Crowley taught a course on racial profiling???!!! Wow. With that kind of teacher, no wonder race relations in the U.S. are still in the toilet.

Good morning everyone.

GoodMorning, Local Elvis impersonator on my TV; hysterical. Doing a promotion for local food bank….”At least please telephone” Fun.

NPR: Big story on Obama and the cop. Endlessly stupid. Happy Friday.

My favorite news story of the day is the arrests of 40 notables in NJ for corruption.

Mika thinks it’s gender,

Endlessly stupid.

Not necessarily so. The remnants of racism in this country need to be flushed out and exposed to the glaring sun.

Huh?

She has seen what happens when 2 men get their backs up.

Mornin’, BT, pups

The GOP being opportunistic. Something the Dems have yet to learn. To paraphrase Trotsky, the difference between an evolutionary and a revolutionary is that the revolutionary takes advantage of opportunities as they arise. The Dems, with the exception of the more progressive elements, have an evolutionary “let’s wait and see what happens” attitude.

OK. Coffee’s gone, headlines on democracynow are over. Getting going. Be well.

Got it.

“Endlessly stupid”?/s

Thank god noted race relations expert rush limbaugh has offered his considerable insights on the subject.

Good morning all.

That serves the bad guys well. They’d love for us to drop everything and make race, abortion, guns to be the issue which has to be solved before we can go on with the dinky stuff like healthcare, education, the economy. They’ve been making faces, screaming, mooning, everything they can think of to bring back these wedge issues which have served them well.

Was anyone else a bit astonished at Schuster getting into an argument with Charlie Pierce last night?

The problem is the Dems will do nothing to counter the wedge issues. They’ll leave it up to folks like Brave New Films and the Lake to do the dirty work then take credit for it during next year’s campaigns.

Maybe he was teaching how it should be done?

which have served them well

Noticed you used the past perfect tense. The flat-earthers may not believe in evolution, but demographic conditions are evolving. What worked in the past is DOA in the future.

What worked in the past is DOA in the future.

I don’t think that’s entirely true in the Old South. The world’s largest Confederate battle flag flies over a “memorial for Confederate soldiers” in Tampa. An AA former state appellate court judge has just been indicted on fraud charges. The Rethugs here will make as much veiled hay out of this as they can.

That works for me. There is hardly anyone in Congress who can be trusted to address sensitive issues like race. It’s best left for the vanguard (the groups you mention) to do the heavy lifting.

It’s their death rattle.

Outside of Ted Kennedy and Bernie Sanders I don’t trust a one of them. Period.

LOL. You must not live here.

The election of Obama was huge on that score. Obama’s people assiduously downplayed it during the campaign. He would never have been elected if he had a chip on his shoulder and declared his objective was to end raciism, increase affirmative action, etc. Everything else will fall apart if we get diverted again onto those issues.

Watching Obama the other night, I told my wife, “You know, I’ve subconsciously started to think of myself as being black, because I just can’t stand anything about those nasty bastards on the other side.”

As a furriner, it is an eye opening, even sobering, experience for me to see the “greatest country in the world” is also the most racist aided by the media. Pathetic to see no dem surrogates stand up for their own president.

If indeed Obama fails and if 2012 is indeed his waterloo, guess the americans deserve what comes to them. No skin off his nose. He’ll still survive and flourish

From 8 til noon on Sundays my community radio station has what is called the Power Block. 4 hours of AA talk programming. Quite enlightening at times. There is a lot of anger within the AA community here. Community groups are beginning to band together along issue lines rather than racial lines. Scares the livin’ hell out of the PTB.

I confess I have never lived in the South. Understanding bigotry is outside of my frame of reference.

To your list, I would add Sheldon Whitehouse and Al Franken.

I’m impressed with Whitehouse. I’ll have be evolutionary and wait and see what Franken does.

I think a lot of progressives misjudge the tenous nature of a Democratic majority in the last two elections. I think there is a very large part of the electorate which barely follows the issues, latches on to the common wisdom as seen or heard on TV and radio, votes because they think they are supposed to, and will turn on a dime. It may be different in other parts of the country, and you may run into progressives everywhere you turn, but I don’t see it that way in the south, southwest, mountain states, and parts of the midwest. Many states still have a progressive state university town, where progressive dominate. It’s usually referred to as the “Republic of Austin, Boulder, Missoula”, etc, to set it apart from the “mainstream”.

