There *are* no liberals

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My heading is an exaggeration, since Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alan Grayson qualify. But this is a point I've been trying to make more and more for the past 8 years. This piece by RJ Eskow makes the same point, but mostly not as directly as it could be made. Here's the guts of it:

Since his re-election, Barack Obama has proposed to cut Social Security, echoed the deficit hysteria of the right, continued to negotiate NAFTA-like trade deals in secret (hidden from Congress and the public but available to 600 “corporate advisors”), and continued to privatize the military/national security state. (He has also pursued the most aggressive anti-whistleblower presidential campaign in American history.)

And yet 85 percent of registered Democrats either “somewhat approve” or “strongly approve” of Obama’s performance, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. While the level and intensity of Democratic support has dipped somewhat, these figures are still surprisingly robust for a President who moved to cut Democrats’ signature achievement – Social Security – and whose other economic policies are so out of line with his party’s base.

Eskow's point is that corporations are using social policy to distract liberal voters from issues of economic justice just as conservatives have been doing with "Kansas" for decades. Democrats and progressive-type voters will tolerate an awful lot of right-wing economic engineering from their liberal heroes as long as they are on the right side of the gay-marriage and immigration arguments.

Since Day 2, the Clintons, in my view, have been the archetypal smiling-faces-sometimes conservatives---every bit as despicable to me as Joe Lieberman. They know how to charm you into silence as you watch them steal the silverware. President North Star earned a lifetime membership in that club of vipers upon following his terrific New-Deal-type inauguration speech rhetoric with centrist appeasement... as if Social Security is his to compromise away. At this point I think I'd rather have Rand Paul than Hillary Clinton as the next president.

Democrats are Tylenol: they keep the fever low enough that the virus can stay in command.

Maybe he could move to Arizona [updated]

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It may be the case that George Zimmerman now sees Florida's Stand Your Ground law as a sort of double-edged petard:

His brother said the former neighborhood watch volunteer was still processing the reality that he wouldn’t serve prison time for the killing, which Zimmerman, 29, has maintained was an act of self-defense. A jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder late Saturday night and declined to convict him on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

However, with many critics angry over his acquittal, his freedom may be limited. “He’s going to be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life,” Robert Zimmerman Jr. said during an interview on CNN.

Somebody should have thought about that before, as Johnny Cash once described it, he shot a man in Sanford just to watch him die.

It's a counter-intuitive outcome, though: when you "stand your ground" it comes to pass that your "freedom may be limited." Maybe even as much as Trayvon Martin's.

Update:  now, according to a musician's son, there's evidently stand your ground, freedom-of-expression style:

Lester [Chambers] was just assaulted on stage at The Russell City Hayward Blues Festival by a crazed woman after dad dedicated ‘People Get Ready’ to Trayvon Martin. He is on the way to the hospital now.

Tick tock Tick KOO-koo!

Vocabulary builder

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From an interview show on my local public radio station, I just learned that there is an engineering term of art for the stuff that comes out of the rear end of an aircraft jet engine that has "ingested" a bird. They call it "snarge."

Thank you for your attention in this matter.