Right.

So’s your mother.

moonraven, you are such a racist.

There is no confederacy of dunces without our rsident ozark hillbilly.

No peace without justice.  I agree.

There is no catfight without Moonraven.

There is NO peace without justice.

Peace.

Samson, good point.

Which is why VOTING IS FOR SUCKERS.

Oops:  Forgot my final point:  The Bureau of Indian Affairs is a US government agency under the aegis of the US Department of the Interior.  It has never upheld any Native American interests against ITSELF.

Duh.

Nor has it provided adequate housing, health services, electricity, running water, schools or anything else that it was MANDATED to provide to Native Americans with the money from whose penny-ante land and mineral leases it holds in (dis)trust.

Your chance acquaintnaces with native folks and friends remind me of a friend of mine from Germany who said he was damned sick and tired of folks in the US thinking that they were entitled to a EU passport because a german shepherd ran through their back yard once.

When the left stops being wimps, the Democrats are
doomed.  Because a strong and honest left could never
support this Democratic Party that’s gone further to
the right than Nixon and which now seems to be passing
Reagan doing warp speed to the right ... and still
accelerating.

gerard:

When all personal racist attacks fail, the racist ALWAYS starts in with how he or she once had a friend who was a Native American!  Never fails.  It’s the old My friend was a Good Indian (remarkable, considering that white slogan of The only good Indian is a Dead Indian still holds forth) and you must be one of the Bad Indians because you won’t just Move on and forget that I have had my foot on your neck and want to keep it there.

As if my saying that I have had white friends meant anything at all.  Or that getting my PhD at Univ. of Massacusetts in literature 40 years ago required me to read mostly white writers meant anything.  I have even taught university courses in British Lit and US Lit.  So what?  I have also taught courses in World Lit—where most of the writers were non-white nd none of them was a Native American.  So what?

Custer Died for Your Sins came out in the 60s.  Despite your claim to be 98 years old (and you are not nuts, no way????!!!!) you did not read it then.  And in any event, like all white racists, your behavior a number of years later, which SHOULD have improved, shows that you did not believe it had anything to do with you.  MKoreover, your behavior on these recent threads indicates that you still believe that it has nothing to do with you.

The other two books you mentioned, by Sherman Alexie (I suspect you saw the film Smoke Signals, though—and it was “cute”) and House of Dawm by Momaday—they are novels.  They are not history.  You have read nothing of Ward Churchill, and he is the heavy-hitter to date.  Moreover, there are thousands of books by native writers out there—many of them drop dead excellent.

Next time you come screaming after a native person with your scalping knife out, at least have the courage to withstand that native person’s resistance instead of pulling a wounded little girl routine which may have worked 90 years ago with your white parents but which cuts no ice with me.

Now, once and for all, WE ARE DONE HERE.

vector:

gerard came after ME.

Wailing and screeching like a banshee because I said her heo Hedges was weak.

When I told her to go away, she started snivelling and puling and whining about how I’d hurt her self-esteem and her feelings.

I am undr absolutely no obligation to continue interchanges with folks who have a racist bee in their bonnet and an empathic wall regarding the non-white experience thicker than the Great Wall of China and who want to attack me.

It is up to me to decide to whom I will respond, and with whom it is possible to have a dialog.

Give me a break here.  The little whiner wound your spring.

being forced to buy shit insurance when I have no money
should be unconstitutional, but since when does our
rulers really care about constitutionality (i.e.,
NDAA)?

What Obama is really saying is that the Big Health
Care Corporations bought this law fair and square. 
And that we shouldn’t let any minor little details
like rights and liberties get in the way of the
corporate profits that Obama and the bought-off
Congress promised those big corporations.

By the way, Obama complaining about his Supreme Court
is rather funny since Obama help make sure Roberts is
on this court.  Oh, in a meaningless final vote on
confirmation, Obama voted against and spoke some
meaningless words.  But the really important chance
to stop Roberts from being on the court was a
filibuster, and Obama stood right beside Roberts and
voted him onto the court that day.

A Supreme Court that overturned MORE laws from our
current bought off Presidents and Congress would be a
blessing upon this land.

Wow, reading all the comments to this article confirms all is as expected in the
land of hate, anger, and coors lite !

gerard said:

The main point is precisely in this quoted sentence from Donne quoting Obama: ” ...that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint—that an UNELECTED group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law….
Because: In overturning previous legislation on health care, as complicated and yet as vitally necessary as it is, in effect, all the time-consuming haggle that finally achieved it is also discarded.
Hence, another time-consuming haggle will result during which millions will go without, or with less, health care because there is nothing else in place. 
  And of course this UNELECTED group will not
suffer at all because of the lapse. Even a bad health care bill, once passed, ought to remain in force until the details of an improved one are worked out, agreed upon and passed.
  Will this be the case?  And to what extent?

