Monday’s Mini-Report

June 9, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* If only this had come out sooner: “The White House had stronger ties to disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff than it has publicly admitted, according to a draft congressional report released Monday. President Bush met Abramoff on at least four occasions the White House has yet to acknowledge, according to the draft report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And White House officials appeared as comfortable going to Abramoff and his lobbyists seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs, the report found.”

* In the unlikely event you missed this over the weekend: “Gasoline prices reached a national average of $4 a gallon for the first time over the weekend, adding more strain to motorists across the country. But the pain is not being felt uniformly. Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.”

* On a related note, the Saudis want to talk: “Saudi Arabia will call for a summit between oil producing countries and consumer states to discuss soaring energy prices, Information and Culture Minister Iyad Madani said Monday. The kingdom will also work with OPEC to ‘guarantee the availability of oil supplies now and in the future,’ the minister said following the weekly Cabinet meeting, held in the seaport city of Jiddah.”

* Oh my: “A military defense lawyer today said that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay were instructed by the Pentagon ‘to destroy handwritten notes that might have exposed harsh or even illegal questioning methods.’ According to Navy Lt. Commander Bill Kuebler, who is representing Canadian Omar Khadr, interrogators may have ‘routinely destroyed evidence’ that could have been used to defend Khadr and other detainees.”

* Teddy heads home: “Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was released from the hospital Monday a week after undergoing an aggressive and delicate surgery to treat a cancerous brain tumor.” The senator is reportedly anxious to return to work, and said he plans to write legislation now that could be ready for an Obama administration next year.

* What happened to all the tomatoes? Kevin knows.

* It’s really painful to hear about U.S. troops and the “rising trend” of self-harm cases among troops unwilling to return to the war in Iraq. Col. Kathy Platoni, an Army Reserve psychologist who has worked with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, said, “There are some soldiers who will do almost anything not to go back.” Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army’s top psychologist, agrees that we could see an uptick in intentional injuries as more U.S. soldiers serve long, repeated combat tours, “but we just don’t have good, hard data on it.”

* The “American dream” is looking shaky — most no longer expect the next generation to be better off than theirs.

* Laura Bush defended Michelle Obama today. Classy move by the First Lady.

* There may be more embarrassing members of Congress than Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), but they’re hard to find.

* “Redneck” was a very poor choice of words for Andrea Mitchell.

* And speaking of media apologies, it’s time for Fox News’ E.D. Hill to offer one.

* It’s a real shame that dnA is going to stop blogging.

* James Joyner has a great piece on the evolution of political blogs.

* Good move: “Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry, Robert Menendez, Byron Dorgan and Frank R. Lautenberg introduced legislation on Monday that will prohibit the Department of Defense from using money for ‘propaganda.’ It would also require the DoD Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office to deliver related reports to Congress within 90 days. The bill is a companion measure to a House effort by Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.).”

* McClellan has said he’s willing to chat: “Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) invited former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to testify before the Committee at a June 20th hearing about reported efforts to cover up the role of the White House in the Valerie Plame leak.”

* And finally, yes, it is surreal to have Ari Fleischer talking about how great (and aggressive) the White House press corps was during his tenure.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Laura Bush is indeed nice. Too nice to be anywhere near a politician, in fact. It’s just such a comic tragedy that she ended up with George.

  • Sorry, don’t feel sorry for the south and inefficient trucks. Their gas has always cost less than ours here on the west coast for no good god damn reason.

  • Having recently moved to the south I have no empathy at all for the redneck shitheads that drive three feet behind you in their black pickup trucks with the Dale Earnhardt and W stickers. They’re a very ignorant lot and are just so damn sure they know everything. Except how to fill them tanks at nine miles per gallon.

  • Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.”

    All red states that produce reliable Republican majorities, right? Let them take their TS cards to the Chaplain to be punched.

  • But the pain is not being felt uniformly.

    You’re right, but it’s not the south that’s feeling it. It’s California, Hawaii, Chicago, New York.

    The closest any Chicago station came to the ‘average’ was $4.07 this morning.

    It’s a real shame that dnA is going to stop blogging.

    That it is. dNA, I hope to still see the occasional guest post, or blogsitting for Steve when he’s away, and the occasional comment.

