March 2013
1 post
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Southern Mythology regarding the Civil War
There is a persistent myth held by many southerners that the reason for secession of the southern states was “states rights” rather than slavery.
Here is a link to the secession declarations of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. All four clearly state that the attitude and actions of the northern states toward slavery is the precipitating cause of the secession. The...
February 2013
9 posts
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When will we southerners stop falling for cornpone...
I’m about as southern as it’s possible to be. My family landed in Virginia in the late 1600s, worked their way southward through the Carolinas, and entered North Georgia in 1825, as a result of the removal of the Creek Indians, and the subsequent land lottery. My accent is thick enough that I’m sometimes incomprehensible to people from other regions.
Yet when I see an...
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Sorting out the Douglas County GOP racial...
The Georgia GOP, like the national GOP would really like to shake the widely held observation that they are the party of older white men. They don’t want to make changes in their attitudes toward minorities, but they’d like to present a better public relations face. They would love to stamp out the White House watermelon patch post cards, Obama food stamp cartoons, witch doctor...
Fact check of Steve Stockman's State of the Union...
jecarter4:
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Georgia Gwinnett College and Progressive Georgians
A story ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this morning entitled Tough Times at Georgia Gwinnett College.
As a Georgian I saw nothing unusual about the story. The weak commitment to education of the Republican majority in Georgia is leading to devastating cuts in yet another institute of higher learning here.
What interested me was the comments below the article. One commenter blamed the...
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Georgia Teaparty rebranding and Karl Rove
Get ready for the Tea Party vs Rove cage match. The Tea Partier on this video seems to be taking the advice of Redstate, and fleeing the tea party label, though.
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The Toxicity of the Tea Party Label
It’s clear the Tea Party is a damaged brand. The Tea Party movement pushed candidates in GOP primaries who, to the horror of the Republican establishment, suffered a humiliating string of losses.
Not only that, the number of people identifying themselves as Tea Party has dropped to around 8% of the population.
It’s gotten so bad that Karl Rove has set up a fund to fight the Tea...
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How important is the issue of who pays for GA...
This is a re-post, which I sent to my generic blog by mistake.
I have to admit mixed feelings about the news that Republicans in the Georgia Senate have asked lobbyists to pay for their committee chairs’ weekly lunches.
On the one hand it really seems to be just a modest lunch. On the other hand it makes sort of a joke of the attempts to reign in lobbyist supplied perks.
Frankly, if the $173...
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Why did Bill Heath hide behind a printer?
This could have a more general title like “Why do politicians have bizarre and stupid responses to questions or criticism?”
Bill Heath is a Georgia state senator for district 31, which covers all of Haralson and Polk counties and part of Paulding county. The area is northwest of Atlanta, on the Alabama line.
I have no reason to believe that Heath is stupider than average for a...
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WatchSome things are just too funny to describe effectively. This is GA senator Bill Heath exhibiting the dignity appropriate for a GA Republican.
January 2013
10 posts
5 tags
Why I Don't Think Barrow is the Most Electable...
There is a notion prevalent out there that the best chance for a Democrat to win the U.S. senate seat being vacated by Saxby Chambliss is to choose the admirably resilient conservative Democrat John Barrow of Georgia’s 12th Congressional district.
Even the national press is getting in on that meme in articles like this one in Salon.
I think the assumption that our task as Democrats is to...
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Why is the GOP Willing to Advance Such a Clearly...
I don’t use the word racism often in the course of political conversations. The use of the word usually generates a series of defensive and pointless insults, and doesn’t do anything to get at the root of whatever policy issue is being discussed.
But sometimes racism is the only accurate word to describe something. The attempts by the GOP to dilute the minority vote by converting a...
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My Initial Thoughts on the 2014 Open GA senate...
The news that Saxby Chambliss is not going to run creates an opening for Georgia Democrats to rebuild the party even if we don’t take the seat. Here are a few initial thoughts:
Progressives should campaign vigorously for the Democratic candidate unless it’s someone truly awful. The party is in disarray, and this is a chance to not only rebuild, but to rebuild with progressives...
