything, But...

We all struggled with the Obama birth certificate story. There was just so much to trouble us there. But I didn't say anything, mostly, I think, because I was blinded by his celebrity and my hatred of George W. Bush. Now we have the flub of the constitutionally-mandated oath of office. He didn't say the right words. He didn't say them! He's not president. At the very least, he violated the Constitution, which I believe is an impeachable offense. I find I have to say it, IMPEACH OBAMA!

I'm kidding, of course. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace is not.

As long as we're here, despite assertions otherwise, nobody on the left has said that Obama's election signals the end of racism in America. Saying such a thing is silly and is an automatic disqualifier for "lefty" status. This is a fantasy invented by the wingnuts so they can cry about it every time Obama does or says anything that has anything to do with race. C&L nails Beck and Malkin on it, I will add Goldberg. Obama's election did not end racism or demonstrate that ameliorative action is no longer needed or any such thing. It is an amazing symbol of the progress that has been made since darker days, but that it is still "amazing" just means we have a long way to go.

Costas

Costas Now did a show on sports and the media, a subject I enjoy. Oy. The last 15 minutes focused on racism. The introductory segment seemed to indicate that we'd be focusing on how a largely white media fails to adequately understand and cover the modern black athlete. Costas decided to make the segment, instead, about how white reporters cannot call out black athletes for being thugs, even though we all know they're thugs, because the reporters will be called racists.

Don't even want to get started on the "bloggers" segment.

Uh-oh

I got a call form the Obama organization yesterday asking me to do some canvassing today. If you know me, you know that I am not a big door-to-door guy, but in an attempt to overcome myself, I didn't immediately say no. The woman I was talking to--Cindy, I believe--informed me this was a voter registration drive. I volunteered on this basis. For some reason, I'd rather be not be in a position where I am trying to persuade someone I don't know to agree with me. Or at least I don't want to argue with people. I especially don't want to be out trying to convince HRC supporters that BHO is the better alternative. I believe so, but my belief is based on a very nebulous "He makes me feel something no other politician has made me feel (I think they call it hope)." Not really a reason for any HRC supporter to switch sides. But voter reg I can do. They wanted me for three hours, but said I could do it for as long as I wanted--after about an hour, hour-and-a-half, I am done with door-to-door.

So, I showed up at 10 am and there was a decent crowd there milling about. There was a line at a main desk, so I got in line figuring it was some sort of check-in. Apparently not, as when I got the front and gave them my name they kind of just looked at me and told me to find a seat and things would start soon. As I began milling about, an older African American guy came in and said he was there to volunteer. He asked if he could get a lawn sign. The woman behind the counter told him he had to buy them. He reacted as I reacted four years ago when I had to buy a Kerry sign, with a "Wait a minute, I have to pay to advertise for the candidate?" As he was talking to her, some college-age kids came in and walked into the back room, obviously organizers. One of them walks over to the African American guy and reaches right in front of him to hand the woman behind the counter a cup of coffee, interrupting the conversation, then walked away. It was rude. The black guy gave him a look that said, well I guess it could have said a lot of things, but to me it said, "What the fuck? Did you just act like I'm not here?" I found it an amazing interaction. We're there to canvass for the first African-American in American history with a realistic chance to capture a major party nomination, there's one black face in the room and he was just treated like it was 1960 and we were in Selma.

That disturbing incident aside, the main organizer dude, Matt Kessler, showed up and we began the orientation. I know the guy's name is Matt Kessler because he was wearing his backstage pass from the Obama rally. This makes him a dork, but I let it pass because I was the only one wearing an Obama shirt, so I guess I am a dork too. Matt informs us that we'll be going door-to-door to get people to sign up to vote for Obama. In his schpeel, he mentions that if you run into Independents or Greens, we should encourage them to re-register Dem so they can vote Obama. He mentioned that he, himself, was an Independent until January, when he registered Dem so he could vote for Obama. Although it wasn't said, Matt made it clear that we were there to register voters for Obama and the Dmeocratic party was not that important. I have something of a problem with this, as I am a Democrat first and foremost. I support Obama because he's a Dem. If he was a Republican (and that accusation has been made), I would not be voting for him.

