Grouchy’s Liberaltopia

Even Tighty-Whitey, Suffering From an Advanced Case of GOP Fatigue, May Find Obama a ‘Change They Can Believe In’

The current Big Media obsession with poorly-educated, working class whites and the Pampered Punditocracy’s eye-rolling epidemic of fretting and fressing over how’ll they’ll vote reminds me of a guy I used to know I’ll call Joe. A construction worker, he’s the perfect model of the uneducated working class white man; an opposite-of-valedictorian high school graduate born into an ancestry of fetid racism — ignorant, suspicious and viciously disparaging of other cultures, religions and colors.

Joe was notorious for going off on ‘Archie Bunker’ rants about black people, assuring the listener that he ‘knew’ they are lazier, dumber and more prone to crime, deception and drug addiction than whites, regardless of the fact that he’d met very few dark-skinned people in his life. But the really confounding thing about Joe’s racism, the head-shaker that brings the palm to the forehead and a wince to the eye, is that he knew two black guys, Carl and Eddie, that he worked with and considered close friends — he played poker with them, went out drinking with them, had them over to the house for dinner many times, they were guests at his wedding, and he’s even gotten into fistfights defending them. (Of course, he doesn’t share his low opinion of black folks in general when Carl or Eddie happen to be in the room.)

Once I interrupted one of his Boneheaded Bigot ravings to ask, “What about Carl and Eddie?” He paused for a few confused seconds before he spit out, “They’re the exception to the rule!”

There are sadly a lot of working class whites out there like Joe and it’s impossible to argue them out of their bigotry — how do you change someone whose beliefs are based on twisted mythology and inherited delusion rather than logic and fact? As comedian Ron — yes, it’s his name — White said, “You can’t fix stupid,” but I’m convinced most white racists aren’t stupid, just ignorant, misinformed and terrified of the unknown. The population of West Virginia, for example, is about 97 percent white and most of the state is badly-educated and rural. The majority of these bumpkins have never met anyone of another color in person, and, like Joe, wild-eyed myths and misperceptions about those with darker skin pass from generation to generation like a family Bible.

There is also the fact that most of Game-Boy Viagramerica has not really started paying attention to the presidential race yet; I’d bet the majority of West Virginians knew little about Hillary Clinton’s policies when they voted for her last Tuesday, only that she is the wife of a former president they liked and, most importantly, that she’s white. Barack Obama, meanwhile, was an unknown scary black man with a funny name who might be some kinda Muslim with a crazy Christian pastor or something.

So Hillary Clinton can celebrate her huge victory among the descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy ‘Mountaineers,’ but she’s no fool: she must know her 41-point win was largely based on her skin color and not her ideas or her personal qualities.

Obama, unless he starts wearing a turban, praying five times a day to Mecca and using the word ‘Jihad’ in every other sentence, is the Dem nominee no matter what Hillary does at this point; the numbers, and Edwards’ recent endorsement, say so. (She can reflect at leisure on why, if she’s the tremendously capable leader she claims to be, she didn’t vanquish this supposedly weak and naive upstart sooner and had no plan to campaign for the nomination past Super Tuesday on Feb. 5th. She might also try to figure out why, what with her resources and alleged crack campaign staff, she couldn’t sweep the remaining primaries following her surprise defeat in Wisconsin. And, while she’s at it, maybe tinker together a good explanation of how someone who says they respect democracy could claim victory in a state where their chief opponent’s name wasn’t on the ballot.)

The redneck revolt has started and the battle is on. I have said all along that JimBob and JoeBob will not vote for Obama because he’s “colored”….!!!

It sounds bad but consider the others who feel the same way but are republican so their hate will never have to be held up for the light of day. Here and in WV racism is alive and well, if you doubt me just visit sometime.

I was raised in the Klan, and have since matured enough to see the folly in the ignorance that is racism but I am the exception to the rule. Jim Crow still roams the hills and the urban areas of Kentuck, Wv and many other southern states, yet CNN would have you believe that the country has evolved into a place where we love everybody and thats just not the case.

Racism however comes in many forms. I knew a black guy who told me only blacks knew racism…well folks, I ain’t black but I am Irish and Indian and while I have never had a drink of liquor in my life I have been sterotyped by many as a lazy shiftless drunkard based on being Irish and Indian and while I may be lazy I am no drunkard!!

So listen up Racheal Maddow and the rest of you losers at AirHead America….between you idiots and Randi Rhodes pissing and moaning about Hillary (this includes that gasbag Ed Shultz), I feel like I am listening to neocon radio. Hillary isn’t killing the party it’s you blowhards with your kool-aid like devotion ti Obama. We have a saying here…you don’t like Hillary, then fine but “Do not throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Obama and Hillary will share the ticket or the party will be history. The only thing that remains to be decided is who is on top lol…..

in closing we might be poor and stupid and white but we are honest, too bad the rest of the country ain’t…

Gotta go now JC Pennys is having a white sale…..