  • “A military defense lawyer today said that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay were instructed by the Pentagon ‘to destroy handwritten notes that might have exposed harsh or even illegal questioning methods.’ According to Navy Lt. Commander Bill Kuebler, who is representing Canadian Omar Khadr, interrogators may have ‘routinely destroyed evidence’ that could have been used to defend Khadr and other detainees.”

    Hopefully, on January 21, 2009, all those Defenders of Freedom down there will be arrested as the war criminals and traitors they are, and left to populare the place. That way, it will be full of real criminals, and we can send Bush Administration Republicans to fill the rest of the cells.

  • It’s really painful to hear about U.S. troops and the “rising trend” of self-harm cases among troops unwilling to return to the war in Iraq. Col. Kathy Platoni, an Army Reserve psychologist who has worked with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, said, “There are some soldiers who will do almost anything not to go back.” Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army’s top psychologist, agrees that we could see an uptick in intentional injuries as more U.S. soldiers serve long, repeated combat tours, “but we just don’t have good, hard data on it.”

    I can tell you from what the soldiers I am working with at Fort Hood tell me, this is far more widespread than is being reported. But when you have your tour in Iraq end when your Humvee is blown up with you in it and you are 20 minutes “dead on the table” and come out of it with 50% hearing loss and the Army still won’t let you out and in fact sends you back for a third tour (as has happened to someone I know), you can see where the hopelessness comes from. When that’s your stop-lossed futre and the only way out of today’s action Army is a wheelchair or a casket, extreme responses don’t seem so extreme anymore.

  • * It’s really painful to hear about U.S. troops and the “rising trend” of self-harm cases among troops unwilling to return to the war in Iraq.

    It’s like serving in WWII on the installment plan.

  • “Saudi Arabia will call for a summit between oil producing countries and consumer states to discuss soaring energy prices

    The assclowns who started manipulating the oil market after they abandoned the drained corpse of the mortgage market had better take cover.

    What am I saying? There’s always grain. People have to buy grain, right?

    ugg.

  • Now Bush knew Jack Abramoff. Heck likely took millions in cash under the table; two people America will see get a presidential pardon very soon. Abramoff and Former Republican Governor of Illinois Ryan.

    Certainly it will be controversial but what the hell Bush is so lame and the decider he doesn’t care what American’s think. Bush is only concerned with what the Arabs want and the profiteering this neo-con group can make while they last for the few days in power. Basically, none of the administration seems to be worried now that Obama is the front runner.

    For me, Obama does not have what it takes to make this administration accountable. There is a lot of money swindled out of the treasury by Bush and company. Obama should be forth coming to America to let us know how he will get it back. Or, is Obama going to let Bush ride off into the sun set to enjoy the bounty of a busted American economy, culture, and broken domestic and world wide moral authority created by a war that should not be.

    Actually the speeches that Obama gives now appear to have lost gusto now that Hillary has left the campaign. More over Obama has the same problem with that Rezko guy. That would be funny Obama and Bush gets indicted for fraud by a Grand Jury right in the heat of the election. That would be huge.

  • so does this mean instead of calling it E. Coli Conservatism we have to call it Salmonella Conservatism?

    either way conservatives cause me no end of, um, intestinal problems.

  • ok, so he may not be the most qualified for President, but McCain really could mop up on America’s Got Talent or Last Comic Standing. Courtesy of MSNBC.com’s front page:

    McCain: How I’ll beat Obama
    Newsweek: How to beat a rock star? “Substance.”

    McCain. Substance. Now that’s funny stuff.

  • On David Gregory tonight, McCain’s campaign director is showing how McCain can win in the fall, using charts and graphs. It’s truly funny.

    Anyone else see this and think it’s ridiculous?

  • Iraq, one of our top allies in the Middle East, is seeking closer relations with Iran. Iran, of course, is the most evil, powerful and irrational country to ever exist throughout all of human history, according to the President and his dead enders. The SF Chronicle reprints a story from the L.A. Times:

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in a visit to Iran where he met Sunday with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pledged closer ties between the two neighbors at the same time Baghdad is negotiating a long-term security agreement with the United States.