The birther theory is simply a way to deny the reality that the United States of America has a black president. That reality is too painful for a certain fragment of our population to accept, and no amount of evidence will ever change their minds.

AA? Please help and pardon the ignorance.

I was the first of my family born outside of South Carolina in over 250 years. I grew up with it. Luckily I had a high school history teacher who set me straight.

Sorry. African American. You’ll see it a lot on the blogs.

Like much of the BigMedia, Lynn Sweet, who asked the Gates question, has been pissed at Obama for quite some time because he doesn’t kiss their ass and play their silly little reindeer games. She’s had it out for him for awhile.

She got her chance, and there’s no easier path to zaniness than to bring up racial issues, so hence Lynn’s question knowing it was basically a no-win situation for the O-man. Reverend Wright, anyone?

No doubt she’s had a permanent smirk on her face since then, and it would be nice to not play into her and the rest of BigMedia’s hands. We must maintain focus on the once-in-a-lifetime political opportunities we have before us at this very moment. We’ve moved the pendulum considerably to the Left these last few years and still have so far to go, so let’s stay on task!

To be honest what I know of Gatesgate I garnered from online news sites. Seeing this kind of behaviour locally I didn’t think much about it.

The changing demographics do not have so much to do with the propagaton of progress thought as with the influx and propagation of non-whites (primarily Latinos). In the not too distant future, Caucasians will be a minority.

Latinos seem to have little interest in flying the Confederate flag.

Duh! Not really awake yet I guess.

I have long been of the opinion that it would take 2 generations of focused education to make a dent in the underlying, entrenched, lovingly embraced racism in the southern U.S. Those that don’t live here can’t imagine the depth of it.

So the Scientologist interviewer who pals around with secessionist almost-former governors is questioning the mango from north miama with a stone pit for a heart about chips on shoulders? Hmmmmm, maybe one of his concierge docs can opine as well.

This BigMedia fixation on Gates, at the expense of details of the health insurance overhaul, is a very conscious and welcomed event for the BigMedia owners. Anyone seen much BigMedia coverage of the CBO final report which said the health care reform proposed will create a surplus? Not me…

There were so many times like this during the campaign where many, especially around here, went all chicken-little about the wheels coming off the Obamatrain. In basically every one of those cases, Obama rode it out and had a longer term strategy of dealing with it. He’s proven very successful at managing situations exactly like we’re dealing with on this Gates/BigMedia deal. I’m interested in seeing what he’s got up his sleeve.

I agree. The Cuban Americans in south FL are, for the most part, ignoring the old moustache petes who have supported and encouraged the Cuban embargo and other sanctions.

On edit: Plus the old Batista supporters are dying off. Former FL House Speaker Rubio, who’s carrying the uberreichwing banner, is not faring as well as he thought he might amongst his fellow CAs.

Although Obama’s accomplishment of becoming America’s first melanin-enhanced President will speed up that change tremendously I think. Perhaps one generation or less now, since it seems the work of previous generation on the “racial” divides was already beginning to pay dividends.

I also trust Russ Feingold, although I’ve not heard any positions on race issues.

I don’t mean want to get snarky, but except for time spent in the service, and a couple of two-year residences in Louisiana, I’ve lived in Texas all of my life. I’m fairly familiar with hispanic politics and voting patterns. While they trended Democratic recently, as a group, they are not reliably left of center. Some of their heritage is very conservative.

Frankly, if you’re willing to throw the dice based on your belief that there has been an incontrovertable change in the electorate, based on demographic changes, and conservatives/reactionaries have seen the last of their power, I think that’s hubris that puts the 1994 Gingrich group to shame.

I’ve been on board with about everything you’ve said for the past couple of weeks. Your last comment is also my perception and hope.

Understood that Latinos are very conservative, but that does not mean they can be engaged in white v. black race-baiting.

Into the demographic mix is the use if this here media. The spew that is being generated by the MSM is being mistrusted by increasing numbers of people. Not saying brain-washing will be eliminated, but the liars will need to work a lot harder.

