The Final Debate: You Don’t Need A Weatherman…
The McCain-Palin Campaign, October 2008
No more rulers. No more books. No more Johnny Mac’s dirty looks.
I take back what I said in the previous post below. I had a GREAT time watching the final presidential debate. Not only because Bob Schieffer did a better job than I expected, but because I knew with each passing moment we were that much closer to the end of John McCain’s presidential quest.
Equally enjoyable was to watch a pack of pundits scurry to say, as the wife of the architect of our current economic catastrophe (Andrea Mitchell) put it, that McCain “probably won on points.” Right. She should have said, he won on points — “give or take 30 points.”
No more than 2 minutes later popped up the CNN flash poll in which debate watchers scored it a 58-31% win for Obama. CNN’s poll also scored ‘Independents” as giving a 57-31% edge to Obama. A CBS poll of uncommitted voters revealed even more asymmetrical numbers a 53%-22% win for Obama. What does that tell us about the wisdom of our Official Pundits?
Those deluded CNN viewers also gave Obama a 70-22% edge of “likability.” And a ten to one edge on who spent more time on the issues than on attacking (Here’s a wrap-up of the post-debate snap polls).
Other than that, a great night for John McCain.
I see little point in performing yet one more autopsy on McCain’s decomposing political cadaver other than to say –per usual– Obama maintained a Xanax-level coolness and steadiness while the Gentleman From Arizona fidgeted, grimaced, sighed, flailed and jabbed.
As the Asian markets nose-dived, the Nikkei falling 10%, and on a day in which Americans found their 401k’s shrunk another 7%, McCain mumbled repeatedly about Joe The Plumber and Ayers The Terrorist. With that discourse, along with his hard-line against choice, he shored up the conservative base and guaranteed he would lose the center — and the election.
Fine by me!
There is some sweet irony in this. In the end, let it be noted for all his brandishing of the Weather Underground bogey man, it was really John McCain who wound up adopting their suicidal strategy. After a half decade of mounting anti-war opposition in the Sixties, with more and more of the political center turning against the policies of LBJ and Nixon, Bill Ayers and the Weathermen squandered the accumulated moral capital of the peace movement by staging what were called “the days of rage” and then by “declaring war” on the U.S. government. They lost their base and ceded the moral high ground to their opponents.
As terrorists, the Weathermen were as tragically inept as John McCain has been as a presidential candidate. If you look at their record you’ll see that most of their bombings were duds (was Sarah Palin’s mom running their show?) Indeed, if their goal was to spread terror in the name of stopping the war, their only real victims were among their own ranks. Not a single innocent death was officialy charged to the Weathermen (though there were suspicions that a bombing that killed one police officer was a Weathermen action). The only people who we are sure who died because of their actions were three of their own members who blew themselves up on March 6, 1970 in a Greenwich Village townhouse.
Play with fire. Die by fire. Isn’t that true, my friends?
Next stop: John McCain’s concession speech.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I agree. The Weathermen’s legacy is on a par with Tim McVeigh. As bad as one might think things are in this country, we are a long way from a police state and violence has no part.
I remember when Reagan was elected, my attitude was if this is what the American people want, let them suffer the consequences.
Hey, it took 28 years, but that’s democracy.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
It is all very absurd. Like 300 people or something showed up to the Days of Rage in 69. Ayers didn’t even have followers at the height of his political influence.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Somehow, the GOP is without a Hate Show this time around.
Saddam Hussein is gone, Putin is white and rich and Hugo Chavez sells oil we rely on at the moment.
The essential elements of a Hate Show just aren’t there for the Republicans. Without that, none of their candidates ever have a chance. They’ve only been able to win the presidency by convincing enough consumerized Americans that there is a dark-skinned dictator just waiting bomb them or steal their oil or destroy the western world unless we elect someone who is mean enough to kill first and ask questions later.
Without that Hate Show, the GOP narrative falls apart. The free marketeer stuff only ever sells on the margins and is really only effective as evidence that they lack the empathy chromosome, a genetic weakness, they claim, of liberals.
The unwon war in Iraq and the unfinished business with Bin Laden killed the GOPs chances for a Hate Show. Think about it, the kind of ads they ran showing bin Laden and John Kerry side by side would just come off as too spectacularly cynical now that we sank the Treasury on Iraq and the chief 9/11 attacker remains at large.
There’s also been a noticable drop off in the general hate propaganda against Muslims, partly as a freaky, unintended result of the wingnutosphere’s focus on calling Obama a Muslim.
Without a living, dark-skinned star for The Hate Show, the GOP loses the plot and the election.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:44 am
I have to agree that Schieffer did better than anticipated. He might have been the “best” (low bar) to date. I happened to click on the Time magazine live blog and it’s a shocker the degree to which John McCain has completely blown his sainted position with the mainstream press. Time’s national and political correspondents ended up mocking McCain’s strange demeanor and noting several times that he’s simply a liar in various claims. Tumulty, a very buttoned-up MSM political reporter, noted that the folks in the press room were, by the end of the thing, laughing every time McCain invoked Joe the Plumber. They made comments like, “He looks like his head is going to explode.” One thing I could never have predicted when the general election contest started was that John McCain would manage to become an object of derision by his most reliable “base” – the Washington press corps. The guy’s totally thrown his carefully-cultivated reputation away.
As a counterpoint to that, I can’t for the life of me figure out what debate Andrea Mitchell was watching. I have a theory that the press have been attacked so vindictively for simply approximating their jobs on occasion that they are terrified of simply stating the obvious, “McCain sucked and his campaign is effectively over.” One has to remember that Mitchell goes to the same Beltway cocktail parties as John McCain. She interviewed Bob Dole in the course of this thing – I think during the GOP convention – and Dole is so on the edge of senility that he turned the conversation into warm greetings to her husband, Greenspan, and a chat about some charity events they were both involved with. Even Mitchell looked embarrassed because her cover as a journalist who could report with some modicum of objectivity on her Beltway social circle was being blown before her viewers eyes.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Also, although they’re different reporters and may have had different views on camera as well, I find it fascinating that in the relatively informal confines of a “live-blog” at Time reporters would be willing to state the obvious about how bad McCain’s performance was, while on camera there seemed to be some consensus about not being overly dismissive of John McCain.
And props to Mr. Excitable, Chris Mathews, for pointing out just how perverse and dismissive McCain was in discussing a pregnant woman’s health. That was bizarre – I think he even made “quote” marks with his fingers when he said the word’s “health” of the mother. My god this guy is clueless. I think the trivia question of “which is the real John McCain” has been definitively answered.