That aside, they eventually started passing out packets. They were handing them around the room and the woman who was passing them out deliberately skipped past the African-American gentleman. She handed one to the woman standing next to him, moved right past him, and handed a packet to the two 16 year-olds standing on the other side of him. The look on his face said "unbelievable" and I head him say under his breath "forget about it." Watching his body language you could see he was struggling with whether to stay or go. As he stayed, another woman (who was wearing leopard ears on a headband despite being an overweight 40 year-old white woman, not a Japanese teenager) noticed that the black man did not get a packet and called out "We need more packets." I had not gotten a packet either, so I walked over the black man and said, "Looks like we're in the same boat." He gave me a look that I interpreted as saying "You will never be in the boat I am in right now." So, one of the organizers got more packets and called out, "Who needs these?" The African-American guy said, "I do" at the same time I said, "We didn't get them." The organizer, with multiple packets in his hand, walks past the black guy, hands me a packet, turns and walks away. I was shocked. I think leopard-ears was shocked. The African-American guy got the message and walked out. I was tempted to go after him and try to find out what the hell was going on. I regret that I didn't. Leopard ears did get up and ran after him. When she came back, she said that he had said that he left because he as "discouraged." I'm not sure how much of his interactions she had witnessed that day, but she seemed to think that it was his failing.

I should have just walked then and there, but I didn't. I thought maybe that this guy was some sort of troublemaker or problem and the campaign organizers had decided the only way to deal with him was to treat him like he didn't exist. It is the only explanation that made any sense. As I tried to figure out what the hell just happened. If there was any kind of explanation other than the obvious, that he was some sort of problem guy was the only thing I could come up with. Not the way I would have dealt with him, but I wanted to give the organizers the benefit of the doubt. I couldn't have just witnessed three different Obama organizers treat the only black man in the room like he didn't exist, right? I didn't just see that.

I started to walk to my car to drive to my route, but I turned and went back in. I wanted to ask someone what the explanation was. I wanted to know that I did not just witness that. I stood to wait for the main organizer guy (not Matt, a different guy) I chickened out. What was he going to say to me? He wasn't going to give me a straight answer either way. Not sure there was an explanation any way.

As I drove over to the Whit where I was supposed to canvass a couple of other things occurred to me. A lot of people where noticing that there were only 5 or so voter registration cards in their packets, despite the fact that we each had around 100 names. It dawned on me that I wasn't really being sent out to do voter registration, this was just a straight up Obama canvass. That 90% of the people on my list were already registered Dems confirmed this for me. It also occurred to me that I no longer had very many good reasons for someone to support Obama. I know he shouldn't be judged by people who represent him that he has probably never met, but I wasn't feeling too terribly good about the Obama campaign right then. Plus, as I mentioned before, I hate going door-to-door.

So I bailed on my route. Actually, I drove in circles around the neighborhood a few times thinking it over before I bailed, but the fact that no one ever took my name or have any idea who they gave that particular packet to helped. I don't think it'll be too great of a loss to them. To make myself feel better guilt-wise I called my sister and got her a voter registration card since she recently moved.

I'm trying not to be over-dramatic about this, but I think my vote is back up for grabs. My support of Obama was always based more on personality and rhetoric than policy. That is tarnished now. He still has the advantage of not being Hillary, but I am definitely persuadable now.

"Lunch Bucket" Democrats

This Morning Edition story is what I was talking about. Listen to the broadcast, the text of the story is not complete and misses a lot of interesting points from Pennsylvania Governor and Clinton supporter, Ed Rendell, about racists in the Democratic party.

Even if you completely disagree with me and are a huge Clinton supporter, hopefully you can agree with me that it is a tragedy that "working-class whites" has become a euphemism for "racists."

I'm looking at you EZ.
(For frack sake, not to say that EZ is a "working-class white," but that I'd like to hear his response).

Racism and the Democratic Party

It is obvious to me that the main hurdle to Obama winning the presidency is that he is black. This is in no way a shocking statement. Despite desperate attempts by the right (and the Clinton camp) to argue that Obama's race is somehow an advantage, it is not. There are still a healthy number of racists in this country.

While the GOP has made some incredible efforts to capture the racist vote in the last few decades, it is a sad fact that some of these people still reside in the Democratic party. I find it appalling and deeply depressing that there are people in the Democratic party that are taking the racist Democratic vote into account when considering this presidential election. I find it depressing that something like 70% of the people in Ohio who identified race as an issue important to them voted for Clinton. That the Clinton campaign did not immediately repudiate these voters further depresses me.

