Good morning, everyone!

I just wanted to put all of the past week’s revelatory racist behavior by the members of the self-styled Morality Party into one post. It makes the point for me.

It succeeded very well in cutting the taxes on the rich and on corporations, but that success came at the price of poisoning the minds of the Republicans, from the lowliest grunt worker to elite-level opinion controllers like Noonan and Carlson, with the deep-set sickness of bigotry.

I’m quite certain that the rich and corporations don’t care as long as they get their tax cuts. If they did care, then these people would be singing a different party line.

These comments from right wingers to reframe the issue are necessary in order for their fellow travellers to justify their own racism. Because racism is one of the worst things one can be called in US culture, and because not admitting to their own racism discloses a fundamental dishonesty and cognitive dissonance by many right wing racists, they have to rationalize their position. What a surprise that they would do so in an objectifying way.

I hear this from them every time the issue is brought up: “I’m not racist. I just don’t like people who are not like me.” Indeed. Then I wait fro their heads to explode. But they never do.

Re “President Obama’s interest in the victims of violence is selective: he cares if they look like the hypothetical son he doesn’t have.”

Obviously, Hinderaker is not paying attention to the US prison population or the Africans Obama has murdered.

If only they would focus that verbal hatred at the injustice and downfall of our country.

I guess they continue to think they are above, beyond, and will never have a reason to question the legitimate reasons of their own future.

UGH….this country is falling apart.

Indeed. What the likes of Reynolds spout is immaterial for the ruling class.

Re the quote: I suspect it worked the other way. A poisoned mind is the prerequisite for unbalanced, maldistributed wealth and power that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

There are some, like Scarborough, who if nothing else understand how bad this all looks to the general public. The others? Not so much.

As with so many of the Republicans’ hate-filled responses, this stirs up haters but is not a recipe for electoral victory. Today–I recently read–white people comprise 20% of the planetary population; within 20 years, 12%. The change is not only coming, it is here, and their privilege is diminishing. The Tea Party is the last gasp of a people whose system, world view, and philosophy are all bankrupt. Too bad that Obama, too, has to rep that system, in all its murderous glory.

Obama’s statement about Trayvon was, oddly, one of the few times when I thought he was NOT being simply narcissistic but really speaking from his gut. As a white man, father of a mixed-race child, I appreciated it.

There’s a huge live oak downtown that some students recently identified as the lynching tree–on at least four occasions white Tallahasseans dragged black men out of the local jail there and hanged them, and partied into the night in celebration. They’ll only get their tree back over my dead body–there are more of us than them.

If our collective reaction across the political spectrum to the Martin killing is any indication of the quality of US culture, then the sooner the better.

The only one of these remarks that surprised me was the one by Joe Scarborough. It must have been preceded by a very loud popping sound.

That’s why he’s so dangerous, PW.

I love this. The left gets caught leaning the wrong way, just like with the Duke rape case, and you want a redo. So far every lefty race-baiter has egg on their face, and demonstrated a truly cynical attitude toward the real victim here, George Zimmerman.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Wrong. He’s the assassin you must be delirious or something.

“So far every lefty race-baiter has egg on their face”-shoot . Not yet until the fat lady sings then you may be wiping egg off of your face.

I don’t know if these people are racist or not. This is more about political expediency. The economy is getting better so now it’s time to find something else. First, they tried the old tried and true, the cultural wars. Unfortunately for them, a good part of America doesn’t want to hear it anymore and it is actually hurting the Republican brand. Next up is the racists and the 2nd amendment crowd. We’ll see how that plays out, but I think it will backfire and we’ll see these “stand your ground” laws being repealed or shelved. What we don’t need is a bunch of rednecks running around with guns thinking they have a license to kill if somebody looks at them funny. Look how fast Jeb and Rubio have been running from their promotions of these ridiculous laws.

These people are really desperate. If Obama came out and said the sky is blue, Romney would come out immediately and say it was an environmental plot and he would be happy with a black or yellow sky. That what all of this has devolved into.

