more than anything else (the issues always do have some level of reality in them, but they are pushed out of proportion to mask underhanded economic issues, like TPP, by our brainwashing complicit corporate media)

I thought the confederate flag debate was sparked by the massacre of 9 black people in a South Carolina church.

How exactly does TPP figure in to all this?

of course the mainstream media didnt INVENT the issue, nor did I claim it isnt a real issue - what I'm saying is the media USES issues like these as cover for stuff like TPP

'get them angry about something else'

In order for your carefully crafted plot to work, someone would have had to hire a domestic terrorist with a hatred of black people to go into a church, to shoot nine people, to create the issue with regard to the flag, to create the climate of protest following the reaction of the families of the dead....

Sounds a bit like an impossible "House That Jack Built."

Most people CAN walk and chew gum at the same time.

but i'm not going to let you put words in my mouth

i never said the media CREATED the issue, I said they USED it as cover. and if it hadnt been this issue, it surely would have been anything else

and if the media uses an issue cynically for that purpose, it doesn't mean the issue isn't real - it's not mutually exclusive

How about "Nice halfassed thesis" in the first place....hmmmm?

A civil rights abrogation doesn't "push" a trade issue off the front pages.

That's like saying people can't concentrate on both the weather report and the hockey scores.

I don't know a soul who has that much trouble concentrating.

Some things are just NOT like others.

"straw man" you're also having trouble with the word "naive."

"Naive" does not mean--as contextually it would appear you believe--"not putting up with any nonsense."

Because, let me make this very clear--I'm not putting up with any suggestions that people here at DU--or elsewhere-- are too stupid, distracted, dumb, clueless or busy to allow a civil rights issue having to do with that ugly-ass racist flag "distract them" from the TPP issue.

If I wanted to be unkind, I'd call that kind of a stance "concern trolling." As in:

Don't talk about the confederate flag, it'll take attention away from the TPP...Oooooh noes!!!!!!

So yeah...whatever.

although I don't think you intended to

There are many low-information people that don't even know what the letters TPP mean, or what the ramifications will be. In that sense, these kind of stories are like shiny objects - they distract from the possibility that they may actually learn about the TPP.

There are a lot of potential Bernie voters that are currently ignorant of these issues. It's up to we the people to help educate them.

plenty of people, overworked and overstressed with issues in their personal lives, and just making a living to get by, who miss important things here and there, in the blur of saturation media

That was a very broad brush I used. At the same time, you just described me in this part:
"overworked and overstressed with issues in their personal lives"

I can afford a computer, and am curious enough to still be able to be informed. Everyone does not have a computer. I wish we could wean people off of corporate media. Instead of having to trust a "reporter" working for a conglomerate, "on the scene", we can see directly on twitter what the people are really saying.

Maybe but I think people are getting better at keeping their eye on the ball and this is a fight we need to have.

And Oklhoma was used mostly as a supply depot by the South. The American Indians fought on both the North and South. So the Southern swastika really has NO heritage in Oklahoma. The ONLY reason they could be flying it for is to show their bigotry and hatred for our duly elected President. I guess they just don't believe in Democracy.

The only way of solving this problem is by removing people with their mindset from society and placing their children in foster care so they can be deprogrammed and permanently placed with another family.

We also need to have a constitutional convention to change the first amendment so racist hate speech isnt included as "free speech". Enough is enough, we need to put the hammer down on these oppressive devils.

It's almost as if you got an assignment that said " for our purposes of capturing Democratic Party quotes we can use on websites and in mailers, write something over the top that confirms Ann Coulter's thesis that liberals can be as bad as Nazis".

Et Viola. I'm sure you were being darkly sarcastic?

A constitutional convention when we lead with 18 states would be a disaster. And taking kids away from parents? Yikes!!!!

Expect them to circle the wagons wherever they have already dug in.

When Used as a protest sign when Obama travels --it is NOT heritage!!


Salon.com ?@Salon

"As the Confederate flag becomes a common sight where Obama visits... what’s next: waving nooses?" http://slnm.us/8MogwYq via @joanwalsh




Thursday, Jul 16, 2015 11:49 AM CST


It’s heritage, all right: What those ugly anti-Obama Confederate flag protests really mean
As Confederate flag defenders spread beyond the old Confederacy, the banner becomes a national symbol of racism


Joan Walsh



Barack Obama; Confederate flags outside his hotel, July 15, 2015, in Oklahoma City. (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/AP/Evan Vucci/Photo montage by Salon)



The notion that the Confederate flag is merely a symbol of Southern “heritage,” detached from slavery and Jim Crow, has always been a pernicious lie. It shouldn’t have taken the murder of the Emanuel Nine, by flag-waving white supremacist Dylann Roof, to make that the new national consensus. But it did.