I’m gonna go ahead and predict a blowout for Obama. I think the only demographics where McCain will do even reasonably well is among white men and white people in his age group. McCain blew whatever shot he still had with most women last night, aside from hardcore religious-right or GOP partisans.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:18 am
October 15
Secret Service says “Kill him” allegation unfounded
By Andrew M. Seder aseder@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
http://www.timesleader.com/news/breakingnews/Secret_Service_says_Kill_him_allegation_unfounded_.html
October 16th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Obama’s at 85, McCain 15, on InTrade.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Excellent post, but I beg to differ slightly with the assertion that the Weathermen “squandered the accumulated moral capital of the peace movement.” Most antiwar activists remained dedicated to nonviolence and continued fighting the good fight until the last helicopters left Saigon. Overall, thousands of hardworking men and women in communities across America did maintain the moral high ground. And they waged a thankless, uphill battle for years, which required amazing amounts of stamina and faith in America. The abhorrent actions of the Weathermen did not detract from the nobility of a Movement that was essentially opposed to violent tactics and committed to the highest of American ideals.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:16 am
McCain’s educational policy:
Teachers do not need to be credentialed, just ex-military.
I don’t want Joe the Plumber teaching my kid.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Turns out Joe the Plumber isn’t even registered to vote.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Reg, I think we should be careful imputing motives to journalists like Mitchell. I think she called it dead wrong and it’s a tribute to her inability to comprehend the dynamics at play here but the theory that her analysis is based primarily on a concern regarding future cocktail chatter with McCain isn’t fair.
On the subject of political punditry, will somebody go over to Politico and put together a tally of their who “won the day” proclamations? I’m too lazy/bad with their website, but it seems like a relatively easy way to establish that it’s a totally bogus way to cover an election.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
There is also some chatter (personal email) that Joe the Plumber may not be currently licensed to be a plumber, either.
A search at this site for Wurzelbacher under the Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board apparently turns up one individual whose license expired in 2002.
The GOP needs better vetting teams.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
“Turns out Joe the Plumber isn’t even registered to vote.”
And seems to be related through marriage to Charles Keating. And doesn’t believe in social security. And likens Obama to Sammy Davis Jr.
(which may actually help with the Jewish vote). BTW – the pundits act as if McCain’s anger and arrogance are some sort of surprise, a strange new tic he just can’t seem to shake. But, when did he ever behave otherwise when debating or confronting any political opponent? I guess he was a helluva fun raconteur on the back of the straight talk express. Off the bus he’s been a teeth-gritting, narcissistic schmuck for years.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Mavis -
I don’t know if Andrea Mitchell was worried about cocktail party status. But I was certain she would weigh in as she did, especialy since she’s been somewhat kind to Obama recently and must have felt a great unease over that. As with David Brooks, every semi-iconoclastic move must be immediately followed by a palliative gesture to the tribe. This was her gesture of loyalty to the tribe and may have been subconsious.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I understand why Mitchell and some others thought that McCain won the debate. For those who “score” debates much as boxing matches, there is a presumption that the aggressor is winning the rounds. McCain has been the aggressor throughout. So he must have been winning the debate.
But like pretty much everything else, Obama and his campaign has a better idea what these debates were about–an opportunity to demonstrate gravitas and leadership. To extend the boxing metaphor, he was like Alexis Arguello, a cool counterpuncher who frustrated the “hands of stone” punchers by keeping them at a long arm’s length, looked after 15 rounds that he had just gotten to the office, and won every match for about a dozen years.
Like a lot of people on this blog, I kept wanting and, yes, expecting Obama (and Biden) to bore in when McCain and Palin were particularly vulnerable. But it isn’t a debating contest. They were demonstrating that they would respond as they would govern: coolly, collegially, cogently, on message.
By that measure, they won hands-down. But it didn’t always seem that way to me, “in real time.”
October 16th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
FWIW:
From John Cole
October 16th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Okay. I give up. Our stupid discourse (TM Atrios).
In addition to, Who is Obama?
And, Who is Sarah Palin?
We now have, Who is Joe the Plumber?
October 16th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Michael Crosby -
Yo make a good argument but I don’t think A. Mitchell reacted to the other debates as if they were boxing matches, automatically scoring it for the agressor. I recall her taking into consideration te other sorts of factors you mention. I’m with reg on this. I don’t think she had the stomach to go against her partisan loyalties. She was looking for a way to score it for McCain.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
lolololololol………….I know Dan or BB won’t believe me but I was pretty sure Joe blow was a plant or something…
This extract is a post from another forum. What a hoot:
“Joe the Plumber” was the centerpiece of John McCains last debate with Obama.
McCain mentioned “Joe the Plumber” 21 times and guess what? Joe is not a plumber and has never even been a trainee.
“An official at Local 50 of the plumber’s union, based in Toledo, said Mr. Wurzelbacher does not hold a license. He also has never served an apprenticeship and does not belong to the union. (The national plumber’s union, it should be noted, endorsed Mr. Obama.)
“He’s basically playing games with the world,” Thomas Joseph, the local’s business manager, said in a telephone interview Thursday morning. ”
So Joe does own a plumbing business (apparently) and no wonder he is complaining about taxes because it appears he is owes back taxes. “Joe the businessman” would certainly been more appropriate and while some might say its not a huge difference, it again brings into question John McCain judgement of the things he says and the people he chooes for important postions. Joe might own a plumbing business and may have a tax gripe but
you might not want him to plumb your house.
One more thing..Joe is not Joe, his real name is Samual.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/joe-in-the-spotlight/?hp
October 16th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Also strikes me as strange how little the pundits seem to care about verbal coherence. The fact that Obama can string together related ideas and McCain can’t doesn’t seem to matter. Just makes Obama seem ‘flat’. While McCain’s choppy incoherence makes him ‘dynamic’.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hey, Anna: If you think everyone is a plant, you’re bound to get it right now and then.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The media’s self-interest is kicking in–more with some pundits than others. The 2 map guys–Chuck Todd @msnbc and John King at CNN–seem to be advancing practically any argument that the race is close. I respect Todd and more respect his pollster, Peter Hart, but Todd always gives greater credibility to the poll showing the race as closest. I guess that’s OK. King just doesn’t seem too bright.
The funniest guy last night was Dick Morris on Sean Hannity and Ichabod Crane show last night. Hannity seemed stunned with by Fox polling showing Obama pulling away, but Morris literally said that “McCain has this race right where he wants it…he can win it now.” It had something to do with McCain being able to nail Obama finally as a tax-and-spend liberal, so the race is pretty much over. In a typical year, this might be right. But Morris favors McCain because he is fighting the last war. That is probably the ultimate lesson of these debates.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Evets makes a very good point that none of the big-name pundits seemed willing to acknowledge that Obama was far more articulate.