Pretty funny how the Republicans now want some some form of path to citizenship for illegals. The last 3 years they’ve been railing about walls and deportation. Romney’s of course spilt the baby and came out for self-deportation. They read the polls. See that the Latino vote could destroy them and they get worried and try to make nice. Of course, if they win the White House it all goes on the back burner and we see more talk about walls.

Thing is, the Republicans shied away from openly courting racists, especially in the former Confederate states, for a long time. But they got tired of being beaten by FDR and then Truman in presidential elections, and seeing these two presidents enact reforms that actually forced rich people and corporations to pay serious amounts of taxes. So they turned to enflaming and cultivating racial hatreds in order to start winning elections again so they could better serve their corporate masters.

Strom Thurmond — who actually ran for president on a segregationist platform in 1948, once Truman made it clear he was going to start pushing the civil rights initiatives that FDR had to forego or soft-pedal in order to keep Southern congresscritters from rejecting the New Deal — was the test case. He switched parties, and while it took another decade for other Dixiecrats to join him in large numbers, by the time of the mid-’70s the switch was in full swing.

LBJ himself said, when signing the Civil Rights Act, that in doing so he had just lost the South for a generation. Shortly thereafter, Nixon and his big-business backers unleashed the Southern Strategy in its full-blown form. The rest you all know because you’ve been forced to live it.

Good Morning PW. Good article. Good question. My flip answer is money. http://www.salon.com/2012/03/29/americas_bankrupt_morality/?source=newsletter After all racism in this country has its roots in cheap labor through a system called slavery.

But the question deserves more serious consideration. We have always had and always will have ignorant mean racists and greedy charlatans. But the GOP has glorified the traits feeding such and called it Godly Free Market and make it a moral and religious code. Paul Ryan pursuing his obsession embracing the immorality of compassion and giving to others is no less religious than the evangelicals and their Calvinism tagging the poor as deserving of their state.

They do not represent just another political party because their ideas and practices are contagious. I have as have many of us been observing for the past 30-40 years the gradual infection of the moderate middle class and liberal progressive intellectuals with acceptance as common knowledge the most radical racist and fascist ideas of the past 100 years.

So Shooter, if George Zimmerman really was beaten to a bloody pulp, why did he refuse medical attention?

If your fellow Republicans are totally in the right, why do you rely on Nazis like the Stormfront crowd to fake your evidence for you?

If Zimmerman’s ever-shifting story is true, why did his lawyer chicken out at the last second from facing Lawrence O’Donnell?

Also, have you ever seen so many police NOT wearing gloves touching and handling a person covered with blood?

Where is the blood? If not Zimmerman’s Trayvon Martin’s, shot fatally at close range?

That’s not really true. It was the moderate Republicans that got the 1965 Civil Rights act passed. Don’t forget the Dixiecrats were then a part of the Democrat Party. It was in deference to them that Kennedy took so long to find his voice on Civil Rights.

Nixon wasn’t a racist. He was just interested in political power. The Republicans were facing the fact that they were looking at becoming a permanent minority party. The party opened its arms to the Dixiecrats. The Democrats imploded over the war in Vietnam and Tricky Dick was elected and are politics have gotten only worse ever since. Reagan was the first to reach out to religious voters. Karl Rove thought he could cement the Democrats into a permanent minority party using the religous right and the racists, but he chose Dubya to be President and the whole thing fell apart

The Republican Party now consists of mostly racists, Bible Thumpers, and of course, the wealthy, who are pulling all the strings. What were seeing is that alliance starting to show signs of cracks and if we’re lucky it’s going to implode.

Now, they’ve included rampant misogyny into the mix.

So Shooter, if George Zimmerman really was beaten to a bloody pulp, why did he refuse medical attention?

Not only is George Zimmerman the gun-toting racist darling of the right, he’s also a warrior in the anti-Obamacare phalanx – he even refuses health care!

(snark)

They may be imploding but only because the Democrats have accepted most of their positions, especially the religious fervor of Randian economics.

That’s what is typically left out of discussions of the Southern Strategy: The motive for its use is money.

