What Happens When You Don't Vote

I usually try to get back to the Commonwealth once a year. I've lived for the past 30 years in the same part of England to which two other Virginia women, Pocahontas (my kinswoman) and Nancy Astor, were condemned; and so I feel that if I don't wiggle my toes in some Old Dominion dirt at least once a year, I'll be pushing up daisies in Brit dirt along with Mrs Rolfe and Lady Astor.

But in 2009, I came home twice, the second time,expressly to vote in the state gubernatorial election. Not that my vote did any good - I voted for Creagh Deeds: nice man, weak candidate.

Virginians have a particularly mad habit of saying one thing and doing another (which drives my English husband around the bend). The real Democratic candidate in 2009 should have been Terry McAuliffe, a clintonista, but a Democrat, nonetheless. However, Virginians balked at a Carpetbagger running for the state's highest office. So what did they do?

They elected a Carpetbagger ... and a Republican.

But this wasn't just any old Carpetbagger ... Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Reconstruction, for the certain dynamics in the South, would have been heaven on a plate if all the occupying Yankees had been like Lil'Bob McDonnell!

First, he wrote a doctoral thesis, basically saying women should be barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen and submissive to their husband. Lil'Bob tried to brush this away as a youthful indiscretion, but fact was, when he wrote this (for his post-graduate degree at the religious playschool known as Regent University), he was already a married man with a wife (maybe not barefoot, but certainly in the kitchen and pregnant a lot) and in his mid-thirties.

When does "youthful" cease to be "youthful?"

Then, there was this little matter which unfurled during the McDonnell campaign (and at a gun booth as well!)

And then, after all was said and done, one of the first things Lil'Bob did as governor was to insert one cultural foot into his mouth and shove.

Look, we don't need any kind of reminder that the Civil War - that's right, I said the Civil War, not the War Between the States or even the War of Northern Aggression - happened. Hell, we're Southern; as Faulkner says, in the South, the past isn't even past. But, Lordy, someone should have told Lil'Bob that the Civil War ended in 1865. We lost. Get over it. (And, pssst! The war was all about slavery.)

But, you see, Lil'Bob should be all over that shit. Because he won. To the victor, the spoils, and all that.

Our problem is that we got a Carpetbagger of the Chris Matthews variety, from Chris's same area nad neighbourhood around Philadelphia. You know, the spittle-flecked type. The sorts who "forget" a black person is black if he or she is the right kind of black person. For Chris Matthews, that's Barack Obama; for Lil'Bob, that's Sheila Johnson of BET.

Lately, Lil'Bob's latest trick is coyly sponsoring draft legislation which heavily regulate the Commonwealth's abortion clinics.

Anti-abortion advocates have been pushing for two decades to impose new regulations that would treat abortion clinics as ambulatory surgery centers and require that they meet hospital-type regulations. They say such rules will make Virginia clinics safer for women because they will no longer be treated like doctor’s offices.

The regulations require the same strict physical requirements as outpatient surgical centers that would be doing complex and invasive surgery, abortion rights activists said. The new requirements are based on dozens of pages of guidelines for health-care facilities published by the Facility Guidelines Institute, a nonprofit group.

(Pssst again! For "nonprofit group," read "conservative family values.")

Now, I certainly didn't vote for Lil'Bob McDonnell, whom many people in the Republican party and the media are now touting as possible Vice Presidential material; but I can easily see how some people in the media, who didn't know any better, might lump Lil'Bob in with all the other raving lunatice fundamentalist Pentecostal types who charm snakes, speak in tongues and believe we are in End Times - people like Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry.

In fact, Joan Walsh is going into meltdown on Rick Perlstein's Facebook wall about Jimmy Carter, trying to curry favour with Perlstein by lumping what these myopic media elitist wannabes perceive to be Carter's conservatism, likening it to his Baptist religion - Southern, protestant and fundamentalist. Walsh even concludes that a good enough reason for Carter hatred is the fact that Michele Bachmann formerly supported him in another life.

(Well, Joan's gal, Hillary Clinton, started out a Goldwater babe, and once upon a time Rick Perry was not only Al Gore's BFF, but his campaign manager, so do we hate these people too?)

I'm sure Joan would like to lump Lil'Bob into that pejorative pack of Dominionists too, except that she can't because he's not.

Lil'Bob belongs to Joan Walsh's ethnic and religious dynamic. Begorrah! He's an Irish Catholic lad from a working class neighbourhood in Philadelphia. Like Joan. Like Tweety.

Recently, Lil'Bob addressed the graduating class at my alma mater, the University of Virginia. It brought back memories of when I took my degree there. That was in 1976, the bicentenniel year. A Republican was in the White House. Jimmy Carter was running for President. The governor was Mills Godwin, who was elected as a Democrat, but who converted to the GOP halfway through his tenure. I remember when he was introduced, my mother told me the audience had to stand, and they did. All except my father, who remained in his seat, with his right hand raised and clenched in a fist, except of the stiff middle finger.

But that was then, and this is now. McDonnell gave the graduating class some timeworn, if not trite advice, which, upon reading this, seems adverse to his Republican principles:-

Follow the Golden Rule. Do unto others, as you'd have them do unto you. Help and serve your neighbor. Be kind and generous to others. Take responsibility for others, and make no excuses. Give back to your community generously. Live today well. Do not worry about tomorrow ... Always vote ...

Eh?

That sounds positively Democratic. In fact, it sounds liberal to the point of socialistic. So socialistic, that I almost wonder if Lil'Bob meant, at the end, that these kids should just vote, as in "just do it," or that they should vote for the GOP?

Who knows? This is the enigma about Bob McDonnell. His policies stink, but he's never been anything less than respectful to the President - moreso than a lot of politicos and pundits from our blue side of the fence. He dismissed birtherism as nonsense and said people should focus on the President's policies and not his character. He's taken government money and publically thanked the President for any help and aid offered the Commonwealth.

Do I want to see McDonnell out of the Statehouse? Yes. I'm bloody glad he's only got one term, and I'm counting the days. Do I want to see him out of politics? Goes without saying. And I certainly don't want to see him on a GOP ticket in 2012 or even heading one in 2016; but Bob McDonnell is what happens to a state when people can't be assed to go to the polls and vote, for whatever reason.

However, I have to say that Virginia could have come off worse in this situation. At the end of the day, Bob McDonnell is no Scott Walker.

Attitude Problem

I was born a Democrat. My parents were Democrats before me. My father cast his first vote at 21 in 1936, for FDR. Four years later, when she turned 21, my mother did the same. She came from a long line of Democrats, going way back to Jackson, I suppose. When 1861 came along, some of her kin hiked on the blue uniform, and some wore the grey, even though all were Virginians. And after that, they all carried on voting Democratic.

They were Southerners and Democrats. They never wavered from the party, even when many of their friends, associates and even some close relatives, gulped and embraced the GOP at the time LBJ signed the Civil Rights' Act. As New Deal Democrats, they morphed into Kennedy Democrats. When 1968 saw a disastrous four-way split in the Democratic Party, they voted for Hubert Humphrey; but they would have voted for Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy all the same.

Both of them voted Democratic until their deaths, although my father was growing more and more disconcerted with some of the leaders emerging from the party's ranks. Although he voted for Bill Clinton in the 1992 election, in the Virginia primary, he supported Jesse Jackson.

Jackson, he explained to me, was a real Democrat, who cared about the working man and the working classes.

Of course, you seldom hear about the "working classes" these days. I don't expect to hear about them from the Republicans, although they use them to garner votes; after all, the Republicans were only ever about business, and the bigger the business, the stauncher the Republican support. But the Democrats were all about the working classes, or the public sector service industries, and - above all - the unions.

Nowadays, however, it all seems to be concern about the middle classes,a euphemism awarded like a gift with the Reagan credit de-regulations in the form of a credit card and an attitude that it's OK to use your property like an ATM, as long as it got you the same toys as the professional person who lived around the corner had. Our recent middle class, the one to which everyone allegedly belongs in its Reaganian reincarnation, is one built on debt and deception and living above our means.

I've never heard any politician of note - actually, except the President - reference the working classes; and even the President does so, within a quick and essential reminder that this really is about preserving the middle classes; but, by and large, we tend to sweep the working classes under a mythical carpet. The Right pulls them out, occasionally, dusts them off, fills them with whatever the current fear-of-the-day happens to be, and then sends them off to the polls every two years to vote against their own interests.

The Left, if they don't ignore them outright, derides them, assigning traits of stupidity and bigotry to them, especially if they happen to be Southern.

Lord, it's hard to be Southern and Democrat, especially these days, and especially amongst a current species of Democrat (usually from the West Coast, I'm sorry to say) who view themselves as morally superior to anyone hailing from flyover country or anyone coming from South of the Mason-Dixon line. Flyover people might be deemed "rubes" by their cultural betters, but my lot - whether they're fire-breathing, Fox-gazing Fundamentalists or real Liberals - are lumped together and described as "shitkicking inbreds," "Neo-Confederates," Secessionists, traitors or just plain common-and-garden bigots. All of us.

The hatred towards Southerners is a wonder to behold in reading some of the things you see on the Internet, much less on television; so much so, that many in the Democratic party, or many purporting to be Democrats, don't think candidates should venture into the South at all, that it simply isn't worth it, which is almost oxymoronic because these very people - probably the children and grandchildren of New Deal Democrats - were the real base, one time, of the Democratic Party.

