hawkeye10
 
  -1  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 06:53 pm
Quote:
When politicians are confronted with bad poll numbers, they often say that these surveys are just a "snapshot in time." That can be true. Fortunes can change. Doom is not locked in. But what's so bad about these surveys is that they paint a very dark picture about the president's ability to brighten the future. If Obama can't improve things for Democrats, no one can. And as bad as the president's numbers are, the Democrats in Congress are in even worse shape.

Candidate Obama used to joke about rays of sunshine coming in when he started to speak. Now he brings the clouds. He's spent a great deal of time talking about the Recovery Act and health care reform, but the political fortunes of those programs are dismal, which suggests his ability to persuade and change minds is seriously damaged.
http://www.slate.com/id/2260359/

It was only a few months ago how it was noticed that having Obama come speak on a candidate's behalf failed to work. People like Obama, they just don't tend to believe him, or value his opinion.
plainoldme
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:12 pm
@mysteryman,
Although there have been serious breaches of trust on the part of Clinton, he confronted the war and the draft rather than pretending to dance to the music, as bush did.
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:15 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
okie has no idea which of Obama's policies resemble anything. He has no idea what a fascist is, because if he did, he would understand how centrist Obama is.

okie thinks he is centrist.
plainoldme
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:17 pm
@okie,
Just like willard romney told the insurance business (not the medical industry . . . what ever that is) what to do?
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:18 pm
Why do I have this feeling that you are shorter than I am?
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:19 pm
NAACP resolution condemns racism in tea party

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, Associated Press Writer
42 mins ago

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Leaders of the country's largest civil rights organization accused tea party activists on Tuesday of tolerating bigotry and approved a resolution condemning racism within the political movement.
The resolution was adopted during the annual convention in Kansas City of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, spokesman Chris Fleming said. Tea party organizers disputed claims of racism and called on the NAACP to withdraw the resolution.
Debate was mostly closed to the public, but the final version of the resolution "calls on the tea party and all people of good will to repudiate the racist element and activities within the tea party," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau.
"I hope it will empower the tea party to actually look at itself and see that there are those who are noticing things that I think most tea partiers don't want," he said.
The final wording of the resolution won't be released until the NAACP's national board of directors approves it during its meeting in October. But the original called for the NAACP to "educate its membership and the community that this movement is not just about higher taxes and limited government." It said something could evolve "and become more dangerous for that small percentage of people that really think our country has been taken away from them."
"We felt the time had come to stand up and say, 'It's time for the tea party to be responsible members of this democracy and make sure they don't tolerate bigots or bigotry among their members,'" NAACP President Ben Jealous said ahead of the debate.
"We don't have a problem with the tea party's existence. We have an issue with their acceptance and welcoming of white supremacists into their organizations," he said.
Tea party activist Alex Poulter, who co-founded a Kansas City-area group called Political Chips, disputed the allegations. He said the movement is made up of a "diverse group of folks who are upset with what is going on with this country."
Poulter said he has seen no evidence of racism within the movement.
"It's unfounded, but people are running with these accusations like they are true," he said.
A group called the St. Louis Tea Party issued its own resolution Tuesday calling on the NAACP to withdraw the proposal.
Though not affiliated with either major political party, tea party activists espouse a political philosophy of less government, a free market, lower taxes, individual rights and political activism.
The group has faced occasional claims of racism, most notably in March near the end of the bitter health care debate. U.S. Reps. John Lewis, Andre Carson and Emanuel Cleaver said some demonstrators, many of them tea party activists, yelled a racial epithet as the black congressmen walked from House office buildings to the Capitol. Cleaver, D-Mo., also said he was spit on.
A white lawmaker said he also heard the epithets, but conservative activists said the lawmakers were lying.
"They are pulling people together and focusing on the negative, and then it's hard to make anything positive out of that," said Anita L. Russell, president of the Kansas City, Mo., branch of the NAACP, which introduced the resolution. "And then these groups, these extremist groups, are looking for something, and they are latching on to this."
georgeob1
 
  2  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:42 pm
@plainoldme,
I wonder if there are any stray advocates of Black supremacy in the NAACP?

Do advocates of aggressive "affirmative action", that is quotas and processes designed explicitly to favor otherwised qualified folks because they are black, acknowledge that this is also racism?

Is the NAACP condemning the (many) disparate "tea party" groups for what it believes 'might evolve, or become' to paraphrase the cited words of the original declaration. Is that not the very essence of prejudgement?

This kind of nonsense, together with the Holder Justice department's apparent refusal to prosecute racism or cases of voter intimidation when the victime are white, is likely to arouse a very significant voter backlash this November. Who knows, perhaps Obama wasn't really sleeping through those fifteen years or so of the esteemed Rev. Wright's racist harrangues.
snood
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 08:57 pm
@plainoldme,
Quote:
okie thinks he is centrist.