It’s not just about racists being racists, or about Republicans catering to bigotry just to win votes. It’s about using racism to trick white working-class and middle-class voters into voting for policies that hurt them and help those who are already rich and want to get richer at the rest of America’s expense.

Or, as Reagan strategist Lee Atwater put it back in 1981:

”You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Ni–er, ni–er, ni–er.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘ni–er’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

”And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Ni–er, ni–er.”’

See what they did? They — as Atwater himself states — cloaked racism in other language, particularly fiscal language. And by masquerading as “deficit hawks” when out in public, they were able to dodge accusations of racism, and even to get their disguised racism to be accepted by many foolish “third way” types.

But now, now that they feel their oats (as Shooter just showed), they are starting to say and do in public what they say and do in private — and that is their collective Achilles heel.

That’s one thing about this extended GOP primary season: The longer it goes on, the longer that “respectable” mainstream Republicans like Carlson and Noonan and Hinderaker and Reynolds will be catering even more blatantly to the racism they’ve spent their careers nurturing, the longer Romney and Santorum and Gingrich have to spend wearing the virtual white hoods, and the harder it will be for whoever wins to believably pivot back to sanity in time for the general election.

Project much, troll-boy?

So Shooter, if George Zimmerman really was beaten to a bloody pulp, why did he refuse medical attention?

And why does the police video show no blood or pulp? Shitter242 is not just a troll–he’s the kind of troll who thinks everyone else is as stupid as he is.

Notice that there aren’t any more moderate Republicans, busher?

That’s because the signing of the act was, as LBJ knew it would be, the thing that allowed Nixon to roll out a full-bore use of Southern Strategy in 1968, and for Republicans to rely on it ever since. The Dixiecrats were welcomed into the GOP with open arms, and the Party of Lincoln became the Party of Thurmond and Duke.

It’s been 10-12 days since I posited that Zimmerman would be a police cadet or close. Cha-ching! That he would be an informant. Cha-ching! That he would be given cover by the Sanford police; I called it immunity. Cha-ching!( 32 days and counting w/out charges) I’m no lucky guesser or visionary. Hardly. But I have read a newspaper for 55 years. I have seen the police in action and come to some conclusions about what goes on in the real world.( Their world is only one that counts here. ) How County and State Attys go about their business regarding the poor and minority communities. And how politicians and judges perpetuate and endorse the Sanford police depts all over this country. I’ll also venture to speculate that if and when we find out who was in that meeting, where Zimmerman was let go, some very, very ugly stuff will emerge. Stuff that would make the mafia proud and should make the average citizen scared as hell. And the ugly stuff goes on all over this country, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. And as long as property rights( ” your hood “, your turf, ” your ground ” ) is more valuable than people it won’t end. White flight is only an option for the wealthier among us these days. For Zimmerman, and his enablers, they’ve decided ” not another inch in retreat ” is the answer.

That’s another ill effect of decades of being marinated in racism: Cognitive dissonance.

Either that, or Shooter knows that since he can’t use honest, fact-based arguments to defend his fellow Republicans not named Joe Scarborough, he has to drop into the sort of nonsensical non-sequitur-filled word salad that inspired Wolfgang Pauli’s famous “not even wrong” comment.

I think this extended Republican primary has been a godsend for Democrats. The Republican watched the Democratic primary in 2008, which was a battle of ideas, and they thought a similar debate would be benefical. What they didn’t realize is their candidates are a bunch of clowns and the longer Republican policies are debated the more voters realize what a disaster their ideas are.

Funny thing is they actually beieve their own BS. Remember when they rushed to pass a law about Terry Shivao? They thought that’s what America wanted. Turns out Americans don’t like the idea of government getting involved in a deeply personal decision. Especially when the decision had already been ligitated thorough the courts and had been vetted by many doctors who actually examined the patient. Dubya deluded himself into believing Americans could be wordsmithed into privatizing Social Security. WRONG!. Now they’ve deluded themselves into believingthat Americans really down deep want the Ryan budget. Like a crooked salesman, they only have to find the right words in the right script.

and demonstrated a truly cynical attitude toward the real victim here, George Zimmerman.

