Frankly, I don’t find all that much to get upset about in the Chris Bowers Open Left post to which Lambert refers here. Okay, the post has a slightly condescending tinge to its tone, but why shouldn’t Democrats be proud that now more than ever the Democratic base looks like America? Bill Clinton himself once noted the same, and pledged that his administration would too, one pledge among many, many that Clinton kept.

While I’m on this subject, I want to remind everyone that neither any particular African-American nor the African-American community as a whole needs to apologize for voting for an African-American candidate for President, or any other office, for that matter. Black folks have been voting for white folks for decades now. And it isn’t as if Obama got their support automatically. It was only when he convinced many of them that he was viable, and presented a vision they obviously found inspiring, as is true for a large swathe of the electorate, that they have flocked to him. So, we are not talking about identity politics here. Remember, it was Obama who has been running as a post-racial candidate, for which many of us here at Corrente criticized him, rightly so, in my opinion.

Back to Bowers. It’s this stunning post that should be the focus of our incredulous ire, although I do realize that in Lambert’s majestic takedown, of Matt Stoller’s chilling foray into Obama triumphalism, this Bowers post is mentioned along with the fact that Bowers starts with an admiring nod to the Stoller post.

In his post, Bowers is imagining/predicting what kind of changes in Democratic governance we might be seeing from an Obama presidency. Fasten your seat belts.

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I’m not even sure what that means. Who the hell are the creative class?  Read more 

It really is weird. Everywhere this guy goes shit implodes. I’ve been watching him for years and it’s fucking amazing. He’s like that guy in the Stephen King Movie “Needful Things.” I mean Barry really has a gift for projection.  Read more 

Ohio. Texas. Indiana. Pennsylvania.
Obama LOST THEM ALL.
Why is he still in the race?

Now:
The problem with the DLC
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2008-05-03 21:45.

Is that it’s an institution that the Obama Movement doesn’t control. Period. That’s all it is. That’s why Kos has a problem with it too.
http://www.correntewire.com/so_why_is_it…

And then:

DLC loses tax exempt status
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2006-09-16 20:09.

* DLC

It couldn’t happen to a nicer crowd of Bush enablers. Although silly Forbes still thinks the DLC are Democrats:  Read more 

WKJM appears to have gone tone deaf. If he was not always tone deaf. Great and unintentionally revealing headline:

Clinton Attacks “Elite Opinion” On Gas Tax Holiday

And your point would be, Josh?  Read more 

[Icky electronic music ends at 0:35.]

Something to listen to while you’re paging through the perfume ads in today’s Sunday Times:

This takes almost an hour. Trust me, it will go very, very fast. [UPDATE: Below the fold, Jeqal made a rough transcript in comments.] My favorite quote:  Read more 

Highly credible Cheetopia Obama uber-fan Kid Oakland’s gone off the deep end (again). Sad, really:

against Hillary: this is personal

Oh, this is new? Film at 11…

Why has the gas tax pander set me off so much?

Let me give you five reasons: Dominic, Louise, Catherine, Will and Oliver. They are ages 6, 4, 4, 2 and 9 months respectively. I happen to care about them a great deal.

Let me guess. Hillary’s going to kill them and eat them? Nice work on the subliminal trope, there, kid.

My nieces and nephews are truly children of the 21st Century. They will see the legacy of the environmental policies we enact…right now. They will also live to see the legacy of all that we don’t do, as well.

We don’t have time for a “gas tax holiday.” We all know that’s true.

What you mean “we,” Obama Fan? Here’s what the dull normals “know” is true:  Read more 

Scary smart Anglachel, again:

In short, Obama, taken here as an exemplar of the liberal elite, is simply wrong in his estimation of the core Democratic constituency. They did not want what he was offering because they did not see themselves as the ones who needed to be changed, and they have consistently given their votes to the person who has focused on their explicit economic needs and their desire to be safe in an unsettled world while being respectful of them as people.  Read more 

Remember when being quiet in school was expected?

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network has registered five participating schools in Katy, at least two in the Clear Creek school district and more than 20 in the Houston area. The organization estimates that more than 6,000 schools and several hundred thousand kids will keep silent Friday.
Usually these students try not to speak the entire day, although some break their vow if required to participate in class. Many also distribute pamphlets or wear T-shirts, letting peers and teachers know why they’re keeping mum. This year, students are protesting in the name of Lawrence King, a California eighth-grader who in February was shot and killed by another student, allegedly because he was gay.
The event began in 1996, but only started getting negative attention recently. In 2005, the conservative legal group the Alliance Defense Fund staged a counterprotest, called Day of Truth, which supports the “free speech rights of Christian students to present an opposing viewpoint to those organizations that promote homosexual behavior in the schools,” according to the group’s Web site. Then this year, the American Family Association sent an alert encouraging parents to keep kids home Friday if other students at their schools are participating in the Day of Silence.
We all know about politicians and lawyers and pundits, but I am astonished afresh at the sheer blind stupidity of school district superintendents on a regular basis. This week, Texas boasts a particularly inconsiderate specimen:

Alton Frailey, superintendent of Katy’s school district, let all teachers know that — though no one asked his district to participate in the silent protest — if someone did, “my answer is no.”  Read more 

Today is not the first time the New York Times has urged elites to step in and stop people from destroying the country by voting. From the 1915 New York Times Editorial on the proposal to give women the vote:  Read more 

You can be a Democrat if you’re First Nations, Hispanic, Asian, Caucasian, or African-American. You can be a Democrat if you’re a woman or a man, old or young, wealthy or not.
All you have to be is for decency. Examples:

 Read more 

That’s right, the oft-referenced Mr. Whassammatta You, Kansas? himself, in his first column for (!) WSJ:

But I know one thing with absolute certainty. The media flurry kicked up by Mr. Obama’s gaffe powerfully confirms an argument I actually did make: That as they return again to the culture war, what the soldiers on all sides are doing is talking about class without actually addressing the economic basis of the subject.

