At a Tea Party rally there is a vendor selling t-shirts saying,  “Yup, I’m a racist”  in patriotic colors.  There is a Republican presidential candidate, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, now leading the polls in Iowa, who signed onto a pledge from an Iowa Christian group that originally said, “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet, sadly, a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.” This is the gut mentality of the Republican supporters on the other side of the debt-ceiling negotiating table where the president is trying to bring together all the players in the efforts to approve a debt-ceiling increase of $1.4 trillion. The Republicans say to do it with cuts alone and no new taxes.  The president does the unthinkable and offers up programs that keep people alive, whole and able to survive. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are the sacrifices he offered in exchange for some contributions from the rich but the Republicans remain adamant that all budget targets be met by cutting into the health and welfare of people, but under no circumstances should taxes on the rich be raised to cover any shortfalls. These non-colored people are intransigent because they’re afraid that the colored people of the hemisphere will unite for a payback time. It’s sad to say but the problem with America is that every place ain’t Brooklyn.  I don’t want to be mean, but it’s true.  Milling people of different colors and a multitude of ethnicities are an oddity to most Americans.  They sit up high on double-decker tourist buses to see as many of us as they can before the flight back to Sioux City, Iowa. The truth is that the Republican base has no interest in anything other than getting this African-American out of the president’s office. And if they have to destroy the country to do it then so be it.  Their forebears did it once with the Civil War and make no mistake, they will do it again.  I think that realization is why the president was looking a little tired the other day.  He knows there will be no deal with these people by the August 2nd deadline. And if the politicians remain deadlocked when the deadline passes and all hell breaks loose, the president will then be “compelled” to step in and invoke Article 14 Section 4 of the U. S. Constitution which states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” The Republicans will scream foul, lawyers and commentators will make nothing but money, and the “American people”, so often and tiresomely invoked at every press conference, will make the ultimate decision at the ballot box on whether to tax the rich or take from the poor, providing they have their papers in order, the machines are working, are digitally secure and have a paper trail backup.