Now, you can preach "Southern Strategy" all you want, but as late as 1976, the South went solidly for Jimmy Carter (with the exception of Virginia, but when Virginia does "stupid," it does "real stupid" - cf: Ed Schultz and Eric Cantor). What annoys me the most is the condescension people in this region suffer from the so-called Democratic "elites" to the point that they've become a point of ridicule and are often presented as the bigots in the equation when ofttimes, it's the real bigots who are levelling the accusations.

These people were part of the expendable hoarde, kicked to the political curb forty years ago by the "cool kids" who took over the Democratic Party. They were wandering in the political wilderness until the Republicans smelled blood and took them and trained them up to be their own brand of useful idiot.

The late Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus, who hailed from my neck of the woods, says it best:-

In the days before the spine of the labor movement was crushed, back when you could be a gun owner and a liberal without any conflict, members of the political left supported ... workers, stood on the lines taking beatings at the plant gates alongside them. Now there is practically no labor movement, and large numbers on the left are comfortably ensconced in the true middle class, which is only about 20 per cent to 30 per cent of Americans ... From that vantage point, liberals currently view working whites as angry, warmongering bigots, happy pawns of the American empire - which begs the question of how they came to be that way, if they really are.

Meanwhile, we have what my people see as the "liberal elite," the people still living the American Dream in relative economic safety. Yet the liberal elite - and verily they are an elite group - don't think of themselves as elitists. Overwhelmingly white and college educated, they live among clones of themselves. As far as they know, American life is about money, education, homeownership, and professionally useful friends. How can one blame them? Conditioning is everything, and how could they fail to believe their own experience or what they see every day, all of which suggests that their privileges are natural and deserved?

At the other end of the melanin-and-money meter are the blacks. And alongside them are low-earning, uneducated rednecks, bred from generations of low-earning, uneducated rednecks, clustered into neighborhoods of the same.

The middle class, both liberals and conservatives, are utterly dependent upon my people,the great throng of the underpaid, undereducated and overworked. This is not whining, just a simple statement of fact.

No Democrat or leftie seems to grasp that much of the working-class theocrats' eagerness to join the corporatists at putting the liberal yuppies in their place is revenge based. Working-class people can perceive the upper-middle-class snobbery toward them.

That last point is interesting, because it mirrors exactly the condescension of the Professional Left to the so-called plebs who make up their listening and reading public, whenever some potential ditto has an epiphany moment, wakes up and thinks for himself and dares to disagree publically with said hero or heroine, who take advantage of social networking sites to expound their self-perceived truths.

It's the same sort of privilege and entitlement that drives Salon editor Joan Walsh to sneer at the African American blogger LisaLV711, when Lisa politely questioned the fact that racism might be behind many of the onslaughts of criticism aimed at the President from various sections of the Left.

It's the same sort of privilege and entitlement which resulted in Boston Globe columnist, Charlie Pierce, actually calling me a TWAT on my Facebook page, when I, again, brought up the continuing question of Walsh's apparent racism, in her diehard defence of Hillary Clinton and her wet dream wish of a Hillary primary. Walsh is currently using reverse psychology to promote her Hillary dream - appearing to be at pains to say repeatedly that she doesn't want the President primaried, yet constantly reiterating a theme of "What would Hillary do?"

In her latest blog in Salon, I objected to the end of her article, which I felt was superfluous in many ways: It alluded to the personal conflict in which she's immersed herself in arguments with Obama supporters on her Twitter page, almost to the point that she appears to interject herself into private discussions in the guise of a concern troll. She also has resorted to the classic Clintonian line of defence that, even though Obama's been personally attacked, it's not nearly as bad as the real first black President got.

it's important for fervent Obama supporters to keep in mind that the GOP demonizes our current Democratic president much the way it did the last one.

Ummm ... not quite. Clinton was smeared by the Right, true; and most of it was blather - the drugs cartel thing, Vince Foster, travelgate ... but Slick Willie's philandering with women from the wrong side of the track was something that couldn't be denied, even if it all depended on what the definition of "is" was.

Racism gives the right wing more to work with, of course; on the other hand, they haven't called Obama a murderer yet.

No, but they've called him an alien, a foreigner, a Communist, a Socialist, an illegal immigrant posing as President. In Clinton, they tried to delegitimise him, based on faux crimes, the Right hoped the public would believe; in Obama, they've tried to delegitimise him based on the colour of his skin - and many in his own party have proven to be useful tools for the GOP in their relentless quest to impeach a Democratic President.

And if Obama critics over-personalize the president's problems, his defenders also over-personalize the criticism he gets.

This is rich, coming from Joan, who - until recently - claimed that Obama's defenders were actually GOP trolls paid by Andrew Breitbart. But I digress:-

One divisive claim is that white progressives, in particular, are racially clueless for demanding that Obama fight harder and maybe even show anger, because he'd be attacked as a menacing angry black man if he did so.

First of all, we won't know that the president doesn't ever get angry, as he so richly deserves to. Second: I think the argument is condescending and kind of dangerous. Insisting a black president can never show anger might suggest a black man should never be president, because sometimes a president needs to get angry. It also harks back to the 2008 primary, when the normal give and take of politics was too often framed racially. If you noted that Obama was relatively inexperienced when it came to national politics, you might sound like you were calling him a boy. If you observed that he sometimes seemed above the fray, especially at a time of economic suffering, you could be accused of calling him uppity. If you suggested he could appear detached from voters, you were playing Sarah Palin's game of questioning whether he's "one of us." Trying to erect a racial force field around the president, in which the normal terms of political debate are judged out of bounds and racist, hasn't helped anyone.

It's interesting that Joan cites Sarah Palin here, because she's actually doing the same thing Sarah does so well - projecting that sin for which she's been exposed onto the people leveling the accusation. So Joan's not racist, it's the people who say she is who are. They are the ones who are condescending, especially regarding the President.

But it's interesting to note that Joan's perceived racism, albeit subtle, has been around for awhile, at least since 2008, when she blogged about the PUMA supporter, Harriet Christian, unloading on the DNC for choosing an "inadequate black man" over a white woman, a blog which actually ended up almost defending Christian:-

We saw the face of the angry white female backlash against Obama over the weekend, and it was hard not to turn away. On Friday, Geraldine Ferraro complained in a Boston Globe Op-Ed that she's been demonized for saying that Obama's presidential run benefited from his being black, and called her treatment "reverse racism." On Saturday, Harriet Christian replaced Ferraro as the overwrought voice of white female resentment. There she was at the Democratic National Committee meeting, screaming at reporters that Democrats were about to nominate "an inadequate black male who would not have been running had it not been a white woman that was running for president."

Beyond Christian's deplorable reference to Obama as an "inadequate black male" was a wail worth hearing. She also said, "I'm proud to be an older American woman!" I can feel her pain. Reading the sexist attacks on Clinton and her white female supporters, as well as on female journalists and bloggers who've occasionally tried to defend her or critique Obama, has been, well, consciousness-raising. Prejudice against older women, apparently, is one of the last non-taboo biases. I've been stunned by the extent to which trashing Clinton supporters as washed up old white women is acceptable.

These comments were enough to offend The Atlantic columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates, at the time, who responded thus:-

Walsh apparently thinks Harriet's description of Obama as an inadequate black male, "was a wail worth hearing." I'm physically sick reading that. I never much agreed with Walsh's take on the Clinton's, but for my money, she just fell into Pat Buchanan territory.Anyone who thinks there's something to take from someone who says it's fine to resent black people racially, who claims that there's something worth hearing in describing the first black man to ever win a major party's nomination as "an inadequate black male" is the moral equivalent of a racist to me.

I don't play these word games. I don't much care about what's in your heart. I don't make any distinction between people who think I'm less than, and the cowards who know the truth, but still run with bigoted fools anyway. There's nothing feminist about siding with worst impulses of white America. The fact is we're tied to each other. The same fuckers who've turned the incarceration of black men into a business, are the same fuckers who'd love nothing better than to drag women back into the dark ages.

... That said, anyone who'd be willing to put the health of women, the chance to expand childcare, the chance to revisit equal pay, on the line in the name of electing a dude who called his own wife a cunt, who laughed as one of his supporters referred to Hillary Clinton as a bitch, who would most assuredly appoint judges that would reverse Roe v Wade, is a joke. There ain't nothing feminist, or "empowering" about gambling on the future of our daughters. It's a ego and sore loser-ism writ large. If that's your angle, take a hike.

There is also an ugly subtext to that "unqualified" remark. Exactly how many terms in the Senate did John Edwards have? Was he also unqualified? Would we be hearing that label from Hillary-supporters if he'd won?

That said, the answer is clearly "no."

And this brings us back to the question of the South, and liberal Southerners, Democrats. The British columnist, Andrew Sullivan in his Daily Beast blog, entitled "The Daily Dish," often posts comments to his op-eds, worthy enough, in and of themselves, to promote comment thereof. Earlier this week, he posted the following, which is clearly a Northern liberal's take on the make-up of the Tea Party:-

No. There's no sign the "Tea Party" are actually against government. They're just against government run by anybody except themselves. And since "they" are the rump South, that "anybody" mainly means the feds: the Northerners, the liberals, the carpetbaggers, the negro-lovers -- and of course, worst of all, the negros themselves ("negroes" to include not just African-Americans, but all sub-human others, including gays and, now, Muslims).

You have to remember this is the planter class. The planter mentality. The foundation of the South, and so of this country, when one considers the fortunes of many (most?) of the founding fathers. We have been at war with ourselves from the beginning. 2008 was just one more battle: a nigger (radical, terrorist, illegal alien) up against a son of the South (patriot, military man, scion of the McCains, among the largest slaveholders in Mississippi before the Civil War, still owners of the original plantation "Teoc").