    …

    Al-Maliki’s three-day visit to Iran is his third since taking office in May 2006. Relations between the two former enemy nations have flourished since the U.S.-led ousting of Saddam Hussein allowed Iraq’s long-persecuted Shiite Muslim majority to rise to political power. Like many Shiite politicians, al-Maliki spent part of the Hussein years in exile in Shiite-dominated Iran.

    If it’s unacceptable for the top U.S. officials to meet with Iran — or presidential candidates to propose meetings — it seems inconsistent that al-Maliki is not receiving withering public criticism from Bush, Cheney and the right wingers. But why should I expect consistent policy from the White House?

  • CB, I’m sorry but the quality of trolls and spoofs this place attracts just don’t cut it. We’re going to have to neuter the poor things so they stop breeding.

    No one disturb the Cheetos baited traps please.

  • Crissa & Tom, would it kill you to follow the link before you sound off on Southerners and big trucks? The article talks about the working poor spending up to 20% of their income on gasoline for transportation to and from work. Christ, people have to decide between what to eat and how much to put in the tank. Should they just go out and buy a Prius?

  • I had a comment to make but I can’t get past the attitude towards the South in these comments. Why do people who consider themselves progressives feel the need to constantly shit on Southerners? I’m seriously sick of the attitude towards our region. We’re not a monolithic group of ignorant bumpkins. There are good, progressive people who live here and you don’t exactly endear yourselves to us when you make base assumptions like the comments above.

  • Heh. Here in Santa Barbara the closest I’ve seen is $4.38/gallon, and several places are at 4.78/88/98.

  • The US pulls out of the UN’s Human Rights Council

    In a move that touched off a wave of “general consternation” last week, the United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, “an international body within the United Nations System. Its stated purpose is to address human rights violations.”

    The Bush administration has long been opposed to the Council’s activities — indeed, its very creation — but had remained on the Council strictly as an “observer.”

    According the the Human Rights Tribune, the news of the U.S.’s withdrawal drew a note of concern from Human Rights Watch’s Sebastien Gillioz, who said: “The message is worrying…Ever since September 11, 2001, the US has constantly interpreted international standards in an ‘a la carte’ manner that has eroded human rights. Its behaviour has served as an example to a stream of states, including Pakistan, Egypt and other, who are not embarrassed to review human rights standards on homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment. It is a step backwards.”

    The press got wind of the move during the June 6 White House Press briefing, but got little response from Dana Perino, who passed the buck to the State Department. But at the State Department briefing, spokesman Sean McCormack had little but vitriol for the UN body, and misleadingly suggested that the United States was maintaining a link to the body, when in fact they were cutting all ties…

    The rest at the link.

  • Five new state polls were released today, confirming that a number of states (NJ, TX and SC, for instance) should be closer in 2008 than they were in the past two elections. Full poll roundup here.

  • LML: Why do people who consider themselves progressives feel the need to constantly shit on Southerners? I’m seriously sick of the attitude towards our region. We’re not a monolithic group of ignorant bumpkins.

    Of course there are people like you who live in all parts of the country, but regions tend to get stereotyped, and the South in general has had plenty of ignorant bumpkins to ratify such generalizations. We’re all “victims” of such stereotyping based on geography and perceptions, however skewed. I live in California, not far from San Francisco. Surprise! I’m not gay! I’m not a communist either, or a Marxist, and I’ve never even had an abortion (well, I’m a guy, so I guess that’s a gimme). Does it bother me when I get lumped in with such stereotypes? Not a bit. Why? Because they’re just generalizations, and I’m fine with considering myself as an individual. Why should it matter to you? Don’t you think that ignorant bumpkins are in the majority in most of the south? Good grief, most of the commenters here who live in the South are usually the first to rag on their own states for their backwardness, even though they certainly don’t consider themselves part of the problem. When the red(neck) states start acting like they’ve heard of that radical movement called the Enlightenment, then maybe people will stop dissing them. Until then, I wouldn’t hold my breath. If you own sense of individualism doesn’t allow you to ignore such stereotyping, you have some options: ignore it, or move to a more enlightened place. Come on over to California with all us gay commies. The more the merrier.

  • Thank you President Lindsay for clarifying it.