Maybe they can’t figure out a way to make clear that being articulate is a good thing for a president, given the political capital Republicans have invested in making articulate synonymous with looking down on undereducated white males.
Still, at least we can count on most of the major pundits to trim their schpiel according to the polls, which in this case, means not saying Obama lost the debate flat out.
I recall Reagan beating Carter, according to the pundits, simply because Reagan taunted the president with the line “there you go again.” Forget about the fact that Reagan was very, very light on the facts and more like a wind-up doll repeating stock phrases than an adult wielding the art of oral persuasion.
Then there was W’s tumultous slaughter of Al Gore, according to pundits, because of something Gore did with his eyebrow. Once again, it mattered zilch to them that Bush showed real trouble keeping a train of logic on track with more than two cars. Or worse, Bush’s inarticulate performance was deemed an ADVANTAGE. In the most preposterous piece of punditry I am aware of, Gore was said to have lost the debate by appearing to be too intelligent vis a vis his opponent.
By comparison to that, the proliferation of pundits spinning this debate did a superb job.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Reg…(was it Reg re hate taking a holiday?)
KKK fliers were slipped into an Okalahoma town’s newspaper.
I received copy of an astonishing little anecdote from friends that had not long ago made a cross country trip and passed through Hays, Kansas. Their bizarre experience in a roadside cafe seemed to be validated by the report of a caller on Air America the other day.
Apparently the caller and his son went cross country wearing Obama T Shirts. They were refused service at a Hays, Kansas restaurant.
My friends’ story:
On a trip cross-country in 2004, my wife and I stopped in Hays, Kansas one morning to eat breakfast at “the” truck stop off I-70 and US-183. In the booth next to us, the only other people in the place held what sounded and looked like a prayer meeting, pleading for foreigners to leave the country, all the while looking at us.
I was arguing, in another thread, about the dark heart of America and its white underbelly– white refuse–the recent ancestors of the culture-less human detritus from the westward expansion and Dust Bowl era.
A few years ago a documentary filmmaker did his skew on some glaring anthropological data that he called The Wisconsin Death Trip.
How you can come to the conclusion that hate has taken a hike is…staggering. The blogs are full of it and CNN was inviting it to be expressed and Marc gives it a forum.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/02/20/racist-attacks-on-obama-growing-more-heated/
Southern Poverty Law Center report
October 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101471.html?hpid=topnews
http://www.flcourier.com/news/articles/432/1/Racist-groups-gaining-members-because-of-Obama/Page1.html
Just a sampling of those tracking the resurgence of hate
October 16th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Evets makes a very good point that none of the big-name pundits seemed willing to acknowledge that Obama was far more articulate.
bb, I think those pundits would need to check a Thesaurus for an alternative to articulate. Wasn’t that the observation that got <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/31/biden.obama/”Biden credited with a gaffe, and had OReilly frothing at the mouth. Of course, it assumes the pundits aren’t searching for a way, in spite of the snap polls, to announce McCain the winner of the debate.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
correcting,
Biden
October 16th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Anna,
I live in Kansas, close to Hays. Please provide me with a link or a name of the roadside cafe. My email addy is vivalove08@yahoo.com
I will look into it with some friends of mine who like to raise signs and yell loud…if such an event ever happened.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
The point, Anna, isn’t that bigots don’t exist in America, it’s that they don’t define the country as a whole. You keep trying to generalize from exceptional examples. That is a hallmark of wingnuttery.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Bunkerbuster you keep misinterpreting my point.
And yes, bigotry does define this country “as a whole”. Its one of the most glaring facets of American life that people outside America notice.
I also think the fact that we regularly assassinate anyone who tries to change the playing field also defines the country.
Once Obama was in the running the pundits couldn’t shut up about race; the Clintons played the race card. And McCain is basing his campaign on hate and divisiveness.
How much more proof do you need to recognize that bigotry does define this country?
To David: I believe in the extract from my friend’s letter (sent to Air America) an approximate location was given. I looked up Hays–its only a town of 20K (did I get that right?)
Can’t be too many roadside cafes on the main drag going through.
And why would you presume I am lying? I find that offensive.
And logic would discount my making up an incident that echoed an Air America listener report about such an arcane location.
I barely know where Kansas is on the map let alone some small berg with denizens that hold prayer covens in their coffee shop.
I re paste in the section of my friend’s email that pretty much says where they were:
“the” truck stop off I-70 and US-183.
It was 4 years ago, but I imagine the joint is still there in some form or other.
Call Air America and ask about the listener call in about the refusal of service incident in Hays because he and his son were wearing Obama T shirts.
Found this:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all
I think somewhere in it is mention of someone else feeling hostility if they wore an Obama T shirt–in Ohio.
There is also the mention of a Thomas Frank book called Whats The Matter With Kansas
October 16th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
David:
The Hays incident was mentioned on the Ed Schultz show a few days ago, I think.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Look, evets, the cocktail party point is a way of saying that a reporter will say anything to stay in good standing with the elite. I think you need a lot more evidence than simply pointing to an overzealous approach to balance, a bias in favor of the underdog, or even undue sympathy toward Republican positions. Those all might make her a bad journalist (and I’m no expert on Mitchell so I don’t really have much of an opinion on this score), but it’s not the same as saying she is more concerned with staying in the good graces of her rich, important friends than doing her job. Anyway, that’s my final brief on her behalf.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Mavis (great name. suggested it to friends who are having a baby–were your parents Blues fans?)
Anyway, Mavis, have you seen much of Mitchell? I watch MSNBC almost exclusively. She is irrelevant, fortunately isn’t on too much and she sounds half crocked all the time.
If you GOOGLE her you will see she has attacked Obama.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“How much more proof do you need to recognize that bigotry does define this country?”
Well, bunker has your number on this one, and YOU keep failing to see it.
The point is not that we are a nation of saints, nor that we are a nation of morally decrepit imperial racists. The point is, of course, that we have noble things and dark things that have happened here and do happen here. And lots of uninteresting things too.
But you take every dark episode (cummings likes to do this too), and turn it into the very definition of the entire country. You take a complex reality and turn it into a cartoon. I let these sorts of things get under my skin a lot more than I should, but I find them immensely annoying.
You cherry pick your episodes and excise anything that would complicate or contradict your position.
To take this specific example about bigotry, any thinking American would probably be wise to recognize slavery and racism as the American original sin, one that, to this day resonates in the country. They would, however, be completely disingenuous, to fail to note how heterogeneous our country is, how new immigrant groups come and are welcomed into American life, how internecine ethnic feuding of the sort found in the Balkans and elsewhere does not happen here, how ethnic minorities are becoming increasingly important parts of the political landscape, and, inescapably obvious, how a black man is about to become president.