I understand that some people think politics is about winning at all costs. Maybe it seems overly silly to expect a candidate to repudiate supporters just because their views are vile. But it also seems to me that a politician who would accept that a certain percentage of support will come from racist hate is not the kind of politician I want to represent me.

Politics is not all about winning. Politics can, and should be, about morality. I identify with the left-wing of the Democratic party because the things they believe in are the same things I believe in. I believe that things like equal rights, solidarity, fighting poverty, the environment, etc. are deeply important. My belief in these things shapes how I live my life. It causes me pain to ignore these values when I vote on who my leaders will be. I don't want to ignore these things. So it is not about doing whatever it takes to win. I can bend, but only so far, before I break. We should not sacrifice fundamental principles in order to win any one election.

And when our party quietly ignores the racists among us, or courts them, we open the door to the kind of argument that we are seeing from the Republicans. Polls show that should Obama win the election, then Democrats from key areas of the nation plan to vote for McCain. These Democrats commonly called Reagan Democrats are white men, unionists, from the rust-belt. We all know why they will vote for McCain. They are, by and large, very narrow men who will not vote for a black man. Karl Rove, however, is advancing the idea that the will vote for McCain because of "patriotism." Apparently, it is not the color of Obama's skin that will doom him, but the content of his lapel.

Causing me even more pain is that these people are labor people. If the Democratic party has a shameful history on the race issue, one that has certainly not been absolved by the last 44 years, then Big Labor has even more to apologize for. We can try to pretend like the opportunistic organizing of public employees, which include women and minorities in high numbers, somehow makes up for past deficiencies, but it does not. Given these twin histories, Labor has to, has to go out of its way to reject the racists in our midst. Even if we desperately need them. Yes, it would be painful. But they is no way we can escape our legacy without pain. I cannot help but believe that the Democratic party and the labor movement would be stronger for it.

But, because our leaders have, apparently, decided that the racists within the party must be appeased at all costs, no one will call bullshit on arguments about patriotism or arrogance or service or experience. It appears that we are not going to have a national conversation on race, unless it involves condemning angry black men, as the chance of securing the White House is more important than the struggle for justice.

Do the Right Thing

Brilliant. By Chris Britt at the Springfield (Illinois) Journal-Register.

I made the mistake of wading into the comments section of the Hullabaloo post about Obama's speech. I haven't really followed the controversy over the Rev. Wright comments. What I've heard of them, I haven't heard anything that I'd disagree with or that I hadn't heard already. But reading the comments at Hullabaloo, it quickly became apparent that either not every Democrat is familiar with this brand of black anger or Clintonites are perfectly willing to pretend that racism doesn't exist in this country and Obama is not fit to be president because he, apparently, is not ready to denounce evil the moment he hears it.

There were a couple of people who advanced the notion that because Obama had a white grandmother (or as it was put, is "half white"), he could have chosen his race, he chose to be black, and therefore he made his race an issue by "choosing" to be black. I don't think the people advancing these arguments are racists necessarily, but, rather, they had somehow never quite understood that white society doesn't really let brown-skinned people choose to be white.

Also, I have found it interesting that Wright is accused of "racism." This accusation goes unchallenged. Not sure if that's because it is so ridiculous or because people really do accept that a black man that expresses a dislike of white America is a "racist." As if racism has nothing to do with power. I think this is the case. I know when I was TAing, it seemed that the kids called all prejudice "racism." One could be racist against blacks, gays, and oatmeal cookies.

Anyway, I liked the cartoon. I wish that all Democrats, liberals, progressives, and radicals, whether supporting Obama or not, would join in and help educate all these people that seem to think what Wright said is anything other than the justified anger that many blacks feel every now and again.

Most Ridiculous Interesting Article of the Year, So Far

I've written of Reuben Navarette Jr. before. He writes for the San Diego Union Tribune and the Register Guard republishes his stuff. He, like Kathleen Parker, typically writes in the "I'm a non-partisan observer who just happens to think George Bush is teh greatest president ever and the Democrats want to feed your children to the secular Satanists" vein.