    I hope that a lot of those ‘bumpkins’ will realize that this coming November, they’ll decide not to put gas in their pick up trucks and vote. The less of them voting, the better the country will be off.

    Sure it’s a generalization, but it’s not a red state for nothing: Republican mindset. The less we have of them , the better it will be for everybody.

    That way LML won’t feel in the minority any longer. Wouldn’t that be great?

  • PL

    It’s true that the South has some not-too-appealing characters, as does any place. I guess one thing I didn’t expect was the overt racism in the central part of the US, reflected in about 10-15% of the Democratic voting population. I was born & grew up in the South, wandered around the US for about two years, settled in the northeast for about 25 years, and finally returned to the South. What surprised me about the central part of the US is that racism exists where there are hardly any African Americans. I wonder if it would be harder to uproot than Southern racism, which sometimes gets its red meat from racial interactions, though that same interaction can really cause a change of heart.

    FWIW, I think that higher levels of education generally have a lot to do with disappearing racism and the worst of “conservative values”. Being exposed to a larger world with different values almost always creates change, simply because one’s self-esteem and world-interest enlarges.

    That’s on an individual level, but on a political level, the old-time Southern values are often entrenched. It’s quite a job to oust ignorant, racist conservatives, but I think it’s slowly happening.

    Just saying….

  • President Lindsay @27:

    Your example doesn’t hold up. No progressive believes that all or most Californians are Communist Homosexuals. But, as is clear from your comment, a great deal of progressives genuinely believe that a majority of Southerners are ignorant rednecks. And btw, your comment about moving to a more ‘enlightened place’ assumes I have the means to do so. Pretty dismissive, wouldn’t you say?

  • Bruno @ 29:

    The South is Red because Democrats and progressives have been willing to concede it to the Republicans for years on the assumption that we’re a bunch of ignorant, irredeemable racists. But you know, if you actually bothered to make an effort in the region instead of writing it off, you might have better luck turning it purple or even blue. Of course, that would require a respectful, nuanced attitude toward the region and it seems the ‘progressives’ here would prefer to just keep on stereotyping.

  • LML, I sympathize with your concerns. Stereotyping and overgeneralization are always harmful, and painting with a broad brush always ends up spilling some paint on those who may not deserve it.

    That said, surely you can concede a certain core truth: the Republicans beginning with Nixon ran an intentional and explicit “southern strategy” based entirely on the premise that white southerners are racists — and it worked. It was Kansas, not Minnesota, that had a majority-creationist state Board of Education (every state may have a rouge district, but the state board?). It is Texas, not Illinois, that has a state curriculum committee putting Intelligent Design in the science texts. There are many more Bush-voting states south of the Mason-Dixon than north of it. Liberty, Regent, Bob Jones, Oral Roberts — all in the south. Confederate flags still fly over statehouses.

    Those who belittle the south aren’t imagining these things. These are very, very real. Objective facts, not just made-up slanders. People in more progressive states are rightfully impatient with what the south has given the country by taking so long to reject conservatism — particularly when the Electoral College gives smaller population southern (and mountain) states a disproportionate ability to hinder progressive changes the majority of Americans want (see Gore, 2000).

    No, progressives shouldn’t stereotype – it is contrary to their alleged values, and it is both overinclusive (by offending people like you) and underinclusive (there are gas-wasting jacked up oversize black 4×4 pickups with brush racks and spotlights and gun racks in the window and sexist stickers in northern states as well).

    But one way to cure it would be for the south to quit providing so much ammunition. Dubya? DeLay? Inhofe? Coburn? Lott? Frist? McConnell?

    All I ask is that offended southerners do as much to clean up their own states as to clean up blue-state stereotyping on blogs.

  • About those Southerners, once again the article in question is largely concerned with plight of poor, working people. Many are African American. These are people we’re supposed to care about as progressives.

    Progressives frequently rail about people voting against their economic self interest by voting GOP. If we brand them as “bumpkins”, how do you think they will feel about voting Democratic? That’s just dumb. I doubt that Howard Dean or Barack Obama think of these people as bumpkins. I’m sure that they see them as Americans and potential Democrats. Their present plight creates opportunities to turn red states a shade closer to blue, but not if progressives brand them as ignorant.

