We've Got to Quit Dancing to Their Sick Music

Don't we all remember Bush's greatest Bushism:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

This was one lesson we could have learned from Bush. But instead we are the fools. Why are we allowing a pond scum dweller like Andrew Breitbart play us like marionettes?

He unfairly smeared and broke ACORN and now he's after Shirley Sherrod. And just like the good little puppets, Obama and the press do exactly what he wants and look guilty.

We have got to stop this nonsense!!

Andrew Breitbart selectively edited a clip of an African-American USDA official seeming to admit she treated a white farmer poorly out of her own racial bias while an USDA employee. It turns out that Shirley Sherrod was actually telling an anecdote of an experience she had 28 years ago to show how the issue of race often obscures the issue of class, and the fact that poor black farmers and poor white farmers had a lot in common (eventually, she helped and became close to the white farmer and his family) — but Breitbart left all of that out of the video (just as he selectively and unfairly edited his cartoonish ACORN tapes). The White House immediately insisted she resign before doing any kind of investigation and now looks like a whimp.

I hope Shirley Sherrod sues the life out of Breitbart! But only after Obama publicly apologizes to her and reinstates her immediately!

h/t http://www.srbwi.org/

UPDATE: Rachel Maddow was just on and reminded me that this really the third time they have done this. I completely forgot their role in getting Van Jones fired.

We have got to grow a spine!

Terminating Teachers Who Have Accents

Arizona isn't satisfied with rounding up Brown people and asking for papers,







the Arizona Department of Education recently began telling






school districts that teachers whose spoken English it






deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be







removed from classes for students still learning English.







Using this standard all of these teachers would have lost their jobs.

(From the top: Prof Tony Blair, Yale, English accent; Dr. Shelby Foote, Southern accent; Teacher Frank McCourt, Irish accent; Dr. Ashley Morris, PhD, Cajun accent; Dr. Wernher von Braun, German accent.)

A Call for Disenfranchisement

Amanda Marcotte has a great post over at Pandagon on these Tea Baggers and the Republithug party. She talks about how these thugs keep expressing that they represent the real people and somehow the Democrats are "shoving something down their throats". I think Amanda has hit the nail on the head: She says:

It's simple, really. They assume, if they don't state it outright, that large numbers of American voters shouldn't have the right to vote. That's the implicit argument when Sarah Palin praises white rural voters as "Real Americans", when birthers obsess over the idea that the first black President simply can't be eligible for office, when tea baggers yell racist and homophobic slurs at politicians, and when they insist that you eliminate black voters from a count if you want to find out how popular a politician "really" is. When Bart Stupak laughed out loud at the very idea that nuns have opinions worth listening to -- and listed a bunch of men whose opinions were the ones that counted-- you had a similar sentiment being expressed. Universal suffrage seems like a fundamental part of democracy to liberals, but it appears that conservatives think it de-legitimizes the results of elections.

See? You let those women, blacks, Hispanics vote and you get things shoved down your throat! It's so simple . . . for a simple mind.

Intellectually Dishonest

Are the Republithugs being intellectually dishonest, simpleminded, or deliberately obtuse on this Harry Reid is a racist thing? I'm not a big fan of Senator Reid and I hope a progressive Dem replaces him but it has nothing to do with his comments about 'light skinned' and 'negro dialect' -- it has EVERYTHING to do with his handling of Senators Landrieu and Nelson during the health care negotiations and his chumminess with Lieberman.

Republicans have been pouncing on Reid's comments and calling for Reid's resignation from the Senate leadership. They compare Reid's comments to Trent Lott's 2002 comments that America would have been better off had then-segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948, which resulted in Lott being forced to leave the GOP leadership. There is a clear difference between the comments, of course: While Lott's words were interpreted as an argument that segregationist policies would have been better for America than integration, Reid was discussing a political strategic reality.

Joe Ritchey over at Fundamental Truths like me has noticed Joe Scarborough's obsession with this:

The irony here is the more Joe talks the more clear it is that it is him that has a racial issue not Harry Reid. . . . But Scarborough along with his other old white boy cohorts Pat Buchanan and Mike Barnacle dig a deeper and deeper hole for themselves by trying to claim some anti Republican bias as if there is no difference in the remarks. His biggest argument to justify his point are unprovable hypothetical, "what would happen" if it was a Republican that said it.

I find it amazing that in a effort to politically destroy Harry Reid by claiming racism, Scarborough is showing clearly how totally clueless about race he is.

Chuck Todd has joined the chorus claiming the two events are the same. Crooks and Liars captured Todd's Tweet:

Why is Reid surviving while Lott didn't? Dems are rallying around Reid; GOPers let Lott whither on vine.

Idiot.

Liz Cheney and Michael Steele are in the same sinking boat as Scarborough and Todd. It's telling when George Will is the voice of reason in this cluster-@#$%.

Who Do You Believe? Republicans or your Lying Eyes?

Why is it so uneven?
I agree with the sentiments of Code Pink but not their tactics. I’ve never seen Congressmen line up to speak to them. I’ve never seen MSM cry and beg them to show up for an event. I’ve never seen estimates that they’re 2 million strong or news coverage of their events go on for a week.


But the Republicans court and flatter the racists in the tea baggers. Glenn Beck controls them like a puppet master. And the MSM covers, discusses, and legitimizes them. The best of the Republicans just deny they exist.

It is a shame that it’s left to Democrats like Pelosi and Carter have to call them out. This morning Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan went on and on denying there are racists and criticizing Pelosi and Carter. How can they deny this? Why can’t they separate them out of the Republican party? I can only assume that they want them as constituents.

Here’s another one. Look how quick the Democrats threw Acorn under the bus after they were set up. Why are we taxpayers still paying Blackwater after sworn testimony that they are guilty of murder and they’ve been caught overcharging us?