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Dear President Obama: More of this, please | Crooks and Liars

Dear President Obama: More of this, please Crooks and Liars

Dog Blogging Tuesday

Obama and Dems Problem

If anyone wonders why dems are in trouble this coming November, a new AP poll spells it out pretty clearly. Mid terms are all about enthusiasm and what side's voters are the most motivated to get off their couches and go vote in historically low turnout elections. This is not new, and the level of trouble for the presidents party mostly comes from the opposition angry at the laws he has passed. In Obama's case, The Stimulus and HCR leads the charge spurring the republicans aching to repeal or mitigate those ideological gut punches delivered by Obama to the right wing. Since Obama still enjoys historic high approval from dem voters, the challenge for dems is to counter complacency that comes with this satisfaction and lack of focus on the danger enraged to vote wingers pose.

A new AP-GfK Poll finds that Americans "with the strongest opinions about the country's most divisive issues are largely unhappy with how President Obama is handling them, an ominous sign for Democrats hoping to retain control of Congress in the fall elections."

In nine of 15 issues examined, "more Americans who expressed intense interest in a problem voiced strong opposition to Obama's work on it, including the economy, unemployment, federal deficits and terrorism."

These people also say they will vote for the Republican candidate in their local House race this fall. Only those highly interested in the environment lean toward the Democrats.

via Political Wire

Let the games begin

The first time I actually laughed while driving home listening to conservative Christian radio. While the commenters were careful to couch their "concerns" in praise for Glen Beck's White Fest, they started to question his religious principles. Of particular concern is the fact that Beck is a Mormon. Mormon's are not real Christians, and one call-in voiced real concern that not enough people attending the rally know where to "draw the line."

The irony is that not one commenter or call-in raised any Constitutional issues regarding taking the country back for "real" Christianity. That the founding fathers and our founding fathers supported a Christian nation was taken as a given. That those who call themselves Christians get to pick and choose who is pure enough. And, that yes we have freedom of religion, as long as we recognize that conservative Christianity trumps all other religions and has a priviledged place in our culture, and hopefully, for some (too many) in our government.

So as far as I can tell, the rules of the game are this. Carry the Constitution, preach a return to basic Constitutional values and precepts, but don't actually read what the Constitution says, or value how our founding fathers struggled to ensure a secular government. And, don't ever mess with our ability to carry guns.

Charismatic Leaders

There is a theory that in times of economic distress, a charismatic leader is able to come forward and essentially maintain that your economic difficulties are a result of "those others" that are preventing you from moving forward. That is the message of Beck. He is able to couch his beliefs in religious language, all the while making people believe that their problems are a result of the "others."

Bullshit

Robert McCartney has a column in today's Washington Post that wasn't too bad, until we got to this point:

"However, I found little or no evidence of racial hatred in the interviews I conducted. Morever, the people heaped praise on King's legacy - or at least on part of it. They loved his call to judge people not by race, but by personal qualities. In contrast, they didn't want to talk about his support for social justice...'We are here to honor Martin Luther King's legacy. He believed it wasn't about skin color, that it's about the content of your character, honesty, integrity, hard work, care for your family..."

WTF. Saying MLK's legacy is not about race and social justice is like saying that the Holocaust had nothing to do with Jews.

Beck has managed to steal MLK's legacy for White people, who feel they are the victims of entitlements and perks for Blacks. The subtext of the quote above is that if skin color doesn't matter, than Whites would be doing better -- because they value character, honesty, integrity, hard work, care for the family, etc...Beck and those attending his White Fest have managed in one afternoon to completely twist MLK's words to justify their own racism, and perserve their own sense of privilege. He has managed to take a message of unity and use it to further promote division.

Of course, those in attendance would heap praise on MLK's legacy. Because through Beck, they managed to pick and choose portions of MLK's vision to support their own ends. Of course those in attendance would refer to part of a speech that said "...to judge people not by the color of their skin..." By choosing that small part of a larger speech, the implicit message of the day was that if organized, Whites can reclaim their position in society, and MLK would agree.