All the Tea Party/Republican/Fox News actions since losing the election have simply been scorched earth warfare: deny the oppressing invader any sustenance, no matter what the cost to the country. Because first things first: destroy the usurper first, the alien, the radical, the invader, the liberal, the fed, the other -- then rebuild once the war is won. That's the game. No, they are not against government, or debt. They're just against any government or debt other than their own.

You see what I'm up against? Is that enlightenment? Is that intolerance? Pardon me, but Sarah Palin, to whom open race-baiting is but second nature, is from the snowy North. Michele Bachmann is from Minnesota, a Northern state. Did not New York choose Carl Palladino, a Tea Partier as their Republican candidate for governor? When a rather high-profiled blogger and California Democratic operative (and constant Obama critic) assails me on Twitter with an assertion that the South shouldn't be bothered with, because the people there "spit on Progressives" (that's "spit" as in "hock and ...")or when a well-known modern historian openly admits on his Facebook page that he hates Obama because he thinks he's "arrogant" (in Southern-speak, "uppity,"), you know Joan Walsh is not alone in her sentiments.

But Sullivan, ever the critical thinker, also provides a beautiful response to that afore-mentioned diatribe of assumptions, and I couldn't have expressed it better, myself:-

Okay, seriously, fuck this reader. As a Southern liberal who voted for Obama and gladly will again in 2012, I took offense to almost every word of that sanctimonious tripe.

I'd prefer to spend my life chained to the most backwards, Tea-Party, Limbaugh-listening, gun-toting, NASCAR-loving, backwoods hillbilly you've ever seen than to sit down for a single drink with this reader. It is one thing to be constantly condescended to by the rest of the country because we have funny accents and sweet tea. I am used to the constant reminders of the sins of our fathers (as if the sins were confined to one corner of the country). The Bible-belt moniker no longer bothers me like it used to.

However, one thing I will never get used to is the phenomenon of self-righteous Northerners talking about us as if we all love Jesus and guns and hate non-whites. Almost without fail, these are people who, other than the occasional trip to South Beach, have never been south of the Potomac; who have never lived in a small town; who have never seen a sunset in Texas; who have never never been to Shiloh, or Sharpsburg, or Mannassas, or Vicksburg; who think Faulkner is great because of his stylistic idiosyncrasies and who read the stories of Flannery O'Connor with horror and confusion rather than wonder; who have never loved their racist grandparents simply because family is family; who could not tell the difference between a Tennessee accent and a West Texas drawl; who have never seen the true devotion and love and warmth of the fundamentalist Christians they hate so vehemently.

When I was a boy, I loved the South. When I was a teenager, I hated it, wanted out. Now, I love it all over again, but for different reasons. I know the history of the place, and I know the mentality of so much of the Southern population. I know many Tea Partiers and NRA members and hard-line pro-lifers myself. I love many of them. Some of them are family. I love them too. I disagree with them, sometimes profoundly, but when you grow up with it, you learn to see beyond the caricature painted so crudely in the editorial pages and by your smug, self-satisfied reader. You learn that these people are every bit as capable of real compassion and sacrifice as any Northern son.

Your reader does not understand this place - does not care to try - because he/she does not like guns or Baptist churches or country music. That's fine. Your reader must sleep comfortably knowing that his fathers were on the right side of history. Well done. He/she sure earned his place atop the moral totem pole.

Your reader and I will likely vote the same way in 2012. Your reader, though, is an asshole.

And as for award-winning journalist, Charlie Pierce, he of the TWAT ad hominem, I leave you with his Esquire essay on the President's 2010 State of the Union address, complete with optional accompanying musical score ... The theme from Shaft.

I ask you, now, who's the real TWAT ... and something else? I'll just leave it at "asshole."

The Perils of Politics and Alcohol

Never mix politics or political discussion with alcohol. Take it from people who should know better.

Too much alcohol can make you maudlin, causing you to cry at inappropriate moments, like when you're trying to get the party you control to screw the American public to the wall. It also alienates your associates, especially when you bark orders about their "getting their asses in line." And eating too much pizza with your booze, might make for unpleasant, uncontrollable smells on the House floor as well as unseemly accidents.

Never drink alcohol before breakfast or in place of breakfast. Not only do you find that you say inappropriate things, but also you find that you project your own inadequacies on the objects of your criticism. The President isn't a loser, Peggy, you are for daring to appear on our television screens at that time of the morning and in that state.

If you have a penchant for the old Chablis, avoid anything like that which might be offered you in the green room before a panel discussion. You never know who might sit next to you, and losing all your inhibitions after imbibing, you might find the real you (and all your inherent ugly prejudices) some spilling out over your tongue. For example, you might be sitting beside Van Jones and start screaming out that Eldridge Cleaver (your image of what a real black man should be like) had a big cock (or at least, that's what you've been led to believe about black men). Maybe someone should tell Katrina that when her tumescent Cleaver died, religiously, he was closer to Mitt Romney than any of her secular idols and politically, he'd turned into the prototype that's now known as Herman Cain. Still, The Priory in London will take your money for rehab, dear. Oh, and comb your hair.

Never drink alone late at night, and if you do, don't go on Twitter. Drink regresses you until you become a mean-girl Heather adolescent, spewing racist comments at people who aren't fortunate enough to occupy your bully pulpit - with emphasis on the word "bully." Once you've sobered up, you'll find you'll make a butt-clinchingly embarrassing fool of yourself trying to suck up to all the famous people you haven't insulted, just to prove you have minority friends. And sometimes when you're drunk, you end up making people like Rick Warren and Andrew Breitbart look almost honourable.

Indulging in a long, liquid lunch isn't as much a substitute for Viagra as it is a warning for an onset of inappropriate prurience. One might find oneself returning to one's place of work and assuming that your position of influence might make you more desireable in the eyes of that younger woman administrative staffer you've been ogling for the past few months. Trust me, it doesn't. It makes you look like a horny old hoofer, but she'll make a few bob off the legal suit that comes from your sexual harassment.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Pundit-and-Politico Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Our (Political) Gang 2011

Remember the old film shorts from the 1930s "Our Gang?" Ever wonder who the Our Gang crew would grow up to be if they went into politics? Well ... Let's pretend a reality television show was produced entitled OUR (POLITICAL) GANG 2011 ... Starring ...

Michael Moore as Spanky

Dennis Kucinich as Alfalfa

Joan Walsh as Darla

Bill Maher as Skippy

Tavis Smiley as Stymie

And ...

Cornel West as Buckwheat

Special Guest star

Arianna Huffington as The Wicked Witch of the West

Joan Walsh's Dysfunctional Understanding of History and Government

Last week, the President - you know, the black dude who sits behind the desk in the Oval Office - spoke to a coterie of politically-involved college students, Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike. It really was a masterclass in what politics in the real world was all about. He channelled Lincoln and spoke of compromise being the essence of governing in a democracy.







And it sent Joan Walsh into paroxysms.







I get it that Joan has a problem with a black man doing what her heroine Hillary was born to do. I get that she towed the line for the first part of the President's Administration and offered support for him (as opposed to others of her ilk in the overloaded punditsphere), but I also understand that such support was contingent on his bowing out gracefully after one term and allowing her gal, Hillary, to take up the reins. I get that once it became obvious that the President was going for a second term, Joannie let her true colours show, and that pun was richly intended.







The Lincoln reference seemed to strike a particularly sour note with Walsh. After all, in the wake of a recent contretemps with various African American voters on Twitter, she took the oppportunity of reviewing a recent history of the Civil War to equate her Irish heritage's suffering with that sustained by African Americans before, during and after the conflict. Now, after reading about the President's tutorial session with the college students, Joan reckons she's Frederick Douglass to the President's Lincoln.







Go figure that one.







During the masterclass, the President spoke about compromise in politics, explaining how it usually meant never getting 100% of what either side originally wanted, and he poiinted to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as evident of that. He pointed out that this original Executive Order, later strengthened and fully legalised by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, effectively ended slavery in those areas of the country which were, at that time, in direct rebellion against the US Government. It retained the institution as it stood in those states which had not seceeded - places like Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky (where both Lincoln and his wife - who hailed from a family of slaveholders and whose brothers fought for the Confederacy - had been born). In fact, slaveholders sat in Lincoln's Cabinet - the Attorney General Edward Bates from Missouri and the Postmaster General Montgomery Blair from Maryland.







The point of the Emancipation Proclamation example wasn't just to reiterate that the order was, in and of itself, a compromise; the President also used it to emphasize the dangers of spin journalism, citing The Huffington Post as a prime example of how, were Lincoln existing in the 21st Century and issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in this context, HuffPo would have cherrypicked and spun the situation as Lincoln having sold the slave population the short end of the stick. As an example of compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation was a starting point: the President knew that the institution of slavery was "enshrined" in the Constitution. It would take a Constitutional Amendment to rid the nation of this blight. He did what he could within the context of his office, and in using this example, the current President not only illustrated the art of compromise and what it could achieve, he also showed Joan Walsh and others of her ilk inhabiting the Professional Left, that he had their measure and knew exactly what they were.







That's probably what irked Joan so much, because her pedantic response to that was to point out prissily that not everyone was happy with the limited strictures of the Emancipation Proclamation and cited, amongst others, Frederick Douglass and Horace Greeley as vociferous in their condemnation of its limitations. What Joan willfully failed to realise that, as important as men like Douglass and Greeley were to their time and age, they, by no means occupied the omnipotent 24/7 bully pulpit of today's cable news networks, combined with the power of the Professional Left on the Internet. Their voices, although nationally known, traveled slowly, in comparison to the speed with which today's information is dispersed; and their writings were read only by that portion of the population which was sufficiently literate to do so.