In this whole breathless debate, few have talked about the causes of the decline of the US middle class, and what should be done about it.

Read the whole thing, it has a great punch line.

Also, Kathy G. looks at the significance of a populist intellectual’s column appearing in Rupert Murdoch’s paper.  Read more 

Via Crooks and Liars comes this YouTube of Reverend Michael Pfleger giving a FAWKS interviewer a brief tutorial on what is what and why what is what is what it is.

++++

A little tactless, the day after April 15, wouldn’t you agree? Times:

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients’ interests.

It’s the usual thing; a bill’s going to pass, because something needs to be done, and so it becomes Christmas tree time…

In the Senate bill, the nation’s biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

Democratic leaders in the House not only have promised to provide more relief for individual homeowners, but have also dropped the corporate tax provisions from their version.

Downtrodden automakers — Ford and General Motors — were especially dogged in securing a tax break that would let them collect alternative minimum tax credits, also known as the A.M.T., that would otherwise be out of reach because they did not pay enough taxes in recent years to claim a rebate.

If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.

Excellent. So I just paid for more cars. But what we need is fewer cars.  Read more 

“By the time you’re thirty-five, you should have somebody do your taxes for you,” this nozzle on the AM radio said this morning, on an alleged sports-talk show. “You should have that as a goal. You shouldn’t be bragging about doing your own taxes. Guys brag … guys brag about a lot of things they shouldn’t brag about doing.
“Like, ’Hey, I built my own ham radio.’ Well, hey! So now you can talk to some other loser at 3 a.m.,” the nozzle went on. “Or ’I spent all weekend under my car workin’ on the tranny.’ Well yee-haw, Jethro!”
At this point I wanted not just to cut the radio off but to know this jerk’s name so I could call him up and tell him the loser was the ignorant wanker in his mirror who believes his line of Republican propaganda enforcing the notion that you must own stuff to be somebody, you must have money to be worthwhile, “by the time you’re thirty-nine, forty, your taxes ought to be complicated. You should have some investments, stocks and bonds, some futures, land and a house and a rental property or two.”
At that point I did turn the radio off; now, to my everlasting frustration, the web site for the local radio station that carried this sack of steaming manure  Read more 

Much of the media and blogospheric discussion of “Bittergate” has focused on whether people really are bitter, or just pissed off. Obama and his sycophantic supporters have argued that what he said was essentially true, just inartfully phrased.

They don’t get it.

Underlying their arguments is the condescending attitude that there is something wrong with the people in the small towns of America. The OFB can’t understand why those stupid people don’t like Obama the way they do, or why rural Americans “vote against their economic interests” by voting for the GOP. They assume it must be a combination of ignorance and racism.  Read more 

Coal Boss: If You Take Photos, ’You’re Liable to Get Shot’

“If you’re going to start taking pictures of me, you’re liable to get shot,” the chairman of one of the country’s biggest coal mining companies, Don Blankenship of Massey Energy, told an ABC News reporter before grabbing the reporter’s camera.

The incident this week, in the parking lot of a Massey Energy office in Belfry, Ky., is just the latest chapter in the saga of Blankenship’s controversial relationship with the West Virginia Supreme Court, which is hearing appeals that could cost his company hundreds of millions of dollars.  Read more 

Forty years down the road from The Kerner Report’s Recommendations for Action, we haven’t accomplished squat in the fight to overcome poverty in the inner cities, or in the rural areas of the US where seasonal jobs in industrial agriculture create conditions favorable to a modern slavery as old as time and as new as tomorrow’s nightly newscast.
Greed.
Stupidity.
Cruelty.
Fear.
Imprisonment.

Let’s come together over this, people.  Read more 

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby had his license to practice law stripped away today; in its decision the court cited “moral turpitude” as a reason for disbarring the former Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

I’m not going to read your last email, (insert your name here),

cause it’s probably just as angry as mine was
and we ARE in danger of not being friends anymore
and THAT has been my point all along.

HOW is this guy bringing the country…together…
When even close friends are fighting OVER him?

I suggest, and NOT in anger or resentment or bitterness,
but as an american with a currently small a who is…worried,
that this “unifier” WILL tear this already frayed country apart.

And it’s happening already

I can’t TELL you how I really feel about the New Racism.
“we are all a little racist” and how that notion truly offends me.
You can’t TELL me how you really feel AS a minority
(never really part of the American dream even as you live it)  Read more 

Liberty, you’ve had your say. I’m about to have mine  Read more 

High-Interest Lenders Tap Elderly, Disabled

I get this at the site. There’s a post at Kos’ place describing how a Northern District of California court shut down the place — which seems to me a bad thing.
I note in passing that wikipedia is not an unbiased source; but wikileaks was open for a slightly more focused reason: to get the word out to people via the Web regarding things like the Rules of Engagement in Iraq, the effect of bank fraud on Kenya’s recent elections, and other unsavory bits of data various and sundry governments and corporations want to keep a lid upon.

Burnt Orange Report and Texas Kaos carry crosspostings of an article today about Senator Box Turtle requesting combat veteran Rick Noriega’s military records. I’m not sure I buy the “swift-boat!” assumptions, but in looking for a legitimate link for the story, I did find some more background on Noreiga as well as Jan Reid’s compelling profile.
While deployed, Noriega met the clue-by-four on our national health care crisis firsthand, according to the Houston Chronicle: Struggle for treatment  Read more