By no means is it all rainbows and tulips. But that;s precisely the point: it’s complicated. Instead, your analysis is so myopic that it’s entirely inept. Embarrassingly so.
This is a complicated topic, and yes I have seen the videos of rube moron former supporters of Hillary from West Virginia drink PBR and drop n-bombs while “discussing” Obama. But if you think that represents all of America, then you need to go outside a little more often. Otherwise you are simply peddling wing-nuttery, just like bb suggests.
It’s like you see everything through a straw and whatever your eye alights on (invariably some hideous episode) becomes the color of everything.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Most unpaid internet posters are wingnuts.
duh.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Anna – I’m a minor fan.
What I’m reading here is that DanO & BB are giving you an honest and useful critique.
Keeping posting.
You’ll get better.
L’chaim.
October 17th, 2008 at 6:30 am
I thought I was addressing people, on this forum, where having to state the obvious wouldn’t be necessary. Bringing up the issue of hate and bigotry was done in the context of discussing the presidential campaign and the forces being unleashed because of it.
That several of you interpret that as the ONLY lens through which I am capable of making comments about he American sensibility demonstrates one more peculiarity of the American sensibility and that is literalism. Not to mention the loss of one of the better perceptual organs that used to detect irony. Whoosh—–gone. Atrophied.
In another thread I elucidated my personal point of view about America as being a collective caught up in the myth of an idea–that the whole world, in fact, is vested in.
When I raise the issue of the white racist underbelly I also explain why I think this demographic exists and its historical roots. But those of you trying to interpret my point of view–fail to acknowledge I was backing up an observation.
I would also like to point out to Dan O and Bunker that you have failed to remember the CONTEXT my comments are being made in…that is a forum dedicated to butt kicking and bitch slapping the Right and the wrongs of its minions.
And getting back to the loss of a sense of humor, irony, satire as well as common sense—more calumny to heap upon your adorable America–Marc’s column–and thats what his blogs are…columns–are in the tradition of social and political commentary.
Both Dan O and Bunker have succumbed to the awful ‘political correct me’ virus. No one is allowed to say critique America–which is why it has become a solipsist’s wet dream.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Sorry to have to put it so bluntly, Anna, but you’re the bigot here.
Bigots generalize from exceptional examples. So while 99.9 percent of the world’s Muslims have no involvement whatsoever in terrorism, the bigot insists the religion and its followers are “dark hearted” because he can recall a litany of terrorism committed by Muslims.
You recite a litany of transgressions by a microscopic minority of Americans and say they typify the nation itself. Simple, unadorned bigotry.
I hinted at a thought experiment you might perform, which should occur to you naturally, but surely has not.
Try applying your categorical thinking to ethnic minorities in America or other countries or entire religions — you’ll quickly see that it leads to simple bigotry.
Who and what represents Afro-Americans? The handful of gang members who always make the news, or the 20-something million ordinary Americans of African heritage who have nothing whatsoever to do with either the nihilistic gang culture nor apologies for it and just want to live in peace?
Critique America? No problem, as long as you don’t generalize the exceptional negative behaviors of the few to the nation at large.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Oh BB…get off the high horse and come down to reality: you keep denying what is right in your face: an entire presidential campaign being fueled by bigotry. A presidential candidate giving a leg up to a neo fascist wench as his running mate and then setting her loose on the stump to whip the hate into a fluffy mousse.
Its not that the MAJORITY of the population by head count are Palinites or McCain-in-nites (new religious cult) and one does notice that the non hate banger Republicans have ditched–its that there exists, in this country, a very substantial niche that uhhhhhhhhhhh has like governed for more years than not. What kind of a population votes in a member of the Bush family 3 times; and Howdy Doody twice and Nixon and bends over for the spectacle of its own citizens being left to die after Katrina while their president and a soon to be presidential candidate EAT FUCKING CAKE?
What kind of a population are we that we dont take to the streets? If the abiding sentiments in this country are so fucking freedom loving and righteous–where is the evidence?
Americans are consensual by nature. Politics and social comment and criticism is the social lubricant in most countries. Here one isnt supposed to talk politics, mix it up, argue. Your continued pedantic recitations are proof of that.
Academics are, in droves, now writing books on all the issues I have raised. You seem to think I am holding some rogue idiot view point. Yours is the point of view that is the problem.
I probably understand better than you the beauty of the American experiment which has been fueled by the need for the world to begin to look at things from another angle. What part of my saying America is an idea that has not yet taken root–don’t you understand?
What part of my saying I understand we have a constitution like no other that allows for the redress of anything—though subject to the caprice of those working the process?
I also like that we don’t have a national cat eating festival such as the one in Peru. Though we do like to lynch Black people every few years or so or assassinate any visionary leader who might like to move us in “another direction”
Hitler and his brown shirt thugs were not the majority and most scoffed. But the power brokers knew he could be useful, set him up and unleashed a monster because he ignited a dormant spark in the German collective.
You think 8 years of Bush, 8 years of Reagan and 4 of Bush senior are because we are such a nation of reasonable folk?
And we are not talking about the foibles of other nations and their collective dark side. This forum has been about what is going on inside America–so your specious argument about applying my so called generalizations to other countries etc is, again, your attempt to sidestep the context of this discussion in the first place.
“You recite a litany of transgressions by a microscopic minority of Americans and say they typify the nation itself. Simple, unadorned bigotry.”
It only took a handfull of bullets, BB, to bring down Giants.
The American experiment is to eradicate tribalism. The bigoted underbelly is the last vestige of that.
Complicated: ‘you betcha’.
Try to stay in the moment—this forum and our posts are dealing with a presidential election that has unleashed the beast. Thats what I am addressing.
When I see people actively protesting rather than being dismissive of the bigotry then I will know the tide has turned.
Incidents in my state support my fears and my point. I have called to the Governor’s office, superintendent of schools, state officals etc over what has been going on only to discover absolute apathy.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Sorry, another point or two: How is it that if we are, by a seismic majority, such a groovy bunch that the last two presidential elections were allowed to be stolen–even though only won by a slim margin?
We might as well be holding elections in one of the states our government has help fail—Oh, thats right we are…
Talk to me on November 5th; then on Inauguration day. Ok?
I predict (and never will I hope to be proven wrong) there will be trouble with the election. It will be contested. Something.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Oh dear. One more point, BB.
Without the constant vigilance of all the progressive advocacy groups– lobbying on all our behalfs to stem the reactionary tide that constantly threatens to drown us completely–we’d ALL be living in a cross between a Stepford community and a Mormon cult.