Yeah, that “lefty press” had me thinking for a while that Trayvon Martin was the one who was dead while the ‘real victim’, Zimmerman very much alive and well. Shows you just can’t trust them, I guess.

I’m sure as the “real victim”, George Zimmerman would happily exchange places with Trayvon given half a chance.

-stewartm, snark.

Beautifully described. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Not long ago one of my most liberal activist and most wealthy friends wryly acknowledged that when it comes to money most of their super wealthy friends are Randians at heart.

What also I think needs to be talked about is the liberal/Democractic propensity to embrace some of these notions of human nature requiring manipulation by “incentives” to do the right thing, the talk of “low information” voters and the plethora of brain studies that suggest political ideology is anatomic and inequality is inherent. I find it disturbing and of course anti-democratic, racist and as well as bad information.

There are some, like Scarborough, who if nothing else understand how bad this all looks to the general public. The others? Not so much.

Why should they care? They are never made to pay for what they say. The right-wing press insulates and protects its own. Lie through your teeth and get caught doing so, and they’ll just raise the noise level until it’s forgotten. The fact that the whole conservative talking head brigade all have histories of saying some whoppers doesn’t disqualify them as being “sage statesmen” for the TeeVee news shows.

-stewartm, after all, we gotta be “Fair and Balanced”…

Not long ago one of my most liberal activist and most wealthy friends wryly acknowledged that when it comes to money most of their super wealthy friends are Randians at heart.

That’s true insofar Frothy’s religious crusade and its throng of faithful as well as racism. Like Rand herself, they just don’t care about any of that stuff, despite their public embracing of it. It’s all about the green.

And like Rand, they live in a fantasy world where only they are the “creators” and the more loot they get must mean that somehow somewhere they’re “creating” more. They really believe that a tiny minority of people who couldn’t possibly even feed themselves or even fix a leaking toilet are the movers and creators of humankind. They have to embrace this fantasy, else the awful immorality of their theft is the only logical conclusion left.

-stewartm

Well said. It is my hope that more and more of the emotionally mature people of the country are recognizing this.

one of my most liberal activist …

No surprise. Now you’re in the circle of trust. Tell us more about the milieu.

With Barack Obama in the White House busting tail to protect the corporate status quo, that thread headline is full-on giggle material.

LOL I have been a missionary observing the “savages” for some time.

Well, we know what THREE years of a business alliance between the preznint and the Fortune 500 gets us:

It gets us a bunch of faux progressives doing nip-ups because Obama came in with more political clout than any president since FDR and has (ostensibly) reduced unemployment from 10% to 8.3%, while caving on real healthcare reform and doing miraculous rehab on the republicans, while utterly squandering that clout.

But, I digress. We really need to talk about Sarah Palin’s shitty lip gloss, and the fact that the repub wingers are talking out of their asses. THAT is what’s important.

Oliphant gets it:

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/pat-oliphant-slideshow/

And free-lancing too, I bet (clarification: not paid for your intelligence). So how much of a farce is our aristocracy? Are they cruel and unusual or moronic and anarchic?

Was America their success?

It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t lie about how he’s protecting middle class interests. He’s poison because he’s a fraud. Only he could have resurrected the Republican Party and crippled progressive Democrats (if any exist). That’s why I want him to go away.

Read RULE AND RUIN by Geoffrey Kabaservice. It is a history of the Republican party since1950. In a surprisingly compelling narrative on a subject many would consider pretty dry, Kabaservice details the events, legislation, and politicians cited above. It concludes with what we all know as the polarization of the Repubs into the Rethugs. Yes, folks, racism and religious fundamentalism were very big influences, but it’s helpful to see just how and who was responsible.

Yup, and Newt Gingrich is the guy we have to thank for that — he was the one who rammed through the law changes that allowed Rupert Murdoch to create FOX News, and ever since then wherever FOX is allowed to broadcast, the people often become more right-wing and racist as a direct result.

Sounds like a Book Salon candidate! Thanks.