Do tell.  I don’t have much time, so I will just post the article…

Bush administration is accused of overlooking rampant corruption in Iraqi government

By ANNE FLAHERTY

The Associated Press

The Bush administration repeatedly disregarded corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information, two former State Department employees say.

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department’s Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who was the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and that its warnings and recommendations were ignored.

Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers’ workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s “evisceration” of Iraq’s top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department’s policies “not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government,” Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The U.S. Embassy’s “effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than ‘window dressing,’?” he added.

Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the administration took the issue of corruption seriously. He pointed to its recent appointment of Lawrence Benedict, a retired senior career diplomat, as coordinator for anti-corruption initiatives at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The Office of Accountability and Transparency, or “OAT” team, was intended to provide assistance and training to Iraq’s anti-corruption agencies. It was dismantled last December after it alleged in a draft report leaked to the media that al-Maliki’s office had derailed or prevented investigations into Shiite-controlled agencies.

Brennan charges the State Department never responded to his team’s report, which was retroactively classified because agency officials said it could hurt bilateral relations with Iraq. Other recommendations by the group also were kept secret, including a negative assessment of Iraq’s Joint Anti-Corruption Committee, Brennan said.

But information later released by the embassy ignored the team’s assessment and ultimately “failed to even mention what a disaster” the committee “really was,” Brennan said.

Brennan said he approved the embassy report against his better judgment but later regretted it.

Mattil, who worked with Brennan, made similar allegations. Specifically, he said the Bush administration “remained silent in the face of an unrelenting campaign” by senior Iraqi officials to subvert Baghdad’s Commission on Public Integrity. Then the United States turned its back on Iraqis who fled to America after being threatened for pursuing anti-corruption cases, he said.

Rumors Slipped Under the Doorway:

– Word is billionaire George Soros, with additional backing from fellow moneybags Warren Buffett, is going to cause heads to explode in the right-wing media universe as he’s supposedly planning to spend mega-millions to buy Air America Radio, along with failing radio stations across the land, and start a well-financed alternative to Clear Channel’s network of conservative talkers. He’s also looking at purchasing some regional small-and medium-market TV stations that are down on their luck to compete with the typically GOP-friendly mumbo jumbo broadcast in those areas. Soros and Buffett aren’t doing this strictly for altruistic reasons – they’ve studied buying patterns in the current depressed economy and it’s clear: the better-educated listeners of progressive talk radio have more disposable income than the downtrodden audience of right-wing media. While many advertisers have been shy to buy time on liberal radio, the trend is turning the other way now, what with the general unpopularity of the Republican Party and George W. Bush in particular. Will they be able to get the deal past the GOP-dominated FCC? Stay tuned…

– Speaking of which, Rupert Murdoch is said to be quietly seeking a buyer for the Fox television network, including the Fox News channel. Revenues and ratings are down at Fox in general and Fox News in particular, and some of the news channel’s nameplates, like Bill O’Reilly, are retiring soon or have become public punchlines, such as Sean Hannity and Steve Doocy. Bloomberg is rumored to have cast the top bid so far.

– Look for rattled Republicans sensing electoral disaster to campaign this year without any reference to the party in their media advertising. Moreover, watch for them to campaign AGAINST some of the GOP agenda of the last eight years. “Appear to be independent,” is the private advice that went out from the RNC, according to rumor. Deflating the prospects of some GOP incumbents and first-timers is word from on high that the national party’s cupboards are bare and not to expect financial help – even in tight ’safe’ districts, only millionaires willing to spend their own cash need apply.

– Hot on the heels of the success of ‘Reel Time with Bill Maher,’ HBO is allegedly on the verge of offering radio host Randi Rhodes her own weekly ‘no-holds-barred’ hour, featuring a free-wheeling stand-up/panel format similar to Maher’s show. With her rumored MSNBC deal scotched after her controversial separation from Air America Radio, HBO sees an opening for Rhodes’ savagely funny, profanity-laden style. Word is, the pay-cable channel wants to have her up and running by late summer, if she’ll sign on.

— Meanwhile, speaking of MSNBC, Rachel Maddow keeps expanding her television orbit, regularly appearing on at least three of the ‘Place for Politics’ programs and as part of their election coverage, but the cable news channel’s execs continue to dither over giving Maddow her own show. They’d better act fast – the dull and snarky Campbell Brown is gasping like a carnival goldfish over at CNN and they’ve been sizing up Rachel’s class act as a sharp and satirical – and more youthful — addition to their political coverage – including taking over Brown’s low-ball primetime hour, opposite MSNBC ratings star Keith Olbermann. It’s no secret that Olbermann and Maddow are good friends and simpatico politically – would she mount a challenge in his time slot? All’s fair in love and TV, they say, so we’ll have to see how this plays out, but word is the Air America Radio talker is a little weary of parrying with the likes of ‘Uncle Fudd’ Pat Buchanan and his precious pup Michael Smerconish at MSNBC.

