Preach on sister!

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She doesn't bother to make her point, that's how. You and the poster above yours showed actual signs from the rallies that could be interpreted to support her view. There are possible counterarguments of sample bias and differing interpretations of the intended meaning of the signs, but at least you guys showed up with evidence.

She didn't bring evidence or logic, and when challenged, refused to even acknowledge that she should have if she's going to call large numbers of people nasty names.

Actually, she references the Willis sign to the News harrassing man and said "You saw the signs", implying a context not explicitly visible in that video (you didn't she what went on before).

I'd be awfully forgiving of a person for not giving out hundreds of specific, well reasoned, examples after witnessing what was evidently a display of self-righteous rightwing fanaticism over an essentially foolish point: Obama & elected representatives are raising the tax on 5% of the population and initating run of the mill stimulus measures to create demand in a depression.

I'm sorry that I don't share your indignation over those awful, awful names she called a bunch of ultraconservative/vocal/wannabe Boston Tea Party fanatics after witnessing their antics for a day and then gets the harrashment treatment by a far-right pseudo-journalist.

How can anyone deny the strong, powerful component subterrenean racial prejudices play in the denigrations of Barack Obama? True, to a point, she's wrong: Republicans would resort to smearing and fear mongering of any Democrat. But the racially charge ques are there: be it in the Palin "he's a terrorist" rallies or in the myths over his birth outside America. If not racism, than general xenophobia almost certainly plays a crucial role in the smearing of this Democrat (with others it was sex life or whether the candidate was "strong", that is militaristic, on foreign policy).

Of course, Garofalo is wrong on two accounts: she (I suppose sacrastically) exaggerate xenophobia as a neural pathology rather than culturally induced vice and she seems to revere Goldwater.

Not his policies, neccessarily. But, rather, she subscribes to the myth that he was a "good conservative" unlike today's cynical party operatives and fanatics. Goldwater wasn't: he was a fanatic and "states rights" entailed segregation and official racism. Let's not idealize the past here.

Its screwy though when people try to tar a valid criticism with stuff like that. One could very easily size up the kinds of tea-shirts, bill-boards, and language that pretty much devouched Palin's womanhood - but its ok because, well, she enjoys none of the protection of political correctness...much like Clarence Thomas...based on that she's part of what should be a liberal lock-step group but just off the reservation and in danger of being a role model for the other side. No, I don't think Palin was the perfect candidate but I really have to wonder how much they can validly sling the 'racism' card when the guy was talking so much about redistributing wealth, very congenial ties with Ayers and Dorn, wondrous works in ACORN, his leftist cards were quite authentic and while people can't say "Oh, we're stuck in a socialist country now" as we're still nowhere close; one can't deny that by all intentents and purposes the guy showed very strong leanings in his history that way; his actions, while a more mild and tempered version of that kind of thing, feed into that image more. A white guy with those credentials would have been worked over likely even harder.

For most of the people out at these protests (and I'll admit my parents and relatives) - I get to hear these people talk all day long about their beliefs, the need to throw racism on it is an attempt at slight-of-hand and a terribly clumsy one. People were almost trying to suggest that 'socialist' was another sub word now for 'black', they'd have to run that by Wayne Perryman, Bill Calhoun, or JC Watts I think for a second opinion.



Xenophobia in terms of at least race seems to happen from lack of exposure. I can see where if there are conservatives....or democrats for that matter.....living out in the boonies somewhere to the extent where race is still this semi-mythical thing, sure, they might buy some strange things from lack of exposure.

The Goldwater thing though I found very reminiscent of Stephanie Miller - her dad supposedly campaigned for him and he's supposedly a 'Real Conservative' (she pulls that in her Youtube debate with Dennis Prager which, tbh, was like one of Robot Chicken's 'most one-sided fist fights'). I think the point being is he's dead, largely forgotten by the young, therefore you can fill that name for those who don't remember him or won't do the research with anything you want and hold not an impossible ideal but an impossible conservative to hold the rest to. Its showy, but its cheap.



Yep, mythology.

I've found much of the attacks on Obama as a socialist mythology as well. It's about as mythological to say Obama is a socialist as it is to claim the protectionist/military Keneysian Ronald Reagan was a free marketer. He wasn't and Obama's not a socialist, he's a run of the mill Clintonian/Centrist Democrat.

As a left-progressive (on the more radical/Olof Palme wing of social democracy) I find Obama's reforms timid, sycophantic to the financial sector, and evading structural problems. He's rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I want all those who claim Obama's a "socialist" to visit Sweden so they know what social democracy is. Then, visit Basque Country or Argentia's recovered factories, or read about Allende's Chile, so you know what socialism actually is.