I hold no brief for O, but T’s problem is that he hates O so much that he once attacked PHB (whose proprietor is an African American woman) for talking about racism when he thought PHB should be 100% anti-O all the time to the exclusion of all other subjects. Doesn’t he know that’s what MyFDL is apparently for? ;-)

Are they cruel and unusual or moronic and anarchic?

Over educated intellectual dilletantes who find entertainment in discussion of the great questions of human existence as abstraction, detached from flesh and blood.

And which they seek to justify by their embrace of people like Ayn Rand, who tells them they are superior beings who don’t have to give a rip about us preterite types.

It gives their game away when the alleged Christians among them, like Mark Sanford, are also Rand fans. It’s actually easier to be Christian and a Marxist than to be Christian and a Rand supporter; both Marx and Rand were atheists, but Marx at least shared the original Christian disdain for usury.

I presume Zimmerman’s blood was cleaned up, I’ve never heard of Stormfront nor have I seen the picture, and I don’t know why Zimmerman’s atty didn’t go on.
What I do know is that this story was seen to be tailor made for back victimology to go into overdrive. Oooops.

And who attacked who? While I’m sure you would prefer the “white hispanic” to be the one dead, Zimmerman is permitted to save his own life. You know, self defense?

I make a distinction between the moneyed effete who profess liberal values and promote them. (as long as it doesn’t interfere with their money.) They are examples of the benefits of hypocrisy being a positive human trait.

I personally see less of a gap for those who embrace Rand more fully as an authentic morality and the brands of Christianity that rely heavily on Calvinism.

Here is a great example in The Economist from a few years back
http://www.economist.com/node/5327621

Most of the resentment lies in the long standing racist tradition that African American deaths by violence are not properly investigated. Trayvon was treated like road kill. He even lay on a slab “unidentified” for 3 days while the police had a complete description from his father’s missing person filing.

Indeed, although there’s a big difference between understanding how bad something looks, and caring how bad something looks :-)

What I do know is that this story was seen to be tailor made for back victimology to go into overdrive.

Scripted by WHITE SUPREMEST PIGS baby, they passed the assassin’s bill of rights AKA Stand your Ground..

Every cop in america , in the age of AIDS, wears gloves BEFORE coming in contact with the blood of anyone. Where are the gloves in the police station video ?

Try again to defend a white supremest going c**n hunting .

“Only he could have resurrected the republican party and crippled progressive democrats. (If any exist…)

That’s a far more accurate and relevant sentence than anything that Phoenix wrote in the thread lead.

As for “hating” Obama, that’s nonsense. I didn’t hate George Bush; he just disgusted me, as does Obama.

And, the line about me wanting it to be all anti-Obama all the time, is just plain bullshit, on the face of it.

What’s going on is that more and more of the threaders here are joining team “Obama sucks less!” and are shrieking about how bad the republicans are, as a method of avoiding talking about what Obama is doing and not doing, which is exactly what I was on about, upthread.

Phoenix, your lead was about the republican business-bigot alliance, and that’s certainly been there, but it wasn’t the republicans who fired Shirley Sherrod so fast it would make your head swim, when Breitbart and Fox got after her with those bogus charges of “racism”; that goes on Obama’s bar tab. He’s the president, and he’s the president who came in with a mountain of clout and has wasted it, while the assholes have filled the political vacuum which he gave them. The instances of Obama’s caving to corporate interests are just too numerous to go over, again. They have done us FAR more damage than the rantings of the GOP, and you people just don’t want to talk about it.

As for Obama’s “courageous” speaking out about Trayvon Martin’s shooting, not a damn thing has changed. Initially, he refused to comment, and then, 26 days after the killing, when the outrage from it was building into a firestorm and his own advisers and leaders from the black community were beginning to question his silence, he finally broke it and made his little speech.

You can call that courageous if you want, but my mileage varies. Your pom-pons need laundering.

I also have noticed what seems to be a lot of thread creep and high-jacking when topics that expose the Obama perfidy show up.

But I don’t see what you do in PW’s article. It does no harm to be supportive when Obama is doing the right thing and especially when it is in support of our liberal progressive values. You may or may not agree but most of us did see what he said as appropriate and undeserving of the inane and insane attacks from the right.