That's one for the books...
okie
 
  0  
Tue 13 Jul, 2010 09:02 pm
@snood,
snood wrote:

Quote:
okie thinks he is centrist.



That's one for the books...

Alot closer than pom will ever be, snood.
xris
 
  1  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 05:41 am
@georgeob1,
Considering the NAACP is a proactive group that is still fighting for black justice in the 21c, I think your remarks are little naive. Considering the teabaggers are still trying to turn back the clock, I think your remarks are a little inappropriate. Remember the original declaration was never intended for them black folk.
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  0  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 07:35 am
@Cycloptichorn,
Jonah Goldberg is indeed an odd duck. He was a member of the second class at Goucher College to admit men.

Now, some of you are going to make much of this, but, I graduated from a women's Catholic college that went co-ed the year after I graduated. A class mate remarked, at the time the announcement was made, "A guy would want to attend a newly open former woman's college has something wrong with him."

I have always had a fondness for Goucher as a much older friend and fellow Quaker (I became a member of the Religious Society of Friends at 21) who had worked for Jane Addams at Hull House while waiting for her fiance to finish medical school, was a graduate of Goucher.

Personal narrative aside, while I haven't read Goldberg's book, I have been keeping a weather eye on him for several years. He's a loose cannon.

Here are some capsulized remarks from some of the negative reviews of his rabble rousing book (were an equivalent book written from a member of the left about the right . . . which, I do not think would happen . . . the righties here would be screaming "Kool-Aid") :

In The Nation, Eric Alterman wrote:
The book reads like a Google search gone gaga. Some Fascists were vegetarians; some liberals are vegetarians; ergo... Some Fascists were gay; some liberals are gay... Fascists cared about educating children; Hillary Clinton cares about educating children. Aha! ... Like Coulter, he's got a bunch of footnotes. And for all I know, they check out. But they are put in the service of an argument that no one with any knowledge of the topic would take seriously.

Journalist David Neiwert, wrote in The American Prospect that Goldberg
has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It’s a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history. ... Goldberg isn't content to simply create an oxymoron; this entire enterprise, in fact, is classic Newspeak. ... Along the way, he grotesquely misrepresents the state of academia regarding the study of fascism... (Italics are mine).

-----------------

Look at what Neiwert* has to say: he grotesquely MISREPRESENTS THE STATE OF ACADEMIA REGARDING THE STUDY OF FASCISM.

Note that Alterman** refers to Ann Coulter's footnotes. Now, one of the ican postings that is full of inaccuracies seems to have been derived from Coulter. Anyone who thinks Coulter does her own research should not be allowed out after dark alone. However, when a left wing person makes the same mistake -- ie, relying on a hired person to research -- the right goes up in arms. The coulter-sourced info posted continuously by ican is just plain sloppy.
----------------------

* Award winning journalist who studied English at the University of Idaho and writing at the University of Montana at Missoula.


** BA, History and Government, Cornell
MA, International Relations, Yale
PhD, US History, Stanford

A professional journalist who has published in leading journals, domestic and international, liberal and conservative. Currently, teaches at Brooklyn College.
plainoldme
 
  0  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 07:38 am
@georgeob1,
Start by reading Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon so you have some idea why
Quote:
Do advocates of aggressive "affirmative action", that is quotas and processes designed explicitly to favor otherwised qualified folks because they are black, acknowledge that this is also racism?
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  0  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 07:39 am
@okie,
No, okie, you are not closer to the center than I am. You haven't a clue where the center is and we have all been trying to tell you.

You and your fellow travelers on the right make much of personal responsibility but you refuse to educate yourself. That is a sad lack of personal responsibility.
plainoldme
 
  0  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 07:42 am
@plainoldme,
Neiwert's book is reviewed here and, of course, none of the righties will read this review which might expose them to the truth, something they run from.



The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right
by David Neiwert, PoliPoint Press, 266 pages, $16.95
David Neiwert's The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right arrives in stores as if conjured up by the zeitgeist. Since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, a culture of paranoia has hijacked the conservative movement. Examples of the hysterical style abound: Glenn Beck portraying Obama pouring gasoline on the American people; Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota calling for "an orderly revolution" against the Democrats; a right-wing conspiracy nut killing three Pittsburgh policemen because of unfounded fears that the government was going to take away his guns. It seems among all segments of the conservative movement -- from the vanguard on the air, to the leaders in the Capitol, to the rank-and-file on the ground -- the mood is apocalypse now.