I’m glad I’m not the only one who worries about all the effort, argument, compromise, democratic process, time, and money that was spent on this legislation… and it all could be made null and void by five people. Unlike the Leftists bloggers here I have respect for those five people, but really its a staggering amount of power. There is a process, a just result that the people are groping towards. It isnt perfect but its the process. I am not saying that i like the legislation, but i care about the process which is about to take a devastating hit.

This scenario that we are in now reminds me of the abortion ruling of Roe vs Wade. A few men in black overthrew the all the evolving legislation and nulled the political debate that was going on in every state in the Union. Whatever we were moving toward was thrown out.

I do revere the Constitution. I am not a lawyer, I am not claiming to know what is actually correct in a legal sense. But it seems to me that some people on both sides of the aisle are afraid to let the democratic process work… and i think in the end it would work.

As it stands now, the Supreme Court is ever more important to control, and although i am glad as a conservative that we arent in an absolute minority there, i wish the Supremes… as well as the other two branches of government, werent so damned important to get control of. The days are coming when one size will fit all, and nobody wants the opposition to determine what that size will be. It results in an existential struggle and we all know it.

Also, I agree with ElkoJohn,l

Obama is a Trojan Horse and E.J. Dionne, Jr. is just another “tool” trying to sell us a “good Cop”.

Correction;

I wrote; “Should any of us have the right to Banish those who we agree?”

It should have said:

“Should any of us have the right to Banish those who we disagree with?”

Hold on E.J.
Obama, a Constitutional law professor,
said the Supreme Court should not throw out
a law passed by a democratically elected Congress.
GIVE ME A BREAK.
With his version of the Patriot Act, and the NDAA,
Obama has done more to destroy our Bill of Rights
than any past President.

Several things I have learned as a result of recent altercations with MoonRaven online here:
1.  I don’t do well with authoritarians. This was not new information for me; it’s been true for most of my 98 years on this earth. Something about me just drives them crazy, sorry to say, and it pretty well disqualifies me as a “peacemaker.”
2.  The virulent and long-untreated disease of racism is invidious and deeply rooted in America as well as in many other places.  At least here it’s coming out into the open where it can be observed, recognized and perhaps dealt with over time and healed if not cured.
3.  Talking about it (sometimes? usually?)makes it worse.
4.  We might all benefit from learning more about the South African experiment of Post-Aparteid Recon-
ciliation.
Note for MoonRaven:  I bought and read “Custer Died for your Sins” when it first came out some years ago.
I also read “Smoke Signals” and “House Made of Dawn.”
Through the years I have been in touch with the Friends Committee on National Legislation who have a section working with Native Americans and maintaining contact with legislators and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (so-called) upholding the interests of Native Americans against the U.S. government. I once had a Lakota friend from Four Corners. While teaching in Japan I hosted four Navajos and an Apache who came to visit my classes and my home, to the benefit of all concerned including several fellow-faculty members.

“Like I said:  Go away; you are just not up to the game of life. “

moonraven;

What you say maybe true but your current treatment of gerard seems to reveal more about your lack of “mercy” than anything else. Should any of us have the right to Banish those who we agree? If so, what makes this site any different from the many other “intolerant” so-called Liberal blogs like FDL, Daily Kos… who only allow the “cool kids” to play?

Ah, but gerard, racist folks like you say much worse things to me every day—right here on this site.  The difference between you and me in that regard is, being non-white, I have had to grow a very THICK skin.

Stop sniveling about your hurt feelings, and go read the books I recommended. 

And then read the ones in the bibliographies of both of them.

If you keep going, maybe be the time you are my age
you will have grown up a little.

But I am not betting even an Indian head nickel on you.

MoonRaven:  “Like I said:  Go away; you are just not up to the game of life.”
  Just think about what you said. Think how you would feel if someone said that to you.

You are pretty thin-skinned for someone with an empathic wall thicker than the Great Wall of China, gerard.

So long as you keep shrilling and harping that you are not racist, that everything was all in the past with your ancestors, I’m not giving you anything but an F—for Fake.

And I am not classifying you by your race, but by your racist behavior and your hissyfit tantrums of denial on this site.  I don’t need to know your history to do that.

If you think I “chewed you out”, I’d hate to see you try posting your disingenuous denial of genocide on a Native American issues site.