Now the flag’s racist meaning is crystal clear, which is why it’s becoming an ever more beloved symbol for racist morons, even outside the old Confederacy. The ugly Confederate flag tableau that greeted President Obama in Oklahoma City Wednesday night illuminated this new reality. It follows a similar protest earlier this month, when the president visited Nashville, Tenn. Over in Durant, Okla., where the president was scheduled to speak, there was also a Confederate flag protest earlier in the day.

When I first saw reports that some jerks were planning to wave the flag along the president’s motorcade route on social media Wednesday, I admit I shrugged: Another day, another angry right-wing tantrum. It’s OK, they’re losing; let them scream and rant and wave their hate banner. But the sight of the bright flags illuminated against the dark sky, just outside of Obama’s hotel, was unexpectedly vivid and disturbing. Especially since Oklahoma was never part of the Confederacy.

It reminded me of the October 2013 rally attended by Sen. Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin, to protest the closing of national monuments during the Cruz-triggered government shutdown. That protest culminated in an angry rump group heading over to the White House and waving a Confederate flag, outside the home of the black First Family. But hey, it’s “heritage, not hate.”

I’m not sure what to do with the fact that the Oklahoma City flag protest was reportedly led by a black wingnut, Andrew Duncomb, whose Facebook page features lots of smiling, flag-loving white people. (The rest of the folks insulting Obama with the flag were white, according to local news reports.) Duncomb, who calls himself “the black rebel,” is making a career out of claiming the flag really was about “heritage, not hate.” He led a pro-flag protest through the Oklahoma City metro area on Monday, joined by 30 trucks waving the flag.

...and take great pleasure in the saying.

Racist pieces of shit are butthurt because a black man is “the boss”. They never met a black person they thought was their equal. Fuck them.

I really want President Obama to close gitmo before he leaves office. Can you imagine how those teabaggers would go berserk and I wish they bust a vein but on the other hand, they will cost taxpayers a lot of money.

This President is to be admired and I loved his stance at the interview after the Iran deal, their heads were exploding but he was so calm and collected, he knew what he is dealing with. Fucking republicans blocking all the progressive changes he wanted to make because they wanted him to lose in 2012, no matter it would cost millions of Americans benefits that the current President was fighting for. The republicans do not care about the poor or the middle class, all they wanted to ensure is to block President Obama's every move for change. And 15 of these thugs are running for President, Americans must be clueless to vote for one of these assholes.

Gawd, if Biden does not run, I just hope Mrs. Clinton wins as that reality idiot trump is not an option.

Their heads exploded when President Obama was elected.

They are proud of LOSERS.

I am so tired of white fragility.

White fragility...little baby men who cannot wrap their heads around the fact that, contrary to what Alexander Stephens said in his Cornerstone speech, the people they denigrate are at least their equal. Sometimes I really am ashamed of being white when so many of my color are so obviously hateful and willfully stupid.

I grew up in and currently reside in very racially mixed communities in and around NYC, and it would have been really easy for me to have grown up believing this kind of in-your-face racism was largely in the past had I never picked up a newspaper. I'm not naive enough to think racism doesn't exist in my area, but rather that where it exists it resides deep in a closet where it belongs.

I guess that is some consolidation-it is progress to a degree that our LGBT friends came out of the closet and the racists went in.

What they're actually doing: Providing no small amount of amusement at their childish antics.

Sometimes the best thing to do is point and laugh.

They know what they are saying, they just want to have the "right" to try to say in a way that provides them the personal justification to deny it ...

they know that they are racists...what is "southern pride"? proud of a "right to work" state, on and on....................

They're proud of being part of the "Right to Be Fired Without Cause" brigade?

Proud of their own stupidity and lack of knowledge of the causes of the War of Southern Secession(The real name for what happened)?

Proud of being poor, dumb fucks?

how long does anyone think slavery would have lasted if the South had not fought? they did not have to go to war, you know. Lincoln said he would not interfere with the institution where it already existed. My guess is that it may have lasted decades longer. Meditate on that.

Point is that by seceeding the confeds shortened the life of slavery considerably.

"But I like to pretend they were Rhett Butler & Scarlett O'Hara"

Every time I see the confederate flag being waved. I say It should remind them that they LOST! And they are right when they say they will never forget that that they LOST! On their monuments it shows LOSERS!

Are you naive or just clueless? And you know you are not naive!

Strong message