Let Me Know

Thanks for the excellent “back pain” suggestions in response to yesterday’s call for help. I’ll post them tomorrow – along with the corn pudding recipe you demanded and ways to save printer ink and skip straight to “the beep.” But I don’t want to lose focus.

Today, it’s all about two Rachel Maddow clips.

When I first heard the Shirley Sherrod story – an African-American USDA employee fired for what appeared to be anti-White bias – I didn’t listen very closely. Chances are, like me, you’ve now gotten the whole story. But I urge you to watch Rachel Maddow put it all in context. Her report speaks volumes about the vast – or at least the very effective – rightwing conspiracy.

In the Sixties, there was a well-meaning “War on Poverty.” It helped a lot of people, but its unintended consequences were massive. Hopefully, we liberals learned important lessons – as when President Clinton signed the welfare-to-work reform.

Now there seems to be an altogether different kind of “war” – almost a war on the poor themselves, especially poor people of color. Someone is working very hard to feed Fox News bad information, and Fox News is obediently feeding it to a wide audience primed to want to believe it.

Watch the clip and let me know if I’m off base.

Shirley Sherrod has been reinstated. But how do you reinstate ACORN, which provided so many services to the poor? And how do you reinstate the estimated 45,000 Americans who have been dying each year for lack of health insurance the Republicans fought so hard not to extend to them?

And what are we to make of this second clip, in which Republicans gut the latest “jobs” bill of virtually all its job-creating provisions?

When the deficits were run to lower a billionaire’s tax rate on dividends from 39.6% to 15%, or to rush to war with Iraq, deficits were okay. But now, to run them to increase funding for SBA loans? Filibuster!

Watch the clips. Let me know.