June 23, 2015

If anybody remembers Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," there was this routine

that he had with his band leader, Doc Severinson, when a joke in the monologue bombed.

All of a sudden, the orchestra started in on "Tea for Two..." "...dah-dah-dah DAH, dah-DAH, day-DAH, dah-DAH..." and he'd start up with a little two-step tap-dance and it'd always make the crowd start laughing, so he'd wind up GETTING the laugh, anyway!

I hear Doc Severinson and the band warming up again any time jebbie gets put on the spot... "...dah-dah-dah DAH, dah-DAH, day-DAH, dah-DAH..." That's your cue, jebbie-boy! Start tap-dancing!

June 23, 2015

Indeed. And making sure our girls and women are well-educated.

June 23, 2015

That's a pretty high bar. Especially when it's majority GOP in that state legislature.

If they go for it now, it MIGHT succeed. But if they wait, or put it off, or somehow find a way to delay it for whatever procedural bullshit excuse the hate-rag defenders come up with, then it's a lost cause once again.

And considering that side of the aisle, remember the tendency we often see from there. It's consistently one of obfuscating, obstructing, dragging their heels any way they can think up to do so, and THEN, always trying to figure out HOW TO GET AROUND the rules, regs, restrictions, laws, whatever it is they don't like or feel like it's cramping their style somehow, or impinging upon their imagined concept of reckless, every-man-for-himself freedom-freedom. Maybe the flag might indeed be removed from that area around the state capitol, but will it also be removed from everywhere else in public?

Or will they just take it off that flag pole in front of the capitol building and hang it up elsewhere downtown?

It needs to be GONE.

June 23, 2015

Well, I'd welcome that. If she stirs up shit against herself from the far wrong, then it means

that many fewer votes she'd bring to the table as a possible running-mate. If she's too controversial, they're not gonna want that on that side of the aisle. They're trying to figure out how to grease their way back into the White House. Also by any means necessary. If the base gets pissed off about it, they'll rebel. They fancy themselves as rebels anyway. I mean, look at their romance with the Civil War. It's all about the glory of the rebel. The rebel is the patron saint - their raison d'etre. Probably makes 'em feel all powerful and vindicated and virile and stuff, especially when they get into costume and go out and play pretend Civil War.

"Yeah, but she took OUR FLAG away!" Let the pouting begin!

June 23, 2015

Nope. By any means necessary.

Shame is a good thing sometimes. And useful. It was certainly effective here.

June 23, 2015

It's absolutely a factor. If anyone needs further proof, just go to the gunman's own journal.

His writings and his photos - of himself with his hate-rag. It was absolutely a factor. Nothing like a battle flag to be your banner that you can raise on high to underscore your point. It was part and parcel of what happened. It IS a symbol of institutional racism and hatred, and of a very shameful time in America's history.

June 23, 2015

My husband was on about that this morning, too.

She was dragged to it. She didn't find her way there just by a personal and quite logical response to the massacre. If it had been up to her, she would have left it in place and not come out - several days later - to call for its removal. If you'll recall, it was NOT her first reaction. It was brought up very quickly after the massacre and she demurred. THAT was her true feeling. Otherwise she would have blurted out, right then, THAT WEDNESDAY NIGHT, that "YES. You know, that's a very good idea. It's unfortunate that it comes after such a horrible tragedy here in Charleston, but this is a perfect time to take that step - away from the past and into the present and future. We need to send a signal that WE are NOT THAT, and THAT is NO LONGER who we are. It's a hurtful symbol, it hurts people, it represents something very ill in our past, and we need to move forward - AWAY from that part of our past. It's long past time."

Now, imagine if she'd said THAT. Or something like that. But she didn't. She didn't grab that very significant moment to lead the change. She hemmed and hawed and it's our heritage and it's a meaningful symbol to so many of our people and we just need to grieve and this is not the time and blah blah blah. Two-step, side-step, cha-cha-cha.

But if she HAD said that, straight off the bat, when this issue was just starting to percolate and the calls for that hate-rag to be removed had just started, THEN I'd be praising her. But, as with jebbie-boy, taking all week to fart around and hem and haw and tap-dance around whether he would have done the same thing his dry-drunk brother did in Iraq, it took her from Wednesday night to Monday morning - FIVE DAYS - to get there. Doin' the two-step, side-step, cha-cha-cha.

It seems like a no-brainer to us. Certainly seems that way to me. There was no other decision possible. But she danced around it and avoided it for days. She gets no pass from me.