This weekend he made the argument that the Democrats are really struggling when it comes to diversity. Specifically, "white liberals" just cannot handle the success of Obama. Apparently, while liberals cannot tolerate the thought of a black man as a leader, as we like to keep the minorities subservient. Navarette offers three pieces of "evidence" for his thesis that 2008 might just become known as the year of the "annoyed white liberal." (I think Navarette believes that while liberals might vote for someone other than Obama, should he get the nomination. Or he meant to say 2007 was the year of the "annoyed white liberal.")

1. Joe Biden called Obama "articulate."
2. Bob Kerrey used his middle name, called him a Muslim, and said he went to a madrassa.
3. Elizabeth Edwards, responding to critical comments made by Michelle Obama about John Edwards, said she was "surprised and disappointed in Michelle."

And there you have it. White liberals, no longer able to suppress their latent racism have unleashed it on Obama. Navarette definitely sees this as a something that will affect the campaign.

[Racism is] a problem for them. Democrats have much of their brand tied up in the assertion that they're more progressive than Republicans, especially on racial issues. What if enough people conclude this isn't so?

At a time when Democratic leaders like to talk about “Republican dirty tricks,” it's becoming clear that Democrats know a few of their own.

I have a problem wrapping my head around all of this, so forgive me if I am stating the obvious, but it seems that a columnist for a mid-size American newspaper is actually trying to make the case that these three incidents are evidence enough of Democratic racism that minorities may just turn to the Republican party? Maybe not vote at all? Remember, he is writing this after Iowa and just a few days before Obama becomes the odds-on favorite to become the Democratic nominee. Yes, nothing says Party-of-Racism quite like nominating a black man to be president.

It Figures

Although many on the right have tried to declare Mitt's Mormonism as a out-of-bounds topic, there has been some light discussion of the issue of racism in the Mormon church.

Mitt has countered this charge by arguing that his family has always been a supporter of civil rights for blacks, specifically citing the fact that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King. You can see that here, at 18 seconds. Elsewhere he expanded on that to say that his father marched with MLK when he was governor of Michigan.

It has recently come to light that King did not march when he was in Michigan in the only time frame that would fit Romney's recollection and there is no evidence that Romney pere met with King. Moreover, young Mitt was off converting the French to Mormonism (and not fighting in Vietnam) at the time.

So what does Mitt have to say about all of this?

On Wednesday, Romney’s campaign said his recollections of watching his father, an ardent civil rights supporter, march with King were meant to be figurative.

“He was speaking figuratively, not literally,” Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, said of the candidate.

Ah yes, figuratively marched with King. There are so many directions to go with this, I don't know what to say. Let's go with this:

My father played with Hendrix at Woodstock and my mom rioted with the French students in '68.

What did your parents do?

The 10 Most Dangerous College Courses

Boffo crazy and high-larry-us.

FSM’s Second Annual ‘America’s Most Dangerous College Courses’

Jason Rantz

It’s been two years since I’ve begun investigating insipid, scary and yes, downright dangerous college courses – sometimes funded by tax dollars – and unfortunately, little has changed. Arrogant professors, protected by tenure and faint-hearted administrators, use their classrooms to spread their twisted views of America and its allies. Sometimes, entire courses are focused on anti-American views; other times, professors take time from non-political classes, such as math or Kinesiology, to complain about George Bush, the war on terrorism, social justice, and whatever it is that happens to bother them at the time of their rants. Consequently, students are not being taught properly and universities and colleges are robbing their students of the well-rounded educations they are paying for and deserve.

Go ahead and check out the courses. I knew it was good stuff when I read about "far-Left Senator Ted Kennedy" and NBC's recent move to the far Left, led by that noted-Trot Chris Matthews.

Shitfaced

Have you all seen the Belvedere Vodka commercial featuring Vincent Gallo? I think the commercial is pretty bad. I'd link to it, but I can't find it on the nets.

The commercial is just as "arty" and pretentious as you might expect from Gallo, but my question is why the fine folks at Belvedere would use him. Does he have some kind of cultural cache that I am not aware of? I mean what percentage of the population has heard of the guy, but doesn't know that he is a racist shit head that seems to genuinely believe that people want to buy his old crap and/or pay $1M to be impregnated by him (no blacks need apply)?

The other question is why the fine folks at Belvedere chose Mr. Gallo. Either they didn't know about his website and personal views, which shows poor judgment, or they knew about this and chose to feature him anyway, which shows shockingly poor judgment.

