Letters to the Editor
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@FaulknerJr
Don't be so shocked about how Obama managed to survive his childhood with a single mother on welfare. She wasn't all that single - she divorced and re-married. He attended good schools, and his mother was only briefly on public assistance. Obama attended top quality schools and almost assuredly never went hungry. Portraying himself as the son of a "single mother on welfare" is a gross distortion, if not a flat out lie. When people hear "single mother on welfare" they tend to think about women living in poverty, struggling to raise their child. Obama's mother was highly educated and his grandparents were financially secure and resourceful enough to get him into a top private school in Hawaii. He wasn't upper class, but he hasn't exactly risen up from the streets, either.
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lj Blaming race
It seems to me that most of the letters blaming race for Obama's primary results in West Virginia and similar states come from residents of those states. According to people who claim to speak for their immediate families and neighbors, race was a big factor in the Clinton vote. We'll see, if Obama is the candidate, how important that turns out to be in the general.
The letters which blame Obama for not spending more time in these states set the bar pretty high: he is spending his time in states he can win. That's not dismissive, it's smart. If he spent last week in Kentucky instead of Oregon, he'd still lose Kentucky and maybe lose Oregon. If you were trying to win the nomination, what would you do?
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Sincere Question for Joan:
Are you hoping/thinking that the superdelegates will look to Hillary and grant her the nomination?
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farallon on lack of diversity
I've been away for a long time, and now live in Cambridge, MA, one of the most liberal and diverse places in the country; when I go home, the "whiteness" of my hometown is staggering. There is no diversity, period. And it's not just racial, or ethnic; people from the big cities are "different." Outsiders are, well, outsiders.
You could almost be describing Irish South Boston.
Ignorance, in the profound sense, is not unique to Appalachia, nor to places far from urban centers. Yes, people with wider horizons tend to be more open-minded, but urban life is a guarantee of neither wealth nor education, and neither wealth nor education are themselves any sure antidote to ignorance. Look at how many rich college-educated people take anything they read in Time seriously.
Most people in Appalachia, like most Americans, know well enough what's right and what's wrong — but like most Americans are prone to being influenced by stupid ideas that sound good. They're in the grip of one right now — one that led them to supporting all kinds of men for president who were as far from their way of life as you could expect.
So the way of life explanation doesn't pass muster. Neither does the stereotype of the irredeemable redneck, nor does the myth of betrayal by liberal elites.
It's that Appalachia is sick. It's sick of an overdose of right-wing mythmaking.
Fixing the situation doesn't require turning hillbillies to bobos. Nor does is it amenable to simply showing up more often.
What's required is that the Democratic party find a way to reach people that will cure them of that same affliction that, honestly, still has much of America — even the liberal part — in its grip.
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@Amity
Nicely said. Thanks.
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the gop is done. fear them not. how many of these traitors avoid jail I'll never know
I do know, but that's another topic for another day. Cronie terrorist fascists.
"It seems to me you’re being awfully evasive and I don’t know why you can’t tell this committee whether you, in fact, had a discussion about this rule or that rule…either you did or you didn’t and I don’t know why you can’t tell us that information.
“I will have you physically removed if you don’t stop.”
Why is it that conservatives consistently appoint people to head agencies who have nothing but contempt for the issues those agencies are supposed to oversee? Well, I guess they can’t later claim that their self-fulfilling prophecy of “government is the problem” is true. The problem lies not with government, but rather with the stooges who run the government and appoint their incompetent cronies to fix problems they have no intention of fixing.
"
Maybe all the fascist sabotuer for profit should be physically be removed. :)
they would do it to us. At some point their treason must be addressed. If we can get through one election without their garbage and criminality
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Appalachia
I am absolutely horrified by the hatred for Applachia in these posts. What is the difference (except location-urban America, Appalachia- between people (of any color) who are poor, who are out of jobs, who only want to do their best, scrounge a meal for themselves and their kids and their elders) between them and us?
I think I've said this badly here, with too many parentheses. But what IS the difference between them and us, except luck? Why, how, can you write off these differences? How can you hate and disparage them this way?
I know it's not to the point, but someone needs to remember, that Appalachia is where some of our American best, our most indiginous music comes from: Bluegrass, Old Time, Black Blues.
What can you be thinking of, to parse out hatred this way?
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@
>Who's talking about starting?
You were, in your first post addressed to me. Don't you read what you write?
>You wrote as if the entire revolution happened in Boston and Philadelphia.
No, I emphatically did not. I wrote that other States played their part, but the fact remains that the two most significant events did, in fact happen in, Philadelphia and Boston, and, to a lesser extent, Northern, Tidewater Virginia.
>So Philadelphia hosted the Continental Congress. The delegates came from all over. And much of the war, from the Green Mountain boys to Saratoga to King's Mountain, was fought in the Appalachian Mountains. By Appalachian people.
That's nice. But most of those battles are footnotes, not the marquee stuff. And there's a reason for that.
>Oh, and then there was that ignorant hillbilly named Thomas Jefferson.
Nice try, but ol' TJ was a tidewater plantation owner, not an Appalachian man. He's one of us evil coastal elites.
>Go back and look at your other posts. They are shocking statements of bigotry. That's what it's called when you paint entire groups of people with one brush.
Back atcha, hon. Like I said, respect is a two way street and we coastal urban dwellers are not going to put up with constant attacks from the rural people we've been reaching out to for decades. As others have pointed out here, we've tried to reach out and build coalitions with you people for generations and all we get for it is grief. We get racism and bigotry and called "elitist" and all manner of horseshit while the GOP steals from you and makes your children poorer. So go fuck yourselves - keep voting for Republicans and let them keep fucking you over. We're done caring. Respect is a two way street. Remember that!