Saturday Night Open Thread

Let’s talk about something else for a while.

Strawmen and Smears

A few weeks back a blogger we admire named Anglachel surprised a few of us slamming The Confluence in this post:

Back in early June, I condemned the willingness of pro-Hillary supporters to deliberately take up the racist, ratfucking bullshit of the Right to spread smears about Michelle Obama, in Visceral Reactions. The epicenter for this type of assault was (and remains) No Quarter, run by a Republican (Hillary supporter or not) and very friendly to Republican interests. Recently, The Confluence has begun serving up the same ugly mix, which is why I have dropped it from my blog roll and will have nothing to do with PUMA. The current set of posts (no, I will not link to them) serves up a toxic brew ostensibly about the current financial market and Obama’s connections to it, but is actually little more than regurgitation of the Republican racist assault on equal opportunity lending.

There is an obvious reason she did not link to (or quote from) the posts she is referring to – they don’t exist.  Oh, dakinkat and Lady Boomer put up some excellent and informative posts on the financial crisis, but not one of them was a “regurgitation of the Republican racist assault on equal opportunity lending.”  Wouldn’t you expect such a serious charge to be backed up be specific evidence? 

Today Anglachel posted this:

As I read the newspapers and the blogs about the mortgage meltdown, a certain pattern is emerging. Toxic mortgage = subprime mortgage = low income borrower = minority borrower.

I read her post several times, and it’s one of the prettiest strawmen I’ve ever seen.  Now I’ll be honest, I don’t know shit about economics.  I can’t even balance a checkbook.  But I can play connect the dots, and Anglachel hasn’t connected the dots.

Nowhere in her post does she provide an example of anyone, on the left, right or center making the case that minority borrowers were the cause of the mortgage meltdown.  She alleges that there is a “pattern” that appears in newspapers and blogs, but doesn’t back up that allegation with a shred of proof.  It doesn’t matter how good a job she does of disproving that allegation, because it’s just a strawman argument. 

(deleted)

Obama, no merci beaucoup

Let’s hear a little Zydeco from Poor James and the Swamp Crows. (H/T Pumalliance)*

* We believe in a progressive tax policy, using less fossil fuel and an efficiently run government because good government never goes out of style.  But, hey, the tune is catchy and with a little tune up of the lyrics, even RD the Chemist can sing along.

Saturday: The Heart of the People is Resisting

Joe the Plumber may be the best thing that ever happened this election season.  (Ruh-Roh, it looks like someone may have illegally accessed Joe’s personal information.  H/T Orange).

Once the media turned on him, people everywhere started to Get It.  Whoever is running the establishment, the parties, the media, is waging a war on regular, average Americans.  Yes, Virginia, the media really *is* trying to force Obama down your throat.  No, they don’t give a rat’s @$$ about you.

The funny thing is that most Americans don’t even know the half of it.  They are blissfully unaware of just how close the delegate count was between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  They have no idea that she lost the nomination because her own party plunged a knife into her back in favor of a less than first term corrupt and ruthless schmoozer from Chicago.  How many Americans would vote for Obama if they knew how he disenfranchised 18 million Americans out of their primary votes?  How would they feel about his hopey-changey shtick if they were enlightened to all of the voter suppression techniques he and his merry brand of electoral thieves used in the primaries and caucuses?

And it’s not like the party has done ANYTHING to reach out and appeal to us.  They haven’t apologized.  They humiliated Hillary and have her on the indentured servant circuit.  They have thrown out any reasonable solutions she has proposed on the financial bailout.  They screwed us over on FISA.  And Obama himself lobbied his fellow senators for the Paulson plan which forks over taxpayer money to banks and other institutions making us silent, non-voting partners in those same institutions.  The tycoons can spend that money aaaaannnnnyway they please, provided they pay the US Government dividends.  How they do it is completely up to them.  They can pay themselves handsomely, and they have and there’s not a single thing that Joe the Plumber can do about it.  Talk about spreading the wealth.  Obama *liked* this plan and made no effort to stop it or change it or propose policies that would make it better.  In fact, it’s worse than that.  He was all ready to vote on the first bill that would have given taxpayers *no* share in the banks.  All we would have gotten were some worthless assets.  Obama thought this was cool.

In the 60’s, we would have said that we are “subverting the dominant paradigm”.  It’s not easy being pain-in-the-@$$ non-conforming, rational, clear headed thinkers who insist that our candidates play fairly, behave ethically and demonstrate that they are good public servants.  Well, someone has to do it and that is us.  Yes, it seems sometimes like we are trying to stop a speeding train with our hands but Joe the Plumber has made our job a LOT easier.

So, all of you Resistors out there, have heart!  No matter what happens, we won’t give up until we are recognized, respected and valued.  We have to stick up for ourselves because, sure as Hell, no one else is going to do it.  And there are millions of us regular Joes out there.

So saith RD the Chemist.

My Ex-Wife Injured In Accident

I was heart-broken to learn she is expected to fully recover.

This is an open thread