A Rosa Parks Moment

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When Andrew Breitbart and the Fox Empire of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes launched their smear and destroy campaign against Shirley Sherrod, she did something none of the politicians, none of the aides, none of the chattering class in the enabling millionaire sheep media of The Village had the dignity, the honor, the courage to do.

She said, "enough."

And she said it with a quiet character that put to shame all the screechers and bloviators and rightwing echo chamber and quavering political class and self-important media types who were first knee-jerk demanding her head and then scrambling to point fingers at the White House for throwing her under the bus.

Maybe so.

But Andrew Breitbart and the rightwing screed machine are the bus drivers.

And Shirley Sherrod was the woman who refused to go to the back, sit down, shut up and be abused.

As much as the words of her speech—in its entirety, where she gives a pointed history lesson on how race baiting and division came to be and how it still poisons the most vulnerable among us—as much as her words are a teachable moment....

Even more so is her quiet refusal to give the white-sheet right wing power over her. Her father was murdered by the Klan, her anger would have been justified, understood. But she rose above the rabble on the right.

I'm hoping that's what Tom Vilsack sees in this moment. This is more than a woman fighting for her job.

Some are likening this to Harper Lee's powerful To Kill a Mockingbird, and it's hard not to totally agree regarding my lifetime favorite book. But I think another's story applies more strongly here.

This is a Rosa Parks moment. And I think Rosa would be proud. As the granddaughter of a German immigrant who endured indentured servitude to be an American, I know I am proud of Shirley Sherrod.

She understands my family story as much as her own.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Dumb, Doddering and Despicable

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Hope they've been enjoying the modern equivalent of 40 pieces of silver. Or raining gold coins through your fingers. Or blood diamonds. Or basking in the view of Diamond Head.

'cause you can't take it with you.

If ever there were a more loathesome trio, it has to be Sarah Palin, who fumbled to even come up with the name George Washington, while talking to Glenn Beck. Book learning be too much for her. But not to worry, no more ad libs, no more relying on memory or rehearsal. From now on, it's all teleprompter alla time....

And then there is Pat Robertson, the shill, the false prophet, the wolf in sheep's clothing, the Judas, the pathetic excuse for all that remains of his humanness--the excrement. In a not-so-rare moment he snake-oiled about a pact with the devil. Look to your own, sir.

And then there's everybody in the Village's good buddy Rush. Racist, rancid, revolting. At long last, media, have you no shame? I waste no such expectation on him. But why are you coddling and embracing this vile sludge?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Drunk in the Bleachers

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Today, the GOP's usual loudmouths mocked Chicago's loss of bid for the 2012 Olympics and attacked Obama for making the effort to help bring those Olympics to the USA.

Among the most egregious was Rush Limbaugh. Doubtless the video will be readily available on youtube and elsewhere, including the Ed Show on MSNBC.

And I realized what we're seeing from Rush Limbaugh. What we have been seeing ever since Barack Obama came on the political landscape. Limbaugh's McNabb tirade was merely prelude.

He's the racist drunk in the bleachers yellin' at the star athlete who shows up for every game, plays to the best of his professional ability, works with his team and is the hero of his hometown.

Rush can't stand it. Because for Limbaugh, every game, he's the loser. He may have a fat contract, but he's still and ever shall be a loser. And when the game ends, he goes home alone. Except for what he can buy.

Which just reinforces: Rush Limbaugh = Loser.
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Prairie Recommends: Bob Herbert on the Fading Species

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The hysterical hyperbole from the bulbous blowhards of the rightwing Republi-THUGS keeps getting more and more outrageous, as Bob Herbert sums up today regarding the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Could we hope that these puffed-up self-important gasbags may at long last overblow their hot air so much that they just explode into the stratosphere never to be seen again?

Likely not, since the Mortal Combat media is only too eager to give these sumbitchez plenty of airtime for their rantings.

The Southern Strategy has become the Latina Strategy. You know...hot-blooded, raaadical, not quite one of "us." Yep, the us vs. them strategy is in full play.

Make note, fellow Americans. Next time it could be rants against an Asian American. Or any ol' smear they can develop against someone they can paint as part of some group of "other."

I must warn the little ol' Norwegian-American ladies serving coffee at the Sons of Norway Lodge. They could be next. What are those long skirts concealing, anyway?
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crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette

NY Post and its Cartoon Cross Racist, Incendiary Lines

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First reaction, WTF was the New York Post cartoonist thinking, drawing the cartoon in the first place?

Second reaction, WTF was the New York Post doing publishing it?

Rush Limbaugh's recent "I hope he fails." campaign has reached down to small town American talk show hosts like Fargo's Scott Hennen's "I hope Pres. Obama's socialist policies fail miserably." [Yes, he is the guy who chortled with Chee-knee about waterboarding. Figures.]

The rightwing Wurlitzer is ramping up the hate.

Now this disgusting cartoon published in a supposedly sophisticated marketplace like New York City. By the global empire of Rupert Murdoch.

