150 Years Ago...

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday April 02, 2011 · 10:13 PM PDT

2011/04/02 · 22:13

On April 2, 1861, the New York Times reported on a speech given by Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy. The speech has gone down in history as "The Cornerstone Speech" because in it, Stephens described the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy and the key cause of the coming Civil War:

They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday February 28, 2011 · 10:29 PM PST

2011/02/28 · 22:29

Old Haley is at again. Seriously the boy just can't keep his facts or his story straight. Late last year the old Nit Diddler told the Weekly Standard that he went to see MLK speak:

In interviews Barbour doesn’t have much to say about growing up in the midst of the civil rights revolution. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.”
Did you go? I asked.

“Sure, I was there with some of my friends.”

This is an invented memory (also known as a lie) or--at best--a very poorly recalled event. Turns out that Martin Luther King did not speak in Yazoo City back in 1962:

Poll

0 votes Show Results

0 votes Vote Now!

Some Maps to consider...

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday February 20, 2011 · 9:07 PM PST

2011/02/20 · 21:07

A few days ago, Josh Marshall over at TPM published a map of how various States treat collective bargaining for public employees' unions:

There are some obvious patterns when one considers this map (including the Red State/Blue State memes of recent years).

Deeper pattens emerge when you look at a map of Free States and Slave States as of 1857 when the Dred Scott Decision opened all US Territories (and all Free States) to Slavery:

What thing becomes clear--as you consider the modern ~~Republican~~ Confederate Party's effort to attack workers, Unions, the Middle Class and their rights--is that their focus is all about the theft of labor. Stealing the labor of folks is a sure fire way to get rich and it has been since, well, forever. Fighting efforts to protect people from the theft of their labor is what the modern so-called Conservative and/or Gliberterian movements are all about.

Poll

0 votes Show Results

0 votes Vote Now!

The Human Sacrifice Encouragement Act of 2011

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday February 05, 2011 · 5:09 PM PST

2011/02/05 · 17:09

There really isn't any stopping the extremists in control of the ~~Republican~~ Confederate Party anymore. Every week and almost every day they can be counted upon for some new crazy in their never ending quest to move the Nation backwards as they pursue fantasies of a 'better time' that never existed.

These romanticized 'Good Old Days' were a time of clear and undisputed White Male Exceptionalism and everybody knew and accepted their roles in society. Rich white men were on top followed by other white men in order of their class. Woman knew their place and had power in any area where the fellas let them play. Foreigners, people of color, LGBT, etc. did not matter. And all of this was blessed by a specially constructed White Male God—a God who oddly enough always wanted to do what these White Males wanted to do—from buying and selling slaves, to child labor, to endless war, to predatory capitalism, to contempt for the poor, to control of women as birthing machines.

And it is hardly surprising that the 112th Congress is not only pursuing a White Male Exceptionalist agenda, but also claiming that each and every piece of Legislation is blessed by a version of a 'divine' God that they have carefully constructed in their own image.

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 07, 2011 · 9:05 PM PST

2011/01/07 · 21:05

Years ago I was a crackpot with a newspaper. I was the publishers of an alternative newsweekly in Athens, GA. We grew out of the Athens music scene and the desire for a local paper that could cover and celebrate it.

Now every media outlet that generates revenue from advertising—from print to teevee to radio to Web to whatever—will have open ad space from time to time. As the owner of the paper I was free to use this open space to promote whatever I wanted to promote and that brings me to Monkey Milk.

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday January 05, 2011 · 8:25 PM PST

2011/01/05 · 20:25

To be factual, they never actually left, but they were dealt a significant beating back in 2008.

The Four Horsemen were identified by Senator Margaret Chase Smith back in 1950 as part of her Declaration of Conscience speech to the Senate. Her speech is pretty hard on the Truman Administration and she makes her case that her Republican Party should be in power, but then she did something unusual for a Senator sixty years ago and unheard of from a Senator today. She took on the pricks in her Party who were trying to seize power though lies, character assassination, fear mongering and all around dickishness.

To the jump...

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 18, 2010 · 5:08 AM PST

2010/11/18 · 05:08

The other day I wrote about Dennis Kucinich taking on the lies and bullshit of Darrel Issa, the incoming Republican Chairman of the very powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Today I was happy to see that Dennis took another step to fight Issa's plans for an endless partisan witch hunt.

