An interesting case study of the political fallout of Ethics Charges.  A political party does not accrue any credit for a process of “Draining the Swamp”.  Your Tom Delay situation — Ethics Committee jammed up — is equal to your Charlie Rangel situation — brought forward.  Annoyingly enough, this suggests the political impetus is kind of non-existent.
So, Charlie Rangel’s floor speech… Entertaining.  But he looks guilty.  Maxine Waters on the other hand — looks like much ado about nothing.  Look into it yourownself.

I post that basically because I’m wandering into the somewhat tired “equivalency” partisan school a little, and I wanted to offset it with some non-equivalency.  As always for these matters, the real problems in the elected government are things just legal and unquestioned understood.

A couple of years ago, there was some discussion about a poll of elementary school children — name 5 non-presidents in American history.  It might have been limited to the nineteenth century, but I don’t quite recall.  It’s a good simple poll which measures a certain zietgiest.  The answers terrified a certain segment of Conservatives in the William Buckley “Why have I never heard of this Harriet Tubman?” manner — too many March of the Rights, not enough Wright Brothers and the Inventive American Ingenuity and Expansion of America.  Why, wait five decades and I bet you Harvey Milk will appear on the list!

So, now quick!  Name the 50 Greatest Monsters in American History!  Or maybe 25…

Evidently Jimmy Carter is number one.
Frankly, this is embarrassing. Putting the Clintons, Pelosi, Reid, Gore, Sharpton, and other contemporary Democrats ahead of someone like Nathan Bedford Forest who was at least partly responsible for creating the KKK after the Civil War and spent his spare nights riding around the countryside whipping, lynching, and burning at the stake innocent African Americans demonstrates an extraordinary ignorance of American history.
Surely they could play the game of “Democrats were the Segregationists and Jim Crowists!” and put up the long list of Ben Tillman, et als.

The thing about this is that if you floated the question over to, say “Democratic Underground”, I have little doubt you’d get a similar effect.  It’s the “101 People Who Are Screwing up America” and its liberal rebuttal “101 People Who Are Really Screwing Up America“.  It’s “Liberal Fascism” and its perhaps more accurate on the continuum but tedious rebuttal.
Note on kos: the blog remains in my rss feed.  Something that popped in my mind recently — Kos actually doesn’t write anything in that blog that’s terribly interesting — anything worth reading is from other contributors.

Moving over into the fringe.  I’ve been watching prisonplanet extoll the virtues of Rand Paul.  Apparently the “Mainstream Media” has been discredited because the “Aqua Buddha” college days kidnapping story somehow or other turned out to have UNRAVELLED with its mischaracterization EXPOSED.  Apparently too the media has been exposed for its HYPOCRISY what with the lack of coverage paid to Gore and Clinton sexual assault and rape accusers.  Fox News trumpeted Juanita Broadwork until the cows came home.  Al Gore received his long spot-light in the gloom, probably overshadowing news of his legal vindication.  The Rand Paul story was treated, even by Paul’s destractors, wtih the “This isn’t the most serious of things, But…” caveat.  You see what you want to see in terms of media conspiracy.

I was curious to see if this story would be jumped on — Florida state legislator candidate calls for Internment Camp in Middle of Country for Illegal Immigrants.  Certainly the first part of the equation falls into the far right paranoid nugget of the past half century adopted by Jones.  The second part kind of doesn’t.  It was put up, though not on par with supporting Rand Paul.  The comments section veer toward the crowd voting for the candidate and favoring her Internment Camps.  I guess their paranoia can’t jump from the logic of “First they came for” over them.

Try this one for both Ideological Presentism and lack of balance.
“The contempt for ordinary Americans displayed by the ruling class is reaching critical mass. There may never have been a time in American history when the governing, academic, cultural, and media elites have been more manifestly disdainful of the country’s values, traditions, principles, and people.”
You know, absent knowing this came from the National Review, and particularly stopping at the end of the first sentence, I could swear this would veer into the territory covered here — where our acceptable high employment has become a bargaining chip.  No.  Mostly this is cultural claptrap.

Take the Muslim Community Center.  It’s being built at the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory some blocks away from the spot where a group of Muslims killed a whole heck of a lot of Christians, Jews (never mind the anti-semitic conspiracy theory that the state of Israel let them know), Atheists, Muslims, etc.
Well, this is stupid.

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