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Nathan Newman on conservatives’ union bashing:

I guess the problem is that the big money folks have so much power that people feel powerless to attack them. So conservatives like Galt take advantage of that to funnel that frustration at an easier, weaker target like the transit unions, who are just trying, as New Yorkers, to take care of their families. As I said, it’s class warfare of the meanest kind, pitting the powerless against those fighting for just a scrap for themselves, while leaving those with real power untouched and undenounced.

Union-bashing and race-baiting by conservatives are linked by this strategy, seeking to distract white workers by finding scapegoats, so working class voters are divided and don’t work together to go where the real money is– the wealthy who pigged out at the economic casino in the last decades. Attack the unions, bash the minorities, pit people against each other, ignore the rich folks behind the curtain– it’s standard conservative rhetoric.

Shadow of the Hegemon writes about what Osama wants, in the process of demolishing Instapundit’s “objectively pro-Saddam” silliness:

So what does Osama really want? He wants LGF. Specifically, he wants xenophobic, anti-Islamic rhetoric designed to give westerners the impression that all Muslims are bloodthirsty sub-human zealots, so that those who are not become afraid. He wants people to say that the religion is anti-modernity, anti-science, and anti- reason, so that all those Muslims who are all three will become afraid. He wants people to say that “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to christianity” so that those who live in those countries and are devout enough to consider forcible conversion forcible damnation to become afraid. He wants the United States to invade Iraq on the flimsiest of excuses, so that they’ll know that the rule of international law is meaningless and therefore everything is fair game. He wants all of them to become afraid, and decide that before the west gets them, they’ll get the west.

Top Stories Friday 13 Dec

Digby, in Atrios’ comments writes on
who exactly broke the Trent Lott story and why it took so long for the “liberal media” to notice:

Jim Lehrer was clearly puzzled tonight as to why this story took so long to find it’s way into the media. Nobody seemed to know. But, I do. It’s because this is a political story about “character” that didn’t originate from the Mighty Wurlitzer with tidy talking points for a platoon of paid talkers to spew en masse on radio and TV. The press no longer even looks for this stuff on its own. It simply waits for it to come to them.

Tom Tomorrow got e-mail from a reader:

The occasion is the signing of the Spence / Warner Defense Spending Bill in October of 2000, and the remark–which is made by Lott to a woman standing behind Senator Thurmond, who is himself in the process of signing the bill–is NOT directed
to the senator himself, but is offered as an aside (furthermore, this event was in no way intended as a tribute to Thurmond, as the birthday celebration was, and thus seems not to have been inspired directly by any attempt to please Mr. Thurmond w/o any actual endorsement of Thurmond’s Dixiecrat platform, as Lott has claimed the birthday tribute was). The remark is exactly as follows, and though spoken off-camera, is quite audible: “Yes…he should have been elected in 1947…or 1948, it was”.)

Top Stories Thursday 12 Dec

The Sideshow reflects on why conservatives think there’s a liberal media:

It’s always so weird reading the comments on these things, with all the “conservatives” leaping out of the woodwork to insist that the media is liberally-biased. What do they mean? Where are they finding all this liberalism in the media? Do they turn on their radios and hear three hours a day of commentators who advocate lifting the cap off of the maximum salary that is subject to Social Security taxes? Does the TV news seem to be advocating a state-paid national health care plan available for free to all? Do they insist on using the proper term for late-term abortion (that was it), rather than “partial-birth abortion”, even?

Shou? talks about memories:

Living in an apartment in Beirut in 1999 and 2000, when Israeli jets bombed the Lebanese power stations to rubble (in Beirut, a 24-hour power supply was restored in 1996, a few years after the civil war), I considered myself lucky when I had power at home for more than eight hours during the day. Living in refugee camps (in 2001 and a few times in previous years), I had to adapt myself to long power cuts a few times a day, and always forgot to fill the water tank on the roof. When I would have had a full water tank on my roof here in Rotterdam, life would have been easier right now. Here in Holland we think it’s normal that everything always works. We don’t even consider the possibility that something could go wrong. We don’t prepare for the worst. In parts of Lebanon you still have to.