For those that might be tempted to view the website as a joke or an "art piece," please show me even once where you get that impression, except in the "sperm" sale, which could only be a joke because it is so over-the-top. But none of the rest of the site is, so I don't know why we would consider this odious slice to be a put-on.

Just so you know, I hadn't read the gawker piece when I wrote this. Been meaning to for awhile, but just did it today. Hmmm.

Ah, the Good Ol' Days

Have you all seen the latest Coors commercial? I'd link to it, but it's not up on the Youtubes and you have to do a hellva lot of navigating to get to it on the Coors website. I know my crowd and you're way too lazy to find it. Go ahead. I dare you.

Anyway, it features a (white) man, his (white) friends, some (snowy) Rocky Mountains and a (yellow lab) dog. Mostly, it features a song. A song about how the world seems to be changing. Everything is changing. But I'm not going to go changing. I like the way I'm living. I've got my reasons why. I'm not going to go changing.

Now, ostensibly, the commercial is about the fact that Coors has been brewed the same way since nineteen-aught-diddly and they aren't going to change that. I guess the fine folks at Coors seem to think that the loyal Coors drinker might be worried that the Miller-Coors merger might result in some compromises to the fine brew that is Coors. This commercial will reassure them of that, I am sure.

Not-very-sub-textually, of course, is also the message that the fine folks at Coors, like you, are just a little tired of these queers demanding special rights, the blacks getting all uppity, and now the women got one of 'em running for president! Can you believe that! So, if you are a reactionary white male, boy have we got a beer for you!

Is it possible that what Coors is trying to assure the loyal Coors drink of is that despite the merger with Miller, Coors isn't going to go changing their very conservative social policies and "charitable" endeavors?

Calgon

Can something be both racist and progressive at the same time? I offer this for discussion. [UPDATE: I didn't know that VH1s, I Love the 70s had already covered this]

This Is Why We Don't Let Conservatives Into the Academy (Just Kidding, David)

Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

Conservative commentator/gadfly/scholar wannabe Myron Magnet has an explanation for why African Americans are finding themselves in jail and in poverty all these years after racism was ended in the United States. Can you guess what it is? It's the same reason Michael Vick raised dogs to kill each other. That's right, hip hop.

For those of you without the time to read it, let me summarize.

We know that racism isn't the problem because blacks flourished in the US during Reconstruction and in the north where there was no Jim Crow. Because we have Clarance Thomas, Condi Rice, Barack Obama, and three (three!) CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who are all black, we can say for sure that racism is over! Nope, the roots of the sufferings of the black community can be traced to that cocksucker Lyndon Baines Johnson and his Great Society. Welfare made blacks lazy. Oh, and the Civil Rights movement, led by "elites." Here you have all these happy-go-lucky Negroes and then these liberals come along and tell them there oppressed and that they don't have to respect massah no more and then you've got discontent.

You can tell "elites" have run our education system into the ground by the fact that they believed the Duke rape story and Tawana Brawley. We've lost our reasoning skills. Because the elites believe that everything, including social order, is "man-made" (that's socially constructed to you and me, Russ), they can't handle the thought that maybe not all whites are racists and then they fire Larry Summers. That the Duke lacrosse players, apparently, didn't rape anyone that night, all liberal "hyperventilating" about race issues has been proved false. Or, "Emmett Till outrages are long over in America," as Myron tells us. Then the elites go and drive a good man like Don Imus off the air, but ignore the cause of all that ails the black community and Don Imus...hip hop.

(Yes, the article is this rambling, but not this smart-ass)

It all started with the Black Panthers. They posed at being liberators, but were really just criminals (not unlike your hip-hoppers today). Then came Ice T and his cop killer song and the elites told us he was just reflecting what was being said in the streets, but you and I know that until then no black man had ever thought about killing a cop, but now that's all they think about. Then you've got all these rappers raping about how racist society is and how the cops are profiling them (my man Chamillionaire gets an extensive mention for his song "Ridin'"). Except that you and I know that racism was ended in 1864 (North) and 1964 (South), so these rappers cannot be reflecting black experience in America. Instead, they are creating it. This is why blacks are poor, because Ice T, Chamillionaire, Jay Z, and Came'ron told them that being a gangsta was cool. So they deal drugs and don't get jobs, resulting in high rates of incarceration and low employment. It's really all pretty easy to understand. If you're not an elite.

