Of Cabbages and Kings: It's Not That Obama's Naive; It's Just That the President Isn't White

(Sigh) I hate to bring race into this equation. I hate even approximating a race war, but the time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings, thus saith Lewis Carroll.

Race has always been a part of the 44th Presidency. It couldn't help but be. After all, Barack Obama is the first African American to be elected President. John Kennedy was the first Catholic elected to that position. People spoke about how Kennedy's devotion to Rome would impact upon his legislative agenda, but that only covered his religion. Race, like the poor, is always with society, and it stands to reason that this President's race, whilst it certainly shouldn't impact upon his ability to govern, is clearly a problem, overtly and covertly, with various and sundry citizens of the United States, Right and Left.

I know I'm opening a can of worms, and a lot of sites where I'd hope to post this will explode in all kinds of cockroaches crawling from the woodwork in order to gnaw at the ideas expressed herein, but - hey - better to be called a cockroach than "the dumbest motherfuckers," which I gather a noted sage in the Progressive community reckons anyone who supports the President is.

Let's see, one high-profile voice in the blogosphere who passes himself off as a Progressive, but who is really a Koch-funded, Citizens United-supporting, child labour-loving, Gary Johnson Libertarian, refers to supporters of the President as "Obamalovers," in what he reckons to be a cute and clever rendition of the old Dixiecrat pejorative of "n*ggerlovers."

A second neurotic doyenne of the Professional Left blatantly declares any vociferous supporter of the President to be a paid Breitbart troll whose sole purpose in life is to undermine the Presidency of Barack Obama. Go figure that one, especially since this same pundit went on record to say she resented African Americans even thinking that they constituted the President's base.

To say that race matters, regarding matters to the Right of the political spectrum, is an understatement. Who doesn't remember many of the people showing up for Sarah Palin's campaign rallies in 2008, with their stuffed monkeys called "Little Hussain," the elderly woman challenging McCain with her misguided fact that Candidate Obama was an Arab, the shouts and jeers, even to one man shrieking out that Obama must be killed during a Palin pow-wow. Then there was the Tea Party and their various depictions of the President as a socialist, a communist or anything frighteningly evile, but always depicted as an African chieftan or, again, a apelike creature. And let's not get started on the Birthers.

I know all about Republican delegitimisation of the Democrats, particularly Democratic Presidents. That's been the order of the day, presidentially, since Clinton was elected in 1992; and, yes, Clinton was particularly demonised in a way, heretofore, no Democratic President had been. That, I will admit.

Real demonisation of the Left by the Right began some 40 years ago, and was actually, unwittingly aided and abetted by the Democrats, themselves - or at least the New Age Democratic Party fronted by Gary Hart and co. The Republicans excoriated the liberal Democratic tendancy left over from Johnson's Great Society of the Sixties, and the New Dems responded by eschewing any reference to liberals or liberalism. From thence forward, they referred to themselves as "Progressives," and forwent any association with what they perceived to be the failed liberalism of a herd-follower like Hubert Humphrey.

Humphrey supported the Viet Nam war, and so the New Dems affected an anti-war stance on all fronts, which made it easy for the Republicans to big up the myth about the Democratic party being weak on defence and unpatriotic. Why, as the Republicans pointed out, a great many of the so-called New Democrats, were scrubbed up hippies from the Flower Movement. And the Democrats obliged there and now. Whenever someone attacks the Left, a favourite saying amongst the Professional Left pundits is that said person is "punching a hippy," when many of these people talking like this are too young even to understand what a real hippy was, and those who are, are ex-Republicans, themselves.

A lot of these so-called Professional Left pundits have been making hay while the sun shines for the past three years, criticizing everything this President says and does. They've done it so much and for so long that one could be forgiven for thinking that they actually hate the man, and you have to ask why.

Well, I've bought just about as much of their rationale, pushed at them via talking points engendered by those well-established guardians of the Left like Arianna Huffington, who taught the dittoes to recite that Obama was a Wall Street tool, that he was a corporate whore, that he "just wasn't that into" the Middle Class, that he was a Nowhere Man. I've had just about enough of their gloating when another well-established hero of the Left, Cenk Uygur, goes of an a high-handed screed, boasting about what he would tell this President to do. I'm fed up with that wannabe Alpha Male, Bill Maher, emerging from his hiding place behind the comedian's mask to tell us how weak the President is, how bad a negotiator he is, how he has no spine, how he constantly caves to the Republicans, especially on tax cuts to the rich, when the high-minded Bill Maher, himself, cheats the State of California out of millions of dollars in property tax annually with a phoney charity registered as the owner of his properties. And I'm tired of the assumption voiced in Joan Walsh's latest blog and wittered and twittered about by various and sundry scribes from the Progressive Left: the President, especially in these debt ceiling negotiations, is naive.

And, really, naivete has been the contents of the envelope pushed by the ueber Left since the beginning of this Administration. The President is naive about wanting bipartisan cooperation for legislation. He's naive to want the Republicans to like him. He's naive about Afghanistan, about Healthcare reform, about job creation, about the economy, about just about anything, simply because there are just oh-so-many experienced pundits on the Left who could just do things so differently if he'd only listen to them.

What's frightening about that is the sheer number of those scions of the Left who, until the past decade, were card-carrying neocon Republicans.

Is there a whiff of ratfuckery about the place all of a sudden?

