You know why black folk in the south don't vote? According to the New York Times and the experts at the Pew Charitable Trust, they're just too damn fat!

Normally I wouldn't care what the Times is passing off as fact, except for that, on February the 27th, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Voting Rights Act was the law that Martin Luther King Jr had a dream about a half-century ago: that all citizens will be able to exercise their right to vote. But, like all pleasant dreams, morning means waking up to the ugly reality sleeping next to you.

The pug-uglies in this case are the four Supreme Court justices hostile to the Act. If one more joins them, you can kiss Martin's dream goodbye.

The dream-busters are led by Chief Justice John Roberts. In 2009, he wrote, "The historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act are undeniable." But - and Roberts' "but" is huge - the Act is out of date and "fails to account for current political conditions."

According to Roberts, "Jim Crow laws" - the apartheid rules used in the Deep South to keep African-Americans from the polls - have long passed away.

It's true, black folks now fare better in Dixie. Why, just last week, Mississippi ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery 147 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation (I kid you not).

So, Roberts is ready to dump the key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act - the "pre-clearance" requirement.

Sixteen states must "clear" any changes in voting procedures with the US Department of Justice. That's to make sure there's no racial funny business - that new rules aren't clever tactics meant to remove black, brown, Native American, Catholic, Mormon or other minority voters.

In the current case before the Court, some rebel states are hollering that they were unfairly singled out for this special scrutiny.

However, it was arithmetic in the law, not the Civil War, that put Mississippi on the list. Before the Act, only seven percent of its black citizens were registered to vote, below the law's 50 percent line.

In November, at least a few Americans got quite upset to see television coverage from Florida of long lines of black folk waiting four or five hours to vote for the President. So is Jim Crow really dead and gone in Dixie?

That's the weighty question addressed by the prestigious Pew Charitable Trust.

Why pick on Dixie? After all, despite what we saw with our own eyes, Pew shows that there's only a 23 minute wait to vote in Florida - less time than it takes to cast a vote in Indiana. Overall, Florida ranks near the best in Pew's "Elections Performance Index". Let's give a medal to Florida's former Secretary of State, Katherine Harris!

Pew was advised by Yale law professor Heather K Gerken, who explained the study for the New York Times.

"Poor Southern states perform well, and they perform badly. Rich New England states perform well and badly - mostly badly," she said. In other words, Justice Roberts is right: "The evil that [Voting Rights Act Section 5] is meant to address may no longer be concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance."

In other words, why pick on Florida and the 15 others?

But wait. Something's missing: colour. Sure, the average Floridian waited 23 minutes to vote, but what about black voters?

In November, I joined African-American voters on "Souls to the Polls" day. Their wait for a ballot: four hours. Then I went up the road to an all-white polling station. Wait: zero minutes. There were unused rows of balloting machines, more poll workers than voters and a pot of coffee brewing for the pale suburban-Americans casting ballots.

Oddly, despite a hot, hot Presidential contest with an African-American candidate, by mid-May 2012, the Census Bureau reported that the number of African-Americans registered declined by over one million. Hispanic names on voter rolls fell, too, despite massive registration drives. A big decline in voters of colour was reported in the South's huge swing state, Florida.

So, overall voter turnout fell short. But the reason, according to the Pew expert featured in the Times, is that, "States in the Deep South with high obesity problems seem to be having a problem getting people to the polling place."

Apparently, citizens of colour south of the Mason-Dixon line are just too fat to vote.

Maybe there's another explanation for black and Hispanic names disappearing from the polls. Willie Steen, a Gulf War veteran, was removed from the voter rolls in 2000 because the Republican Secretary of State of Florida listed him as a felon. I met Steen. He'd never got so much as a parking ticket. He was, like tens of thousands of others, guilty of "VWB"; Voting While Black.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris sent Steen a note of apology for the "error", but only after the election of George W Bush. Then, in 2004, Steen, who is quite slender, was purged again.

Steen's name matched that of an Ohio felon named "O'Steen" on a database created by Republican hacks. The name-match game cost 58,000 innocent voters their registrations in just one year.

This was just one method of nine used to hold Florida's black voting rate to 58 percent compared to 65 percent for whites.