Next time you look at your partner imagine her with a hair do like Conan O’Brien and in a costume that looks like your local Baptist church’s production of Little House on the Prairie.
Of course, this set of circumstances may appeal to you–being a male and all.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Anna,
You seem to be stereotyping a huge swath of America — “the dark heart of America and its white underbelly– white refuse–the recent ancestors of the culture-less human detritus from the westward expansion and Dust Bowl era.”
Sounds likes a bunch of subhuman savages to me.
How would you regard someone who similarly talked of the heart of darkness of inner-city America, full of ferel beasts such as the person who pumped lead into this progressive activists head for the crime of riding a bike in the wrong neighborhood. As the police report notes: “Robbery does not appear to have been the motive.”:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/30/18542081.php
I think you would have angry words for such a person.
It’s too bad to hear about what happened in Hays, Kansas. If one of them was member of minority, then they would have an excellent opportunity for a lawsuit. If they’re just honkies, I’m afraid they’re SOOL.
People are naturally tribal, Anna. An evolutionary explanation makes the most sense to me: groups with the greatest sense of solidarity and exclusiveness, and individuals with the ability to conform to this solidarity and exclusiveness, tended to survive much better through the millenia compared to groups and individuals who did not. (Exhibit #1: Jews). If you want to minimize tribalism, support efforts to build a more homogeneous or assimilated political order. But if you reject that route, and if at the same you are indifferent or even enthused about the prospect of America or Europe becoming less and less white, don’t be shocked when you see whites on both continents starting to explicitely look out for their own perceived group interests, just every other ethnic or racial group that is nondominant or losing its dominance does.
I don’t doubt that a person with an Obama t-shirt in Hays would be very out-of-place and probably disparaged. (At least for now, my great hope is that a fairly successful Obama administration will do much to end real racism, that is, the inability or unwillingness to discern the wide range of aptitudes, and defects, and other differences, within a particular racial group.)
I am sure that putting up a McCain sign in Kansas would be foolish. Just like I would be foolish to put up a McCain sign in my townhouse neighborhood, which was 95% white twenty years ago and is 95% black today. (Besides fact that I don’t support McCain.) Not just foolish…given that our new backyard fence had the word “chink” spray painted on it last week (a message for my wife), it would be inviting trouble.
Finally, I would invite you to explore the paleo-conservatives, who hate mainstream neoconservative Repubilcans just as much you do. A good portion of The American Conservative and antiwar.com are articles that would not be out of place in places like The Nation.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Whitecorenerback…nevermind. Having chosen a name like that lets me rest my case.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:19 am
This is interesting:
BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court throws out largest GOP “voter fraud …
Oct 17, 2008 … The full 6th Circuit Court on Tuesday night decided in favor of the Ohio … U.S. Supreme Court just took the side of Democrats in Ohio, …
http://www.americablog.com/2008/10/breaking-us-supreme-court-stops-gop.html – 37 minutes ago – Similar pages – Note this
October 17th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Whoops, I meant to write “I am sure that putting up a OBAMA sign in Kansas would be foolish. Just like I would be foolish to put up a McCain sign in my townhouse neighborhood.”
October 17th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Anna, I’ll never understand how self-styled progressives like you find such virtue in ad hominem attacks on your opponents, fanatic intolerence of dissent, and unwillingness to challenge your beliefs. You’re as rigid and close-minded as any fundamentalist Christian.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:55 am
In your America, whitecornboy, it shouldn’t be foolish to put up a sign about anything anywhere. It would be the America of the First Amendment–you know–the one the ACLU has to constantly beg money from people to keep going to court and defending?
You just shot your whole thesis in the foot about MY tarring our collective feathers with the same brush.
I really suggest you read Henry Miller’s Air Conditioned Nightmare, Letters to Anais Nin (which have the first drafts of what became the book), Colossus of Maroussi, Time of the Assassins, and HL Mencken.
Their prescience is unnerving. Miller anticipated Kennedy getting shot. What you just dismiss with the wave of your little white wand is the fact that virtually every thinking person and observer of American culture has come to a similar conclusion.
You are using some of the same specious arguments I found in a White Revolution blog post. A very articulate, but pathologically twisted polemic set out to rationalize the need for the white race to establish a bulwark against ‘pollution’.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Better Than Sex.
Hunter Thompson on the 1992 presidential campaign.
Read it and weep. It contains his obituary for Nixon. If you havent read it you haven’t read…
October 17th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I agree, Anna, that everyone ought to have the right to put up whatever sign they want in their front yard. My point is, in this imperfect world, full of intolerant people such as yourself, everyone has to be careful of what they do in public. If my wife doesn’t want more “chink” graffitti on our fence, she and I better watch we do and say. And I know quite a few people like you, Josh (who wants me banned) and Mike Baltier, who would have no moral compunctions whatsoever of trying to get me fired if they knew who I really was.
I’m not sure what “similar conclusion” and “fact” you are referring to that Miller and Mencken are supposedly precient about. You mean they thought the ancestors of the people who survived the dustbowl were trash? Also, What does predicting the Kennedy assassination have to do with anything?
I always liked what I knew about Miller. I wasn’t aware that his annoying experiences with censorship ever turned him into an anti-religious scold. Expatriate that he was, he also seemed to really love his country and what made it unique and beautiful. I had a girlfriend in college and we used to lie in bed and read Sexus. Never got through any of his other books.
Never read Mencken either though I’ve heard he’s been recommended. I found this following quote of his in about one minute on the internet which I think is way over the top and outrageously wrong:
“The history of the hopelessly futile and fatuous effort to improve the negroes of the Southern United States by education affords one such proof [of it being "necessary" that there be "a class content to obey without fear or question"]. It is apparent, on brief reflection, that the negro, no matter how much he is educated, must remain, as a race, in a condition of subservience; that he must remain the inferior of the stronger and more intelligent white man so long as he retains racial differentiation.”
October 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Yeah, and Mencken was a knee jerk German anti semite until he discovered he was part Jewish!
Mencken suffered from a lot of the biases that Americans instinctively had–the point I have been trying to make–but he also was brilliant and deflating the pompous, pious lunacy that infected the country–which I have been trying to make a point about.
That you never made it past reading Sexus—well that pretty much says a lot, too.
You use the same specious tactics to make your weird pointless points that people on the right use.
It makes it difficult to have a debate with you because one has to go back and try and unscramble almost every sentence.
You also conveniently refuse to actually read what somewhat writes or respond to the spirit of intention. You are just contentious–like Woody. Your game is reductionism. You project your m.o. onto others.
I doubt you got the point of Sexus either…
I suggest you also acquaint yourself with his essay The World of Sex.
