Chris Matthews and anyone with some understanding of how violence related to racism is very much a part of American history should be livid about people saying the President isn’t American enough or is some sort of foreign intruder: it’s based in racism. Racial animus has been used to justify violence against intended targets throughout the history of our country. There is no civil conversation to be had when someone is deploying these tools intentionally while denying them with friendly smiles, cliches “tone” and “the high ground” and rhetorical misdirection. It’s not a moment of levity.

On Morning Joe this morning, RNC chair Reince Priebus tries to be shocked and appalled that Matthews accuses Republicans using racial politics to attack President Obama. The entire panel of MSNBC co-hosts is just so uncomfortable that Matthews was so mad that Priebus tries to spin his way out of any substantive response to very serious and substantive accusations. Then Priebus turns around says that Obama’s healthcare plan (the one that was based on Romney’s) is serving some sort of European (re: socialist) goals. Even while proving Matthews correct in front of them, Tom Brokaw goes on to blame “both sides”. Watch the video below:

Yet to the Morning Joe panel insists it was only a poorly timed jokewhen Romney asserts that no one has ever questioned his place of origin. As Romney says: I am what I am: we should trust what he is and that’s that’s good enough verification. Romney has changed positions on so many major issues but he says “trust me” and that’s it. The press stops asking for returns and insists that he was unintentionally joking if he says so. For Obama, what he is, what he says he is, and what he does will never be believed by certain people. There is no “I am what I am” for Obama because the press is willing to debate almost any claims about the man (the extreme of which being Fox News).

Romney surrogates know they are free to lie about the president and call him: an un-American, a President who doesn’t support and ignores Israel, a secret Muslim or a secret foreigner (Donald Trump and Fox and Friends). No one will ever get angry like Chris Matthews. Tone matters to much to those who work for these networks. They can say Obama “has blood on his hands” and “stole” from the Medicare fund (as Priebus said on Meet the Press). They can just claim these are all just some rottenly crafted jokes or misspoken utterances instead of cynically planned political attacks. (TNC describes how this relates to Obama as other in the latest issue of the Atlantic)

Brokaw’s interjection was so disappointing. Mika Brzezinski tiredly tags Romney as an “awkward joker” because the campaign said he was joking. Not because she has laid out a case supporting this opinion. He uses his elder position to prevent Matthews from asking Priebus about actions and strategy he personally actually deploys at the behest of Mitt Romney and Priebus doesn’t want to answer those questions.

ABL at Balloon Juice is exactly right when she says: By the way, this is why you don’t make jokes about the president “not being one of us.…

Original post: In a disturbing report out of Georgia, prosecutors say four U.S. soldiers plotted to overthrow the government and assassinate President Obama. Details remain slim about the case, but the AP’s Russ Bynum says the soldiers allegedly bought $87,000 worth of “guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in nearby Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.” The plot was apparently uncovered in relation to a murder case surrounding the killing of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend Tiffany York in December.

[…]

The news follows a controversial report published byReuters’ Daniel Trotta last week that the U.S. Army is battling soldiers within its ranks who enlist in the Army and Marine Corps “to acquire the skills to overthrow what some call the ZOG – the Zionist Occupation Government. Get in, get trained and get out to brace for the coming race war.”

source: Prosecutors: U.S. Soldiers Plotted to Kill President Obama – National – The Atlantic Wire.

Any politician that issues types of claims about Obama has to know they are all abstracted (laundered?) from more blatantly racist tropes.