To the jump...

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday November 13, 2010 · 9:29 AM PST

2010/11/13 · 09:29

And I don't mean me.

I'm talking about another Dennis—the often maligned Congressman from Cleveland, Dennis Kucinich.

Kucinich is one of those guys who easily becomes the butt of jokes, especially on the Right, among pundits and in the all knowing cocktail parties of Georgetown. He is a hardcore peace activist and progressive Democrat from the old school of the Party who has run for President twice. He holds strong beliefs and often finds himself to be the odd man out.

How much of a fighter he is and why he has earned my respect was on display this week when he became one of the rare Democratics in Congress since the election—a Democrat who gets off the mat and start swinging back at the incoming Republican Majority.

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 04, 2010 · 9:42 PM PDT

2010/11/04 · 21:42

I remember a time when I posted a Diary everyday on this site and some of them made a difference in helping to defeat this or that Republican weasel with deep ties to the Abramoff scandal. That was back in 2005-2006 and the goal of Progressives and Democrats of all stripes was to defeat Bush and the GOP. We were united. And we won.

In 2007 and 2008 our unity began to fray in the intensity of the Primary battles as we advocated for favorite candidates and issues. Still, once the General Election season began we unified and won again.

Since then, unity on our side has been downgraded. For some it is still the most important thing, for others it has been downgraded to only occasionally important and for others it has become a 'dirty' word: the shameful utterance one hears from Obots and corporate sell-outs.

As President Obama took office the fight for control of the Progressive movement and Democratic agenda was well under way and the notion of unity became a threat to all the factions fighting for control.

And just as we abandon unity as a virtue, the Republicans embraced it with gusto.

To the jump...

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday November 02, 2010 · 9:41 PM PDT

2010/11/02 · 21:41

This is a night of redemption for the politics of the Confederate Party. It is their second great redemption, the first one being the election of 1876. Like that election they needed to speak in code to win. Back then it was all about how slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. Now it is all about masking racism in vague economic mumbo-jumbo.

To the jump...

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday October 31, 2010 · 9:03 AM PDT

2010/10/31 · 09:03

Back in 2007 and 2008 there were two people who seemed consistently correct in their pre-election analysis in the long primary season and then the General. One of them was Nate Silver and his 538, but his analysis was (and is) mostly about the numbers and very little about the why. The better analysis to me always came from Al Giordano over at The Field.

Perhaps it is his time living outside of the US that gives his work insights that most folks just miss as they get swept up in CW gasbag talking points. Or maybe it is his work as an organizer. Whatever the reason, he is just a hell of a reporter, observer and analyst of our political system.

A couple of days ago he had a solid post that should be required reading. Al gets straight to the massive uncertainty, why it it happening and who will be at fault if the massive GOP wave comes to past.

To the jump...

dengre

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday October 29, 2010 · 6:47 AM PDT

2010/10/29 · 06:47

Does anybody remember a fella named Jack Abramoff?

For years Jack ran a money laundering operation to move massive amounts of off-the-books funds into the political process to help extreme neo-Conservative Republicans win elections and hold power. Jack was self-funding a private school for his sons (and many others) to get the unique edcational experience Jack thought they should have. It was an expensive hobby. Jack needed a bigger cut of the action and so he took it. Somebody dropped a dime on him and he got caught.

Jack went to prison. And today, most of his co-conspirators are running the same old con—yet again—as elected officials, staffers, think tankers, pundits, lobbyists and all around grifters. The scam is easier to run these days because the Radical Roberts Court has invented new ways to give legal sanctions to political money laundering and new protections for political corruption (if the Roberts rules were in place back in 2004, Jack would still be on K Street).

Jack got out of prison this summer and lives in a half-way house in Baltimore. He works at kosher pizzeria about three miles from my house.

A few weeks ago I stopped by for lunch.

To the jump...

Newer
Older

RSS

150 Years Ago...

The False Memories of Haley Barbour...

Some Maps to consider...

The Human Sacrifice Encouragement Act of 2011

Monkey Milk

The Four Horsemen Are Back in Town

Give Dennis that Chair.

Dennis shows how it’s done

How'd That Disunity Thing Work Out for You?

Learn the code

What Al said...

What Jack Abramoff told me... [updated]