Like I said:  Go away; you are just not up to the game of life.

Well MoorRaven, you have now chewed me out to the nth degree.  I doubt that it made you feel any better.  It certainly was a thorough wipe-out for me and has reduced my self-esteem to the place where I am tempted to quit commenting entirely.
  But I am not going to quit.  Why?  because although I “understand your pain” to some degree at least, I also understant that I am not racist though I know that this country as a whole is very racist, has been racist forever, and is attempting to remain racist even though racism is evil and corrupt.
  Not that I feel “better than” or “above” racism. Just that I have done as much as I could during my long life to try to get rid of it, and to some extent have succeeded in some crucial contexts such as education and personal life. So give me a B minus and let’s part as friendly enemies.  I’m sorry for all my ancestors did—whatever they did—and all I have done even unconsciously to justify your opinion.  Short of licking your boots, I can’t do more. You know nothing of my history, and so are jumping the gun and classifying me by my race—which is just another kind of racism.  Not that I blame you.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is so full of shit I almost don’t know where to start!

He somehow implies that that Obama is a modern day FDR? Anyone who has been paying attention might notice that Obama has been “slinging” Heritage Foundations ideas like like a $2 drug pusher:

Pay roll tax holiday
Cap & Trade
Individual Health Insurance Mandate

As a matter of fact he (Obama) managed to weasel through the “Pay Roll Tax Holiday” a Heritage Foundation idea to defund FDR’s baby (Social Security) something Republicans have been “pimping” for years with no success. Instead of bring back Glass-Steagall Obama and his Wall Street flunkies supported the “watered down” Volcker Rule.

The man (Obama) has stated on more than one occasion that he is presenting the very policies that the Republicans embraced in the past, yet they still refuse to “play ball ” with him?

Did any one here vote for Obama knowing that this “Trojan Horse” was going to push old (rejected) Heritage Foundation ideas?

The Ryan Budget is a masterpiece of misdirection! The plan is for fools (or trolls) like Dionne, Van Jones, MSNBC, and Current TV to keep our attention focused of this “over-the-top” decoy, while Obama and the Democrats lock in the Heritage Foundation Corporate policies the Republican failed to push through in the past. We are living through Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”

A final comment to you, gerard:

It was either incredibly silly or incredibly cynical for you to write the slogan of Latin American non-white resistance in its English version.  The original of that slogan you stole is: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.

A few decades back a prominent woman Native American writer said:  It’s not enough that they stole our land, our lives, our culture—they want to steal our souls, too.

Ward Churchill quoted that in his book A Little Matter of Genocide:  Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present.

You claim you have done all you can, yet you haven’t even read that book—which is fundamental to begin to understand race relations in the US—along with Vine DeLoria’s 60s classic:  Custer Died for Your Sins.

It’s time for you to educate yourself about the colonial settler society you live in and stop all this race-baiting silliness in internet.

gerard:

No, I did not misunderstand your comment.

I was describing YOUR divisive behavior on this site, and pointing out that you were in no position, therefore, to pretend to advocate unity.

Are you really so incapable of analyzing your behavior on this site as you claim to be?

And are you really so deliberately ignorant that you believed that when a white brit and a black guy from the US sang Ebony and Ivory that everything on the planet was hunky dory and we all capered off into The Rapture together holding hands?

Nobody is his right mind is going to “work together” with his enemies just because they tell him that those glass beads are worth ten times what his beaver pelts are. 

You, just like Obama, are just “shuckin’ and jivin’”, trying to play everybody else for a sucker to advance your own agenda.

MoonRaven:  You misunderstood my “Divide and conquer” comment.  Sorry for that.  What I meant was a warning that unless we all work together—and I mean across class, culture and race—we probably cannot achieve the kind of changes we all want to see.

gerard:

You’ve been playing divide and conquer right here in River City.

White privilege nostalgia against indigenous grievances.

Suck it up:  There is not room on the Forbes list of billionaires for all white folks.

You are very quick to tell others with LEGITIMATE grievances to “move on and play nice”.  Try doing it yourself.

It’s like when the baby burps and the delusional parents say:  Look, he’s trying to talk. 

Obama did not “stop being a wimp” when he made suggested that if the court decided the individual mandate was unconstitutional (which I believe it is), then the court would be acting improperly.  If Congress passed it, Obama suggested, then it is constitutional.  It was a stupid comment from a legal perspective, as well as wrong, and Obama knew it when he said it.

