HAPPY T-DAY!!

Circular Firing Squad

Thanks for the reminder, Kevin Drum!

Drum (11/13/13):  ...anyone over the age of 40 knows that Clinton lived through an eruption of right-wing rage that was every bit as bad as what Obama has gone through. Even the specific obsessions of the wingers weren't even very different. Health care socialism? Check. Economy-killing taxes? Check. Gay rights destroying America as we know it? Check. Supposed juvenile drug use? Check. Endless faux scandals and corruption? Check. Government shutdown? Check. Deficit hysteria? Check. Ball-busting wife? Check. The similarities, frankly, are pretty stunning."

And yet how often do we liberals say it's worse this time because the President is black?

How often do we write off the Tea Partiers as racists?

And how is that helpful exactly?

Not only is it poisonous to civil dialogue, it seems naive when we need only look back at how the last Democratic administration was treated...  (Clinton murder conspiracies?  Check.) 

Of course racism is still extant in our body politic -- race has played a prominent and punishing role in our country since its inception  -- and elites have used it to divide us down through the annals of history, so...

given this bloody past, shouldn't we treat racial matters with care?

Does it really serve progressive interests to label millions of Americans racists so, uh, liberally?

Because when we assume to know the hearts of millions of fellow citizens and cavalierly (if not claravoyantly) call them racists, we serve the plutocratic desire to divide and conquer.

99% are easy to beat when we're all in a circular firing squad!

"The more you think, the more you stink"

Producer, David Briggs:

when I first got to L.A. I got invited to Radio Recorders to see Ray Charles, and I walk into the studio, and Ray’s playin’ all the piano parts with his left hand, reading a braille score with his right hand, singing the vocal live while a full orchestra played behind him. So I sat there and I watched. And I went, “This is how records are made. Put everybody in the fuckin’ room and off we go.” In those days everybody knew they had to go in, get their dick hard at the same time and deliver. And three hours later they walked out the fuckin’ door with a record in their pocket, man.

Respect.  Read the rest here.

Thank you, Sophie

She was our rabbit's foot during game 7 in 2010... 

and I'd like to think she had that same effect on the game tonight.

Lakernation thanks you, Sophie... RIP...