The Shadow of the Hegemon on how blogs helped to break the Trent Lott story:

I actually think that blogosphere politics had a hand in this one, although not in the way you’d think. The right side of the blogosphere has been making a lot of noise about how fairminded and forward-thinking they are, especially compared to the humorless and racist and sexist and P.C. left. (Nonsense, but bear with me.) Thing is, in this case, if they had let this go or tried to explain it away when people like Atrios were all over it like the proverbial cheap suit, there is absolutely no way that they could ever claim the moral high ground. So they jumped on it. (To be fair, most aren’t that fond of racism anyway; neo-cons are more libertarian than that.)

I’m not sure about Demosthenes’s last statement; in my experience there is certainly a bigoted streak in libertarian and neocon thinking; at the very least both groups tend to be extremely myopic about race relations, as well as gender and sexuality issues. Partially this may be because both groups are overwhelming made out of white boys –it’s easy to downplay the existence of racism when you’re not part of the group it is targeted at.

(The paranoia about government programs and fetishising of personal “liberty” and “responsibility” –sometimes ending up as hostility against people who cannot make it “on their own” — don’t help here as it often means libertarians/neocons oppose just those laws/programs intended to help minority or disadvantaged groups. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice this looks a lot like bigotry from the outside.)

Musings and Meanderings tells us about those scarey socialists organising for peace:

Damn those Commies! First, their sneaky pinko brain trust takes over organizations like ANSWER, then brainwash its members into fighting for peace. Next thing you know, the United States has a wussy peacenik government that can be easily infiltrated by the Trotskyites and Maoists who still roam the earth looking for fresh meat to devour. It’s Red Dawn all over again!

Nathan Newman on Affirmitive Action:

Let’s be clear– affirmative action is not payback or reparations or anything of the kind. It is not a punishment to whites, but a system of correcting for the fact that, just by being white, you get an advantage in looking for a job. You get more interviews and more consideration. You can be Brad White from the ghetto and you still have privilege compared to Tyrone Black from next door and all affirmative action does is recognize that fact and try to correct for it, imperfectly no doubt but the status quo is imperfect as well.

MyDD does a 2002 election wrapup:

What Louisiana shows is that the Democrats know how to beat Republicans– by going after them on specific (mostly farm-related) economic policies that the GOP consistently pushes, which run against the rural voters interests. This is the Bush economy that is heading into recession, and the Democrats should be under no pretense of thinking that Bush enjoys a mandate on economic policy (especially one that delivers for the multinationals against the US farmers interests). It also means that Landrieu is a new Democratic star for the Party– a southern, moderate, tested woman is probably just what they need on the 2004 ticket, and she just showed how to beat Bush.

Lean Left: where is George?

Where is George W. Bush in the firestorm around Trent Lott? Nowhere, as near as I can tell. He had Fleischer offer some weasly words of support, but has remained silent. He has yet to call for Lott’s resignation. He has yet to do anything but hide. The Democrats should not let him. By not calling for Lott’s resignation, Bush seems to be trying to have it both ways. He doesn’t want to appear to court the racists, but he certainly seems to want their votes.

Eschaton on principles:

I can’t throw my hat in with the crowd that thinks we should keep Lott around to use him for a punching bag. There are times when principle should come first, and this is one of them. It’s been outrageous from the beginning that he had his leadership position – his segregationist links are NOT new or newly discovered, no matter what some bloggers like to think. Hoping to keep him around to exploit the situation politically is a bit too cynical even for this cynic. A message should be sent that Such a Person Should Not Be Majority Leader. It’s up to the Republicans to do that, of course, but to hope for anything else is to hope for the continued legitimization of his views. It’s time for him to go. If that somehow helps Republicans, fine, because it will be the right thing to do and they should get credit for doing it (even if their motives aren’t pure – no one’s ever are in this business.)