On the other hand, there was another faction of the population who felt they had a reason to be displeased with Lincoln's freeing of certain parts of the slave population, and Joan's forebears probably constituted a part of that demographic: the immigrant population.







Before his Presidency and throughout, leading up to the Emancipation, Lincoln was at pains to mollify the immigrant population, the newly-minted citizens of Irish and German descent who constituted the bulk of cheap industrial labour in the North and who provided much of the gruntwork of the Union Army, reassuring them that, contrary to some of the spin they were being fed, he actually didn't want to place the African American population on a level footing with the white ethnics. Newly emancipated slaves, travelling North for work, would constitute and even cheaper workforce against whom the ethnic whites would have to compete. And this prejudice didn't go away with the Emancipation; it still hasn't left entirely, and it reared its ugly head in the white backlash riots in the North and on the West Coast in the mid-1960s. I suppose that attitude, were the 24/7 news cycle and the internet available during Lincoln's time, would have ensured Lincoln was hung out to dry by the Professional Left of the day, also.







So it would appear as though Lincoln, much like our current President, was getting it in the neck, pretty much, from all sides: the South seceeding and fighting a war to retain their "property rights," the Abolitionists disgruntled because Lincoln wasn't doing enough to ensure total liberty for the slave population, and the white ethnic immigrants grousing because they felt he was doing too much. Sound familiar?







Similarities between Lincoln and our current Presidentn have been noted many times. Both were unlikely candidates, elected to the highest office in the land and at critical times in their respective centuries. Not only was Lincoln the compromise candidate of the new Republican Party, he presented himself as a centre-Left pragmatist, willing to compromise and institute incremental change in order, ultimately, to achieve his aims, knowing precisely that incremental change, almost imperceptible change, was change that lasted and developed positively.







But he was also a rank outsider in Washington terms. He'd only served 2 years as a Congressman, during which time he lived away from his family in a boarding house. He was a Westerner, self-educated, somewhat gauche in social graces. The more refined political elements of Washington, even those of his own party and including some members of his Cabinet, regularly encouraging cartoonists' depictions of him as a gangling ape.







Not only the Opposition, but even some members of the fledgling Republican party, including Cabinet members, felt Lincoln unqualified for the office of President of the United States and summarily treated him with scant respect. This eventually led to his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P Chase, being removed from the Cabinet and given a sideways promotion to the Supreme Court.







The worst offender, however, was George McClellan.







At the beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln was pressured into appointing the mercurial McClellan to head the Army of the Potomac against the Confederacy. McClellan was a Democrat from an aristocratic Pennsylvania family and a supporter of slavery. To McClellan, Lincoln was a rube, an uncouth Westerner who demeaned the office he served and knew precious little about anything. He treated the Presidentn with open disdain. When Lincoln requested meetings at the White House, McClellan generally demurred attending, saying openly that he had other things to do.







Once, frustrated that his attempts to meet with the General had been met with repeated rebuffs, the President determined to visit McClellan at his Washington abode one evening, effectively, to force a meeting about the lack of progress in the Army of the Potomac's manoeuvres. When Lincoln arrived, McClellan's servant told him that the General and his wife were attending a party elsewhere in the city. That's fine, replied Lincoln, he'd await their return and was ushered into the McClellan's parlour.







After waiting several hours, Lincoln heard the McClellan carriage arrive. As the General entered the house, his servant told him that the President was awaiting him in the parlour. McClellan didn't miss a beat.







"Tell the President that I'm tired," McClellan told his servant, as he climbed the stairs, "and that I'm going to bed."

Needless to say, McClellan was subsequently relieved of his command and went home to cool his heels in Pennsylvania. When no further military orders were forthcoming, he challenged Lincoln for the White House in 1864, running as a Democrat and losing. History remembers McClellan's empty pomp, circumstance and arrogance. They remember the disrespect he meted his Commander-in-Chief.







Will Joan Walsh or any of the pundits from the Left who are addicted to constant criticism of this President, even acknowledge the wanton disrespect ofttimes openly shown the current President, even from their own quarters?

One night ago, when Joan was on a tweeting surge again, she pissingly remarked that she understood that compromise was an essential element of governing, she just didn't think compromise should be an excuse for governing.







Look, I know Joan wasn't young enough to vote or even understand the machinations of government when Richard Nixon was President, but history is there in black and white for all of us to see - and many times, it's in living colour. Nixon had a Democratic Congress, and I'm not giving him credit for all of the so-called liberal accomplishments he achieved. Read Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland." You'll see that Nixon's perpetuation and enhancement of LBJ's Great Society, as well as his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, was done entirely for ulterior motives which were contrary to the ethos of the legacy of these entities. Nixon, after all, was all about Nixon; but he recognised that the only way to accomplish anything in governing under those circumstances, was to compromise.







Hell, Nixon compromised so damned well and so damned subtly, that he actually got the Democratic candidate that he wanted for the 1972 election and won a landslide, even though he was perilously close to a criminal investigation for his part in Watergate.







As much as it might pain purists and Joan to remember, FDR governed by compromise enormously, and within his own party. Reagan and Clinton had to do much the same, when they were presented with the fact that they were, effectively, minority Presidents.







We got into our present situation because people who should have, simply didn't vote in the 2010 Midterms. Now our government is being hijacked by a tranche of the Republican party whose members are, arguably, the most ignorant representatives ever chosen to national office. One of them, actually, should be in a military prison; instead he's on Capitol Hill. Figure that one out.







As the President remarked last night, the ubiquitous mass known collectively as the American people may have voted for divided government, but they sure as hell didn't vote for a dysfunctional government. Joan Walsh might be well advised to realise that the President isn't a king or a dictator, as much as she might sub-consciously wish he were. He's also not white, and that bothers her too. But in situations like this, the only way forward in anything, is compromise - otherwise, you get gridlock, and everyone suffers.







And I certainly don't remember Joan agonising and whingeing when her heroine Hillary's husband compromised his way through two terms, achieving the likes of DADT and DOMA, as well as contributing to our financial woes by repealing Glass Steagall, but then again, the Big Dog was that whiter shade of pale.







The sole and total object of this season's Republican Party is the downfall of Barack Obama. The thugs masquerading as legislators have been open in actually stating as such. They aren't interested in governing. Mitch McConnell says his major aim is to ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term President. John Boehner states that it's important to "stop" Obama. Tim Scott, a freshman Congressman, as well as the criminally-compromised Darrell Issa, wants to impeach him. So does Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat. And Joan isn't even touching on the fact that Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, stands to earn a bitch load of money by betting against the survival of US government bonds in the event of a default situation. That puts a whole new meaning on the phrase "conflict of interest." In fact, it brings it firmly into the realm of treason, but no one on the Professional Left, Joan included, is mentioning that.







Joan would do well to remember a little bit of recent history, such as what occurred in 1980, the last time a Democratic Party turned on its President and he was primaried by a Senator in a misguided act of hubris. We got the start of the shitstorm in which we findn ourselves now - 12 years of it.







Joan Walsh needs to understand the blunt edge of the truth: If Obama fails, we all fail. That's the end of the Democratic party, the end of the unions, the end of everything which we've taken for granted - separation of church and state, public education, woman's right to choose, healthcare, human rights, the lot. It's the end of the Left and the rise of the Right so far to the Right, that Reagan would blanche in his grave.







Joan Walsh needs to put aside her prejudices and remember the fate of those who are ignorant of the past. This time, it's going to be worse. This is our Armageddon.

Joan Walsh Says Vicious Obama Supporters Are Paid GOP Trolls

Sometime around about April Fools' Day, Joan Walsh jumped the shark. Since then, she's got caught out and called out in remarks that were just the teensy-weensiest bit racist, although Joan, being Joan and a bona fide bastion of the Progressive Left abjectly and vociferously denied that she was racist in anyway, whilst at the same time just as vociferously resenting any claim that African Americans could have to being part and parcel of the base whom Joan declares the President has abandoned so callously.

One thing led to another, and Joan got more than a bit rude with several people who disagreed with her point of view on certain things - most notably the fact that since the President declared his intent to run for re-election in 2012, Joan's been on a massive downer and appears to be suffering from DODS - Delayed Obama Derangement Syndrome.

In her last blog, usually written after an appearance on Chris Matthews's Hardball, she admitted that Obama appeared to have a "mirage" of support - which means that he might have the appearance of support amongst his base (whoever and whatever his base may be), but it really isn't support as such.

That confused me. Does that mean people will say they'll support him and then vote the Republican ticket? Or that they'll say they voted but in reality they stayed at home? Who knows? Still, that didn't confuse me as much as her next assertion, made in a Twitter exchange on June 23rd:-

@dpleasant @LaurieInQueens I'm convinced some of the most vicious pro-Obama people are paid by GOP

Mouths closed yet? Chins picked up off the floor?

Yep, you read right. Joan thinks that some of the most "vicious" Obama supporters are paid GOP trolls. She was most likely referring to me, in our last direct exchange, when she accused me of working for Breitbart, simply because I disagreed with her gratuitous criticism. More apt were my accusations that she was climbing on the Obama-bashing bandwagon to prove her own relevancy and to fit in more as an "esteemed" (but unpaid, according to Joanie - yeah, sure) political contributor for MSNBC.