Talk to me when you have read Tropic of Cancer, Air Conditioned Nightmare, Black Spring, Colossus of Maroussi, Time of the Assassins and I challenge you to find a copy of an academic book called HL Mencken Critic of AMerican Life.
Then you can spare yourself such dim pronouncements such as:
“I’m not sure what “similar conclusion” and “fact” you are referring to that Miller and Mencken are supposedly precient about. You mean they thought the ancestors of the people who survived the dustbowl were trash? Also, What does predicting the Kennedy assassination have to do with anything?”
Might try reading something other than for its sexual content and reinforcement of your perverse perceptions.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
“And I know quite a few people like you, Josh (who wants me banned) and Mike Baltier, who would have no moral compunctions whatsoever of trying to get me fired if they knew who I really was.”
Do I have to deconstruct you, like I did Woody?
That type of taunting, declaration further reveals your psychological make up
I may be brash, profane and rude (out of boredom with the endless…no I shouldn’t be that rude–I am a guest here) but I take seriously and digest what someone posts and try to engage. Thats the sport of participating in a blog comments section. Its also a nightmarish reality check about who is out there thinking ( I use the term loosely) “what”.
That taunt shows serious emotional immaturity that seems to be a hallmark of most reactionary posters. Its reeks of thwarted masculine aspirations and probably a father who was a bastard and or a mother who was a dragon.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
“I take seriously and digest what someone posts and try to engage.”
No, you don’t. I pointed out that your comments= about the decendents of the “culture-less human detritus from the westward expansion and Dust Bowl era” was hateful bigotry. In turn you said that you had no reason to respond to me because of my choice of an online name.
Given your speculations of what my childhood must have been like, I’ll pass on further coffee-table deconstruction. Instead of a reading list, you could tell me what you imagine Henry Miller would think here. And I would be delighted to hear what you consider to be “weird, pointless points.”
I’ve dealt with whitey-hating leftists like you for years, and was actually one myself for a short time. Only with the anonymity of the internet can I (or anyone else) safely challenge your hatefulness and intolerence, of the kind that has done so much to drive working-class white Americans into the arms of Republican Party plutocrats, who at least don’t insult their very being.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
On second thought, Anna, skip telling me about Henry Miller. I read the Amazon comments on the air-conditioned nightmare, he seems to hate America as much as you do.
I’ll stick with his pornography.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Get these folks a copy of Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” NOW.
America is an abstraction. So is the entire state system.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for the tip on Benedict Anderson. Never heard of him, absolutely fascinated on all sides of the racial/ethnic/cultural question.
“America is an abstraction. So is the entire state system.”
Maybe so. But ethnogenesis, and ethnocide, are very, very real. And Tay-Sachs Disease, Sickle Cell Anemia, and race-differentiated bone marrow are not social constructs either:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/health&id=6443924
Neither is BiDil, the heart disease drug that seems to work a whole lot better for black people than it does for white people:
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2005/new01190.html
October 17th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Whiteboy your last remark further allows me to rest my case about your pointless points and actual agenda.
And your having to skulk about in cyber mufti so you can express your atavistic clap trap keeps shooting you in YOUR foot.
The only porn being discussed here is no doubt the eugenics book you keep under the mattress.
I’ve come to my own “scientific” conclusions about the reactionary mind. Its an evolutionary deviance. A left over from the cave dwelling primitive time when everything was about the survival of the group vs anyone or anything else.
The very designation “conservative”, reactionary describes someone who cannot absorb or take in anything new. The imagination gene hasn’t become fully formed yet.
A few years ago there was actually a Conservative Film Festival. One of the organizers–po faced–is on record as saying that “well, you know, conservatives aren’t generally known for being creative”.
Gee. Really?
Wonder why?
Oh, maybe its because their response to a suggestion to experience something new is always: “skip telling me about Henry Miller. I read the Amazon comments on the air-conditioned nightmare, he seems to hate America as much as you do.
I’ll stick with his pornography.” {big blank space here for everyone to imagine their own response to that}
Everything is perceived as a threat to your feeble mental constructions.
What must it be like to be locked in such a primitive, reactive mind set.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Whiteboy says:
“I’ve dealt with whitey-hating leftists like you for years,
and was actually one myself for a short time.
Only with the anonymity of the internet
can I (or anyone else) safely challenge your hatefulness and intolerence, of the kind that has done so much to drive working-class white Americans into the arms of Republican Party plutocrats, who at least don’t insult their very being.”
Gosh, you must be a Republican strategist. Thats as ingenious as McCain claiming he’s the victim of John Lewis’ bigotry and insults.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Anna,
all ridiculous things must come to an end, including this ridiculous exchange. I look forward to reading your posts in the future, sister.
October 17th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
And I look forward to your unmasking and having the balls to exercise your first amendment right that all us whitey, american hating progressives have fought to be defended so all you closeted neo fascists can out yourselves without fear of retribution.
I guess being so sequestered inside your solipsist mind fuck–you failed to notice.
October 18th, 2008 at 2:11 am
You recite a litany of transgressions by a microscopic minority of Americans and say they typify the nation itself.
You might want to get out of your cosmopolitan bubble a bit more if you think it’s microscopic.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:13 am
Anna writes:
“If the abiding sentiments in this country are so fucking freedom loving and righteous–where is the evidence?’’
Your knowledge of the good and bad in American history appears to be equal if not greater than mine. The question, then, can’t be whether there is evidence, but whether you are emotionally capable of acknowledging it.
How did slavery end? Did France invade and force emancipation on “dark-hearted America?” Did the masses go temporarily insane? Did the slaves overthrow their slavers? Did we win some temporary supernatural moral lottery and the wind blew just in the right direction one afternoon? And how, then, did Afro-Americans get the vote? How did Jim Crow end? And how, pray tell, did the nation’s biggest political party nominate a mixed race person, half African, to run for president AND WIN!!!!
According to your view of America, these either didn’t happen, or they are all anomalies—the exceptions.
Evidence, indeed.
If these are anomalies, why does the progress stretch across centuries, while the setbacks last mere years?
Speaking of evidence, where’s yours?
Name one decade in your lifetime when ethnic or religious minorities lost ground in legal rights, educational achievement, relative economic level, media exposure, political representation, relative access to medical care – take your pick, Anna. Then tell me how decade after decade after decade, the “dark-hearted’’ “neofascists’’ and bigots you say define and control America have yet to produce a single era of advance for their cause.
No one denies there have been and will be setbacks. By definition and throughout American history, they have proven to be the exceptions, not the rule.
Anna writes:
“A presidential candidate giving a leg up to a neo fascist wench as his running mate and then setting her loose on the stump to whip the hate into a fluffy mousse.’’
