John Derbyshire of National Review Online,explaining how all white Americans are festering with racial hostility under the skin: “Put me in a room with a white American for a couple of hours and I can work them round to the point where they are telling me about their last mugging, the last time some black DMV clerk insulted them, or whatever. And when you get your white American to that point, the mixture of relief and rage with which it all spills out is like a boil bursting.”

He then goes on to explain that “In observing American racial attitudes and politics, the interest is in the variety of ways white Americans smother their despair. Some, of course, don’t. They are the kind of people whose groups you find on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘hate’ list, though many of them are not noticably hateful, only, as they would put it, ‘realistic.’ Hate is not a synonym for despair.”

“Not noticably hateful?” The SPLC lists the Aryan Nations, neo-Nazi groups, Christian Identity organizations (white supremacist Christian extremists), skinhead groups such as Hammerskin Nation, the KKK, the anti-gay Watchmen on the Walls and more (including black extremists, though those obviously aren’t relevant to Derbyshire’s point). Which ones does he think are the realists, pray tell?

I see the Daily News is full of letters this morning parroting the Republican Party’s latest talking points regarding Jeremiah Wright, the minister of Obama’s church and how shocked, shocked and appalled the writers are that he said America deserved 9/11 (I haven’t read his statements, so I don’t know if that’s accurate description, but it doesn’t change the point of this post).

Funny, I don’t recall a huge flood of outraged letters when Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell said the same thing right after 9/11. Or Billy Graham’s daughter, a few months later, expressed the view America had it coming. Or Sen. James Inhofe for saying that by pressuring Israel to trade land for peace, we opened a “spiritual door” for God to punish us.

None of them were ever labelled “America hating” for their statements. Nor do I recall a vast upswelling of calls for Bush to denounce Falwell and Robertson, with whom he’s claimed to discuss matters of policy and ask their opinions on such matters as selecting a Supreme Court nominee or whether to invade Iraq.

So is the horror at Wright’s statements because it’s a convenient way to target a Democrat, or because it’s more unsettling when a black man says something like that than when white guys do it? Or a mix of both?

I don’t know if anyone reading this remembers Al Capp’s old strip, about a hillbilly family in the backwoods wilderness of Dogpatch, but I do, and I’ve been reading reprints on comics.com for a couple of years now.
The reprints have been from the fifties, then last week they switched back to the start of the strip. While Capp’s writing style is still recognizable, the differences are startling.
The later strips are cartoonish in style; the earlier work is much more realistic. And the characters and situations are a lot less outrageous—the opening plot (Li’l Abner goes to stay with a wealthy relative in the big city) so far resembles a lot of City Slicker Meets Country Bumpkin stories I know of.
Nothing significant, but it’s interesting to see how the strip changed (and improved—Capp was a lot funnier as he went more over the top).

I love the stuff, but who the heck came up with the idea? How on earth did someone tink to say “Hmm, I need to put stuff in this dip … I know, some spinach and—and—artichoke!” I mean, it’s not exactly peanut butter and jelly in terms of a familiar combination, is it?

This thought being prompted by the spinach/artichoke dip I just had in a panini from Not Just Bagels off Danny Wuerffel Way (the Publix shopping center side).

The first of the two student-night performances was last night (hence my absence from City Council meeting and any possibility of liveblogging it). And it went great. The audience laughed, the cast was full of energy, our costumes look fabulous (though I have discovered that wearing garters pinches like crazy) and the audience responded well to our soliloquys. I can’t wait for tonight’s show (I think I have a couple of friends coming, which will make it even more fun).

Qwest refused to cooperate with the Bush administration in providing information on our phone records.

The CEO says that’s why the government subsequently pulled a lot of contracts from the company.

If true, that hardly fits the Bush line that the telecoms were just trying to help defend America because they’re good corporate citizens.

Director of National Intelligence Michael Mukasey to House Speaker Pelosi last week on the need to give legal immunity to telecoms who give the government our phone records: “Even prior to the expiration of the Protect America Act, we experienced significant difficulties in working with private sector companies because of the continued failure to provide liability protection for such companies.”

As I’ve said before, if the corporations were obeying the law, why would there be a problem? And if they’re not obeying the law, why should they be given immunity?

Of course, Mukasey has also asserted that the White House had no choice but to break the laws requiring warrants for intelligence wiretaps because it’s just too much darn paperwork and they might not be able to put a wiretap in place fast enough. I’ve never heard an explanation why they made no attempt to change these supposedly onerous requirements until after the programm went public.

The House, fortunately, seems to be seeing through Bush flimsy rubber-stamp-my-wishes-or-the-terrorists-will-kill-us rationalizations: The bill that was passed last week doesn’t give telecoms immunity but does allow themselves to show records to a judge to prove that what they were asked to do was within the law.

Of course, Bush has announced he’ll veto this, even if it passes the Senate. Because taking anything to a judge might reveal who the supposed “terrorists” were that the administration has been spying on, and for some reason, Bush just doesn’t want anyone to know. Gee, I wonder why?

Iraq-war supporter Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute on the next president’s Iraq policy: “No one would be so stupid to come into office, see what the situation is, and then do the wrong thing.”

Like say, responding to an attack on a terrorist group by invading a country that had nothing to do with the terrorists?

Or a pundit who continues to champion the occupation of Iraq long after it’s failed?

Of course, in the eyes of war supporters, the situation ALWAYS requires us to stay in Iraq: Either everything is improving so much, we need to allow a few months for it to work out or everything went wrong but we have a new strategy so we need to allow a few months to fix things. Anything so long as the balls stay in the air, and the troops stay out in the Middle East. The only “wrong” decision is the sane one, the one most Americans support: A gradual withdrawl.

From John McCain adviser Max Boot: “If we manage to stabilize the situation in Iraq and manage to get casualties close to zero, I don’t think the idea of having troops there is terribly controversial.”

Wow, who would have thought it? Of course, that’s like saying “If we could make people immune to all known diseases and give them the power to heal all their injuries, I don’t think people going without health insurance will still be an issue.”

Gov. Charlie Crist admist he smoked pot when younger, but doesn’t believe the laws for nonviolent drug-offenders should be changed because “I don’t want to sacrifice public safety.”

So, does he believe he should have been arrested and given the same kind of sentence drug felons today receive? Would that have been better for public safety?

If he doesn’t believe this, what makes him any different from the people getting busted today?