Mike Stark is the KING!

Revisiting the Prof. Gates/Crowley the Cop incident, it might not be so much of a race issue as a class issue. The officer in this case is a member of the servant class, responding to a call to protect the property of a member of the ruling class (Prof. Gates). After putting himself to a small degree of risk ensuring that the professor’s property is not being engangered, instead of receiving the expected expression of gratitute, he is met with verbal abuse. His response was an expression of his resentment of his treatment by the Master, a role reversal of the Deep South paradigm.

Max Baucus isn’t the only one that needs to go. Reid should be given his walking papers if it is possible for him to walk without a spine.

Actually, race does enter into it a bit, because this is Boston, after all. South Boston resisted, in many cases violently, integrated schools and busing back in the ’70s and a lot of the people who couldn’t handle it moved out to suburbs like (drum roll, please) Cambridge.

And BT provides us with this little tidbit as well, from a Boston cop:

An officer in the Boston Police Department has been suspended after allegedly writing a racially charged e-mail about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to colleagues at the National Guard, a law enforcement official said.

The law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Officer Justin Barrett referred to the black scholar as a “jungle monkey’’ in the letter, written in reaction to news coverage of Gates’s arrest July 16. Barrett was suspended Tuesday, pending a termination hearing.

Funny thing: When picking their Senate leadership, Republicans go for people sitting in safe seats, like Mitch McConnell. Dems go for guys in seats that hang by a thread instead of safe seats like Schumer’s or Kennedy’s.

Think the dust up was as much ego as race. When Crowley said keep the cars coming he already knew Gates was in his own home and I seriously doubt he was in fear of personal harm. It was about intimidation. Gates was ultimately arrested for contempt of cop. However contempt of cop is not illegal – stupid maybe but not illegal.

PW – need to separate what Barrett wrote and what happened in South Boston in the ’70s from what happened at the Gates home. No one is disputing that racism is very much alive in the Boston area today. My argument is that Officer Crowley’s response to Gates might not have been an expression of deep-seated racism as much an class resentment. My take is that the officer would have responded in the same way if the professor were white.

So Congressional progressives are FINALLY figuring out the Bush Dogs comprise your basic Eisenhower Republican wing on the Democratic Party? I’ll believe any actual pushback when I see it happen since the usual reply to the Dogs is “Thank you sir! May I have another?”

And when it comes to beer, make mine a Leinenkuegel Summer Shandy.

Mornin’, BT, pups

Gettin’ ready to make our presence and demands for single payer known to Nelson, Castor and Young when the recess starts next week. I’ve an idea that the congressmorons are gonna be glad when recess is over and they no longer have to deal with the adults of their district/state.

Wonder who’s gonna do the beer run this afternoon.

No offense to the Jamaican bros, but I’ll pass on the Red Stripe.

I thought Sherrod Brown was good last night on reassuring those starting to get demoralized over Baucus, et. al.. I have some concern because the entire health care issue amounts to a P.R. matter. There will be no election and it will boil down to what congressmen and senators think their constituents will support. Polls play a big role in assessment of opinion and progressives who “do not favor Obama’s handling of health care” come out as a statistic opposed to health care reform. Independents and the mildly interested start to see it as a lost cause.

Linus Max Baucus thinks he is finally going to get to kick the football.

I suppose Barack figured he better pick an American beer to keep the wingers quiet, even if his choice DOES taste like a pitcher of warm…spit.

Normally, I like a beer my pocketknife will stand up in all by itself, but that Shandy I had last night with some fresh-caught walleye was pretty darned good. I always figure beer ought to have some flavor; otherwise, just cut to the chase and drink lab alcohol.

The mildly interested believe the polls, independents not so much, me not at all. Pollsters are pretty much limited to folks with land line. Many of the younger generation I know don’t have a land line, they’re strictly cell. I want to see what happens during the recess.

There are some local PA brews that are cut above warm… spit. If Obama chooses to go American to keep the wingers quiet, he’ll get no complaints from Crowley the Cop or the Harvard Guy if his cooler is filled with one of them.

American beer sucks.

Mornin’ Blue Tex and Firedogs,

CT,

he had me at “phony co-ops!” . easily the most honest 5 min from any Senate Dem in this fight I’ve seen to date.

Not surprised Obama picked a tasteless “beer” manufactured by a multi-national corporation as opposed to a hand crafted entrepenurial brew.