(If you think all those "political contributors" just sit around the table shooting the breeze with Joe and Cenk and Chris and Larry and newly-minted lyin' liar Rachel just for a cuppa Starbucks and a camera in their face for nothing, you seriously need to get out more.)

I know Joan's recently read "Nixonland" and I know the GOP are famous for their infiltration tactics as a part of their ratfucking techniques, but gone are the days of Donald Segretti. Instead, if Joan bothered to open her eyes and ears, she'd find that there are a lot of pretty intelligent, normal, hard-working, everyday people who see exactly what the President has done, how he's done it and - above all - why he's had to do things the way he has. Such people are these that they understand how government works, they know the President doesn't legislate, and, furthermore, they know that in a democracy, one discusses, debates and compromises.

These people know that change that lasts is often incremental. Some of us might remember when FDR implemented Social Security and how it covered a fraction of the people it covers today. Others might remember Jim Crow, still more might remember when a female teacher got paid considerably less than a male counterpart.

These people are the ones who remember that the President has always said that change comes from the bottom up, which is a euphemism for the aristocratic FDR's direct command of "make me."

And these are the people who listened to Candidate Obama's speeches and realised, if not from their content than from reading his work, The Audacity of Hope, that the man presented himself as nothing more than a Left of Centre pragmatist in the mold of his hero, Abraham Lincoln.

If these people are now vociferous to the point of vicious in their support of the President, it's simply because we're effing mad at the trust fund kids from the Progressive end of the political spectrum slamming the President on everything he does and doesn't do to their specification. We're sick and tired of being called Obamabots and derided on sites like Daily Kos, which was allegedly founded as a Democratic website and has turned into a den of hatred for people specialising in pissing on the President and pushing the meme that he's done nothing, yet all the while proclaiming that this criticism is constructive and it's purely done in the name of political policy.

My blue Democratic ass.

The Right walk around with signs of the President dressed like witch doctor with a bone through his nose, and the Firebaggers at FDL get a pass when they refer to him as "boogalu Bush."

The Right accuse him of being a Kenyan mau-mau, while Progressives openly refer to him as the "Affirmative Action President."

Joan would do well to remember that it was a fellow PUMA who started the birther myth in earnest, and she would do well not to forget the PUMA woman who stridently declared she would support no other than John McCain, when Hillary dropped out of the race, because she simply couldn't understand why Democrats would set aside a well-qualified white woman in favour of a black man.

The Right assert that the President is a weak leader, and Joan obliges by pushing the same meme. The Right treat him with open disrespect, while the Left act like Miss Scarlett about to smack Prissy from sheer frustration.

His supporters are sick and tired of being referred to as sycophants for "Dear Leaders" and called "Obama-Lovers" by her newest pet blogger, Glenn Greenwald, who appears to be the tail wagging Salon's dog to such a degree that Joan has to slavishly echo his critique.

In short, our "vicious" support of the President is simply nothing more than a reaction to an irresponsible, lazy, assumptive and downright untrustworthy media who like to think that the majority of Americans are totally incapable of thinking for themselves and need political action explained to them, but always with a spin. And if you're canny enough to disagree, you're deserving of the rudness thrown in your direction.

So, sorry, Joan, "vicious" supporters of the President aren't paid GOP trolls, but whiners, whingers, moaners, and relentless fault-finders and criticizers such as you and the mean girls and guys around you are the underminers taking the corporate penny of people whose agenda is to see the President fail.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the ratfucker after all?

Joan Walsh: Twisted Sister Punches Down

The British have a great phrase for expressing the fact that someone is undergoing a particularly angering derangement syndrome. They simply say that someone "has a cob on." Well, Joan Walsh has had a massive cob on since early April, dating, specifically from the moment the President announced he was going to seek a second term in office.

Joan, being an unreconstructed PUMA, harboured hopes that Barack Obama would gallantly step aside after four years, so Hillary Clinton could step up to the plate and save America from a fate worse than death: a Dominionist-led Republican party intent on forming a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. The President could have been forgiven for doing just that, with the amount of vitriol coming from the so-called "Progressive" end of the Democratic party, criticizing his every action and parsing his ever word.

Joan, like Bill Maher, identifies with this tranche of Democrat, but often, like Bill Maher, she betrays herself as a dedicated follower of political fashion, a Madonna wannabe who, more often than not, revealed herself to be pragmatic and with an abundance of good common sense, based on a solid working class upbringing. In fact, as if to prove her Progressive credentials to people whom her mother would probably view as dubious company at best, she's often accused the President of "punching the hippy."

That's a pretty oxymoronic description of Progressives, who like to think of themselves as the natural successors to the hippies of Haight-Ashbury, considering the fact that these self-proclaimed successors are designer-clad, drink the finest wines, holiday in exclusive resorts, fly by private jet and employ people, some even illegally, for pathetically low wages, whilst pumping up their own credentials as spokesmen for the middle class. Besides, Joan's a few years younger than I. She was a little kid in elementary school, when I was in junior high and actually knowing some bona fide hippies who tuned in, turned on and dropped out of mainstream society.

Anyway, around about the time the President declared he'd be running again, Joan penned a pretty petty screed, complaining about how much the President had let everyone down, specifically pointing to the events recent to Wisconsin and its major kerfuffle with Scott Walker, accusing the President and Organising for America, basically, of not coming up with the goods in support of the striking public service workers. All real Democrats, Joan said, should do as she intended to do, which was probably vote for the President again, but she wouldn't invest so much time, energy or money into his campaign. In fact, she intended to spend this entire year working for local and state candidates, and suggested we do also; then, maybe next year we could all think about supporting the President at the last minute. After all, he's abandoned us, his base.

I used to be one of Joan's Facebook friends. Like many high-profile media pundits, she maintains a Facebook page and twitters. However, the most surprising thing about Joan I learned from her Facebook page is how utterly intolerant she is of anyone who disagrees with an opinion she's given. Even any disagreement made in a polite form was met with snark and invective, Joan invariably telling whoever disagreed to "get help" or "get a life" or even "you're scary." In other words, "You're a pleb. You don't count. If you disagree with me, find someplace else to hang out."

Wow. Real mean girl tactics.

My problem is, someone saying something like that to me, not only insults my intelligence, it's like waving the proverbial red flag to a bull. I answer back. I demand explanations. And wait a moment, not only is that condescending, it's downright rude. I might come from the rural South, but my liberal credentials are just as good and solid as those of Ms Walsh, my education is certainly on par, and besides, my mamma raised me better.

Any public figure who maintains a foothold in the social networking cybersphere is inviting an exchange of ideas, but more and more, it's becoming obvious that this instant punditocracy is demanding reinforcement and excessive stroking of ego. Short order, peeps: They think for you so you don't have to think critically. They speak. You listen. They're on television. They're paid to write. Therefore, they are your betters and you must adhere to them.

Gee, that's almost something of which Ayn Rand would be proud. Disagree with Joan, and Joan does something of which she disparagingly accuses the President: she punches down. Moreover, unlike the President, she uses snark, invective, ad hominem and bad language. She name calls. She swears at you. Univited and unsolicited.

And when all is said and done, she takes the coward's way out of any further discussion by banning the person whom she's directly vilified. She left an African American blogger who confronted her about a racial issue on Twitter with the pronouncement, "I know it must suck to be you" before blocking the lady from her account.

Joan, I know it must suck to be so insecure as well as to have made an inadvertant slip-up and to be revealed as someone who has issues with people of other races as well as people who disagree with your opinion, but you see, I've always been of the misguided opinion that anyone who is given a platform in the media needs to call upon their supposed good breeding and meet any divergence of thought with good grace and good manners. That's civilised. But then again, maybe you aren't, or maybe you just haven't got past the thinking and debating skills of the average fourteen year-old girl.

Joan most recently wrote an op-ed piece for Salon, once again, haranguing the President for abandoning his base. I disagreed, but because I have been banished from expressing an opinion on Joan's Facebook page, because I didn't worship at the altar of St Joan, I had to express my opinion to her in a Private Message, and I include the exchange herein so people can see just how our media betters respond to us plebs.

I admit, I started off with a glib remark, but I feel justified in doing so, although I know it lowers me to Joan's level, because I've been on the receiving end of Joan's standard suggestion that I "get help." (Get it? Anyone who doesn't follow Joan's line of thought is patently mental.)

This occurred several days ago:-

Me - June 15:

Puma Girl, in your screed tonight, you failed to consider the part the media - that's YOU - played in undermining the President's message. People like your BFF Arianna Closet-Republican and Corporatist Huffington in lying and telling people that the President wasn't for the middle class; people like Jane Hamsher and her racists posters and words; people like Ed Schultz, telling people not to vote in the midterms. You fail to realise the innate critical thinking inability most people in this country have and how they listen to the celebrity talking heads for their opinions. This President has been shown less respect than any President in history, including those obvious crooks, Nixon and Bush Minor. And we all know why that is? Because he's BLACK. And that's as true with the obvious racism from the Right as it is from the white privilegists on the Left. As for the analogy to FDR: horses for courses, and even Roosevelt, who was effectively separated from his wife whilst President, wouldnt' stant up to the scrutiny of you lot today. You make yellow journalism look positively pristine. And please don't resort to ad hominem and tell ME to get help until you've addressed your racism problem. Sorry, but an Irish background is no equivalent to an African American one and what they suffered.
Cleopatra,Queen of Denial.

Joan - June 16:-

You're Obama's worst enemy. I think you might be a paid GOP troll. God bless!

Me - June 16:-

In YOUR worst dreams. I am MORE of a Democrat than you can EVER hope to be.