Jim Crow isn't dead, he's just changed his white sheets for spreadsheets.

And in 2012, a new Republican Secretary of State again set out to bleach the rolls.

Using lists of illegal aliens, the GOP hack-marked 182,000 (!) voters whose names matched the deportees. But wait: it's a jail-time crime for a non-citizen to register or vote, so that's one heck of a crime wave.

So how many illegal foreign voters were arrested in Florida? One: a Canadian gun aficionado.

Yet, nearly one in ten Hispanic voters would have been barred from the polling booth. But, at the last moment, federal voting rights law stopped the Republican's latest Jose Crow manoeuver.

But wait - if the Voting Rights Act required Florida to get federal approval for voter roll purges, how could Steen and other black men have been stripped of their rights?

Answer: Florida lied. The state used a loophole in the Voting Rights Act, claiming the purge was not a change in rules, just a clerical clean-up of the voting lists.

What's the solution to the new trickery? Not, as Justice Roberts suggests, to eliminate Section 5, but to expand it.

Indeed, the reach of the Voting Rights Act was massively expanded by presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. Reagan!

As a result of their changes, states designated officially racist include the Confederate states of… California, Arizona, New York, New Mexico, South Dakota and Alaska. Alaska? You betcha!

And for good reason. Take California - under a Republican Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, 42 percent of voter registration forms were rejected, an overwhelmingly amount of those Hispanic, Arab-American and Asian. Jim Crow, it seems, became a surfer dude.

In 2004, in McKinley County, New Mexico, only one in ten voters cast a ballot for President - at least, that's what the machines said. In fact, the voting machines simply disappeared the vote - almost all cast by Navajo Natives. Unfortunately McKinley was, by that time, "bailed out" of the Voting Rights Act, which any state can do by proving it no longer discriminates. (Apparently there's not much you have to prove.)

And those lines I filmed of black voters standing for hours and white voters waltzing in for a ballot without a wait? That was in Ohio, with arguably the most racially bent voting system in America. (When the black voters finally made it to the voting station, I discovered they'd been given "absentee" ballots, subject to challenge, rather than the regular ballots given to the white voters.)

The horror show in Ohio does not absolve the racist voting systems of Florida, it merely calls for another expansion of the pre-clearance list to reflect a new reality. Jim Crow voting games are more widespread and far more sophisticated today than in 2000 when I first uncovered the Florida black-out.

That's because Jim Crow is now Dr. James Crow, database analyst, a hired gun who knows it's easier to win elections by blocking voters rather than winning their votes. Identifying and challenging "suspect" voters is far more effective in chasing away blacks than burning crosses.

In 2012, cyber-guru Karl Rove created a massive voter profiling system called Data Trust. Rove stated then that, for example, "Even a small drop in the share of black voters would wipe out [Obama's] winning margin in North Carolina. If [black voters'] share of turnout drops just one point in North Carolina, Mr Obama's winning margin there is wiped out two and a half times over."

A little purge goes a long way. Add in a requirement of voter IDs with photos (which Indiana used to bar about 72,000 black voters this year), and voting games, not voters, will pick our government.

The solution is not for the Supreme Court to let Jim Crow ride again through the Southland, but another expansion of pre-clearance scrutiny to Ohio and those states that need a little Reconstruction.
(c) 2013 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to 's reports at. Greg will be providing investigative reports for EcoWatch.org.

ONE OF the most interesting and prolonged private debates I have had in my life was with the brilliant Dr. Nahum Goldmann. The subject: American peace initiatives.

It was an unequal debate, of course. Goldmann was my elder by 28 years. While I was a mere editor of an Israeli news magazine, he was an international figure, President of the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress.

In the mid '50s, when I was looking for a personality who could possibly contest David Ben-Gurion's stranglehold on the prime minister's office, I thought of Goldmann. He had the necessary stature and was liked by moderate Zionists. No less important, he had a clear set of opinions. From the first day of the State of Israel, he had proposed that Israel become a "Middle Eastern Switzerland", neutral between the US and the Soviet Union. For him, peace with the Arabs was absolutely essential for the future of Israel.

