After the wingers ridiculed the Obama stage set in Denver (they didn't recognize the White House motif that was so evident and thought that it was fashioned after the Parthenon, duh!)

Not to be outdone, the RNC is frantically erecting their own monolith in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

http://tiny.cc/RNCset

I've read enough stories like this in the last few years to conclude that we cannot trust the police, that the police are our enemies, not our friends, and that all the post-arrest lawsuits and damage awards are merely the costs that our lords and masters are willing to pay for in order to prevent dissent.

I never thought that I woud agree with G. Gordon Liddy on anything, but he was right: the police are nothing but jack-booted thugs.

GG... You beat your chest like some sort of rabid revolutionary but it's all confined to comments you leave here. I didn't see you at any of the protests in Denver or here. I've repeatedly invited you to post whatever protests and events you're organizing -- and promised I would do what I could to promote them -- and you never answer, because you do nothing, while attacking everyone who does things for not doing enough.

He is resentful because he is angry. He is angry because he feels powerless. He feels powerless, like those misguided "anarchists" (who shouldn't be concerned with power, political or otherwise) because he fails to understand, like Dennis Perrin and those "anarchists," what Glenn and Billmon and anyone else who has taken the time to analyze the situation long ago recognized:

As imperfect a party as it is, the Democratic party is the only vehicle... I'll let Billmon say it. He says it so much better, not that misguided angry fools like adnoto would ever listen:

My discontents are probably shared by many of you, maybe most of you: The overpowering influence of corporate money, the puerile cluelessness of the Democratic consultant class, the repeated betrayals of those who most need the party to stand and fight for them (Biden, cough, bankruptcy "reform") And my biggest policy heartache: The party's reflexive support for a completely deranged "bipartisan" foreign policy agenda -- the very parade of folly that landed us in Iraq and is now stumbling on in the general direction of Tehran (or the Russian frontier, or both).

Mostly, I just wish the party would grow a backbone, or at least an exoskeleton -- anything that would keep it standing upright in a fight, instead of collapsing into a quivering blob of goo whenever the battle heats up. I disagreed with the late Steve Gilliard about many things, but I always agreed with him about one thing: The need to fight back.

But there are loyalties that go deeper than policies, deeper than ideas, deeper, even, than folly and cowardice. When I turn on the TV and see the crowd at a Democratic National Convention -- black and white and every shade in between, Anglo and Hispanic, gay and straight, old and young, Jew and gentile, I know somewhere deep down in my gut that those are my people, the Americans that I want to be my fellow Americans.

Maybe that emotional loyalty is why I've never quite been able to throw in my lot with the Greens or the Democratic Socialists or Ralph Nader (in the latter case it also helps that the guy is a complete asshole), even though their beliefs and positions are probably closer to mine than the Democratic Party's will ever be, even in the Glorious People's Republic of Obamastan.

For better or worse, the Democratic Party is the rock; all else is the sea -- to steal Frederick Douglass's old line about a different (very different) Republican Party. It's the only political organization in the country that offers even a remote prayer of advancing a progessive agenda.

But that's pretty weak beer most days: More of an apology than an argument.

This evening, though, I watched something happen that I was solid sure would never happen in my lifetime, or probably my children's lifetimes: A major American political party just nominated an African American as its candidate for the presidency of the United States -- the big job, the Leader of the Free World, the whole enchilada...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/27/185922/893/893/576781

It's not perfect by a long shot and even I would prefer a system that allowed more political participation by doing away with winner take all elections and even the electoral college. I think it would make American politics more in tune with and responsive to the majority of the electorate, and less inclined to these bizarre and paradoxical electoral results, than any other action one could take, but there it is. You have to go to the polls with the electoral system that you have.

For writing about this. Last night when I read your posts and saw the video, I became very depressed.

I did a cursory check at CNN.com but found nothing last night. This doesn't seem to be a headlining story for the MSM. I'm not surprised.

We can always rely on you for accurate, no-bullshit analysis, with always a high regard to principle.

There is something wrong with you people. I am literally both shaking with rage and sick to my stomach. You disgust me.

Jebbie's joke hit a nerve. My acknowledgement also hit a nerve and for that, I apologize. I meant no offense to you, nor did I mean to diminish the severity of what happened in the raids.

But seriously, Adnoto, what have you done? For all your protestation about how lazy the rest of us are, giving lip service to causes via our computers, what have you done? Me? Well, I have aided in airlifts to refugees in war-torn countries, I've worked for an organization to abolish the death penalty, I've tutored homeless children, I've helped newly arrived political refugees to get back on their feet, I've raised money for an organization that offers bilingual education and desegregation assistance to public schools, I've volunteered at a state mental institution, I've protested war, and I've researched injustice in urban areas and written about countless ethics violations of government officials. Do you want me to go on?

While I and others here might enrage you, perhaps you shouldn't judge us without knowing who we and what we've done. And if a moment of levity helps ease the oppression of the continued abuses of the Bush Administration, allow us to be human and enjoy that moment.

Take a moment for yourself to step back and calm down. Channel your rage into something positive. Do something with all of the pent-up energy you have, because yelling at posters at UT really doesn't contribute much.