You know, I seem to recall the President, the month before he was inaugurated, spelling out explicitly just how bad the economic situation was and how it would take 10 years to rectify; also, that he couldn't do it alone, and that we all would have to make sacrifices. I also remember during the campaign that he said repeatedly that change comes bottom up. You state almost categorically that this President has let US down. No. The public has let HIM down. The public led by provincial hacks turned into self-important media "analysts" like yourself. You DEIGN to criticize corporate power when YOU are paid and serve one of the biggest media corporations in the world. I don't hear YOU complaining about the corporate cheque you receive for your satellite appearances on Chris Matthews's or Ed Schultz's show.

From day ONE of this Administration, people like yourself, led the chorus in nit-picking everything this President did, parsing his w.every word, second-guessing his every thought or action. The GOP didn't have to do anything but say NO - because the Democratic so-called "base", in all its immature glory, did the rest for them. Even today, we see that eminent "Progressive" voice, Dennis Kucinich, turn himself into the biggest weapon the Republicans have at their disposal, all for the benefit of his Napoleonic hubris.

You, yourself, are positively simple in your analysis that EVERY African American, EVERY Latino, EVERY young person is, by nature, of a Progressive bent. WHO was behind the implementation of Prop 8 in California? The African American churches and Latino Catholics. Herman Cain? Allen West? Alan Keyes? Hardly "Progressive", which is really a poor euphemism for people who are too scared and too trendy to use the good, solid epithet of LIBERAL.

And as for the "middle class," that's a euphemism also, just to justify social climbing. If you have to work to live, you're working class. Suck it up and be proud about it. People like you, who took over the Democratic party threw the unions and the working class and working poor, chiefly located in the rural South, Midwest and Rust Belt, under the political bus. Your great Progressive hope, Gary Hart, who was, himself, a political and moral fraud, referred to them as "little Hubert Humphreys" and deemed them unworthy herd followers. You only paid attention to the unions lately when something as blatant as Scott Walker comes along and tinkers with a basic right that's virtually taken for granted by so many, but how much attention has been paid to the NLRB and the President battling Boeing for moving works from Washington to right-to-work South Carolina as punishment for a strike action previously taken. No one in the media is covering that.

The whole truth of the matter is simply that when the US collectively found good common sense and elected someone who genuinely cared about serving and working for the people who elected him and those who didn't, privileged, WHITE America suddenly developed Negro Derangement Syndrome - the Right hating the fact that a black man was in the White House and the "Progressives" hating the fact that there was a black man in the White House, smarter than they were and who wouldn't do what THEY said. Of course, giving him a second term would tacitly tell others of his ilk that they're entitled to try for the Presidency too, wouldn't it? I have lived in Europe too long. I was one of those Americans who didn't hide behind false Canadiancy from shame at having someone like Bush represent our interests, but I'm even more ashamed at the behaviour of my countrymen in their return to petulant adolescence because the man they elected cannot right the wrongs that took 30 years to fester in less than one Presidential term. I've also lived in Europe long enough to know that the US media sucks cack in comparison to entities like the BBC, and that you are part of the problem. And, PLEASE, don't presume to question my political affiliation.
YOU and self-important, inexperienced faux journalists and the lowest common denominator who listen to you and expect you to formulate opinions for them have done far more damage to this Presidency and its legacy than you will ever know. But perhaps you'll have a long time to think about that, under the theocratic Rightwing regime of a President Palin, Bachmann or Perry. God HELP you.

Joan - June 16th (this one's the doozy!)

Go tell your friends you think the black church was behind Prop. 8! That'll get a good discussion going! God help YOU. You don't know a fucking thing about my life or my background. You run with a gang that harasses other progressives instead of fighting the good fight. You're probably paid by Breitbart. Oh, and I don't get paid for my MSNBC appearances. Again, you know nothing about me -- and you never will.

Me - June 16th:-

AND YOU KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT ME! YOU HAVE BREITBART OF THE BRAIN! HOW NICE THAT YOU SWEAR SO READILY AT THE VIEWING PUBLIC - THAT SHOWS HOW MUCH DISDAIN YOU HAVE FOR THE PLEBS. AND MY AFRICAN AMERICAN FRIENDS READILY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THAT PART OF THEIR SOCIAL DYNAMIC HAD A LOT TO DO WITH PROP 8 PASSING. YOU SEE, THEY KNOW THAT THERE ARE SOCIAL AND EVEN FISCAL CONSERVATIVES AMONGST THEM. UNLIKE YOU WHO TAKE A PARTICULARLY PATRONISING VIEW OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND, INDEED, OF ANYONE IN GENERAL WHO DOESN'T OCCUPY SUCH LOFTY HEIGHTS OF THE MEDIA. YOU ARE PATHETIC. TO THINK I USED TO ADMIRE YOU AND THOUGHT YOU HAD COMMON SENSE. YOU LONG TO BE PART OF THE RADICAL CHIC AND YET YOU'RE KEPT OUTSIDE ON THE WINDOWLEDGE OF THE BOURGEOISIE WHOM THEY DISDAIN. YOU ARE ONE OF THEIR USEFUL IDIOTS. SUCK ON THIS ... IT PERTAINS TO YOU:-

Oops! Forgot this ... this is how bourgeois you are ... You are Larue to the rich girls' (Arianna and KaTREEna) Gidget. Bet you even cover up on the beach too, just like Larue. You have a really cute dog - I'm a dog lover. Shame about the owner, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gr7WQf9izU

I guess life is a bitch, and so are Joan and I; but I take particular exception to anyone accusing me of being a Rightwing troll. Anyone who knows me, and certainly anyone who knows me from childhood and adolescence, knows I am anything but Rightwing; but that's the best Joan can do: When in doubt, accuse someone of being a Rightwing troll in the employ of Andrew Breitbart. I know Joan's having a small problem with Breitbart at the moment, but there's no reason to project her opinion of Breitbart on anyone who disagrees with her. I mean, that's tantamount to saying that anyone disagreeing with Joan Walsh's idea of things is invariably dishonest and journalistic scum of the earth.

Sorry, Joan, but no less than Bill Maher, amongst others acknowledged as early as March 2009 that Prop 8's success in the 2008 election was down to three factors:- massive campaign funding from the Mormon Church, the support of Catholic Latinos and the support of the Evangelical African American churches. It's not my problem if you, a Progressive, hold a disgustingly patronising view of African Americans, assuming that because of your natural descendence from the politically fashionable but shallow radical chic, all African Americans hold the same political views as the saintly and pure Progressives. If that be so, how does one explain the Blue Dog Harold Ford Jnr, or the Republican Alan Keyes, or the Tea Partiers Herman Cain, Tim Scott and Allen West?

Joan's the Queen of Twitter, who recently reviewed a new history of the Civil War and who, in her review tried valiantly to equate the hardships and suffering endured by people of her heritage, the Irish, to the sufferings endured by African Americans, both as slaves and freed men. Sorry, Joan. As they say in my part of America, "That dog don't bark." And it doesn't land you any kudos. In fact, I had an African American blogger remark to me in your domain of Twitter that in actual fact, most African American churches were originally part of the Evangelical movement which started in the South, so their religious faith is akin to that found in the South.

As for accusing me of being a troll from the Right who attacks Progressives, Joan, you really should get out more. People like you, Arianna and Katrina van den Heuvel, along with Hamsher, the grifter Adam Green, and ex-neocon Cenk Uygar and others, have been doing their damnedest since the beginning of this Administration to drive a wedge in the Left; and mostly, you've succeeded, if the GOP's retaking of the House in 2010 is anything by which to measure this.

Arianna toured the country telling people that the President wasn't "that into" the middle class. Jane Hamsher and the craven Dan Choi sat at Netroots Nation and proclaimed Obama to be the worst President for gay rights in history. (By the way, didn't the President get DADT repealed and didn't he invite Choi to the signing? And wasn't Choi photographed atop a light pole waving a flag outside the White House on the night Osama bin Laden was killed, and wasn't he in the company of Rachel Maddow?)

If I attack Progressives and if others do so, it's because we're sick and tired of Progressives or closeted Koch-infested libertarians like your homeboy Glenn Greenwald, referring to us as "Obamabots" and calling us names because we more than sorta kinda remember what the President has said and when, as well as knowing how government is supposed to work and function and maybe being a bit familiar with the Constitution. And as for history - well, revisionist history isn't something to be found exclusively in the realms of the Teaparty. Sarah Palin may think that Paul Revere warned the British not to tamper with our Second Amendment rights, but Netroots Nation tried to label "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a pro-slavery book. Go figure.

Many of us REAL Democrats - those of us who eschew Gary Hart's label "Progressive" label in favour of the traditional LIBERALS which we're supposed to be - remember that Hart hated the unions because the unions backed LBJ on the Viet Namese War, mainly because it was the sons of working class union members who had to heed the draft call. Hart's minions were the white, affluent, privileged sons and daughters of the professional middle class, with no ties to the union movement and no contact with working class people, except for the ones who cleaned their parents' houses and cut their grass. And it was Hart, who cacked on the real traditional base of the Democratic party - the working classes and working poor of the rural South, Midwest and the industrial Rust Belt, the "ordinary Joes" your friend Chris Matthews tries to channel - calling them "little Hubert Humprheys" and "herd followers."

Hart ushered these people directly into the arms of the Republican Party, even figuratively holding the door open for their exit and pointing the way right.

Of course, Hart, the great white Progressive hope, handed us all a bill of goods, didn't he? It wasn't a coincidence that his name, more than anyone else's, surfaced in comparison to the Weinergate plight, was it?