I visited him in a luxury suite in Jerusalem's classy Kind David hotel. He was wearing a silken dressing gown, and when I made my offer, he responded: "Look, Uri, I like the good life. Luxury hotels, good food and beautiful women. If I challenged Ben-Gurion, all these would disappear. His people would vilify me as they do you. Why would I risk all that?"

We also started a discussion that ended only with his death, some 27 years later. He was convinced that the US wanted peace between us and the Arabs, and that a major American peace effort was just around the corner. This was not simply an abstract hope. He assured me that he had just met with the highest policy-makers and had it from the highest authority. Straight from the American horse's mouth, so to say.

Goldman was also an inveterate name-dropper. He regularly met with most major American, Soviet and other political personalities, and never failed to mention this in his conversation. So, being assured by the incumbent US presidents, ministers and ambassadors that the US was just about to impose peace on Israelis and Arabs, he told me just you wait. You'll see.

THIS BELIEF in an American Imposed Peace has haunted the Israeli peace movement for decades. In advance of the coming visit of President Obama to Israel next month, it is raising its weary head once more.

Now, finally, it is going to happen. At the beginning of his second term, Barak Obama will shed the hesitations, fears and incompetence that marked his first. AIPAC will not be able to terrorize him anymore. A new, strong and resolute Obama will emerge and knock all the heads together. The leaders will be strongarmed into peace.

This is a very typical and very convenient conviction. It relieves us of the duty to do anything unpopular or daring ourselves. It is also very comforting. The Zionist Left is feeble and lifeless? Maybe, but we have an ally who will do the job. Like the little kid who threatens the bully with his powerful big brother.

This hope has been shattered again and again and again. US presidents came and went, each with his entourage of Jewish advisors, White House and State Department officials and ambassadors. And nothing happened.

Of course, there have been American peace initiatives galore. From Nixon's "Rogers plan", through Carter's Camp David agreement about Palestinian self-government to Clinton's Parameters and Bush's Road Map there were plenty of them, each one more convincing than the last. And then came the Obama, the new man, energetic and resolute, and imposed on Binyamin Netanyahu a stop of the settlement enterprise for several months, and...well, nothing.

No peace initiative and no watermelons, as we say in Hebrew (borrowed from the Arabs). Watermelons have a short season.

SLOWLY BUT surely, even Goldmann began to despair of the mirage of US intervention.

In our conversations we tried to crack the code of this enigma. Why, for God's sake, did the Americans not do what logic dictated? Why didn't they put pressure on our government? Why didn't they make an offer that our leaders couldn't refuse? In short, why no effective peace initiative?

It could not be in the American national interest to follow a policy that made it a hate-object of the masses throughout the entire Arab and most of the Muslim world. Didn't the Americans understand that they were undermining their clients in every Arab country - as these rulers never tired of telling them at every meeting?

The most obvious reason was the growing power of the pro-Israel lobby, from the early 50s on. AIPAC alone has now more than 200 employees in seven offices throughout the US. Almost everyone in Washington DC lives in deadly fear of it. The Lobby can dethrone any senator or congressman who arouses its anger. Look at what is happening right now to Chuck Hagel, who dared to say the unthinkable: "I am an American senator, not an Israeli senator!"

The two professors, Mearsheimer and Walt, dared to say it: the pro-Israeli lobby controls American policy.

But this theory is not completely satisfying. What about the spying affair around Jonathan Pollard, who stays in prison for life in spite of immense Israeli pressure to release him?

Can a world power really be induced by a small foreign country and a powerful domestic lobby to act for decades against its basic national interest?

ANOTHER FACTOR often mentioned is the power of the arms industry.

When I was young, no one was more despised than the Merchants of Death. These days are long past. Countries - including Israel - pride themselves on selling arms to the most despicable regimes.

The US supplies us with huge quantities of the most sophisticated weapons. True, a lot of these come to us as a gift - but that doesn't change the picture. The arms producers are paid by the US government as a kind of New Deal public works project supported enthusiastically even (and especially) by the Republicans. After the arms are supplied to Israel, some Arab countries see themselves compelled to order huge quantities for themselves, for which they pay through the nose. See: Saudi Arabia.

This theory, which was once very popular, does not really satisfy either. No single industry is powerful enough to compel a nation to act against its own general interests for half a century.