  • but AK, you talk as if these southerners we could potentially court more nicely have never been given a choice before — that they had to vote Republican because those mean ol progressives didn’t even bother to show up.

    when Kansas voted in a creationist school board, the villians weren’t snooty New York progressives. Kansans presumably had a choice of other Kansans — it is unlikely the reality-based candidates were dismissive towards other Kansans.

    Texas has had some very moderate-to-left candidates for US Senate and contested House seats. The southerners made freewill choices to take the race-baiting, irrational tax-cut-promising, Mexican-bashing Republicans. Heck, Texans voted out Ann Richards, one of the coolest politicians to ever serve.

    You make it sound like the northerners and coastal folks are imagining things, that there is really some secret silent progressive majority in the south. the reality is you are a minority – I know I’m glad that you and others are there so there is some progressive presence, but lets not whitewash that no one is making South Carolina voters repeatedly defend the Confederate flag, no one is making Mississippi elect pompous, smarmy Haley Barbour, 1 in 5 allegedly Democratic voters in Kentucky said they were less likely to vote Obama because of his race — you don’t see those numbers in other regions. This is a reality. States where 95% of voters are not bothered by Obama’s race are rightly impatient with that sort of backwards view. How long should the south get a pass on that stuff? How many Tom Delay’s do we have to let slide before we hold it against the South?

  • Wow. It’s a form of “deja vu all over again” (as Yogi Berra once said). This reminds me of when I was out of the south for the first time (in the Marine Corps in 1966) – and everyone from outside the south was talking about the Civil War and how “they” had kicked our asses. The funny thing is that I was very much against racism and really did not like the way things were in the south (Georgia in my case) – but I sure as hell resented what was being said and would fight to defend what I was actually against.

    Maybe there is a lesson to be learned about how attacking and denigrating others creates more of the actions you are supposedly against, and would like to see less of.

  • grain of truth @ 34/37:

    I have to point out that Kansas is in the Midwest. It’s not the South. Economically and demographically, we’re quite different. Same with Texas, which is practically a region unto itself.

    And you missed my point. I absolutely agree that the Republicans courted white racists through their Southern Strategy. But the Democrats did absolutely nothing to combat this. There are a great many moderates in the South not to mention minorities like African Americans. Who were they to vote for? They’re not going to vote for the Republicans but neither are they going to vote for Democrats who make no effort toward them. So they just don’t bother to vote. Most of my family is politically apathetic – they don’t like Republicans but they don’t trust Dems because they never bother to ‘show themselves’.

    No one here is advocating that the South get a pass for racism or conservatism. What were asking is that you try to be a bit less judgmental. There are decent people here who have essentially been left behind by folks like you who would rather dismiss them than reach out to them.

  • In case you missed it:

    Breaking: Kucinich introduces articles of impeachment against Bush.

    This evening on the House floor, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is presenting 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush to Congress. “The first article Kucinich presented regarded the war in Iraq. ‘Article 1: Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq.’”

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/09/breakingkucinich-introduces-articles-of-impeachment-against-bush/#comment-5008774

  • LML

    the short of it is…. ALL politics is local…

    Why don’t you start running some Democrats on the ballot for County, City, and State offices… that is where it starts.

    IT is so typical for the South to want to sit back and have the Democrats come and ‘show’ you the way. Are you implying that Southerners, need to have their hands held at every corner, otherwise they’ll instinctively vote Republican?

    Don’t all Southerners have the SAME access to the SAME information as progressives do? Or are Southerners intellectually more lazy and wait for Rush to tell them what to do?

    Just curious. You’re entitled to your own opinion, just not your own facts.

    I live in a Red district myself, and we are slowly turning it around. We become active in the community.

    What have you done to turn your corner a little purple? Without blaming out of State progressives for not caring.

    You do an effort and I’m sure the the DNC will pay attention and help out. But they are not going to do it for you.

    It’s funny that so many Southerners believe in ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ and ‘personal responsibility’ and because of those mantras vote for Republicans, because they said it is a conservative/Republican trait. Yet, you seem to want progressives to come over and ‘help’ you in so many ways.

  • You make it sound like the northerners and coastal folks are imagining things, that there is really some secret silent progressive majority in the south.