This control of politics and all aspects of our lives by craven money is I believe even more important than racism per se. As we have commented the racism is really driven and nourished by big money.

I know you to be perceptive and if you stop and think about it, indiscriminate slamming of Obama diminishes the power of our stance. There is also the fact that like it or not Obama will continue to call himself a Democrat and no real traditional Democrat will be elected to the presidency this go around.

We gain more by pressuring him to pay attention to our positions by being loud yet precise in what we believe he should be doing.

eg I was furious and would have liked to see more local outrage at Obama bopping into Atlanta for thousands of dollar plate dinners and leaving town later that night with millions of dollars in donations. — Leaving behind the message from the campaign that the Georgia Democratic Party not look to them for financial help because the state will vote Republican anyway. (At least the generous DCC gave the local party a whole $2300 donation. — (aren’t they sweet?)

I presume Zimmerman’s blood was cleaned up,

Even the stains that would be on his clothes? Even the ones that surely would be there from Martin’s blood being splattered on him having shot him “presumably” at close range?

Silly boy, surely you realize that *bloodstains* don’t get cleaned up very easily.

And who attacked who?

Better question: who initiated the confrontation? Who was following the other in defiance of the 911 caller’s instruction?

Moreover, who has a history of er, “anger management” issues, including as a stint as a security guard? “When the dude snapped, he snapped?”

And finally again, just to straighten out this victimhood thingy–which one is dead?

-stewartm

It gives their game away when the alleged Christians among them, like Mark Sanford, are also Rand fans. It’s actually easier to be Christian and a Marxist than to be Christian and a Rand supporter; both Marx and Rand were atheists, but Marx at least shared the original Christian disdain for usury.

And you have Rand’s connection with Nietzsche, who likewise despised Christianity and also any humanitarian instincts as “slave morality”.

-stewartm

No gloves was the first thing I noticed about that video. I promise you a speck of anybody’s blood and the gloves go on. The only explanation that makes sense to me is they took him by home to shower and change clothes.

Actually Calvinism fits nicely with Rand. Also the evangelicals respond positively to anything held with religious fervor. The Randnuts (and as Rand wished) believe and practice their beliefs as a moral code. Then there is the Tea Party nuts who believe the Constitution is the sacred text of their moral code.

I’m not slamming him indiscriminately. I’m being very discriminating. :o)

Overall, no public option.
No importing of generic drugs.
No stripping of the examption from antitrust laws for the Health Insurance pirates.
No ending of sweetheart tax deals for the fat cats.
The sustaining of the misery in Afghanistan.
I could go on and on, as I’m sure you know, but when I see someone putting up a thread complaining about the republicans getting into bed with millionaires and bigots, it has to be pointed out how the PRESIDENT; the boss; has been doing it, too. You ignored all of the specifics I cited, and when people do that…indiscriminately, it kind of shoots down your cred.

Barack Obama only “did the right thing” 26 days after Trayvon Martin was killed. Before the firestorm started to break, he did nothing. Nada. Zippo. I refuse to call that courage. I don’t know why some liberals insist on calling it courage. It’s nothing but the same kind of poll-sucking that we’ve seeing so much of from this guy, instead of the leadership that we expected and hoped for, and which has been so glaringly absent, even when he had the congressional tools, and the backing of the people, to use it. That some people are not only willing to give him a pass for rejuvenating the republicans, but in fact, want to reward him for it, is depressing. It’s also depressing when they get after people who insist on pointing out the reality of Obama and what he’s “accomplished”, when they’re putting up threads using the republicans as fear dolls, to avoid talking about Obama.

Yeah, I remember something similar, about 20yrs. ago in a near by community, where the criminal was made out to be the hero and the victim was made to be the criminal. Than later the news came out that the policy dept. had a special relation with this perpetrator. No investigation was ever done, but thru some act of faith within 6mo. he met his maker (ironic, isn’t it)!

I can add many things more to your list of betrayals.

