Terminate us with Extreme Prejudice to protect the Co'ssitution, goddammit!

My country shamed by thee
Wet tree of liberty
Lynched from thy branch!

And I say again, Yucch!!

MiddleClassBill,

Please cite your sources? Glenn Bleck also makes up stories about Van Jones

I think Van Jones and I have something in common. We both stood up (in San Francisco) during the verdict in Los Angeles after the Rodney King incident and said we are tired of black people being the brunt of police brutality. In my book Van Jones is unworthy of your scorn.

As Eva Patterson says in this article, he was just an legal observer who happen to get caught up in illegal arrest. I too was arrested and the city of San Francisco had to pay us both for illegal arrest.

Which tribe, flower? And congratulations.

I know what you mean, friend, do I ever.

Honestly, for me, it's just very unsettling that we are citizens of a country where this is a popular view ("My boyfriend isn't too wild about him being black," ha-ha-hah!). What in the *hell*?!!

Though I suppose, more in line with what you say, I may feel some guilty pleasure WHEN healthcare passes. And *if* some of them calm down then and reflect on whether it is the right way to go, hating your fellow Americans, and what they really get out of it.

These idiots on the TV stirring up the hate need to travel to a place where there is no government and see how cushy their existence will be when everything disintegrates into chaos. They're not thinking how all their money will not enable them to get food, or that they will be prisoners in their own mansions, if those mansions still even stand. These terrorists are not going to be able to support them in the manner of living to which they have become accustomed. They encourage it's destruction at their own peril.

You are very correct in making this linkage.

The political dynamics that led to the Civil War were hauntingly similar to what we are now seeing play out before our very eyes. We would do well to learn about it and combat these extremists now so it never reaches that point again. I strongly recommend William Lee Miller's book "Arguing About Slavery" which delves deeply into the political dynamics of national politics leading up to the Civil War. His portrait of the bullying and bellicosity of the pro-slavery politicians and the docile, timid, ever accomodating northerners who comprised the majority is frighteningly familiar. In the end, however, the majority did what was required to check the insane, violent and reactionary forces of the status quo who fought change every step of the way since the signing of the Declaration of Independence decades previous.

I also highly recommend the following excerpt from Chapter 17 in US Grant's memoirs that describe the atmosphere in St. Louis, MO at the outset of the war. Armed traitors had joined together on behalf of the Confederate cause and established a base they called Camp Jackson in the City and intended, I believe, on seizing the Federal armory. United States troops captured them and put an end to that. Grant comments on the atmosphere in the city on that day. To me anyway, it is very easy to imagine that scene because it is so similar to the dynamics we see today and have been seeing the past few decades as the right has gained strength and torn our country down at every opportunity.

Here's the excerpt from Grant:

Up to this time the enemies of the government in St. Louis had been bold and defiant while Union men were quiet but determined. The enemies had their head-quarters in a central and public position on Pine Street, near Fifth--from which the rebel flag was flaunted boldly. The Union men had a place of meeting somewhere in the city, I did not know where, and I doubt whether they dared to enrage the enemies of the
government by placing the national flag outside their headquarters. As soon as the news of the capture of Camp Jackson reached the city the condition of affairs was changed. Union men became rampant, aggressive, and, if you will, intolerant. They proclaimed their sentiments boldly, and were impatient at anything like disrespect for the Union. The secessionists became quiet but were filled with suppressed rage. They had been playing the bully. The Union men ordered the rebel flag taken down from the
building on Pine Street. The command was given in tones of authority and it was taken
down, never to be raised again in St. Louis.

I witnessed the scene. I had heard of the surrender of the camp and that the garrison
was on its way to the arsenal. I had seen the troops start out in the morning and had
wished them success. I now determined to go to the arsenal and await their arrival and
congratulate them, I stepped on a car standing at the corner of 4th and Pine streets, and saw a crowd of people standing quietly in front of the headquarters, who were there for the purpose of hauling down the flag. There were squads of other people at intervals down the street. They too were quiet but filled with suppressed rage, and muttered their resentment at the insult to, what they called, "their" flag. Before the car
I was in had started, a dapper little fellow--he would be called a dude at this day--stepped in. He was in a great state of excitement and used adjectives freely to express his contempt for the Union and for those who had just perpetrated such an outrage upon the rights of a free people. There was only one other passenger in the car besides myself when this young man entered. He evidently expected to find nothing
but sympathy when he got away from the "mud sills" engaged in compelling a "free people" to pull down a flag they adored. He turned to me saying; "Things have come to a pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own flag. Where I came from if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to." I replied that "after all we were not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be; I had not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one; there were plenty of them
who ought to be, however." The young man subsided. He was so crestfallen that I believe if I had ordered him to leave the car he would have gone quietly out, saying to himself: "More Yankee oppression."