THEN THERE is the "Common History" thing. The US and Israel are so much alike, aren't they? They have both displaced another people, and live on denial. Is there much difference between the Native-American naqba and the Palestinian one? Between the American and Zionist pioneers who struck roots in the wilderness and built a new nation? Do they not both base themselves on the same Old Testament and believe that God has given them their land (whether they believe in God or not)?

Do our settlers, who are creating a new Wild East in the occupied territories, not imitate the Wild West of American movies? A few days ago, Israel TV showed one Avri Ran, who declares himself "sovereign" of the West Bank, terrorizing both Palestinians and settlers, grabbing land irrespective of to whom it belongs, telling the army where to go and what to do, openly despising the Israeli and all other governments, and becoming a multi-millionaire in the process. Hollywood at its best.

But all this applies also to Australia (with whom we are quarreling at the moment), Canada, New Zealand and South American nations. Yet we don't have this kind of relationship with them.

Noam Chomsky, the brilliant linguistician, has another answer: Israel is just a lackey of American imperialism, serving its interest in this region. A kind of unsinkable aircraft-carrier. I don't quite see it that way. Israeli was not involved in the US action in Iraq, for example. If the American dog is wagging the Israeli tail, just as surely, the tail is wagging the dog.

NEITHER GOLDMANN nor I found a satisfactory answer to this riddle.

Eight months before his death, I received from him, quite unexpectedly, a surprising letter. Written in German (which we never spoke) on his stationery, it was a kind of apology: I had been right all along, no American peace initiative was to be expected, the rationale remained inexplicable.

The letter bears the date of January 30, 1982, five months before Ariel Sharon's bloody invasion of Lebanon, which was approved in advance by Alexander Haig, the then Secretary of State, and presumably by President Reagan too.

The letter was a response to an article I had written some days before in the magazine I edited, Haolam Hazeh, in which I asked: "Do the Americans really want peace?"

Goldmann wrote: "I, too, have already sometimes asked myself this question. Though one should not underestimate the lack of statesmanlike wisdom of American foreign policy makers ... I could write a whole book proving that America seriously wants peace, and another book showing that they do not want peace."

He mentioned America's fear of Soviet penetration of the Middle East, and their belief that peace is impossible without Russian participation. He also disclosed that a Russian diplomat had told him that there had been an American-Russian agreement to convene a peace conference in Geneva, but that Moshe Dayan had called upon the American Jews to sabotage it. The Russians were very angry.

Sprinkling names along the way, he summed up: "Without being quite sure, I would say at the moment that there is a combination of American diplomatic incompetence on one hand, a fear of Russian involvement in a peace on the other hand, added to the domestic fear of the pro-Israeli lobby, (which includes) not only the Jews but also (non-Jews) like Senator (Henry "Scoop") Jackson and others. (All these) seem to be the reasons for the complete lack of understanding and results of the American Middle East policy, for which Israel will pay heavily in the future."

EXCEPT FOR the decline of Russian influence, every word is valid today, 31 years later, on the eve of the Obama visit.

Again many Israelis and Palestinians hope for an American peace initiative, which will put pressure on both sides. Again the President denies any such intent. Again the results of the visit will probably be disappointment and despair.

To those who would argue that the notion of a perpetual motion machine is impossible, we give you the revolving door - that ever-spinning entrance and exit between public service in government and the hugely profitable private sector. It never stops.

Yes, we've talked about the revolving door until we're red or blue in the face (the door is bipartisan and spins across party lines) but this mantra bears its own perpetual repetition, a powerful reason for our distrust of the people who make and enforce our laws and regulations.

Jesse Eisinger, writing at The New York Times, reports that on January 25th, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid announced the appointment of Cathy Koch as his chief advisor on tax and economic policy. According to the Times, "The news release lists Ms. Koch's admirable and formidable experience in the public sector. 'Prior to joining Senator Reid's office,' the release says, 'Koch served as tax chief at the Senate Finance Committee.'"

But, Eisinger notes, the press statement fails to mention Ms. Koch's actual last job - as a registered lobbyist for GE. "Yes, General Electric," he writes, "the company that paid almost no taxes in 2010. Just as the tax reform debate is heating up, Mr. Reid has put in place a person who is extraordinarily positioned to torpedo any tax reform that might draw a dollar out of GE - and, by extension, any big corporation."

