Actually, I have a rule : If you are Jewish, a woman and/or part of the melanin brigade, you cannot justify state rights in any way, shape or form. Sorry. Nope. Can't do.

You might as well go out, buy yourself a box cutter and start slicing yourself before you rationalize state rights. Why? Because they're synonymous to slavery, internment camps and husbandry privilege. Plain and simple.

Paul Krugman wrote today an piece on The New York Times where he says (obliquely, of course) that he agrees with me :

More than 40 years have passed since the Voting Rights Act, which Reagan described in 1980 as “humiliating to the South.” Yet Southern white voting behavior remains distinctive. Democrats decisively won the popular vote in last year’s House elections, but Southern whites voted Republican by almost two to one.

The G.O.P.’s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.” So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.

And Ronald Reagan was among the “some” who tried to benefit from racial polarization.

True, he never used explicit racial rhetoric. Neither did Richard Nixon. As Thomas and Mary Edsall put it in their classic 1991 book, “Chain Reaction: The impact of race, rights and taxes on American politics,” “Reagan paralleled Nixon’s success in constructing a politics and a strategy of governing that attacked policies targeted toward blacks and other minorities without reference to race — a conservative politics that had the effect of polarizing the electorate along racial lines.”

Thus, Reagan repeatedly told the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud. He never mentioned the woman’s race, but he didn’t have to.

And here's the coup de grace, in case you were trying to make a case about "but he wasn't a racist" : Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.

And that, my friends, explains the Bush Administration.

Yes, there were/are way more minorities in positions of power in the BushCo administration than in any other Presidency, including Bill Clinton's.

Yet it also proves you don't have to be poor, uneducated and "socially underdeveloped" in order to be alienated and a tool. If you live in a world where you believe your place is to protect the interested of the rich and powerful that own you, then that's exactly what you're going to do ---no matter how much melanin you've got on yourself. On the contrary, it's been incredibly profitable for BushCo to have had a Powell and Rice and Gonzales on their board --they've been the tools for justifying the invasion of Iraq and for manhandling the Constitution and stripping anybody coming in contact with the US government from having any civil rights.

In other words, the colored puppets in high GOP places have made the southern political strategy the success that it is. Because we can't call what they've done racist. After all, it's people of colored in power positions that we're talking about.