The purpose of the comment was strictly about politics.  If the court overturns the mandate, Republicans will undoubtedly argue that Obama was unconstitutional in promoting this law, is therefore a despot and must be thrown out of office.  Obama is simply trying to weaken their position by arguing, in advance, that if the court throws out the individual mandate, then the court is guilty of “judicial activism,” which is wrong.

It’s a real shame Obama never takes a stand on anything that matters to working people.  He never took a stand for medicare for all or even a public option.  He sold out to the insurance and drug companies, and now all the democrats are cheering as if this was the greatest law ever passed.  It isn’t.  It’s essentially meaningless, solves little, simply gives more money to corporate interests, and still leaves many Americans unable to afford healthcare.  It was a kick the can down the road law, a coward’s law.  At the least, Obama could have been honest with the public about what he was doing (helping a very few people but not fundamentally solving the cost problem).  Instead, we’re hearing this nonsense.

For my own perspective, the failure to provide a non-profit option for the uninsured, unemployed, people over 50, was criminal.  These are the people who most need medical care, who are being thrown out of work and not re-hired, now left to die by cowardly democrats.  Thanks for nothing.

What a bore! Romney or Obama? At this stage does anyone with more than a double digit IQ believe there is a difference? As Progressives( not liberals or democrats or whatever )we need to continue to occupy everything everywhere, refuse to vote for either face of our janus-like duopoly, and when the numbers are tallied and it is reported that the lowest percentage of votes ever were cast but that the show will go on none the less, that will be the call for a nationwide general strike to bring this fascist monstrosity to its knees! The ballot box means nothing. As Stalin so cogently put it, it isn’t the voters but those who count the votes that determine the outcome. I’m sure we all remember the contribution of Diebold to our realization of this fact. Before this current capitalist regime can change in any meaningful and positive way it must be stopped! FREE BRADLEY MANNING & TIM DeCHRISTOPHER!!!!!!

Us ... and them.  Divide and conquer.

The Way of the Wimp
appears to be the only path
that folks who call themselves leftists
or liberals
(a term which has been so debased as to mean
a far-right fascist
here in Latin America)
are willing to take.

Why?

Cowardice,
too much comfort,
the lunatic belief that god
will appear at the last second
and tell them that it’s all been a
bad dream
and that all whites are still his chosen
ones, still have good jobs,
have universal and good health care,
and are on the Forbes list of billionaires.

Of course those of us who are not white
are SOL as part of that package.

What else is new?

Might be a good time to check on the entire population and try to find out in broad over-all terms what kind of country we want, what we can agree on, how we are going to organize, and how we are going to leave room for new and creative people-participation.
  I often feel these days like the “system” is so out of balance that it is at the tipping point and will collapse before the majority of people are even halfway prepared to inherit what’s left.
  Signs of weakness:  Poor health care for the ordinary people.  Constant wars and a military/industrial complex out of control, yet providing the bulk of employment opportunities.
General spirit of resistance to and fear of change.
Persecution of differences, forceful insistence on conformity and imprisonment as a method of social control. Vapid and slanted news coverage . The 99% to 1% factor. Insistent self-centered belief in “American exceptionalism.” Declining quality of public education and popularity of anti-intellectualism. Fracturing effect of persistent racism and classism. Overwillingneses to resort to militarized police control. Retreat into religious fanaticism.
  We can do a lot better, and many thousands are trying as hard as they can East, West, North, South—everywhere. “The people—UNITED—can never be defeated.”

Wimps maybe, but countering the illogical, untrue,
fantasy laden mind-wanderings of people who are
severely mentally ill is an exercise in futility.
Changing their minds is impossible because their minds
left reality about 35 years ago with the advent of
Reaganism.

The main point is precisely in this quoted sentence from Donne quoting Obama:  ” ...“that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint—that an UNELECTED group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law….
Because:  In overturning previous legislation on health care, as complicated and yet as vitally necessary as it is, in effect, all the time-consuming haggle that finally achieved it is also discarded.
Hence, another time-consuming haggle will result during which millions will go without, or with less, health care because there is nothing else in place. 
  And of course this UNELECTED group will not
suffer at all because of the lapse.
  Even a bad health care bill, once passed, ought to remain in force until the details of an improved one are worked out, agreed upon and passed.
  Will this be the case?  And to what extent?

Time to pressure the Democratic Convention to show a
Progressive face. Show a party to the left of Obama
that is as real as the tea party.  Push Obama to stop
caving.  If we can’t do it from the inside, do it
outside.