However

I could go on and on, as I’m sure you know, but when I see someone putting up a thread complaining about the republicans getting into bed with millionaires and bigots, it has to be pointed out how the PRESIDENT; the boss; has been doing it, too. You ignored all of the specifics I cited, and when people do that…indiscriminately, it kind of shoots down your cred.

I am not certain there is any merit in equal opportunity slamming in every post. Doing so often distracts from the evil in the GOP or whatever actions

Strongly disagree. And you might too if you felt that it was the system, rather than individuals, that were the problem. Start with 800 military bases, the military industrial complex that both parties back to the hilt, work your way down. Obama is drone-bombing five countries by last count. It’s a shell game, and what you get from the Dems is tolerance of gay people, veiled undermining of unions rather than open antagonism, nothing more.

Phoenix woman, you wrote a good article. Our problem is, Jimmy Carter was the last true Democratic president. Clinton and Obama are triangulating all over the place. The last true social initiatives to advance society as a whole were made by Nixon (Methadone, EPA), and for a Democrat, Johnson (Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid). Big business rules. Clinton – wiped out much of the welfare safety net, exported work to China, NAFTA.

I agree with your pov Tanbark. Thanks for having the integrity to state it.

Team color politics make it possible to keep D vs. R FlimFlam alive.

Barack Obama has been dealing in duplicity and misdirection since Jan.20,2009 that protected/protects G.W.Bush,R.B.Cheney while proceeding to keep doing or doing more of what Bush and Cheney did for 8 years as POTUS and VPOTUS. What is happening to Bradley Manning is being done under Barack Obama. Not Mitt Romney.Not Newt Gingrich. Not the Ricks.

Playing “balance” as a defense of Obama is deceptive and dishonest. But we can expect more of this as November 2012 gets closer.

Barack Obama is a warmonger,a warcriminal and wantonly is killing many innocents and children. It does not require a moral compass to see this as being wrong and to reward Barack Obama for doing so is obscene. It was wrong when G.W.Bush did it. It is wrong when B.H.Obama does/is doing it.

Americans who vote for Barack Obama are signing off on what Barack Obama is doing to Bradley Manning or letting happen to Afghan children. Banging on the drums about how “bad” the Rs are while we have a D as POTUS who is doing lots of what any R POTUS would/will do is not very intelligent. Wanting four more years of this D POTUS and working to get this POTUS re-elected by giving this POTUS political passes in favor of beating up Rs seems not very intelligent. Read Joan Walsh or Steve Kornacki at Salon for prime examples of this sort of conduct. Too bad FDL displays this team color stuff — D doing it is OK — R doing it is bad/evil stuff. It does not move the ball that really needs to be moved in American politics.

Of course much can be laid on the doorstep of Obama’s character, weak or evil, however you want to describe it. But he couldn’t be the instrument of power for the craven big money community without the presence of a predatory market system demanding it. And it is insane to believe replacing this one man with Jesus will make things right. The system PW so eloquently describes must be addressed.

As I am writing I am beginning to wonder if the trolls that seem to be at work are here to deflect revelations and discussions of accountability of big money and their corporations.

The reality is we must develop strategies that will get the most out of him or his clone Romney and limit the destructiveness. Just slamming him indiscriminately on liberal blogs is not a strategy though it may make you feel more manly.

Regardless of Obama or whoever I think taking the opportunity to illuminate our liberal progressive values and in particular the evils of this sociopathic free market system we call capitalism.

I criticize Obama not to replace him with Jesus but with a new system, one that begins by meeting our basic needs. And like the post we both reference, I think that the daily critique and laugh-fest over Republican stupid is a waste of time that tends to hide the systemic nature of the abuses from us.

Curiously divergent takes, but I appreciate your careful reply. You seem to think the system can be saved!

I doubt “strategies to [...] limit the destructiveness” is a call for salvation of the system. On the other hand, I doubt it’s practical.

40M compradors to go, comrade.

Well, considering 2-5 million are falling into the ranks of the poor weekly, we’re on our way! :)

In practice, that’s what “strategies to. . . limit” may amount to. We’ve GOT TO openly, clearly, and forthrightly combat. And if we don’t do it now, when the system is so clearly failing. . . we never will.