One other example cited in the Times article: Julie Williams, chief counsel for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency - "and a major friend of the banks for years" - has been forced out of the OCC by its new boss and is joining Promontory Financial Group, "a classic Washington creature that is a private sector mirror image of a regulatory body."

Promontory plays both sides of the field, helping financial companies hack their way through the bogs of regulation while simultaneously "helping" the OCC review said regulations - like the just abandoned Independent Foreclosure Review that essentially let the banks hire outside "experts" to decide who had been victimized by the banks' abuse of mortgages. Result: not a dime to affected homeowners but $1.5 billion in consulting fees to Promontory and other companies like it.

And get this: as Julie Williams exits OCC for Promontory, she will be succeeded as chief counsel by Amy Friend, former chief counsel of the Senate Banking Committee but currently a managing director at - wait for it - Promontory!

It's a wonder all of Washington doesn't lie prostrate in the streets, overcome by vertigo from all the spinning back and forth. But while we're at it, remember that this whirling frenzy isn't limited to the federal government. There are revolving doors installed at the exits and entrances of every state capitol in the country. The temptation for officeholders to seek greener pastures in lobbying can be even greater in statehouses where salaries are small and legislative sessions infrequent.

A quick search of newspapers around the country reveals how pernicious the problem is. On February 22, the Los Angeles Times reported "the abrupt resignation" of State Senator Michael J. Rubio to take a government affairs job with Chevron: "As chairman of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, Rubio was leading the charge to make California's environmental laws more business-friendly and has introduced bills during his two years in office that affect the oil industry in his Central Valley district."

A recent editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer points out that since the last session of the legislature there, Republican Harold Brubaker, former speaker of the North Carolina House; and Republican Richard Stevens, a ten-year veteran of the state senate, have become registered lobbyists: "Both men became experts in state spending by heading budget committees in their respective chambers... Top legislators-turned-hired-guns advising lawmakers sounds like an opening for well-funded interests to buy influence."

Florida, that inflamed big toe of American politics, is one of the worst offenders, even as the state debates a sweeping ethics reform bill that keeps in place a current law that prevents departing members from lobbying the legislature for a two-year "cooling off" period - but postpones for two years a similar ban on doing business with the governor and state agencies. Over the last two decades, the state has increasingly contracted government work - currently valued at $50 billion - to outside vendors.

Earlier this month, Mary Ellen Klas of The Miami Herald wrote, "The infusion of state cash into private and non-profit industries has spawned a cottage industry of lobbyists who help vendors manage the labyrinth of rules and build relationships with executive agency officers and staff so they can steer contracts to their clients."

"There are now more people registered to lobby the governor, the Cabinet and their agencies - 4,925 - than there are registered to lobby the 160-member Legislature - 3,235." Dozens of them are former legislators and staff members "as well as former utility regulators, agency secretaries, division heads and other employees."

Former Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon retired last November and has set up a lobbying shop just a block from the state capitol in Tallahassee. And former Senate President Mike Haridopolos, now a lobbyist, "used his influence to get lawmakers to insert millions into the budget at the final stage of the budget process to pay for a state law enforcement radio system the agencies didn't ask for, a juvenile justice contract that agency didn't seek and the extension of a contract to expand broadband service in rural areas."

You get the picture. In 15 states, according to the progressive Center for Public Integrity, "there aren't any laws preventing legislators from resigning one day and registering as lobbyists the next...In the most egregious cases, legislators or regulators have written laws or set policy that helps a business or industry with whom they have been negotiating for a job once they leave office." What's more, in many of the 35 states that do have restrictions, "the rules are riddled with loopholes, narrowly written or loosely enforced."

Which is why Glenn Harlan Reynolds, law professor, libertarian and head honcho of the political blog Instapundit, may be on to something. In a column for USA Today last month, he suggested, "...Let's involve the most effective behavior-control machinery in America: The Internal Revenue Code."