We both know Palin’s no wench and I know she’s no neo-fascist. You seem to apply that label with the same promiscuity and reckless disregard for truth that right wingnuts apply communist as an epithet.
Palin is indeed very conservative but cannot be construed as neo-fascist. (And why the “neo,” Anna? Playing word games with yourself?)
Nor has Palin, who is absurdly unqualified to be president and a rather disappointing specimen in other regards as well, been “set loose’’ to whip up hate. Rather, she has been assigned the role of attack dog in a nakedly unscrupulous attempt to brand Obama as the friend of a terrorist and of Frannie bosses.
Given the wingnutty scale on which you weigh evidence, Anna, one is tempted to write that “to their credit’’ neither McCain nor Palin has suggested Obama shouldn’t be president because he is of mixed race and/or because he has Muslim relatives. That omission by the McCain-Palin team should earn them no credit, as it is ASSUMED that any normal American presidential candidate would refrain from “fanning hatred” in those ways.
Not that the Republican party has not fanned hate under the Bush administration. As I asserted earlier on this same thread, one of the reasons the Republican formula isn’t getting the job done this time is that it lacks the Hate Show element. The Hate Show does, in part, tap into the American demographic that fears dark skin wherever they find it. But it is actually much more versatile than that, as it also turns legitimate concern about security threats into hatred and, much more counterproductively, paranoia. Racism, almost all of it latent, is definitely an element. But the good news is that it ISN’T WORKING THIS TIME.
Maybe it will, in the end, work one more time and Obama will go back to Washington as a senator who gave it one helluva try. Sometimes the setbacks can last many years, though even when they endure longer than expected, the regression is exceedingly slow an always incremental.
I’d guess you’re betting against that and know, like we all do, that Obama’s going to win and 10 years from now, America will be freer, better educated, healthier, richer and more humanistic that it is today, but less so than it will be 20 years on.
October 18th, 2008 at 8:13 am
BB
The 2000 election was stolen on the back of Black voters. Katrina (nuff said)
If you think America hasn’t moved backwards since Clinton’s racist welfare reform, then you aren’t looking at the data.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:01 am
It’s amazing how the cable chatters keep getting these debates wrong.
Nothwithstanding their obvious bias for Obama .. HAHA.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
“If you think America hasn’t moved backwards since Clinton’s racist welfare reform, then you aren’t looking at the data.”
The 2000s have been horrible for America. Setbacks on many fronts. It’s possible that the regression has gone further in Afro-American communities than in general, but I’ve seen no overt indications of that. As far as I can see, the setbacks have been across the board for all middle- and lower-class demographics. But the 2000s arent’ over yet, so let’s wait till we have the data before we start saying it backs up our case.
As for the 1990s (Clinton era), I’ve looked at the data and I don’t recall any showing Afro-Americans losing ground.
Maybe that’s one reason Afro-Americans were enthusiastic supporters of Clinton. Or maybe you, JC, believe they’re to dumb to recognize their own self interests.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
BB. you try to sweep pointed observations away with your broad brush strokes.
Clinton took a hike outta office signing in two of the worst deregulation bills plus repealing the Taft Harley Act. Not to mention GATT and NAFTA.
Then Bush. Gains? You weren’t on the phones for months fundraising for every major advocacy group trying to stem the tide of Supreme Court decisions/appointments and horrid legislation pretty much putting us back in the Stone Age when one considers the blood, sweat and tears–the evolutionary slog to get a lot of things enacted.
As to educational rights being lost–I know you specifically mention minorities. I can’t even respond with a straight face. What planet have you been on.
Whatever it is kids do when the leave home each day it is certain they are not getting an education.
We can’t have this discussion in cyber space because the sweeping generalizations you make that wipe out a contextual point that I make—just make it impossible.
And anyone who doesn’t think Palin is a neo fascist…well to take a line from WIll Rogers: I’m building an asylum just for people who think Palin isn’t a neo fascist.
I find it hard to believe, Reg, you haven’t read any number of accounts of how the rabble was roused in Germany nor can I believe you haven’t read any number of academic definitions of the phenomenon she represents.
She is the poster girl for the concept. And she is a wench. Actually some who have had close dealings with her say flat out she is a bitch. Her whole demeanor and manner of expression certainly support report.
I suppose to any guy into S and M she would be their wet dream as a dominatrix.
October 18th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
How did slavery end? Did France invade and force emancipation on “dark-hearted America?” Did the masses go temporarily insane? Did the slaves overthrow their slavers? Did we win some temporary supernatural moral lottery and the wind blew just in the right direction one afternoon? And how, then, did Afro-Americans get the vote? How did Jim Crow end? And how, pray tell, did the nation’s biggest political party nominate a mixed race person, half African, to run for president AND WIN!!!!
According to your view of America, these either didn’t happen, or they are all anomalies—the exceptions.
Uh, can you try to be just a little bit intellectually honest? According to her view none of these questions has the answer “because the abiding sentiments in this country are so fucking freedom loving and righteous”. And she’s obviously right. Good grief, to take the ending of Jim Crow as evidence of righteousness and a love of freedom virtually defines cherry picking.
Given the wingnutty scale on which you weigh evidence, Anna, one is tempted to write that “to their credit’’ neither McCain nor Palin has suggested Obama shouldn’t be president because he is of mixed race and/or because he has Muslim relatives. That omission by the McCain-Palin team should earn them no credit, as it is ASSUMED that any normal American presidential candidate would refrain from “fanning hatred” in those ways.
Talk about nuttery … the only reason McCain and Palin don’t do that is because it would immediately lose them the race, as such explicit bigotry isn’t tolerated. So instead they use inferred bigotry, and leave it to their supporters, such as the woman who said Obama’s an Arab, and all those repeating “Barack HUSSEIN Obama”. They’ve got people like Michelle Malkin working on overdrive, telling people that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., attended a Madrassah, etc. etc. I mean really, how thick can you get? You’re making Anne look downright level-headed in comparison.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Passing writes:
“ Good grief, to take the ending of Jim Crow as evidence of righteousness and a love of freedom virtually defines cherry picking.”
Either you can’t read or you’re in very deep denial over what the common words I used mean. I referred to entired decades, indeed an entire American era. It takes some moronic chutzpah to refer to a post citing DECADES of progress as “cherry picking.”
As for NAFTA, there is a legitimate debate over whether it was the best possible agreement. I don’t think there’s any evidence that global trade in general is bad for ethnic minorities in America, but I can see that there could at least potentially be some room for critique there.
There is no legitimacy or substance whatsoever, though, to an assertion that NAFTA is racist or was somehow intended to hurt ethnic minorities in America.
The data are in: More Americans moved up economically and out of poverty under the Clinton administration that at any other time in history.