Well, there's a tradition Murdoch's probably run across in his world travels — seppuku.

For the New York Post, and all of Murdoch's global propaganda machine for that matter, I hope they commit media seppuku. Ritual disembowelment of the Murdoch presses and the Murdoch websites and the Murdoch networks.

No entity deserves it more than the Partners in Propaganda brainwashing machine that is Murdoch Media.

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crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette

Race Card Politics

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Ari says it a tad more subtly than I replied to him over at Oxdown--good on ya, Ari, for the screen grab.

My take:

When you choose to play the race card… When you choose the staff who have a history of playing the race card…

You are a racist, John McCain.
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Ari's got the picture at Firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette... now everybody's got the picture... of John McCain.

Prisoner of....

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More and more, John McCain is looking like a prisoner of slimeball rightwing political "consultants" and cronies and "conservative" voices of the Atwater-Rovian School of sleazeball politics. Delivering hostage tapes of lies to appease those who control him.

At least that's the only possible alternative explanation to John McCain being so desperate and covetous of winning the Presidency that he will stoop to any vile tactic of race-baiting and inciting hatred and anger in the crowds who attend rallies to hear his and, even more, Sarah Palin's scathing and disingenuous attacks on Barack Obama.

Attacks that are joined by the likes of Cindy McCain and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Some company to keep.

Even as he calls McCain to account, though, Frank Rich like too many of his fellow reporters and opiners gives him a pass--and a benefit of the doubt that McCain no longer deserves.

The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder.

Friday in Lakeville, Minnesota, McCain grudgingly responded to one of Minnesota's lesser nice [shorter: Lice] citizen's attack on Obama as an "Arab" by saying that Obama was a decent family man, a citizen, that they had disagreements.....

Now, maybe McCain had an epiphany and realized he needed to pull back from the rants and rousing of the rabble. Or maybe not.

Because just moments from that comment, McCain was attacking Obama as someone who never worked across the aisle. A flat-out bald-faced thou-shalt-bear-no-false-witness lie that would come as a surprise to Senator Dick Lugar [R-IN] and Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK]...for starters.

But then, when McCain signed on with the merchants of hate and gambled on Palin the Barbarian, he signed away his Honor Conduct.
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UPDATE: Garrison Keillor has thoughtful words for real honor conduct. And Matt Tiabbi dons his hazmat suit to delve into the world of Rove.
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[crossposted at Firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette]

Race Baiter

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The Republican saga of race-baiting rightwing bigotry is ratcheting up these days.

John Ridley over at Huffington Post reminds us: there is no context for bigotry other than bigotry.

And there is no bigger propagandist for the Republican bigotry machine than their carefully cultivated rightwing radio talker, Rush Limbaugh.

And certainot, a commenter there, puts it succinctly:

yes... the party of lincoln is now the party of limbaugh. no one represents the morals and priciples of the modern GOP better.

These days, (R ) is a four-letter word.
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UPDATE: On the Sundance Channel, a powerful documentary—Ring of Fire, the Emile Griffith Story. Griffith was beaten within an inch of his life. Coincidence that this happened in the summer as the gay-bashing right was beating their drums during the 1992 campaign?

Bigotry has many targets—the "other"—the person of color, the gay, the Jew, the gypsy...and as Niemoller reminds us...and then they came for me and there was no one left to say anything.

Bush is a four-letter word. Rush is a four-letter word. Rove is a four-letter word.

And so is Evil.
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Premeditated Liar John McCain

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When John McCain hired the same campaign team that smeared his own family with racist bilge in 2000 in South Carolina, he knew what he was buying.

When John McCain tells lie after lie after lie...repeatedly and often...even after the lies have been debunked, he knows what he is doing.

Sorry, Carville and Cronies, there is no dividing line between John McCain and his racist, lying campaign.

The lies, the race baiting are bought and paid for by John McCain.

Trying to say otherwise is a pig in a poke I just ain't buyin'. Out here in Prairie Country, no matter what the Beltway lobbyist/McCainiacs team and hangers-on try to tell us, we know pigs. And we know pig sh*t.
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Dogwhistles and Levees

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Last night, Sarah Palin scathingly attacked Barack Obama's work as a community organizer.

Today, on his radio show, the chortly extremist redneck radio voice, Rush Limpballs, cited as the example of a community organizer Al Sharpton.

And then there's good ol' goober-state Rep. Lynn "10 Commandments" Westmoreland, saying Obama is uppity. Asked if that was what he meant to say, he repeated yes, uppity.

The dogwhistle politics of race-baiting and fearmongering that Lee Atwater once was so proud of is alive and well and slithering through the Republican Party again. That which John McCain once decried when used against his own family, he now owns, lock, stock and dogwhistle.

But hey, what's wrong with that, right? After all, Sarah Palin's a bold choice, a "hockey mom," and John McCain, he's a maverick with scars and was a "fighter."

Meanwhile, the rightwing racist bile is rising higher and higher, flowing up out of the sewers, and threatening to overtake the levees of democracy again. Who will be left to fight against it?
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