Hey, I'm as Liberal/Progressive as the 90% in campaign mode. I just know that crap like this doesn't happen out of thin air. There's always a reason.

Postcards are .50 cents a pop at Borders, and I got a small stack of them here. Every couple of days, I fire off a couple of them to selected Congresspeople, and have at it.

Is there something he's said while on Countdown that's been wrong or questionable, or head scratching? Has he done something or is this pre-crime? (Give the man his hat...bonus points if you can remember that little bit of Movie trivia.)

Then the question is, how long is MSNBC responsible for any notification? Every time he appears on screen? How long (the Producers will ask) until it becomes repetitive, and the audience goes "We get it, we get it."

What sort of title do you want to see emblazoned under his name? Odds are, anything short of "Corporate Schill" isn't going to satisfy.

Other than shaking your fist, and saying its wrong, what does addressing this issue look like in the real world? And I'm not asking out of snark, I'm asking you honestly, Sconset, and anyone else reading this. Richard Wolffe is not an idiot. He has valuable Political insight to offer. I'd like to see him on the show more often. What does it look like?

Politico has this story...literally two months ago. No one pays attention:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23252.html

All the sudden Glenn "Holier Than Everyone" Greenwald brings it up Friday, TPM Community and the Blogosphere is all (pardon the pun) all "atwitter" over it.

I've known for two months Wolffe's been working for a PR Firm. And??!?!?

We are a country that maintains a very strict, very harsh racial dividing line, one that's ingrained into our history, one that keeps reminding African-Americans, no matter what their education, their background, or their wealth of their second-class status. Why it is maintained, I cannot tell you. I can only tell you that its there. It's real, and more often than not, it is very painful.

Now, the dividing line is something I have to deal with on a daily basis, and let me emphasize have to. I work in a white Office, surrounded by White Americans. So one my way to work, in my dealings in my neighborhood, shopping, living, breathing, I live in a white world. In order for me to do what I have to, what I want to do in life, I have to interact with the white world.

There's nothing wrong with this. There's nothing inherently racial about this. It's just the way thing are.

But flip that around. Where I have to interact with a white world, White Americans don't have to interact in mine. It is entirely possible for a White person in this country not to interact with an African-American in this country if they choose not to. Same can't be said for me. And it's making us strangers in our own country.

In the 90 or so years of our history leading up to the Civil War, and the 150+ years since, it seems that a lot of our White Neighbors still don't understand African-American feelings, African-American concerns and African-American complaints. Worst of all, they have shown little interest in learning. And this point in our history, African-Americans have grown tired of waiting for so many of our fellow citizens to catch up.

We can only explain how things are so many times, before that annoyance shows. The statement that "we don't care what you think" is meant more than anything to highlight that extreme level of annoyance, to draw a line in the sand and say there's only so much of this crap we're willing to take.

We're angry, and for the first time in a long time, African-Americans, no matter what their education or background, are more willing than ever to show it.

Where we go from here is a much, much, much, harder question to answer. While we have elected an African-American President, we have not stamped out the racism that seems so much the life blood of this country. Barack Obama would be the first to tell you that. The beer that will be shared tomorrow night will go a long way to hear this particular incident's hurts, but the larger issue remains unchanged.

You put your question simply and straightforwardly, which is why I felt you were worth answering in kind. You're going to find, hopefully, a great number of African Americans willing to engage with you should you have questions like this in the future. We always should be willing to engage...

...but our mood to concede is rapidly fading away.

Why didn't Crowley look at the I.D., apologize for the mistake, tip his hat, and leave?

Even if Dr. Gates is cursing a blue streak at him, why not give his name? It's not like the Desk Sergeant isn't going to have his back.

One, my reasoning for saying it's a "true and hollow all at once" is the fact that I just spent a page and a half defending the President with the idea that his reversal was about the situation in Pakistan, where our drones (and not our Troops) are in harms way. AfPak, I'm sure you'll agree, is combustible, and could involve our Troops if it gets out of hand, but it's not out of hand yet. (Thank you, Lord!)

Also, we heard the "safety of our Troops" line over and over again, so that its starting to get a little old (just a little). Hence "true" and "hollow".

Two, I also wrote "if there's a situation where the President does something to deliberately anger his base". If being the key word...also could have used "suppose" or "maybe". It's called a hypothesizing, its theorizing. I'm speculating. If you read what I wrote again...this time a little more slowly...you'll see that you and I are in 100% agreement in this issue.

Three, the main point about the Third Hand is about what we don't see, what we don't consider; facts or no. (More often, yes, they're going to be facts, but they're facts that we as a newsreading public have either forgotten, or never where told.)

I think we're pretty much eye to eye, here VivaAmerica. Don't know where your pushback is coming from.

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/13/filthy-pictures/?xid=rss-topstories