Maybe someone could explain what is meant by “pushing back” if President Mitt and Paul *Ayn Rand* Ryan were to kill treasured common assets? Is this like believing it possible to “force Obama” to do something, that I sometimes read? If Romney/Ryan do their worse, it’d be too fun late for push back. Do you guys seriously think ‘Mericans will abandon the sofa and hit the streets, or something?

“Black authenticity, as defined by Southern mannerisms and darker complexion, amplified by conservatism or traditionalism, earns liberal unease….[Cain’s] speech and manner are as genuine as Obama’s are forced and often phony…. Cain is authentically African-American and of an age to remember the Jim Crow South”

Oh, my, a white historian comes out trying to school somebody about “black authenticity”. Well get the corn cob and bend me over.

Herman Cain is the contemporary Kingfish, who forever tried to con Amos and Andy into one of his get-rich-quick schemes. In Cain’s version it’s get-richer-quicker.

These fiends are always ready to talk smack about how the left plays the race card. Hypocrites is not a strong enough word.

Well, now I know how a letter written with one’s head fulla blow reads.

“Avlon is an example of why many Americans do not support Occupy Wall Street. They understand that Occupy Wall Street wants to have an impact on the system and force the system to respond to the occupation’s demands, but they see protesters do not want to work within the system and lobby members of Congress and sign petitions and find out what piecemeal reforms representatives and senators think they can manage to deliver without jeopardizing their re-election campaigns. They are afraid of people power or “too much democracy.”

“People like Avlon and Harman fear people power or acts of rebellion because they choose to be managers of democracy rather than citizens. And, actually, media and the elites aren’t the only ones who think like this. Numerous politically engaged Americans operate like managers of democracy in America because they believe “purism” on issues will create gridlock and prevent anything from being done. They despise making urgent demands of power because they believe Washington is only and has only ever been capable of incremental reform. To them, making demands and refusing to budge places an unacceptable burden on President Obama and legislators.”

That is an exceedingly cogent diagnosis of our problem. Thank you, Kevin.

“He [Obama] wants us to be grateful to the rich folk who help out of their benificence, not the social structure underlying the ability everyone has to succeed – those are two very different ideas with a lot of daylight between.”

Superb.

Ooo-k, it begins to clarify. Depending on how Christie’s BIG SPEECH later today on our most treasured A-number one myth, “American Exceptionalism”, is received, may determine if he jumps or not.

Really, that it? Christie has swagger, sure, but he’s a fat blowhard. Rather than Romney, a calculating technocrat. Romney can talk to those clowns in their Manhattan hedge fund offices, boardrooms and Koch brothers’ retreats better than Christie, I would think. It’s still not adding up for me.

Lee Raymond looks like a walrus crossbred with a rodent.

Question: why are those kleptocrats named in the Times piece rallying around Chris Christie, rather than Romney, a private equity guy, himself, one of their own? What do you think it is he’s lacking in their eyes?

“Republicans will be driven from government yet again just as they were in 2008…”

And if you’re wrong?

Upwards, someone dropped a Vonnegut quote. Here’s another, for all of you itching for a massacre next year:

“Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ‘Poo-tee-weet?’”

I do, yes. Emphatically. Is there a negative argument against Kagan and Sotomayor? Reports I’ve read state that these two have already had an impact on the court, in terms of their respective approaches. Sotomayor is a very astute questioner, and Kagan, amongst her colleagues, often explicates the liberal viewpoint. So, no, I don’t have a problem here.

Well, I mentioned 1968 only because cause somehow I think our compadre Hotdog as visions of Guy Debord urging on the insurrection against The Spectacle, or something.

Hell, this isn’t even Paris of 1968. Like I said, magical thinking.

You too, speaking sense? Thank you.

Please stop, you’re making too much sense.

The better off we’ll be? By turning over the government to one of those jokers from the rubber room? Sorry, I can’t go there with you. Where is the upside there, cause I’m not seeing one. You guys have all bought in to the notion that with a Bagger in the WH, and possibly a two house majority, this will sufficiently rattle our cages such that we will finally revolt. Nifty word, “revolt”. That’s a large wager. Actually, it sounds like magical thinking, to me. Don’t do this. Why such defeatism? Who does that serve? This doesn’t square with the sense of what it means to be on the left, not in any way I know. This sounds instead like people whose vanity incorrectly assures them that they are too pure for this world. Yes, I voted for him but I don’t feel at all betrayed. I never imagined I was voting for some progressive champion. Just because he was conversant with Saul Alinsky, never did I for a moment think I was voting for some radical firebrand. Certainly, such a person would never have made it to the WH. Obama was an untried, inexperienced pol who, largely due to the devastation of a global financial crisis, got himself elected President. Who ascended to an office that was and is, frankly too large for him. You give the election to a Bagger and a two chamber majority, and the calamity that will follow will have you begging for Obama. Don’t do this.

So we let disappointment in Obama turn us into masochists, is that it?