The thread that connects them is the subject of Neiwert's compelling new book. A journalist based in Seattle, Neiwert has for years been doing yeoman's work reporting on the extreme right. On his personal blog, Orcinus, as well as on Crooks and Liars, where he is managing editor, Neiwert has trained his focus on the extremist ideas of the right-wing fringe and the echo chamber that launders them for mainstream consumption.

Neiwert's paramount concern is the transformation of terrible thought to murderous deed. Richard Poplawski, the Pittsburgh man who killed those policemen last month, is the textbook example of the type Neiwert worries about. Poplawski liked to publish posts on Stormfront, the largest white-supremacist online forum, and visit Infowars, a Web site run by right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones. Poplawski believed that the Obama administration was out to get his guns, a baseless myth that nonetheless gets repeated again and again on conservative outlets -- and that, in his case, apparently inspired a violent spree.

But Neiwert argues that these tall tales are not confined to (or spread by) the fringe. "Transmitters" like Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing media figures circulate such conspiracy theories to a wider audience. The result is a feedback loop of paranoia and hysteria, as the transmitters "inject extremist ideas into the mainstream and … bring the two sectors closer together."

He offers the example of the Patriot movement, which thrived in the Northwest in the 1990s. According to Neiwert, the movement "provided most of the early audience for The Clinton Chronicles," a conspiracy documentary about Bill Clinton's alleged involvement in the death of his aide Vincent Foster as well as drug-running and murder in Arkansas. Although easily debunked, the wild accusations bounced around in the right's outer reaches long enough "that the claims obtained currency in the mainstream." That symbiotic relationship between shadowy fringe and conservative mainstream has only deepened in recent years, thanks to the rise of the Internet, a more entrenched right-wing echo chamber, and an even more rigidly ideological GOP caucus.

The Eliminationists attempts a grand theory of the right-wing mentality. "What motivates this kind of talk and behavior is called eliminationism: a politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination," he writes. Calling eliminationism "a signature trait of fascism," Neiwert offers a deft and scrupulous synthesis of academic research on fascism, which has been drained of its meaning from both liberal overuse (as Neiwert admits) and conservative up-is-downism.

Neiwert's commentary is depressingly timely. While paranoid and anti-intellectual rhetoric has long defined conservative media, the latest strain seems to be louder, meaner, and more pervasive. Where once the kind of hate talk Neiwert describes was confined to the fringes, it's now part of daily programming at Fox News. To a distressing extent, much of mainstream right-wing culture and politics is predicated on hatred and exclusion. Hardly a day goes by that an epithet isn't hurled against Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and other bêtes noire in conservative media and the right-wing blogosphere. And let's not forget the greatest enemy of all: liberals. More than low taxes, traditional values, or a hawkish foreign policy, hatred of liberals (as opposed to mere disagreement) is the one true unifier among conservatives. Neiwert sums up the right-wing mentality by citing a line from Benito Mussolini to a left-wing critic: "The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our program? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo." For many conservatives, the goal isn't so much to enact conservative policies as it is to vanquish the liberals in their midst.

At a brisk 266 pages (including notes), The Eliminationists serves as a useful primer on the violent and doomsday strain of American conservatism. At times, Neiwert's slim book can barely sustain its ambitious scope. More detailed dispatches from the ground from his experiences as a reporter would also have been welcome. The peeks at a subterranean and yet potentially dangerous world make up some of the book's most compelling passages.

But it's hard to deny the fundamental truth of Neiwert's argument. The recent departure of Republican Sen. Arlen Spector for the Democratic Party -- and the response by the right's standard bearers -- is only the latest illustration of Neiwert's thesis. As the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys cement their status as the party's de facto leaders, the GOP has become increasingly radicalized, alienating moderate Republicans like the Pennsylvania senator. Progressives have looked upon the radicalization of the right as a good thing for the left's political prospects -- the farther right the Republicans go, the smaller their tent becomes. But as Paul Krugman recently wrote, "In the long run, this is not good for American democracy -- we really do need two major parties in competition."

Neiwert also bemoans the radicalization of the Republicans and the refulgence of the fringe. He writes that the poisonous rhetoric that now dominates the right represents the "death of discourse itself" -- and possibly presages the coming of a new American berserk. Bookending The Eliminationists is the story of Jim Adkisson, a Knoxville man who killed two and wounded seven in a July 2008 shooting at a Unitarian Church. In a manifesto released in February, he wrote, "Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. … Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book."

The scariest part of all this? We are just a few months into the Obama presidency. The ugliness has just begun. Neiwert's book should serve as a wake-up call not just for progressives and moderates but also for conservatives who still seek to participate in the American pluralist experiment. Some may want to brush off the Adkissons and Poplawskis as deranged aberrations, but that would be a dangerous temptation. As The Eliminationists persuasively argues, they are less anomalies than inevitabilities: the terrifying end products of a conservative movement that has nothing left to offer but the conspiratorial murmur and the rabble-rousing howl.
Irishk
 
  1  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 07:55 am
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
It was only a few months ago how it was noticed that having Obama come speak on a candidate's behalf failed to work. People like Obama, they just don't tend to believe him, or value his opinion.


