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Cliff Green says:

It’s may be easy to be a liberal in Candler Park, but it still isn’t easy being a liberal in our region. For example, you don’t have to go far outside I-285 before you drive by the all-white “Christian Academy”, bump into home schoolers at the shopping mall, meet keep-MARTA-out-at-all-costs zealots, and confront wild-eyed pistol-wavers petrified by the prospect that one day the Second Amendment will be read accurately.
Out there in the land of the smug are those who have never had to utilize food stamps, apply for unemployment benefits, or request reduced-cost school lunches for their children. And they are more than happy to tell you so. They are kept comfortable in their self-righteousness by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and a vast right-wing conspiracy that has convinced them that each and every penny of tax money is being confiscated from “producers” and handed over to the “non-productive”, meaning minorities.
In the context of your piece, Keith, I’m not so sure a conversation with them is worth our time.

George says:

I have stopped posting anything political on Facebook due to the verbal assault on my patioritism. I think of my self as a moderate liberal. I think the decription that Mr. Graham used to define southern liberalism fits me well. I also think of myself as someone who investagates the facts before forming an opinion and making any sort of statement about an issue. Again I am absolutly insulted by the verbal assault on my postion and patroitism. I guess I have fallen into that group of Southerners that have decided not to put my self into a postion to be ridiculed, insulted, and questioned by the uninformed sheep that have become the new right wing vocal minority.

austin says:

Thanks Keith, I just spent an hour disentangling misplaced anger from a friend who continually spreads disinformation through e-mail in the guise of humor and commiseration for the poor old disadvantaged white middle-class semi-literate ideologues whose own political party long ago abandoned them even as they cling with death-grip righteousness to anti-conservative notions. It aint easy and seems futile, but thanks for the encouragement. I saw Tom Wicker on that same speaking tour. Keep up the great articles.
austin mac

Chris Wohlwend says:

Last week Howard Dean spoke to a full house on the campus at UT-Knoxville, and, as expected, made excellent points about being a liberal and taking a stand. Two audience members tried to interrupt. Both were quickly shouted down. The first one was sitting immediately in front of me, videoing the talk on a digital recorder with a label on it that said Property of the Leadership Institute. I can only assume she was sent onto campus to continue the Tea Party/Town Hall tactics of this summer. Fortunately, the rest of the audience was not having it. And, hopefully, Obama is correct in his approach and the public has had enough of Banana Republic tactics.

Cliff Green says:

Robert, a minor correction: I do not see a conspiracy among white people outside the perimeter. I find there a mindset that believes white, middle-class, Christians have become a put-upon minority in the U.S.
Pray tell, who is picking on these delicate creatures?

Brenden says:

Seems to me lib counting skills apply solely to ennumerating victims and precise tabulations of classes in which to place them, and then conjuring legal obligations from the federal gov’t accuring to those classes of victims. All, of course, based upon an unjust allocation of wealth in our society. And yet, in 2008 we spent some $2 Trillion on social programs amounting to transfers from the wealthy to the less so, according to Wikipedia. Judging by the comments I read on this website, we have gotten very little in return by aleviating the social ills about which you all complain endlessly. You all demand yet more.

So let’s do a little basic arethmetic, with the same Wikipedia data (admiting of course it lacks precision but certainly the mere invokation of facts and numbers represents a step change in intellectual discourse for Dew purposes). The poverty level for an individual is about $20k. Now, that ain’t a lot but it’s more than a little. The website further states that about 20% of the nation lives below this $20k income line, representing some 60MM people. So, on average, the average “poor” person in the U.S. receives about $33k in federal gov’t wealth transfers.

So how is it, then, that the poverty line is more than $13k less than the average allocation to the poor? There are many answers to this question no doubt (many involving racist Republicans, of course… is there another kind of Republican?). But in terms of gross measures of efficiency, the gov’t wastes in transfers to the poor 67% of the requirement to meet their needs. In light of this fact, how the hell do you all get the nerve to beg for more money and give yet more authority to the state to waste yet more money? It’s difficult to have a reasonable discussion about such topics because of its inherent absurdity viz. the fact of galactic-sized gov’t waste.

And austin: I used your own words to demonstrate your pornographic fixation upon race as the only means to advance your agenda. That is, having demonstrated the federal gov’t wastes so much in transfering America’s remaining productive assets to the poor. Playing the race card is a damnable fact of angry left rhetoric, certainly not a “Straw man,” but an essential reality of your political view. And an empty and false one that is a failed attempt to distract the observer from the real objective to plunder wealth under false pretense.

Cliff Green says:

Mandy, did you notice today that all the right-wing-nuts in the media exploded with joy when Chicago was passed over for the Olympics? Sure Chicago has problems; 0utside of Heaven, name me one place that doesn’t. But can you imagine yourself applauding the fact that some of your fellow Americans will miss out on opportunities for jobs just to try and make the president look bad? How perfectly awful can these bastards become?