    I don’t know anything about secret majorities, just that the situation described in the article that CB linked creates opportunities for Democrats to get their message through to people it can benefit. But, only if we can talk to and about people in ways that don’t offend them. One reason that the GOP has been successful in the Southern and other red states has been by painting Democrats and progressives as elitists and “not like us.” Portraying the residents of these states as ignorant aids in that effort.

    How many Tom Delay’s do we have to let slide before we hold it against the South?

    Well, I guess we call them names. That’ll help progressive cause. Once again, the point of the article was that the working poor in these states are spending up to 20% of their income on gasoline for transportation to and from work. That strikes me as something that we should all care about. It looks like Senator Obama does, too. He kicked off his “Change That Works for You” tour in North Carolina.

  • Computerized oil futures price speculation is completely unregulated and has caused these recent gasoline price hikes. It’s not supply-and-demand, it’s not OPEC, I just discovered a lucid explanation about why we are suffering from such high oil and gasoline prices in the last several years: corporate speculation on electronic oil futures markets in New York (NYmwx), London (ICEfutures) and Dubai (Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME). See the web site: http://www.financialsense.com/ editorials/ engdahl/ 2008/ 0502.html for all the depressing details. It seems that in Jan. 2006, the Bush Administration dropped the ball on regulating oil futures trading in a computerized system, and since then, large banks, pension funds and other players have been making billions of dollars in speculative trading of computerized oil futures contracts. All of these corporate profits are coming right out of our pockets (surprise…).
    The home page is http://www.financialsense.com, the author is F. William Engdahl and the article is PERHAPS 60% OF TODAY’S OIL
    PRICE IS PURE SPECULATION, written 2 May 2008
    This barebones summary should be passed on to researchers that can digest the whole article and then explain it to Congressmen and Senators (Obama?) and demand that the Bush Administration institute serious regulation and end this absurd ripoff of the world’s drivers…

  • The “American dream” is looking shaky — most no longer expect the next generation to be better off than theirs.

    Don’t have the link handy, but I remember seeing an OECD study from a couple of years ago that measured what they called “financial mobility”, or the ability to change economic classes (ie: lower to middle, etc.) within the advanced industrialised countries. As Americans, we were all taught about American “mobility”, the “immigrant who becomes a titan”, or Bill Gates having an idea etc. What they found was surprising, to say the least. According to this study (again, apologies for no links…), they found economic mobility in the US has gone dramatically down, that you’re as likely to descend as to go up the ladder now, and that, wait for it, France is actually more mobile than the US. France, that supposed bastion of socialism, the common good (solidarité in French)…

    Has it become “the French dream”? And this was *before* Sarkozy.

  • Having recently moved to the south I have no empathy at all for the redneck shitheads…

    In the late 60s IBM moved South to Research Triangle Park (near Raleigh) and brought a slew of Northerners with them. They never stopped coming, and they never stopped complaining. Hence the bumper sticker: “We don’t care how you did it up North!”

    I can tell you this: No progress will be ever be made if you continue to let yourself think, and speak this way. If you hate the Southerners, don’t complain. Get off your ass and do something. These notions about rednecks etc. are just as damning to us as a whole as anything in our earlier history. Plus, it makes you look just as ignorant as you claim they are. To me, stereotyping signifies laziness. If you can easily color great swaths of folks in one broad stroke, then you have failed to investigate the possibilities.

    I mean shit, here in SoCal, I’ve seen some of the most blatant racism since segregation days. They hate the Mexicans, they hate Blacks, they hate Native Americans. And the feelings seem to be mutual.

    For example, I had a friend who was a Pala Indian. She was married, living on the Res with her white husband and half white son. She died a miserable death at 38 from raging alcoholism. The tribe proceeded to literally throw her husband out of his house off the Res, and gave it to the son then only 19. I can understand it but I’ve never witnessed something so cruel. It was as if the tribe had decided to bring it’s full wrath for the white man all down on one lowly white guy.

    This is real folks and it’s cancerous. You can’t just condemn it and hope it diminishes. You must actively counter it in your own life and your own thoughts.

    When you change, we all change.