My (non-existent) god, I wish DentArthurDent were here to so what radicalism really looks like.

He held his first campaign fundraiser in his living room? There was more than the Annenberg Challenge.



Was being manipulated heavily over her disagreements with some of McCain's policies. Wasn't vetted well either. Gambles taken by McCain and he paid somewhat for it. Still, all of this, as well as her pastor and Young Earth Creationist.....that makes a few words Obama got emblematic of a political party entirely based on covert racism but Palin being a crazy mutant evangelical straw-woman....definitely deserved every slur, every 'c***' t-shirt? We could set her credentials aside and Obama's for a second and realize that this crap happened on both sides which...wait....I think we can remove gender and race and just call this what it is - rabid idealism.



You might have a seizure for my bring this up but - her pastor might have been claimed to hunt witches (if it wasn't a traveling pastor was there *once* - I've heard that one as well), even assuming that its difficult to weigh that against a VP or Presidential office in the same way that GD America and US of KKK A has. Likely Obama was just there for 20 years because he was from Chicago and you needed to be in that church to make connections, he may have just as well completely tuned the guy out. No one knows.



Do you want to figure out how our starvation figures are compared to third-world? Or figure out for that matter what the standard of living is for our poor compared to third world? Even other first world countries that have ascribed to a deeper cut of corporatism and state sponsorship of health care and regulated work weeks, etc.?



Campaigning at the guy's house?



You mean Fannie and Freddy? Wasn't that largely the gift of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd? Trying to bring that up just gets a person's voice buried in white noise because saying something to the contrary of blaming the Republicans is like trying to wade north in the Colorado river - the mantra of 'deregulation' is too thick, no one can think of where it really came from either aside from guessing who they'd typically imagine to like that sort of thing.




Because every D-I-R has them and it barely has any broader salience than the usual?



Of course, by executive order every President has the power to fully remake the financial and political structure of the United States exactly as he/she sees fit.



Yes. GWB actually I'm pretty sure got ground into the carpet for....stealing two elections? Setting something in motion to bring down the towers? Letting Katrina be the disaster it was? Inventing the story that there were WMD's in Iraq? Phony National Guard documents came up regarding Bush which actually made one of the major stations and were broadcast as news before they were found to be fallacious? People have been likening the guy to Hitler all over the place? Seems like the only people who got that worked up or angered by the bailouts were the conservatives and people who voted him in.



That take seems like less a fact and more an emotional need that many liberals have to see the landscape that way.



You don't remember him talking about cutting taxes enough to remove closed to 40% of the U.S. from the income tax roll or even the suggestions of negative income tax being pushed more?



Glad we at least agree on something so far



I don't know about terrorist, you have small minds of all kinds in all crowds. Flaming leftist though - sure.



I think the idea of Republican monopoly or even leadership in racism is a farse at least.



I live in Cleveland - a city that's been run by EEO for years. Maybe I'm out of touch living in the kind of liberal dystopia that makes these wackaloons look like they're absolutely right? Are you suggesting that liberal cities are even close to as good for race relations? I still can't get over my trip to Indianapolis and both seeing no ghetto and seeing not only a complete spread of everyone everywhere rather than in segregated neighborhoods but also everyone actually getting along quite well like it was a post-racial kind of place (though I have to admit, it definitely doesn't seem like a liberal town).

My belief: the race situation is what we make of it. How bout the discriminative plight of the autistic? The diabetic? The single mother? Female? Male? Latino? Asian? Everyone can find plenty of angles where they deal with static - it takes a very specific kind of person to jump on the victim wagon and many times over it takes a very specific kind of person to promote the society of victimhood.



You'll find it everywhere and under every rock, under every pebble, in every corner of a city, toward any person you could think of from at least someone. Really, its not saying a lot.



I'd bet money you'll never want to find out either. If you can't admit that Stephanie Miller is a shrill lightweight, compared to other liberals, I'd worry. Then again its just as likely you've never heard of Dennis Prager either.



Of course he's racist; he's both white and capitalist.



Right, because if he was a real socialist all the major corporations would already be owned by the government, healthcare would already be universalized, and we'd have a hammer and sickle in place of the 50 stars on the flag by now.



Likely a sign that he doesn't have much control. Cute what you said about the Titanic though.



I've said a couple times already and I'll say it again - your absolutely right, we would have looked like Sweden or Argentina the minute he stepped into office if he were a socialist.