And did anybody notice reince priebus there in that gaggle behind her, too? Interesting that he seemed to kinda hide even as he stood in that group. In the live coverage, you couldn't even see him behind her, from the camera angle, unless she moved a little while talking at the mic, and at that, we only saw about half of his face. Then also in this big group shot that they all posed for afterwards, you really had to search for him because he was STILL standing mostly behind somebody else.

Phony. That's how it strikes me. Just for appearances. Just a veneer. If HE had really wanted to make a statement, he would have positioned himself in the front row by Jim Clyburn.

I don't trust it for a moment. And I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a move bubbling up even now - to wait it out for awhile til the heat dies down and they can start bringing the Dixie Swastika back out into the open again. Wouldn't surprise me. These people do NOT want to give up on it. This is another one of their "sincerely-held beliefs." And they won't give it up without a fight. I wouldn't be surprised if they wait on it in the state legislature til December and January, when they think the heat's died down, and then don't get enough votes to have the damn thing removed. And then it'll be shrug, throw up yer hands, and say "well, guess not. Hey we tried. We're so sorry. It's over. Time to move on. Next!"

June 23, 2015

The term "states' rights" IS about slavery.

Even lee atwater said so - in a clip that's been going around here in which he spells out a strategy for appealing to the racist voter bloc, and how you can get the point across to them, and let them know you "get it" by using vague references like "states' rights" and "forced busing" and it's just codespeak. But it's code for your base - to assure them you're with 'em.

I'll have to try to find that clip. He spells it all out in about a minute or so.

Here's the thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251251853

Here's the story:

http://americablog.com/2012/11/audio-of-infamous-lee-atwater-interview-its-a-matter-of-how-abstract-you-handle-the-race-thing.html

Here's a key quote:

[It’s a matter of] how abstract you handle the race thing. In other words, you start out … Now y’all aren’t quoting me on this … you start out in 1954 by saying, “(triple N-word).” By 1968 you can’t say “(N-word)”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.

And you’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites…. “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than (double N-word).” …

And here's the clip. A minute-39 is all you need:

It's the Southern Strategy that dates back to nixon, stemming from when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and admitted he'd just effectively handed the South over to the republi-CONS. "Get Abstract." Notice even now, years after lee atwater's heyday, how that's STILL in play all over hate-radio and Pox Noise and elsewhere, and in every republi-CON's personal repertoire of on-the-record blather. Notice, in the second paragraph of the quote (which I just noticed, too), he says - all these things you're talking about, when you code it like this, are economic. HOW MANY TIMES have we heard that the Civil War and the Dixie Swastika were about "economics." Yeah, thanks atwater, you schmuck!

On edit - I extracted the rest of the word he kept repeating, in his quote that I lifted from that Americablog story. Just don't even want to go there when all I'm doing is lifting somebody else's quote.

June 23, 2015

Welcome to DU, captainarizona!

Glad you're here! It's been extremely annoying and frustrating to watch the progressive talk stations wither and die. Unfortunately for CON-talk, that is slowly dying, too, because of either listener boycotts and bad publicity OR the slow fade of the primary demographic that tunes in for that shit. The biggest audience for hate radio is literally dying off. And advertisers run for the hills when boycotts take off, as has happened with limbaugh's show. His show is dying too. Bleeding slowly to death, as he loses sponsors, loses listeners, and there's dramatically dwindling interest in buying time on his show. Buying commercial time on his show used to cost a fortune, because he was the biggest of the gas giants. But ever since he ran his yap about Sandra Fluke, the bell has begun to toll for him. He used to be on the station with the strongest signal in town. He got bumped off there to an itty bitty station with a shit signal and worse coverage, where KTLK had been, with Stephanie Miller and Randi Rhodes and Bill Press, and Mike Malloy even. limbaugh and that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity and a couple others got plunked in there. They called the format, and the station, "The Patriot." Yeah. Screw that! As another DUer here posted upthread - so you now have to embrace CONservatism in order to love your country?

So I mourn and resent the fall of Air America (since I was part of the audience they served - now nobody's serving me! Here in a city the size and prominence of Los Angeles) of all places. No progressive talk for a HUGE potential audience that's here. With a Democratic mayor and majority Dems on the City Council and passing the minimum wage increase and facing extreme drought which flows directly into climate change, SHEESH. No progressive talk. You have to go to the Pacifica station, KPFK here in L.A., or online, to listen to anything decent anymore. Hell, we're down to one all-newser on the radio. We used to have two and the thriving competition between them made us all better-informed, or at least better-updated. And it isn't as though there wasn't ever anything much going on in L.A.

June 23, 2015

All I know is I miss her!

I listened to her show all the time - whenever I was driving. Sometimes I created reasons to drive or errands to run, just so I could listen to her for awhile.