Ye Olde Scribe’s Incredible, Inedible, Quote Machine
“Turning out the Inedible, but Interesting, for at Least Eight Blog Years.”

“(Junior’s)… no moron. He just plays one.”

-A-Non-E- Moose

“(Junior’s) …legacy may well be: amongst other more obvious horrors, reviving the old U.S.S.R.”

-A-Non-E-Moose

Simply “Super” (Sarcasm Intended)

This is about the disturbing story of SPC Jeremy Hall, an atheist soldier serving in Iraq who is now suing the Pentagon due to the anti-atheist discrimination he faced there. He was actually threatened with “fragging” (a “friendly fire” murder) after word of his suit became public.

Does this attitude lie behind the killing of Pat Tilman in Afghanistan?

Wonder about the creeping Christian theocracy?  Check out the Christian Embassy website.

We believe that the workplace offers endless opportunities for people to explore and apply what they believe to what they do for a living. We provide safe places and practical resources to help national and international leaders working in D.C., their spouses and staffs integrate their faith and their work.

Hello?  The workplace is just that:  The frickin’ workplace.  As a taxpayer who pays people to work in that place, I feel that it is NOT a place for promoting a religion OR the lack thereof.

Where Government is Tiny, Everything is Privatized, and the Free Market rules…

“Hello, this is the Little Big National Neighborhood Bank that really cares about you! How can I help you?”

“Well, first of all, you could ‘care about me’ by not making me wait through 30 minutes of canned music to talk to a real person.”

“Sorry, sir, but we’re very busy here taking care of all our happy customers!”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not one of them.”

“What can I do to make you one?”

“Last night I took out $60 bucks from one of your ATM’s and I noticed I was charged $1.50 for the withdrawal.”

“That’s right, sir, that’s our standard ATM transaction fee.”

“But fifteen years ago when you converted to the ATM machines, you said it would cut costs for the bank and the savings and convenience would be passed on to the customer. Back then, all transactions at any ATM were free!”

“That’s right, sir. Aren’t the ATM’s so much more convenient than coming into the bank to withdraw cash?”

“But wait a minute here — about eight years ago you said you were going to start charging an ATM transaction fee of a dollar, but only at other banks’ machines; your ATM’s would stay free.”

“Yes, sir – what’s the problem with that?”

“Aside from the fact that the fee to use an ATM from any other bank has steadily risen so it’s up to $3.00 a pop, now I’m getting charged $1.50 a transaction from your own ATM’s that used to be free!”

“Yes, sir, well, our fees have to keep up with inflation.”

“But I just read that your bank made a record profit last year! Why not take a little less profit and show how much you ‘care’ about your customers by keeping the ATM transactions free?! I’ve been putting my money in your bank for twenty years!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir. We want to keep you as our customer, but if you’re so dissatisfied with our service, perhaps you can find another bank that does not charge this ATM fee. After all, it’s a free market and that guarantees competitive prices!”

“I’ve already called around to every bank in the area – they’re ALL charging $1.50 to use their ATM’s. What do you guys do, get into a room and decide how much you’re going to shear us sheep?”

This edition of Inspection has been updated since the first draft to include my observations regarding North Carolina and Indiana.

I’ve been pondering a region; a gulf; a canyon so deep; so wide, that the Grand Canyon would be a skunk’s footprint in comparison. How fitting to use a skunk: because this same divide is far more odiferous and seems set on permanent spray mode. I, of course, am referring to the O’Bama/Clinton divide that still lingers despite cries of, “It’s over…” which have been spouted practically since the first caucus.

C’mon Baby, Let’s Do the Twist!

For 30 years, the Right-Wing Attack Machine has been ‘educating’ (most people would call it ‘propagandizing’) their audience to reject anything reported by the Big Media as biased liberal lies. From Rush-Buster to Hannity-Insanity, it’s been a solid wall of attack on the three major broadcast networks, the two major Fox News cable competitors, and, especially, those rotten bastions of left-wing calumny that conspired to take late GOP saint Richard Nixon down the Watergate without a paddle, The New York Times and the Washington Post.

Since the Dittoheads that slavishly follow the neocon media gadflies rarely alight on any surface resembling reality, they have nearly ignored the Times’ support of the Iraq invasion and the hiring of PNAC founder Bill Kristol as one of its regular weekly columnists. Meanwhile, the Post’s editorials these days might as well be written by the Republican National Committee, Karl Rove’s a Newsweek columnist, and a typically blind eye is turned to Bob Woodward’s conversion from 70’s journalistic hero to the current Bush-grubbing zero; only recently has Woody stuck his finger in the air and detected a shift in the political hot air, freeing him to belatedly chase the caboose of criticism and scorn his Man O’ War pal Dubya has engendered from his media colleagues and hundreds of historians.