  • I come from Colorado but have lived in Boston since 1970. When I first arrived here most Bostonians couldn’t tell a Western accent from a Southern, and so they assumed that I was stupid because of the sound of my words. That didn’t stop my from trying to learn more, even though it did annoy me occasionally.

    The main part of the stereotype is ignorance, stupidity. And it’s not completely unfounded. The dominant cultures of the South and Appalachia, and some of the more benighted parts of the midwest – hell, even the part of Western Colorado in which I grew up – look down on learning and build up their pride by rejecting anything that outsiders bring along – like education. Hence, the “we don’t care how you did it in the North” bumper stickers.

    On the “educated’/Northern side, since we define ourselves by how we use our intellectual gifts, the OTHER consists of those who obviously don’t develop their intellects. There will always be friction along the frontiers between educated and militantly uneducated. If you life in the South, or Kansas, or western Colorado and you resent the way New Englanders and Californians stereotype you, the best use of your energy to counteract that is to try to inspire your neighbors with a love of learning rather than to try to get the rest of us to pretend that anti-intellectualism doesn’t dominate the culture you swim in.

  • If you life in the South, or Kansas, or western Colorado and you resent the way New Englanders and Californians stereotype you, the best use of your energy to counteract that is to try to inspire your neighbors with a love of learning rather than to try to get the rest of us to pretend that anti-intellectualism doesn’t dominate the culture you swim in.

    And we can continue to rub people’s noses in their supposed ignorance and continue to lose elections. I can understand the impulse to call some one an ignorant red neck, but it hardly makes for a convincing political argument. It sounds too much like bigotry.

  • again, show me examples that the South wants to change before asking me to invest resources there.

    was Max Cleland a snooty northerner? did a bunch of elitist Yanks come down and force southerners to vote for Chambliss?

    when it is 143 after the Civil War and huge numbers of South Carolinians still fight to fly the Stars and Bars, when 40 years after minorities finally obtained full legal protection in all aspects of society 20% of Kentuckians find a non-white incapable of being President (while 95% white Iowa gives him his first win), when all it takes is a split screen with bin Laden to convince Georgians that a man who left limbs in Vietnam doesn’t care enough about his country to be re-elected – how is any of that the fault of uppity blue staters?

    look, at some point the evidence is that the South either can’t, won’t, or just plain doesn’t want to change. I’m sorry that puts you in an uncomfortable minority; I wish folks like CBR regulars dominated everywhere. And in a year where Obama is essentially creating cash like the US Mint, we can take a shot at every state, north, south, east or west. But in most years when resources are tight, I tend to agree with Schaller. Show me any reason to believe my resources are well invested in the south – show me how I can change the minds of Chambliss/McConnell/Inhofe voters without compromising my core principles. Heck, show me any evidence those voters want to change in the first place or are even open minded about it.

    The southern voters still bear the shame of the worst, most despicable election in my mind: Chambliss-Cleland. Let the south do something major to atone for that cardinal sin and then we can talk about whether there are really opportunities in the south.

    several of you keep saying “if you’d just stop being so condescending/bigoted/elitist/condemning” etc – but no one is answering the questions I and others are raising about how the north was able to get progressive on its own, so why can’t the south – and about how “northern elitists” explain the south’s own recent choices in elections between Repubs and Dems who were all southerners not Republicans against snooty (sorry, Steve) “carpetbaggers.”

  • …but no one is answering the questions I and others are raising about how the north was able to get progressive on its own, so why can’t the south – and about how “northern elitists” explain the south’s own recent choices in elections between Repubs and Dems who were all southerners…

    Voter suppression and identity politics are leading contenders to explain Southern politcal choices. That and a history of inadequate support for public education.

    again, show me examples that the South wants to change before asking me to invest resources there.

    Its only one data point, but a pretty impressive one. Democrat Travis Childers defeated defeated Republican Greg Davis in a special election for Mississippi’s 1st congressional district on May 13. This has been a solidly Republican district by all accounts. But, whether the South “wants” to change is beside the point. Millions of Americans in the South and elsewhere suffer as result of GOP political dominance there. Dissatisfaction with the GOP and the current economic climate are favorable for initiating change. Or we can keep calling Southerners ignorant crackers and aid the GOP’s identity politics.

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