If there's a movement at all amongst the rank-and-file Democrats, it's a movement against the extreme Left, who's allying itself ignorantly with certain elements of the extreme Right, in an effort to undermine this Administration. I hope there will also be a backlash against the irresponsible, uninformed and deliberately misinforming tranches of the faux liberal media for promoting dissension from the onset of Obama's tenure.

An informed public can be relied upon to chose responsible leadership, said Jefferson. Thus, an informed public needs a reliable media - not one who lies about the President "punching hippies" whilst they're busy punching plebs.

Sorry, Joan. You lose.

Rude Pundits

I’m about to date myself, but I can remember when the only political pundits and commentators were the ones who had regular columns in the big regional newspapers – people like Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson, David Broder and George Will, who seems to have been around since g-d was a boy. I also remember when network news was the half-hour broadcast after the regional news every evening about 7pm, with two fifteen-minute blurbs on the weekends. Sundays gave us half an hour of Meet the Press, when a politico really did meet the press and get grilled by them, and another half hour of Face the Nation, when a different panel of pressmen (and, occasionally, a woman) did the same to another elected or appointed government official. The only real poltical opinon talk show was another half hour feature entitled Issues and Answers.

If the public wanted to respond to points raised by these various individuals, especially the political journalists who appeared in the print media, their only recourse was the good, old-fashioned Letter to the Editor of the paper in which the offending column appeared. If you were lucky, maybe your letter got published in the appropriate section. If not, you’d had your say and had to live with the assumption that the editorial department conveyed your opinions, along with those of other members of the public who’d taken the time to put pen to paper and write, to the journalist in question. Either way, unless the journalist addressed these opinions in another column, you got no feedback.

Nowadays, with the internet and social networking sites, more and more self-appointed political pundits are using this media, in addition to more traditonal forms, to spread their opinions to a wider audience. Further still, many double as “political contributors” to the various 24/7 cable news outlets. Like rock and film stars of old, these people have accumulated a devoted following, and some have reached near iconic status.

This past week, I learned a couple of things.

First, I learned that this deviant form of the Fourth Estate is a closed shop which closes rank and protects its own ferociously. I’m not surprised by that. Most professions do form a protective shield around any of their own who seem to be attacked from without. Police, firefighters, teachers, doctors … it’s common practice to look after your own. And any from within those ranks who whistle blow or take the side of the accusing outsider are given pretty short shrift from their own within their profession.

Earlier this week, David Sirota and Ed Schultz engaged in a shrieking session with each other on Sirota’s radio program, the likes of which made Rush Limbaugh look positively polite. Sirota was peeved because Schultz had, a week earlier on his television program, castigated Michael Moore for his reactions to the shooting of Osama bin Laden. In Sirota’s opinion, Schultz had crossed the loyalty line in telling Moore, as Sirota perceived, to STFU and get in line behind the President.
Let me say that I have no particular liking for either Sirota or Schultz as political commentators of any realiability. Both, in my opinion, have done more than enough in the past to alienate and divide the Left, and both have a reputation for being, at times, openly rude and disdainful towards the public to whom they’ve given an opportunity to interact directly with them. But I happened to see the segment on Schultz’s show where he took issue with Moore.

Unusually for Schultz, he was unfailingly polite in his disagreement, moreso than he would have been, had Moore’s sentiments been uttered by either Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Then you would have heard bullish comments, snark and a lot of ad hominem. Because Moore was from the same side of the political coin, Schultz treated the matter with great respect, offering kudos to Moore as a great voice from the Left and giving him credit for his work regarding the health and financial industries.

Ed simply thought that at this point, regarding bin Laden, it might be helpful to present a united front. Yes, he did call for the liberal hand-wringing to stop, but because the Right, ever the opportunists, would cherrypick any and all opposition and use it in the up-coming campaign to present the Left and the Democrats as a party, hopelessly riven by division and, because of this, weakened by it. After all, it was the first Republican President, Lincoln, who reiterated that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

So Sirota took this and spun it, inviting Ed onto his show as a telephone guest, and asked him about the legality of bin Laden’s killing. And then proceeded to engage in a screaming contest, when Schultz began by saying that the Attorney General had said that the killing had been legal under the circumstances. The exchange became, quite honestly, incomprehensible, until the point that Schultz told Sirota to go to hell, and Sirota cut the mic in order to gloat. When he opened the microphone a few seconds later, Schultz had hung up.

Sirota’s gloating point was that the Attorney General was an appointee of the Administration, so he probably would be complicent in upholding bin Laden’s killing. I don’t know how Schultz could have elaborated on his point, because he was never given the opportunity, once he’d expressed his original opinion. I don’t know if he were planning on pointing out as well that a State Department attorney had also expressed an opinion on the legality of the Seals’ actions, or if – more importantly and independently of any association with the Obama administration – ex-Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had publically declared bin Laden’s killing to be perfectly legal under the circumstances.

We’ll never know, because Sirota managed to shut Schultz the fuck up in exactly the same way he’d accused Schultz of attempting to do to Moore – albeit he did manage to level the accusation directly to Schultz of being turning on one of his own kind. And then Sirota was back the next day, same time and same station, chest beating like an Alpha male, bragging about out-bullying a bully. Suffice it to say, that all the ensuing calls in the phone-in were those selected who were favourable to Sirota’s handling of the incident.

So the first lesson learned is that the gentlemen and ladies of political punditry don’t disagree with those who purport to be from the same side of the political blanket. Fair enough.

But some of these people punt their wares on social networking sites, inviting comments on their latest opinion blogs, and some of them respond to the comments. That’s fair enough too, as long as these high-profiled and high-principled people remember that the public responding might be people who like and admire their work immensely, but at times, they might disagree with a particular point or opinion. In this regard, some self-appointed pundits have proven to be remarkably thin-skinned.

One, allegedly, has compiled an enemies’ list of bloggers and commentators on the internet, most ordinary people who don’t blog for money, who’ve been critical of continuous barrage of unfounded criticism he’s levelled at the current President. This same pundit has acquired a reputation for sock puppetry, showing up in various guises (but always with the same IP address) on his critics’ blogs, to level ad hominem remarks about what they’ve written.

The normally sensible Joan Walsh has literally imbedded herself in an ongoing argument with African American bloggers on Twitter after one lady politely sought to correct Joan in her assumption that Progressives made up the base of Obama’s support. The lady on Twitter was correct: Progressives do not make up the base, either of the President’s support or that of the Democratic party. If they are the base of the party, it’s a pretty shifty one at that, when any accomplishment by the President or the party is disdained and scorned. The argument progressed until Walsh rather tactlessly admitted resentment that African Americans should consider themselves the base of support for the President, and it’s continued from there, to the point where, last Sunday night, one of the bloggers in question was engaged in a discussion with someone else, and Walsh waded in, uninvited, and turned the discussion into one concerning, yes, race, again.

Walsh is known, both on her Facebook page and on Twitter, to meet anyone disagreeing with her point of view with the cleverly unfunny advice to the commentator to “get help.” In one of the recent Twitter exchanges with the African American bloggers, she uttered to one that “it must suck to be you.”

Really, this is the stuff of high school girls, but that doesn’t detract from its rudeness.

These people are paid professionals with high public profiles. If they are going to allow an exchange of ideas with the reading, listening or viewing public, then they have to show themselves above criticism and meet it in an adult and professional manner. And that doesn’t mean, as Walsh went on to brag to a crony on Twitter after the Sunday night encounter, “punching down.”

Social networking sites are great equalisers, if the personality in question invites comment in which he or she participates. Why do it and then pull rank against people who are, at best, internet ghosts? Or maybe that’s why it’s done, because these entities are faceless, nameless ephemera.

The political pundit class, which seems to be reproducing itself at an alarming rate lately, has done a remarkable job on the Left, in incessantly urging, encouraging and promoting criticism of this President and his Administration. The old cry of “holding his feet to the fire” has become gratuitous. We’re asked to fall in line behind the pundit of our choice and carry his or her banner, worship at his altar, even defend all criticism of the chosen one against any critique levelled with the ferocity with which we would defend a slight to the honour and person of a close relative, friend or loved one.

That was the second lesson learned this week: that whilst it’s perfectly permissable to criticize a President from our party ceaselessly and unremorselessly, we daren’t criticize the punditry. It’s they, you see, who’ve taken on the thankless task of speaking for us lesser mortals. How many times have I heard people say that this one or that one is “our voice,” how we need them and how missed they’d be if they weren’t about? And how many times are we deceived, such as when Arianna Huffington made the middle class her pet cause and pushed the meme that the Obama Administration was totally against them, on the back of Huffington Post’s unpaid labour policy? In the wake of Ed Schultz’s recent praise of the President, how many remember him urging Progressives not to vote in the Midterms? How many remember Glenn Greenwald’s 2006 anti-immigration blog or that he writes for the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute?

Back in the days of Anderson and Broder, when Huntley and Brinkley and wise Uncle Walter gave us thirty minutes of the top news each evening, where were the voices who spoke for us then? They were in our minds, and they bore fruition at the ballot box.

I guess rude pundits are the fashion of the day, but I’ve never been one to follow fashion.

Joan Walsh, Joe Miller and The First Amendment

I’m sorry to say that Joan Walsh and I are no longer friends, and that’s upset me. No more gossipy girls’ lunches or hour-long telephone calls, no more whispery confidences about who’s doing what with whom, no more laments over the San Francisco Giants or the Washington Redskins … but our friendship was never like that. She’s in San Francisco, and I’m on the South Coast of England; she’s the editor of Salon.com, a pretty up-front and Progressive internet newspaper (for lack of a better word), and I’m a ghost on an internet page.