Now that the Big Media has become, for the most part, an arm of the GOP, faithfully repeating even its most laughable attacks and holding its opponents to a higher standard of conduct and past relationships than that imposed on Republican politicians, and the reporters covering McCain continue to gleefully fawn over him and paper over his mistakes, the thundering irony is crashing down, wrapped around a tire-iron: McCain’s embrace by the MSM may end up costing him the presidency as voters on the right desert him because he is adored by the hated ‘liberal’ media! Ho, ho! Read on:

“… The millions of conservatives who have spent decades learning to loathe the ‘liberal media’ aren’t going to change their minds just because much of the news media cover John McCain the way Teen Beat covered Menudo. For reasons having little to do with his reliably right-wing voting record, a sizable chunk of the GOP base has never trusted McCain; the media’s embrace of him will simply confirm their doubts about both McCain and journalists rather than warming them to either.”
– Jamison Foser, Media Matters, May 9, 2008.

We might as well get used to saying ‘President Obama’ right now.

“Election II – Tracy For President” Finally On Its Last Reel

“This is Hillary Rodham, calling from Emerson Junior High School in Park Ridge. I want you to tell Mayor Daley that it was wrong of him to steal the election, and that Richard Nixon should have won!”
– Hillary Clinton calling Chicago City Hall on Nov. 9, 1960, when she was a Teenage Republican, as quoted by In These Times.

“A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”
– Tennessee Williams

Although Your Tattlesnake’s been on hiatus recently, recharging batteries and working on other projects, he hasn’t neglected politics, and the post-May 6th unraveling of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Let’s start off with everyone’s favorite, an anecdote:

The Tattler knows of two women who fit into Hillary’s core demographic, the people she’d need to get elected president: white middle-class women in their 50s. One is a psychologist and the other a small business owner. Both initially strongly supported Sen. Clinton until two months ago when she descended into this Rovian nightmare of innuendo, sleaze and negative campaigning. They are disgusted with her these days — the psychologist said she would have to ‘force herself’ to vote for her in November, but she’d rather have Obama. The small business owner said there is no way she could live with her conscience if she voted for Hillary since she’s seen this ‘obsessive, manic, anything for a vote’ side of her. If Obama doesn’t get the nomination, she may vote third party or sit this one out. They are particularly incensed that she is campaigning on her ‘testicular fortitude’ — they wanted, after all, a Democratic woman as president, not a fake Republican man.

Of course, this is just anecdotal, but I wonder how many other women in their age group are having the same reaction?

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
– Mark Twain

Meanwhile, Your Tattlesnipe has also been hanging with his Homies at the local bars. Having once worked the kind of physically exhausting jobs that required medicinal doses of whiskey by the shot and several bottles of beer at the end of the day just to lower the pain and stay sane, I well know what type of liquor is served in Working Class Palaces, the constituency Hill was trying to impress by sipping a shot of Crown Royal and tipping a beer at a saloon in Indiana. The real Blue-Collar Heroes were highly amused at Mrs. Clinton’s photo-op – first off, none of these guys would drink a pricey blend like Crown Royal. The actual Members of the Working Non-Elite throw down Jim Beam, Ten High, Jack Daniel’s or whatever cheap rotgut whiskey the dive has on hand. They also don’t sip, they pour it down in one quick snort – another blunder by the Regular Salt-of-the-Earth Midwestern Gal from suburban Park Ridge whose net worth just happens to be over $100 million dollars.

Then there was the Hillary hilarity invoked by her photo-op at the Hoosier gas station. You’d think she’d practice at filling her own tank before this event but, instead, she embarrassingly let the driver, a haggard working class accessory provided as background for the occasion, do it. Video clips also showed her busily chatting on the cellphone while Mr. Blue Collar mutely chauffeured her around. This didn’t go over well with the hourly-wage crowd either. If anything, it enhanced her aura of privileged elitism. Finally, she put the foam on her French Vanilla Cappuccino by struggling ineptly to get it out of the machine – a risible You Tube moment – showing she obviously isn’t used to fetching her own java from roadside stops. Most telling, as pointed out to me by a guy who drives for a living, is that there was a pot of regular coffee just to the left of the cappuccino machine – all she had to do was grab a cup and pour. Why candidates let themselves be talked into doing photo-ops that inevitably make them look like an idiot is beyond me, but Hillary’s gaffes were particularly obvious and onerous. As one laid-off assembly line worker snorted, “She must really think we’re stupid to believe she’s just some kind of down-home girl who won the lottery to run for president.”