They’re limited to folks with a land line who are willing to participate in polls. If I answer the phone I’ll tolerate being polled, Mr. Marion in Savannah hangs up on them.

Try some Shiner Black Lager!

From the tale end of the first story:

“That’s as close as you can get to totally removing the mandate without removing it,” Ross said. “Quite frankly, once you get up to three-quarter million a year in annual payroll, as a former small business owner myself, most of them are already providing health insurance, and if they’re not, they should.”

Of course, Ross does not mention he was a former pharmacy owner!

saw yesterday the folks planning to protest at Camp Baucus next week are calling it the “Buy Back Baucus! tour – with a How Much Will It Take, Max ?!?!? theme

Yup. If stupidity were a crime George W. Bush would have spent his entire adult life in jail.

Boston was also the last major league baseball team to include black players. Pumpsie Green was their first(1959?). Before that Pumpsie was very popular with the Minneapolis Millers, a AAA team.

Beer’s like everything else; you can find the good stuff if you look hard enough. Me, I’ve got the genetic predisposition where hops just don’t taste good, so I like beers that aren’t hoppy at all, so it takes some serious experimentation to find what I like. It’s a brutal, exacting process, tasting all those beers, one after the other, but I’m willing to put the time and effort into it, sometimes staying up well after my normal bedtime and even resampling different brews time after time to make absolutely sure they don’t meet my exacting standards. It’s hard being a perfectionist, but that’s just the way I roll.

Roger that. He’s the old fashioned kind that I like.

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All the latest horrible news. Not safe for the nursery…

Or the stables.
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You’re probably right about following the polls, but the MSM uses the polls as theme. Last night, MSNBC (like it or not the most pro-left) repeatedly played the theme of sinking faith in Obama. That does become the conventional wisdom the independents and barely insterested accept as fact. It morphs from “Obama losing on health care,” to “why did Obama and the Democrats fail,”, to “can the Republicans retake Congress”, etc., etc.. I know plenty of people who then just accept that as fact, feel obligated to vote like going to church on Easter, and we end up with George Bush or Sarah Palin.

Embedding disabled??? What’s that all about?

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

Coming in late as usual, but I just have to comment on the newest manifestation of Boston cops’ racism.
Btw, the discussion earlier, especiallly at bmaz’s posts at Marcy’s place, included considerable discussion of the roles of class and ego in the arrest of Prof. Gates. I am sure all three were included, but I am absolutely certain that if Prof. Gates were white, he would not
have been arrested.

As for the comment that we have to separate the busing violence in the ’70’s in Boston from the Gates arrest — that’s a crock of you-know-what.
It’s all of a piece. I’m sure Sgt. Crowley believes he is not racist – but his behavior (and we’ve now heard the tape of his calling for “keeping the cars coming, and get the Harvard Police here), with none of the evidence we would supposedly hear of the Professor yelling and “being tumultuous” in the background).
He wanted the Harvard Police because he wanted verification that Gates really was a Harvard professor. A Harvard i.d. just wasn’t enough.

I’m afraid that this new email by the Boston cop is just more evidence of the mind-set of too many people in Boston-Cambridge-surrounding areas. Yes, it is partly class, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t racist.

Notice, please, at BT’s link, that the cop and his lawyer are usinng much of the same language: he didn’t mean to offend anyone, “I didn’t mean it in a racist way”—WTF? How else can you possibly mean “jungle monkey”? He says he meant it to apply to behavior – again, WTF?

So sorry, but if you haven’t spent time or have some real knowledge of Boston, more than what you read in the news, you don’t understand the complicated class and race attitudes that contribute to this kind of behavior.
I spent nearly a decade there, including much of the ’70’s. By the time that began, I was appalled but not really surprised. Yes, the reaction by Southie residents was strongly about class, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also deeply racist. And it may have faded in public, but the feelings and attitude have not gone away. It’s related to the Southern attitude of poor white people, that goes back to slavery: “I may be poor, the rich may look down on me, but I can still look down on black people.”

Okay, I’m going on too long, but this issue hits me hard. I lived through the civl rights movement, watching Bull Connor’s dogs and fire hoses, and through the ’70’s busing; I started out in the South and moved North, and am back in the South. Trust me, these things are not simple. And they are not “not-racist.”