Likewise. Thanks.

Morning all,
Oldnslow: I have traveled through the south and spent some time there. Many of the places in the south cannot hold a candle to the racism is SD.
The EOC issued a report about the situation there in 2001 and said that nothing had changed there in the preceding 20 years

Okay. I’ve been around the block a few times and don’t know if I’ve ever convinced any adult of anything. If the wheels come off of all progressive efforts because we start trying to extinguish racism, or get rid of all guns and ammo, or convince every American that they need to accept a woman’s right to choose, I ask you to remember it. Then, if you’re around the next time we get a chance to do other things, you won’t take the bait again.

Can’t consider Feingold trustworthy because of his inappropriately close ties to Israel,

Texas Board of Education attempting, right now, today, to remove the names of Thurgood Marshall and Ceasar Chavez from history textbooks. Not seeing a whole bunch of progress here.

You gotta quit sayin’ my place is racist. *g*

Hell, with the new Superintendent I thought they were gonna do away with textbooks altogether and replace them with the Old Testament.

That’s the direction all right.

Christy’s upstairs…

Don’t quite follow your argument, but I don’t see any need to convince or strongarm anyone of anything. Progressives present ideas because they make sense, and they appeal to the reasonable judgements of others to get them to agree. It the opposition succeeds in a given election because of ruthless tactics, the progressive position is not affected by it. It will continue its appeal to reason the next election cycle.

I really feel for the students in TX. These poor kids are gonna end up with the worst education possible.

Just leftovers fighting for every last bit they can get. Not to be so morbid, but I feel like the Fox Newz audience, they’re just going to have to die off (yes, they’ve infected some younger people still, but they’re numbers are so small in the younger generations).

Nothing’s going to change their minds now, and their whole way of thinking and life is completely threatened now, so they’re feeling back into a corner and will lash out like never before. Just like a rat.

I’m afraid you will be almost correct. Don’t like those taxes, you know, esp. for $$ to go to all the illegals who may be in our schools. Yes, self-defeating, but we’ve got GuvBig-Hair to show us the way.

What I was asking you to do is to remember, if you see it occur, conservatives have found that reason goes out the window on certain issues. If those become the basis of an election, reason is portrayed as elitist and a big part of the electorate swings off to the right. Some of the problems we have now help focus people on reason, but that degenerates fast once people start calling names. Otherwise, there would have been no Civil War, no U.S.-Mexico War, no Spanish-American War, no Great Red Scare, no McCarthy Era, no George W. Bush Administration. Review the attention given to reason in those events.

Have a nice day.

By electing Obama as president I figured we’d see smoother race relations but it seems to have gone in just the opposite direction. It’s certainly has nothing with what Obama has done but……….
There was the Gates thing of course and more obscure things like the City of Detroit complaining about malt liquor ads.
It’s all strange and sad.
By the way this may be a bit unrelated but did anyone hear why the Black Pathers in Phily got off on the voter intimidation charges? I never heard a good explanation.

The problem with the TX BoE changing the textbooks is that as goes Texas (in re textbooks) so go many other states. If they succeed in making the textbooks here reflect their ideology or religious beliefs, that change will have a huge impact on education across the country (and yes, they know it – that’s why they’re doing it here-now). By undermining reality-based education in TX, they undermine it elsewhere. The thing is that many other states’ textbooks are the ones approved by the TX BoE!

Very well said!

I loved that one too.
Crime does not pay….or at least not for very long.

You’ve got a fascinating- and terrifying!- point! If this is the situation, then what can we, as progressives, do to counterbalance it?

It’s a little late to respond to you, but yes, I was outraged with Shuster,who would not let his guest Charlie Pierce finish one sentence. Pierce was trying to make the point that it wasn’t just the internet that make these outrageous stories flourish, it was the media who embemlishes and keeps stories alive. When he made reference to Whitewater and Swiftboat, Shuster would have none of it (he’s media, of course) and took over the whole conversation and steered it to the conclusion he(Shuster) wanted. I used to respect him, but he isn’t a very good journalist. Not like Rachel Maddow — not even close.