Guess I missed most of that, Hekate.

I made my first comment about this as reaction began to stream in from nikki haley's teary appearance before the cameras and mics the other night. I just impulsively fired off words to the effect of "Well then why don't you take that damn flag down?"

Well, why not? Doesn't it seem kinda obvious? I'm just one person but that's immediately how it strikes me. Catholic, y'know. We're into "outward signs" and stuff. Born in Missouri, y'know. The Show Me State. You want to show how sorry you are that this happened, and how badly you want your state and this city to heal? Then take that damn flag down! It just fans in the face ALL the wrong stuff, ALL the wrong messaging, ALL the wrong reminders.

STOP GLORIFYING THE DAMN CIVIL WAR!!!!!!

Enough with the obsession with the Civil War. It's OVER. It ended more than a century-and-a-half ago! It's LONG OVER. And I'm afraid YOU LOST. You need to GET OVER IT. Quit rubbing it in our faces! Quit parading it all over everywhere. YOU LOST. GET OVER IT.

Besides, you don't have anything to rub in our faces. YOU LOST.

If you do decide to write about it, you may find it tremendously therapeutic.

If you write about it, I would like to read it. I'm sure others here would, too.

I need to find some sort of way to understand the mentality of the South. It's just freakin' ALIEN to me, some of what they believe in. I don't understand it. It doesn't compute. Your writing from your personal perspective would be most illuminating.

Maybe we should start channelling reagan.

"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down... This Wall!" Anybody remember that monumental soundbite?

"Madam Governor, Tear Down... This Flag!"

And don't stop with nikki haley either. EVERY state senator and assemblyman in South Carolina needs to be told that. Because as I understand it, it's the state legislature that would have to change this.

No. It needs to come DOWN.

I think too many of us are WAY past that. That kind of justification or rationalization to reinforce not doing anything - that I've heard from SO many different voices in the past couple of days - will not get the job done.

We need a BIG change here. The people who claim it's their "heritage" need to be asked why they're proud of it, and why it's something to be proud of. We don't see legions of in-yer-face Germans parading the Nazi symbols around in public! Hell, they're rightfully ashamed of it. Still. To this late date. I think the "stars 'n' bars" is as offensive to the African American community and to others in this country who are against racism as the swastika is to the Jewish community.

If people in the South want to see that "Dixie Swastika" so badly, let them fund the building of a Museum of Intolerance - and install all the john c. calhoun statues and hate rags and other crap inside there. One per state capitol in the Old South - all the states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy.

I was just watching Chris Hayes on MSNBC and he was interviewing a black state legislator.

That legislator's name, I think, was Todd Rutherford (D), who said he'd been contacted by fellow state rep Doug Brannon (r) from Spartanburg. The GOP colleague told him he was planning to introduce a bill to take the flag down.

Chris Hayes actually got him on the phone. Brannon is talking about why he's doing it - that he "lost a friend on Wednesday night" in the Rev. Clementa Pinckney who was also a State Senator. Brannon said "I'm not a politician tonight."

Says he'll profile that bill in December, before they go back into the next session, next January.

Let's follow this. See if it's gonna happen.

I'd rather we didn't have to wait til December or January. That fucking hate rag needs to come DOWN. NOW.

I've heard a very excellent new name for it somewhere here, and I think it should be used openly, so people can make the connection: The Dixie Swastika.

And evidently, Governor Oops says it the drugs.

Has to be the drugs. CERTAINLY can't be the guns.

The Powell Memo.

That is the "bible" of the Dark Side. I have it in my sig-line so people can check it out. It was a blueprint for building the CON infrastructure that has overtaken this country.

Welcome to DU, shadowmayor!

Glad you're here, Your Honor! Oh MAN, did America EVER suffer a giant collective aneurysm during that era.

It was the pizazz. The staging. The Hollywood stuff. The sloganeering. The schtick. He wore blue jeans and a cowboy hat off duty up in them thar Santa Barbara Mountains - and he looked good in them. He rode horses. He'd been a movie star. He then had a radio show and thus, a national pulpit and he was good at that. Sure knew how to use a microphone, including the time he yelled about how he'd PAID for that microphone (and nobody was gonna cut it off on him, either).

He had this triumvirate of close advisors - James Baker, Michael Deaver, and Ed Meese. James Baker was White House Chief of Staff. Ed Meese was first legal advisor and then full-on (and rather crooked) Attorney General. And then there was Michael Deaver. Mr. Showbiz. He was Deputy White House Chief of Staff under Baker and, as a former PR guy, he capitalized on reagan's actor skills to manipulate the masses. He was an "image guru," what CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller described as "the man behind the curtain."

"When it came to conveying Mr. Reagan's message, the cry at the White House was, 'Leave it to Deaver,'" Knoller said. "He chose the settings and staging, and operated the bells and whistles, that helped President Reagan earn his reputation of being 'the Great Communicator' — but he couldn't have done it without Michael Deaver."

(snip)

To exert as much control as possible, Deaver steered the president away from reporters when he could, instead arranging Reagan in poses and settings that conveyed visually the message of the moment. Presidential news conferences were a rarity, which suited an actor-turned-politician who was at his best when using a script.

Deaver's greatest skill "was in arranging what were known as good visuals — televised events or scenes that would leave a powerful symbolic image in people's minds," former first lady Nancy Reagan recalled in her memoir, "My Turn."

One example was Reagan's visit to the beaches of Normandy, in France, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II. Deaver arranged for Reagan to appear on a cliff overlooking the English Channel and address D-Day veterans, which yielded dramatic video and still images of the president.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reagan-advisor-michael-deaver-dead-at-69/

Get that? reagan had this famous and much-vaunted "troika" of his closest advisors. And one of those three rarified-air jobs was his IMAGE GURU. It was THAT important. His IMAGE was absolutely THAT important. Economic advisor? Nope. Foreign policy advisor? Nope. Executive staffing guy, legal advisor guy, and IMAGE GUY. What does that tell you? Packaging above just about EVERYTHING else. It was the "how you sell it", not so much the "what you're selling" that was important. Nothing but surface treatment.

It was INFURIATING.

And, the SOB took about an equivalent of a full year out of his eight years in our White House - ON FUCKING VACATION!!!! He used to tie up traffic all over the Westside of L.A. over and over and over again, either going from LAX to Santa Monica Airport by helicopter and then limo'ing either to the Century Plaza where his entourage would take up at least a floor of the hotel there, or else up to Bel-Air to the former 666 St. Cloud Road (rich benefactors bought the exclusive Bel-Air home for the reagans toward the end of his second term, and had the street number changed to 668). OR it'd be helicoptering from LAX to Santa Barbara, up to the ranch. Either way, it was murder trying to get around West L.A. when he was coming through there. And we taxpayers were paying for all that nice time off he was always taking. Don't care if he was as old as Methuselah. If he needed that much time off and that many naps while supposedly on duty back in DC, maybe he shouldn't have wanted to be President. I certainly didn't get MY tax money's worth outta that old fart.

The ONLY good thing about ronald reagan is that he's dead. Gone. Can't initiate any further harm on America. His days are over. Unfortunately, his legacy is well-cared-for, at least for the moment. But he himself is gone.

Such a great cartoon. Horrible and tragic. But great.

Stormfront. Wondering if that's the reason why Dylann Roof's middle name is Storm.

Has there been anything looking into extremism in his family background?