Nope, our “friendship” was the shadowy cyber sort encountered on Facebook. Joan would peddle her ware and opinions on her page, and I was one of the thousands of plebs who made comments on her opinions.

Until now, I genuinely admired Joan. I thought she was an honest and forthright journalist with real scruples. I thought she was a Progressive, in the truest sense of the word, who could and would put the ignorance of the Right to shame, a living embodiment of what a principled Progressive, endowed with cold, hard common sense and realistic pragmatism, could be. Besides, unlike her more strident and high-profiled soul sisters (Huffington, Hamshire, Dowd et al), she had the President’s back.

That’s not to say she was above criticizing him, but her criticism was valid and constructive, instead of snide, snarky and petulant.

But, alas! I was wrong. I misjudged a character I thought I knew; but now I know that Joan’s as much a ghost on an internet page as I am, for this week, she crossed the journalist’s Rubicon to join the soul sisters of the Dark Side: the faux Progressive trio of mean girls who use their bully pulpits to dissuade and discourage the Democratic base from ever seeing any kind of sense and rationalism in anything the President does – whatever he does usually being not enough for what their idea of perfection for the country would be.

Earlier in the week, Joan blogged on Salon about one of the current memes being propagated throughout the Democratic base by Arianna Huffington: “Obama doesn’t get it.”

The blog was in response to a feature article The New York Times Sunday magazine had published, an extensive review of the President on the even of the mid-terms, entitled, “The Education of a President.” In the article, Obama started out making what appeared to be a snarky reference to Madame Huffington’s recorded criticism of his recent redecoration of the Oval Office, something every President does with a special fund provided by the government. In my opinion, humble that it might be, Obama had every reason to make an off-hand remark about Huffington’s disapproval of his colour selection.

About two months ago, she’d published a totally gratuitous blog on The Huffington Post, criticizing the taupe colour scheme, and, in particular, the rug chosen, which featured woven quotations from the Founding Fathers. In referring to this item, Huffington joined the Beck-Limbaugh circus in poking fun at the President’s daughters, openly maligning the intelligence of the older daughter, Malia. It was a totally gratuitously cruel, bitchy and vindictive remark levelled at an 11 year-old by a sixtysomething woman, who has two daughters of her own, whom she’s ferociously shielded from the glare of the media, especially in the fall-out surrounding the break-up of her marriage to a gay Republican politician.

In Joan’s article, she chided Obama, basically for mean to her “friend”, Arianna Huffington, and - more or less, for the rest of the Times article – for sounding whiney, complaining and weak.

Just the sort of thing a Progressive, wavering between showing up at the polls on Election Day or sulking out the vote amidst a welter of Leftwing propaganda varying from the President being a corporate sell-out to his not having achieved a single thing of note that would push the country even an inch in a Leftist direction, needed to read. Not.

I read Joan’s blog with dismay. It was the sort of rhetoric I’d have expecte from the pen of Maureen Dowd or the keyboard of Madame, herself, but certainly not from Joan Walsh.

I read the article on Salon, itself, but later in the day, a link to it appeared from Joan on my Facebook page. Having read it, out of curiosity, I clicked onto the comments’ section and received an epiphany of a revelation.

Something’s stirring amongst the grassroots of Progressive Democrats. People are beginning to wake up to the fraud that is Arianna Huffington. Certain peope are suddenly remembering that Mrs Huffington immigrated to these shores with a solid history of virulent Rightwing idealogy, that she married a neocon’s neocon and not only drank the Koolaid, but served it on a silver platter to all and sundry who stopped long enough to listen. People are remembering that not only did this woman push the idea of a Gingrich Presidency in her writings throughout the 90′s decade, she recently was photographed on her summer vacation, treehugging the Newt, himself, after “coincidentally” meeting up with him in Amalfi, whilst the current Mrs Gingrich III, managed to look distracted in the background of a photo recording the accidentally on purpose reunion of two true, too true amis de coeur. People are suddenly connecting with the fact that Madame utilised the internet, during the late 90s, in a way in which it had previously never been utilised, to campaign actively for the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Then, suddenly, on the morning of Novembe r 3, 2004, in the wake of a Kerry defeat, the neocon awoke to declare herself a fully paid-up member of the Progressive philosophy – but not before it became fashionable to hate George W Bush.

The suspicion that Huffington just might be a rogue GOPer in Progressive clothing, that she’s a plant Gingrich, if not Rove, whose brief has been to sow discord, dissension and discouragement amongst the Democrats’ base, has been slow to rise; but rising, it is. Three weeks ago, when Huffington appeared on Rachel Maddow’s program, hawking her latest ghost-written tome, she went public with the message she’s been propagating in her wanderings throughout the heartlands of the United States, moving amongst the middle classes in a desperate effort to ensure her book makes the Times best-sellers’ list.

The message is trickledown. The message is if the diminishing middle-class doesn’t stop depending on the government and start doing for itself, America will turn into a third world country, because – according to Huffington – Obama just “isn’t that into” the middle class; instead, he’d rather play war games late at night, she said, with General Petraeus.

When that program was broadcast, Maddow’s Facebook page went viral with people lining up to call out Huffington for the fraud and phony she was.

In fact, several months prior to this, Joan Walsh had appeared on ABC’s This Week, openly calling out not only Huffington, but also Maureen Dowd, for senseless, cruel and bitter ad hominem attacks on the President.

“People are even calling him names now,” lamented Walsh, at the time. “I mean, Maureen Dowd’s calling him Spock. Arianna Huffington refers to him as ‘Nowhere Man.’ And they’re loving it. And it’s wrong!”

So, on Tuesday, when more than several of Walsh’s commentators on her Facebook page called out Huffington’s perfidy and questioned Walsh’s motive for what was essentially a petty, backbiting litany of gratuitous criticism, implying that the President was weak, Joan bit back … and sounded just as whiney, complaining and weak as she accused the President of being.

“It’s obvious that most of you have misread this article,” she wailed. (And that sounded more than just a little condescending).

The plebs responded vociferously, defending their stance, calling Huffington out as a Republican plant, a Rove operative and a neocon-in-hiding with an agenda. Now it was Joan’s turn.

“Wow, from all the name-calling,” she whined, “it’s clear such people have no place on my Facebook page.”

And with that, she shut down comments entirely, dropping me and various other regulars from her friends’ list.

Now, let me make it perfectly clear, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, no one called Joanie names. This was all about her umbrage at the President snarking back at a woman who’d derided his daughters in print. The worst thing Huffington was called amongst the comments was “Media whore.” If the designer shoe fits, well … you get the drift.

My dismissal came as a result of my questioning her integrity. After all, I reasoned, it’s perfectly acceptable for Joan to use the medium of a nationally televised opinion program to chide and criticize Dowd and Huffington for unacceptable and disrespectful ad hominem attacks on the President’s character, but ordinary people aren’t entitled to criticize a journalist for the content of an article with which they agree or remark upon her “friend’s” past activities as suspect and derogatory? One rule for the Fourth Estate and one for the plebs whose opinions they hope to insinuate and influence? We can criticize the President of the United States, but once we speak out against a journalist with whom we disagree, our First Amendment right of reply is abruptly cut off because the ego of a national opinionator has suffered a fit of pique?

To quote former US President: “Give. Me. A. Break.”

I don’t know if Joan Walsh and Arianna Huffington or Maureen Dowd move in the same social circles. I don’t know if they enjoy girlie, gossipy lunches or long-winded telephone conversations, or if they even use the same deoderant, but at best, this looks like the professional Professional Left closing ranks and shutting down the response facility of the hoi polloi when they utter a thought devised in their own mind and not gleaned from the instuctive, destructive meme of misinformation the media bods, Right and Left, want to inflict upon the otherwise unsuspecting sheeple.

At worst, Joan risks acting like the proverbial high school girl who hangs desperately about the peripheries of the social boundaries set by the socially popular mean girls’ society, cravenly willing to defend their diatribes to the death, do their homework for them and carry their bookbags a mile if it means acceptance as one of the chosen few.

Either way, it’s infringing upon the First Amendment.

The day after this article appeared, Salon was awash with no less than three articles, heavily and rightly criticizing the strongarm tactics of political bully and hypocrite, Joe Millar, in using a private security force (two of whose members included serving military personnel) to handcuff and illegally arrest a reporter whose only crime was to attend a Miller rally and try to ask the candidate a legitimate question, concerning a part of his past his would-be constituents have a right to know.

Some years ago, Miller, hoping to be elected GOP chairman for Alaska, whilst employed as an attorney in a public capacity, used his firm’s computers to rig the results of an online survey which would have affected the result of that particular election. If the Senatorial candidate is running on a ticket of political purity, then his public have a right to know if he’s guilty of the smallest ethical quirk. It’s another matter entirely that he relies on bevies of armed goons not only to protect his person, but to ensure that the public he serves are prohibited from asking questions that seriously need to be asked about someone in whom we’re entrusting our representation and interests as citizens.

Again, that’s a denial of a right accorded to us by the First Amendment of our Constitution.

Not only is this unusual similarity denial of free speech common ground amongst the power players on the Right as well as the Left, it’s also a comment upon how the two sides of the political spectrum enforce supression of our Constitutional rights for their own agendae: The Joe Millers of the Right swagger into suppression with an armed guard, ready to use brute force in order to quell dissension; the Joan Walshes of the Left flounce off in a pique of anger and simply deny dissenters access to their Facebook page.

I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies and the lesser of two evils.