To Diego…
My sentiments exactly….
For those quasi-“strict-constitutionalists”...1 Rep per 30,
000 souls. How’s that strike ya?? Right now, we’re right
around 1 Rep per every 650,000 souls. And we wonder why
DC and its minions are showering with imported whale-ass
soap, drinking Dom for breakfast, wearing Armani to just
about everything. Engaging in Graft, Influence peddling, oil
slogging, pipeline pushing… These motherfuckers need a
lesson in humility. WE put their sorry asses in place [or, so
we’re led to believe]...and WE MUST kick their sorry asses
to the curb.
We can start by revisiting the
1. Bullshit Re-districting issues
2. Go back to the 1 rep per every 30,000
3. Make them accountable for every dime spent.
4. Create [and this puppy will be the hardest] a solid Third
Party that challenges the status quo of the hyper militarized,
hyper-sexualized, hyper masculine/Rambo-tized mentality of
the constituency.
5. Re-visit the entire Judiciary and its deliver the
comeuppance it deserves. No More Lifetime appointments,
for starters.
Damn this shit drives me nuts.

I’m afraid Obama has rolled over far too many times for me to give much credence to what he says. Talk is still cheap, even in this economy.

To all you disgusted and outraged by an admittedly slick President, you callers for
election boycotts, you whose adjectives tend toward the extreme, you callers for
election boycotts or a vote for somebody named Joe the Plumber (remember him?): 
just do it.  Stay home.  Vote for Joe the Plumber.  And find a blog you like.

It was nice to see Barry finally start to talk tough again. Then I remembered, he did the same thing in 2008, then sold us down the river on healthcare and financial reform, all the while assassinating anyone that gets in his way (think about it, if he so casually orders the death of people in the international arena, what’s keeping him from doing it here?)

Orwell would be proud.

@dorn

Didn’t realize the “99%” had sworn fealty to president Obama. My how
easily a good movement can be co-opted by the very forces it protests. Go
ahead and join the cult of personality but know that you do so in lock-step
with those who also worshiped president Bush regardless of his stance or
action. Our problems will be solved by allegiance to issues and thought, not
people.

Welcome aboard, all you strict constitutionalists.  Single payer, good; ACA bad.
Court good; Obama bad. 
I wish you people could find a blog you liked, so you could play with yourselves
and not make the rest of us 99% watch.

I would simply add to Bill’a poignant remarks that in their questioning of
the law, it was the conservative side if the bench that stated a single payer
or socialized system specifically would be constitutional while the liberal
members waged just as partisan an argument in favor of the mandate. I’m
curious where Dionne’s tirade has gone for acts of the SCOTUS that do
warrant such criticism: namely Citizens United and the draconian limits it’s
placed on class action suits for discrimination. Those democracy destroying
rulings are lost in the pundits’ race to remain commercially relevant. Our
only solace with each passing day is to reach a new low in the pathetic
hope that we forget yesterday’s unimaginable atrocity. Thanks EJ.

When did Obama ever stop being a wimp, DJ?  After he sold out universal health care for all to the mega-profits of health insurance corporations?  Come off it, what pandering.  Disgusting.

Pure BS, E. J.  I would have hoped for better from you.

The ‘individual mandate’ is a clear over-reach, and the attempt to distort the Commerce Clause even further beyond recognition to support it is pathetic.  Furthermore, there is no NEED to do so, since a Constitutional approach to providing universal access to health care (REAL universal access, which the Affordable Care Act fails to provide:  the CBO estimates that well over 20 million people will STILL uninsured by 2019) already exists:  extending Medicare to cover everyone.

Medicare for All would also handle the most serious non-Constitutional problem that the ACA faces:  its staggering cost (not only due to lack of cost controls but by virtue of its funneling health-care dollars through bloated and inefficient private insurers, which all by itself drives up costs by about about 1/3 over a Medicare for All system).  The only reason the overall cost of the ACA came out looking even half-tolerable was the inclusion of long-overdue oversight to reduce Medicare fraud which had nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the bill but provided nearly $50 billion in annual savings which made the total package look reasonable (so we should obviously retain that measure while discarding the rest).

Whether one considers the ACA an incompetent attempt to salvage something (ANYTHING) out of the fiasco that the health-care ‘reform’ process constituted or a cynical ploy to improve access to care in a manner that would keep major campaign donors extremely happy (by conferring upon them guaranteed profit margins, an additional 30+ million customers, and government subsidies to ensure that premiums, no matter how high, would be paid), it just isn’t what we need and will fail of its own weight if we don’t discard it first.  So let the Court do its job, and then we can go about creating the REAL solution to our long-term health-care problem that our elected leaders so conspicuously failed to do with the ACA.