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attempts to gerrymander electoral college are...
I’m going to keep this post short because the implications are so glaringly obvious that there isn’t a lot to say.
The plans being floated from within the RNC to gerrymander the electoral college so that only the white vote really counts in presidential elections are insanely dangerous. It’s a reaction to the fact that the GOP has lost the popular vote in five of the past six...
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Ayn Rand/Tea Party Asshattery and the contemporary...
I deliberately made the title of this post a bit provocative because I want to make it clear exactly what I mean, and how damaging I think the late 20th century swing to the crazy right of the U.S. political system has been. But I’m not just doing it to attack the Tea Party or the Ayn Rand followers. Their influence has peaked and is now in steep decline. Pretty soon the Tea Party...
Why Is the Pentagon Blocking LGBT and Progressive... →
monsterpolitics:
hatethepolicestate:
By Dana Liebelson
Gay and lesbian Americans have been able to serve openly in the military ever since President Obama repealed ”Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in September 2011. But online, some Pentagon computers appear to force the LGBT military community behind closed doors, blocking military users’ access to LGBT advocates’ and other progressives’ websites,...
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Until the Georgia Democratic Party gets its act...
I would love it if the national Democrats started viewing Georgia as as a battleground, and started pouring money into the state democratic party. Not only is that not likely to happen, but I think the national Democratic Party might be wasting its money at the moment if it did.
I’m reluctant to criticize people who are doing work in areas where I haven’t been involved. I’ve...
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Georgia Democrats absolutely have to get more...
Let me start with a softening statement. It isn’t the fault of Georgia Democrats that the deep South polarized to the benefit of the GOP in the years since the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We all know the story of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, to recruit the segregationists into the GOP. It was a strategy that worked for many years, until states like Georgia are practically...
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Shame on the five House members from Georgia who...
Have we come to this, Georgians? Are we at the point where we elect legislators who deny help to other Americans who have experienced a disaster.
I know many decent Republicans. We argue politics, sometimes those arguments are heated, but I consider them decent human beings.
The five Georgia members of the U.S. House who voted no to Sandy aid, Broun, Collins, Graves, Price, and Woodall...
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Happy New Year and Merry Fiscal Cliff Drama
I took a little break over the holiday week, then followed the fiscal cliff theatrics a bit. I usually focus on Georgia politics, but am going to just do a short general post to get back in the blogging habit.
Those of you who are twitter users can follow me @larryfeltonj I tend to be a bit on the zany side on twitter, since the 140 character limit lends itself to bringing out the Henny...
December 2012
14 posts
6 tags
Turn Georgia Blue precinct by precinct
It’s my firm belief that turning an entire state in a new political direction can’t be done by the media-driven methods which have been dominant in politics since radio ads (and later television ads) essentially took over political campaigning. The fight is going to be won on the ground, not on the airwaves or over the internet.
Progressives should not avoid television, the radio,...
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Progressives should avoid gun policy debate...
In the aftermath of a series of horrendous shootings there is now enough public attention on the reality of guns and violence in America that there is a real opening to move toward a sane and sensible gun policy in the U.S. The NRA was even helpful in that respect, coming across as almost comically clueless and evil in their “press conference”, which I put in quotes because unlike a...
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The NRA's antiscience campaign
I’m accustomed to the right wing in general and the GOP in particular crusading against science and research. But the shootings at Sandy Hook brought my attention to an unexpected target from the gun lobby: research on gun violence. The National Rifle Association, which acts largely as a front for the gun manufacturing industry, had its shills in Congress act to block both scientific...
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The need for a permanent "ground game"
I’m a proponent of the 50 state strategy advanced by Howard Dean when he was chair of the Democratic National Committee. Since I’m a progressive Democrat in Georgia this should not be surprising. First, Dean and his strategy are identified with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And secondly, I’m in Georgia, a state which is often ignored by the national Democratic...