Oh yeah, and hip hop speaks of sex in terms of porn, not love. Music and literature is supposed to be about love and marriage (ah, Frank), but this hip hop stuff is just about "fucking" and this breaks down the bonds of marriage, which is the foundation of civilization. And Wynton Marsalis and Bill Cosby agree, so there you have it.

Duke Rape Case

As long as we're discussing it...

Maybe I'm living in the wrong world or have seen a small slice of it, but is my reading on this correct that a woman accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her. These charges proved to be unprovable and (possibly) false. The entire country is acting as if three white men being falsely accused of raping a black woman is perhaps the greatest crime in the history of the US.

That's it right? The "overzealous" prosecutor has been fired. The "boys" have been given an extra year to play lacrosse. Crazy right-wing pundits are allowed to babble on about "name rape" and "emotional murder." College sports announcers are allowed to go on and on about how the Duke lacrosse team had their season "stolen" by this woman. Less crazy right-wing pundits use this case to show that the Times is a far-left paper because the editors believed the accusation. Everything wrong about the liberal rush to judgment has been exposed, right? This is the narrative I am seeing.

Ash, please tell me in Durham there is someone pushing the counter-narrative of 400 years of white men raping black women with no punishment whatsoever. Someone is mentioning the history of lynching in the south (other than to try to say these innocent angels were lynched by the prosecutor, which I pray, but don't doubt, is being said) where black men were summarily executed with no evidence at all. Please tell me that someone is pointing out that normally the assholes who want the prosecutor to go to jail don't really mind it when black men go to jail on drug possession, which is almost solely based on the word of the arresting officer and prosecutor. Everyone knows that black men go to jail on completely bogus stops with no probably cause. In other words, everyone knows that the judicial system in this country is set up in favor of whites and against black men and women. Is this narrative being discussed?

Has anyone else seen any strong counter-narratives in our supposedly crazy-liberal blogosphere? I think I've seen one or two references in passing putting forth the idea that the rape(s) did happen, but otherwise I see a lot of people trying to distance themselves. What am I missing?

Race and Gender

Sometimes you run across stuff like this and it reminds you that some weird-ass shit goes down in this world.

Pornography and alcohol will be banned for Aborigines in Australia's Northern Territory, the country's prime minister, John Howard, announced today, after a report found that "rivers of grog" were leading to rampant child abuse.

"This is a national emergency," Mr Howard told parliament. "We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present."

The sale, possession and transportation of alcohol would be banned for six months on Aboriginal-owned land in the Northern Territory, Mr Howard said, and sales would be reviewed after that.

'Course, I feel compelled to offer this, just so as no one thinks that I am under the impression that things here in the US are hunky-dory.

[A] Nebraska district judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, suddenly finds himself in a war of words with attorneys on both sides of a sexual assault trial. More worrisome, he appears to be at war with language itself, and his paradoxical answer is to ban it: Last fall, Cheuvront granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004.

A Taco Stand at Every Truckstop?

Don't know about you all, but I cringe when my union brothers and sisters seem to rely on anti-immigrant, racist, and fear-of-terrorism arguments. Concerning NAFTA provisions that allow goods from Mexico to be delivered in Mexican trucks, we get this:

Speaking by telephone with VOA, Teamsters Union spokesman Galen Munroe stresses that the number of U.S. inspectors involved in the program is inadequate to the task [of inspecting trucks coming from Mexico].

"It is a real concern of ours from a safety standpoint and, frankly, from a security standpoint," he said. "We do not know what is coming over these borders. They claim they are going to look at each truck and inspect each truck, but they try to do that now and they cannot even do ten percent of the trucks that come over the border."

You combine the Teamster's right-wing history with this kind of jingoism and I am repelled by the anti-NAFTA crowd. These are not the type of arguments I want to associate myself with. I know that some of you do. Anyone want to defend our Teamster brothers (let's face facts) here? If you are opposed to Mexican trucks on American roads, on what grounds? I know I'm wrong on this one, but I still can't seem to see it. And please let's not have any NAFTA is evil because capitalism is evil arguments. Yes, yes, but that has nothing to do with Mexican trucks, "American jobs," or anything that the Teamsters might believe.