Again: More Americans moved up economically and out of poverty under the Clinton administration that at any other time in history.
I suppose you’ll call that “cherry picking,” but any sane person would concede that the achievement is not only spectacular, but definitive of the administration’s record on poverty.
Or maybe you, like so many right wingnuts, will argue that the Clinton administration was just lucky. The moon was in the seventh house and the ranks of the poor magically shrank, just ’cause that’s what happen when the stars align.
No one need deny that the Clinton administration had its flaws and mistaken policy choices, but they are not definitive. By almost every objective economic measure — GDP growth, personal income growth, number of people living above the poverty line, percentage of people living above the poverty line, job creation, total employment, inflation, stock prices, budget deficit and national debt — Clinton’s performance was the best since JFK-LBJ. On some, Clinton’s was the best ever.
Cherry picking?
I can’t wait to see what sort of unsubstantiated nits Anna and Passing barf up to try and show that Clinton shafted minorities.
My guess is that they’ll move along quietly.
I don’t really mind either way. Passing does a good job of making my points for me, and I quote:
“the only reason McCain and Palin don’t do that is because it would immediately lose them the race, as such explicit bigotry isn’t tolerated.”
Got that, Anna?
“Explicit bigotry isn’t tolerated.”
Of course we all know that in many places around the world, explicit bigotry IS tolerated. In many, it’s a matter of law. More important, explicit bigotry was once tolerated in America.
FDR, who I would assume is one of the few presidents Anna wouldn’t call a war criminal or bigot, was, in fact, explicitly bigoted and famously opposed letting Afro-American soldiers fight alongside other ethnic groups.
We’ve come a long way, indeed, and what’s great about America is that we’re going to go a lot further!
If you want to debate Nafta, Anna, bring it on. But first, acknowledge that Nafta’s supporters whether or not they made the best possible policy, they werent’ dark-hearted or neo-fascist or crypto-anything.
As for the deregulation bills Clinton signed, please do tell us exactly where you find fault with them. The deregulation under the Clinton administration has almost nothing to do with the current credit crisis, if that’s what you think you want to try to allude to.
If you have a problem with Clinton’s deregulation, bring it on. I doubt you’ll have more substance in that debate than you’ve had in the rest.
October 19th, 2008 at 6:18 am
the deregulation bills Clinton signed, please do tell us exactly where you find fault with them. The deregulation under the Clinton administration has almost nothing to do with the current credit crisis,
Obviously you are on another planet where cause and effect have no meaning.
October 19th, 2008 at 6:34 am
FDR, who I would assume is one of the few presidents Anna wouldn’t call a war criminal or bigot, was, in fact, explicitly bigoted and famously opposed letting Afro-American soldiers fight alongside other ethnic groups.
Again, you try to tar others with your twisted perspective.
I believe I actually posted in another thread the issue of FDR’s bigotry. He went out of his way to get the 30% enrollment by Jews at Harvard reduced to just 15%.
Go ask the thousands upon thousands in the heartland the effects of Nafta. The ones that still have a brain cell left and can still connect the dots–after generations of accepting rotten education that did more than prepare them to be a cog in a wheel–as a great many communities across America were corporate towns.
You might also want to read how Kennedy was virtually a one man shadow government trying to stave off the stripping being done by Clinton making good on his moving the Democratic party to a centrist position. Read the accounts of those in the administration on a day to day level having to waste time putting out the fires he ignited with his dick and then disrupting things with that troll Dick Morris let loose to play devils advocate.
There are enough professional-academic reports on the damage Clinton did you can read rather than me trying to remember them.
The Clintons attack on Obama was as if they were stalking horses for McCain. Don’t talk to me about Clinton.
Even in the Al Smith affair the other night part of McCain’s little satiric riff was to allude to the fact the Clinton’s were hoping for an Obama defeat; and dissing Obama while giving McCain left handed pats.
And you really need to read up on the effects of the three deregualtion acts Clinton sneaked in before he exited.
October 19th, 2008 at 6:40 am
http://www.progressivehistorians.com/2008/05/bill-clinton-glass-steagall-and-current_30.html
Just for starters re the congressional debate on Clinton’s repeal of Glass Steagel or whatever it was.
October 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
The link you cite, Anna, only lists comments from congressmen and senators who opposed the legislation. There’s nothing there even claiming that the bill has caused problems.
Glass-Steagal prohibited federally insured banks that accept deposits from getting into the businesses of providing insurance or issuing stocks and bonds or advising on mergers and acquisitions (investment banking.)
You may want to take note that mega-banks formed following the repeal of Glass-Steagal are not among those having problems.
Citigroup, for example, has weathered the crisis well. Lehman and Bear Stearns — the banks that accelerated the credit crunch into the credit crisis — were not deposit-taking institutions and could have existed before Glass-Steagal’s repeal.
Moreover, the Clinton deregulation actually saved the taxpayers from having to spend even more on bailouts. Bank of America was able to buy Merrill Lynch — preventing its imminent collapse — only because such a merger is now legal post-Glass-Steagal. The same applies to Goldman Sacs and Morgan Stanley becoming deposit-taking institutions. Had Glass still been in force, these banks may well have had to simply go out of business — or join in the long line receiving taxpayer bailouts.
Anna writes:
“Go ask the thousands upon thousands in the heartland the effects of Nafta.”
Yes. Perhaps then, I would find out how Nafta is racist or “dark hearted.” But at the moment, I just don’t see it and neither do you, Anna, or you would have brought on some evidence. Should I ask them about Glass-Steagal while I’m at it?
October 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Either you can’t read or you’re in very deep denial over what the common words I used mean. I referred to entired decades, indeed an entire American era. It takes some moronic chutzpah to refer to a post citing DECADES of progress as “cherry picking.”
I can read but unlike you I’m not grossly intellectually dishonest. In your demented mental world, a man who stops beating his wife has demonstrated that he loves her freedom — no need to think of or compare to the man who never beats his wife in the first place — heck, he’s made no “progress”.
Idiot.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
We’ve come a long way, indeed, and what’s great about America is that we’re going to go a lot further!
Yeah, some day we’ll stop being racist scum!! Wow, we’re so wonderful.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Thank you , Passing Through.
BB: all one can say to your rabbit hole gibber defense of deregulation is OY.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Like pretty much everything else, Obama and his campaign has a better idea what these debates were about–an opportunity to demonstrate gravitas and leadership. To extend the boxing metaphor, he was like Alexis Arguello, a cool counterpuncher who frustrated the “hands of stone” punchers by keeping them at a long arm’s length, looked after 15 rounds that he had just gotten to the office, and won every match for about a dozen years.