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Democratic prospects in Cobb County GA
I’ve been going over census figures and county-wide and precinct election results, and there are quite a few things encouraging for Democrats, particularly considering that Cobb has been considered the Orange County of Georgia, a GOP stronghold. Here are some of the figures for Cobb County, garnered from census figures and the election results:
The overall population is 697,533 ...
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Really Democrats? We're going to help the GOP...
Really Democrats? Did the GOP just win the 2012 elections? Social Security and Medicare, the two most popular progressive social safety net programs of the 20th Century are “on the table”?
One of the GOP’s pet projects has been dismantling Social Security and Medicare. That’s what they do. It’s in their nature. It should be a deeply engrained part of the...
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How the Democrats can edge toward 50% in GA
Since I’m feeling lazy this Sunday morning, I’m going to recycle a couple of comments from a Daily Kos diary. I think the comments are a good starting point for a discussion among progressive Georgia Democrats about how we could make Georgia competitive.
I had set up a diary on Daily Kos to try to get a discussion going of the book Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic...
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Congratulations to the Democratic Party on its...
This morning I composed a message on twitter which got a pretty decent response:
Larry Felton Johnson @larryfeltonj
I want to congratulate the Democratic Party on it’s newly grown spine regarding a number of progressive issues. Let’s never get wimpy again
Aside from the grammatical error (“it’s” instead of “its”) I thought it was a pretty good...
Yelling At The TV: Rand Paul doesn't know what his... →
jecarter4:
December 5, 2012 - During a radio interview with WMAL, Senator Rand Paul made several disparaging remarks about Ashley Judd. One of these remarks revealed something I think is more important than the Senator’s anti-Judd views: Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) doesn’t know what Kentucky’s biggest…
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What would a 159 county Democratic strategy for...
I’m taking a one day break from discussing the platform of the Democratic Party of Georgia to do some general musing about political strategy.
I’ve always voted and I’ve often campaigned for candidates, but I’ve never examined the overall aims and day-to-day operations of the Democratic Party here in any detail, so writing this blog also entails a learning experience for...
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Tin foil hats, mind control, and the Georgia GOP
As I work through the guiding principles of the Georgia Democratic Party platform, one line at a time, I’m not going to focus much of the discussion on the Georgia GOP, but to talk mostly about what the Democratic Party should be doing. It’s common for minority and opposition parties to spend too much time talking about what the party in power is doing wrong, and not enough about what...
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Whoever has the gold, makes the rules ... but...
In my last post I said I’d go down the guiding principles from the platform of the Democratic Party of Georgia, one line at at time, and discuss why the majority of the people of Georgia should be supporting a progressive Democratic agenda. This post will explore the first line of the guiding principles, which is:
Georgia Democrats believe that the American Dream of opportunity for all...
Exactly what is the platform of the Georgia...
One of the first comments I’ve received on this blog stated that the Democratic Party of Georgia seemed to mainly be running “to not be Republicans”. This is an excellent place to start a discussion, since in order to tell people they should be voting for Democratic and progressive candidates, we have to first know exactly what it is the Democrats in the state of Georgia stand...
November 2012
3 posts
4 tags
Secession talk, progressives, and nutiness
Nutiness is often a lot of fun, particularly if the person exhibiting the nutty behavior realizes that they are behaving in a nutty fashion. It’s fun, therapeutic, and is often a good way to blow off steam. But it’s probably not a good thing for nutiness to become an operating principle in politics.
Since Obama’s re-election, there have been a number of petitions circulated...
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Nobody knows you're a dog ... (except you)
I’ve included the low resolution, fair use copy of the famous cartoon above (CYA on copyright laws) to illustrate a point about my attitude toward the comments box I’ve provided below. If you don’t see the box for comments, click on the title for this post, and it should appear. The caption is “on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog”. I’ve been...
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Welcome to Bluestate Georgia
Welcome to my new blog, Bluestate Georgia. In it I will put forward the proposition that Georgia can not only become a state within the Democratic Party fold, but that a strong Democratic Party will be a good thing for the citizens of the state, and can lead to opportunity and prosperity for all Georgians.
The purpose of this blog is not primarily to promote the Democratic Party, which has...