"In short, I propose putting 50% surtax - or maybe it should be 75%, I'm open to discussion - on the post-government earnings of government officials. So if you work at a cabinet level job and make $196,700 a year, and you leave for a job that pays a million a year, you'll pay 50% of the difference - just over $400,000 - to the Treasury right off the top. So as not to be greedy, we'll limit it to your first five years of post-government earnings; after that, you'll just pay whatever standard income tax applies."

The conservative Boston Herald endorsed the idea, comparing an ex-legislator or official's connections and knowledge to intangible capitol and Reynolds' scheme to a capital gains tax.

For some years, several times a week while driving to go shopping and do errands, I have listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Pretty much all the time I have become angered because every few sentences I realized that with his total sincerity and conviction he was stating absolutely incorrect things. Add to endless wrong information complete lapses in logic, causing me to be bewildered that Limbaugh has reached such success. My only explanation is that he appeals to a very large number of ignorant and unintelligent people who, like religious zealots, remain enraptured by his ultra-ring wing rhetoric. What a surprise therefore that recently Limbaugh has been speaking relentlessly about "information poor" Americans as his pseudo brilliant explanation of why President Obama has succeeded.

Two things stand out. First, he clearly refuses to face the reality that it is his incredibly loyal audience that must be information poor to readily accept all the falsehoods he dishes out daily.

Here are just two simple example of intentional misinformation and disinformation he has dispensed, like the proverbial Kool-Aid keeping his listeners doped up. He recently was admonishing President Obama for doing terrible things or not doing the right things and in his routinely glib, smooth style spoke of the five years of the Obama presidency. This happened at about 10 percent into Obama's second term, in other words some weeks, or about 90 percent less than the full fifth year of the Obama presidency. How could an honest, fair person so easily state to his vast audience that there had already been five years of Obama as president? And yet, there it was. I quickly realized that this specific event was just part of the normal design of the ludicrous Limbaugh rhetoric, actually propaganda designed to maintain the conservative idiocy of his loyal audience.

And then today I heard Limbaugh refer to the settlement of Minnesota by the Vikings. As usual I shook my head in disbelief. I could not imagine how the Vikings had managed to get so far inland when they had hit North America around the year 1000. So when I got home I did some easy research on the web and, of course, verified that I was correct to disbelieve what Limbaugh had said. The Vikings discovered Eastern Canada, not what is now defined as Minnesota. But like everything else Limbaugh mutters he conveys a complete sense of honesty, correctness and conviction, despite being totally wrong. Does Limbaugh connect the Minnesota Vikings to historical fact? Perhaps he has learned from many years of astounding radio success that he can say just about anything and get away with it.

Now for my major point about information poor people that he now talks about endlessly. Limbaugh has shown semantic creativity in expressing racist thinking. When he uses the presence of many millions of information poor Americans to explain Obama and Democratic successes he has devised yet another way to attack African Americans and Hispanic Americans that, indeed, are demographic realities causing failure for Romney and other Republicans. Moreover, it is also apparent that Limbaugh does not appeal to the poorest Americans who he routinely condemns for living off of government handouts.

I suspect that if there were good data about the demographics of the Limbaugh audience they would reveal, like those voting for Romney, that it consists mostly of older, higher income white American men. Well, turns out there is some decent information.

As to the listeners of Limbaugh's daily radio show, according to a 2008 news media consumption survey conducted by PewResearch, 72 percent are male and 80 percent are conservative. About three-quarters of his listeners identify themselves as Tea Partiers and Christian Conservatives. In other words, Limbaugh does not change the thinking of people, he appeals to a mindset and gives those people exactly what they like. Another source says his audience is 95 percent white and two-thirds earn more than $60k a year with the majority earning over $100k a year. In other words, not only is his audience mostly white men, they are also in the upper parts of the economic spectrum (I suspect mostly small business types who may have learned how to make money but nevertheless are quite ignorant and prejudiced.)

As to his website, according to quantcast.com (as of March 3, 2012) the vast majority of visitors to RushLimbaugh.com are aging white males: 54 percent are 45 and older, with 28 percent 55 and older, and 91 percent are Caucasian.

So here is a radio god whose success depends on having information poor people as addicted listeners using the same concept to condemn those minority Americans he aggressively blames for the ruin of the nation because they vote for Democrats. And of course with his male dominated audience he has shown himself to be rude and worse towards women, another demographic that Republicans have lost.