A recent Pew poll confirmed those results. It surprised me and I wonder if the Slate author had that poll in mind when he wrote the article.
0 Replies
 
okie
 
  0  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 09:44 pm
@plainoldme,
plainoldme wrote:


The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right
by David Neiwert, PoliPoint Press, 266 pages, $16.95

Who would waste $16.95 on that piece of obvious garbage. Most conservative talk hosts are decent law abiding Americans that believe wholeheartedly in the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. If that is radical, then count me a radical, but it is not radical. It should be mainstream, but unfortunately the liberal left press and liberal educational system has polluted society and poisoned the brains of the young people growing up.
okie
 
  1  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 10:01 pm
@plainoldme,
plainoldme wrote:

No, okie, you are not closer to the center than I am. You haven't a clue where the center is and we have all been trying to tell you.

You and your fellow travelers on the right make much of personal responsibility but you refuse to educate yourself. That is a sad lack of personal responsibility.

You are using the term "fellow travelers" in the wrong context, pom. That term has traditionally been used for communists, not conservative people. In fact the first definition to come up when I did a web search was this:
"a communist sympathizer (but not a member of the Communist Party) "
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:fellow+traveler&sa=X&ei=QYg-TOC6CJPqnQeZh9X1BA&ved=0CBIQkAE
georgeob1
 
  1  
Wed 14 Jul, 2010 10:22 pm
@plainoldme,
The author, of course, is an aggressive left wing partisan. All of his "analysis" should be considered in that light. This is a piece of political rhetoric intended to demonize a manufactured cariacature of the opposition. It is not at all a piece of dispassionate analytical work.

I note from a subsequent post that plainoldme considers herself to be something of a centrist, as evidently also does okie. This merely demonstrates the near universal human tendency to assume our own views, whatever they may be, are the norm. Plainoldme's assertion is just as ridiculous as okie's.

The truth is we have a more left of center government now than we have had since the hapless Jimmy Carter was President. That fact alone alters the boundary markers for the left-right political theologians among us.

The current Administration has shown an unusual willingness to fudge the numbers in its political rhetoric. From "you can keep your presennt health insurance if you like it" to the claims of budget neutrality for the health care fiasco, and now to the unemployment numbers that appear magically unable to pierce the 10% barrier , their lies and prevarications have also set a new standard for veracity and moved those markers too. This, of course, may backfire on them, as the cumulative effect breeds growing incredulity and later widespread suspicion. At some point before the November elections , unemployment approaching 15% is apt to become an undeniable fact. Blaming it all on his predecessors may well have worn very thin by then and we could see a dramatic reversal in the political fortunes of a president who masqueraded as a centrist during the campaign but who has turned out to be a left wing populist, oddly reminiscent of Huey Long, in his governance.
plainoldme
 
  0  
Thu 15 Jul, 2010 06:59 am
@okie,
Have you ever looked at the word prejudice? It means "pre - judgment," or judgment without familiarity or knowledge. Prejudice in the basis of your life. What is sad is you are proud to be prejudiced.

The word radical can and should be applied equally to both the left and right. That the right has largely captured the word is a sign of how disjunct the right has become. As I typed this, I thought of Medieval flagellants. At the end of the Medieval period, after the Black Death, religious adherents, driven to a frenzy by the death surrounding them, took to flagellating (whipping) themselves in public. This was related to pilgrimages. There were bands of these ecstatic whippers, traveling throughout Europe. Ingmar Bergman depicted them in his film, The Seventh Seal. Eventually, people noticed that the flagellants brought the Plague with them and the Catholic Church declared them heretical.

Anyway, I think the Tea Totalitarians are like the flagellants. They see the social change, that they are actually a part of but not because they joined a year old, loosely organized quasi-political movement, but, because as the newspapers endlessly proclaim in their weaning statements that these are largely business people. They contributed to the mess the economy is in which they alone think they can fix while denying their culpability.

Talk show hosts are not --- let me repeat NOT -- "decent law abiding citizens." They are poseurs.

There is no liberal press with the exception of few journals. You have been told that repeatedly but you need a whipping boy, someone else to blame for your discontent and the distant and unknown press is a great victim.

plainoldme
 
  0  
Thu 15 Jul, 2010 07:00 am
@okie,
You never heard of a pun, have you?

Besides, the left is not hurting America and the world. The right most definitely is.
0 Replies
 
 

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