This naivete motif, I'm sorry to say, plays in very nicely with an image many of the Professional Left retain regarding African Americans, especially those in positions of power. It's basically an "Affirmative Action" mentality toward them: they've achieved what they've achieved, thanks to Progressives' efforts, so now they'd do well to listen to the advice these people have to impart to their protoges. They need help, and the ueber Left is there to give it. They're there to tell - er, advise - the President what to do.

It's just a typically and badly hidden genre of patronising racism, but it's racism, all the same. And their frustrated, because the President, intelligent Negro that he is, simply won't do as they say - because if he did, you know, things would just be that much better. Ne'mind, he'd probably have to bypass the Senate and people like Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin; ne'mind, that he'd have to pretend the Republican House didn't exist, although it does - thanks, in a great part to all those Progressives who sat out the vote in a sulk in 2010. Hell, he can just rule as a dictator. After all, isn't that what Bush did? Well, as one Progressive noted this week, Obama's nothing but a black Bush, anyway.

Sometimes, the Left suffers from a psychological wardrobe dysfunction.

But it seems as if the President is too much the recalcitrant Negro for some on the Left, it seems he's not Negro enough for other big mouths who manage to say nothing. After all, earlier this spring, no less than Cornel West excoriated the President for, amongst other things, daring to have a white mother, be educated in primarily white institutions and feel at home amongst educated, white, Jewish men. This coming from a man whose parents were educated professionals, who grew up in a predominately white community, and who has spent all his adult life amongst the leafy, white academic suburbs of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Princeton, New Jersey.

But at long last, it would seem that people in the political and pundit world are beginning, if they haven't realised it beforehand, to, at least, find the courage to allude to the racism which belies the treatment meted this President, by both the media and the public in general.

Note Rep Sheila Jackson Lee's pointed comment, aimed at House Republicans, about the real reason so many difficulties are being dreamed up about the passage of this year's debt ceiliing increase:-



And just to be fair and balanced, we've had Lawrence O'Donnell give a masteclass on The Last Word this past week about What The President Is Really Trying to Do 101, for all those who subscribe to having the President's words and intentions inadequately interpreted for you by no less than Adam Green of Bold Progressives, who, for the modest price of five dollars a shot requested contribution, will ensure that you stay in an appropriate state of fear at the next betrayal the perfidious President is about to enact against his natural supporters. Not that any of these people either listened to O'Donnell or paid heed to what he said, if they did; but Thursday night's segment was particularly brilliant, in view of the scare-mongering Green is propagating regarding the sort of cuts to Medicare he envisages Obama making only in his scammy, little mind.

Watch the segment, for yourself, especially the bit beginning around the seven-minute mark:-

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

That's right, in 1993, when Lawrence O'Donnell was an aide to the Senate Finance Committee, no less than Bill Clinton, pushed through the biggest cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in the history of the programs' existence ... with the complete and utter support of both a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. No single liberal opposed these cuts. Not Ted Kennedy who was then in the Senate. Not Bernie Sanders, who was then a Congressman from Vermont. This was Bill Clinton Pre-Triangulation, before Newt got control of the Hill. This was Bill Clinton in liberal mode.

As O'Donnell asks rhetorically, where were all the voices shouting betrayal then? Instead, now, we don't even get a definite word from the President about any sort of cuts to Medicare; instead we get a deliberately concocted and misleading headline by Sam Stein, arguably the laziest and most inept reporter covering anything Presidential, and all hell breaks loose - so much so, that when the President states categorically that wealthier people should pay more into their Medicare program and the ueber Left erupts, they're opposing exactly what they berated the President for not doing in November: raising taxes on the wealthier elements of society.

And, of course, the unspoken question of why people are doing this from the Left to the President, is left, appropriately, dangling, by O'Donnell.

I am not alone in thinking that this is the first time in my life when I've seen a President so derided by both sides of the political equation. Not even Nixon, who was revealed to be crooked and dishonest, was so reviled. And whilst Clinton was certainly delegitimised in the worst way, first for supposed criminal activity, and subsequently for a sexual peccadillo, this was done entirely by his political opponents in the Republican Party.

Delegitimising a Democratic President is par for the course for the Republican Party, even the lunatic asylum which is masquerading as such right now; but unrelenting criticism of a President by those on his side of the spectrum is not only stupid, it's divisive as hell, and projects the party as being weak and as much out of control as the Teabaggers on the Right.

The latest fly in the ointment with which the Progressives hope to smear the President came in the leak about Elizabeth Warren not getting promoted as head of the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Late last night on Twitter, that noted political pundit Katrina vanden Heuvel, child of privilege who pays lip service to the poor and who's fashioned a career for herself as a political sage without any iota of political experience or acumen, was working herself into a lather trying to find someone who knew "something" (presumably, something bad) about the man rumoured to be the President's choice - like, was he a Wall Street or an international banking tool?

Of course, this is the same Katrina vanden Heuvel, who last year predicted that Nick Clegg would emerge triumphant from the British General Election as Prime Minister, because he'd been an intern on The Nation. (Nick Clegg is now the vilified as the most odious political opportunist in Britain and a true betrayer of his party). And this was the same Katrina vanden Heuvel who trolled the lengths and breadths of MSNBC during the campaign of 2000, telling all and sundry that a vote for Al Gore was a vote for George Bush, and real Progressives wanted Ralph Nader to succeed.

That theory all worked out so well, didn't it?

And of course, that was the same Ralph Nader, who, on election day 2008 and several times publically thereafter, has taken perverse pleasure in referring to the 44th President of the United States as a "Tom."

Racist, much?

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.