Well Mitch, perhaps the fact that Strom Thurmond was opposed to civil liberties for blacks, fatherered a black daughter by sleeping with (maybe assaulting - because I'm sure his maid in 1925 was REALLY asked to consent -)perhaps the conduct of the conservatives gives reason to believe that they don't exactly support what Rosa Parks stood for.

Perhaps also the Willie Horton adds, disparaging code words and made-up stories about rape gangs in New Orleans, complete lack of regard for the plight of the poor in the country, leads us and other reasonable, sane, and rational people to think conservatives blame others for their problems, say all the ills of society are some other (races) peoples problems, and the social stratification is truly attributable to one group being willing to work, and the other (blacks) being unwilling.

All the stereotypical stuff that your side clouds in catch phrases (family values, criminal culture, etc..) but still boils down to the same lack of accountability and willingness to blame "other" that makes us think you have as much regard for Rosa Parks, especially the "next" Rosa Parks, as you have for the rights of Jose Padilla, Hamdi, or for a fish you'd rather flush than worry about why it died.

As for McCarthyism, you guys are the ones who say things like "if you dissent, you are a traitor." The essence of McCarthyism, in case you forgot, was that McCarthyism made statements like, "I'm against communists, and if you are against me, well then, what are you, in favor of communists?" Replace communists with terrorists, and those words have been said by radical morons on the right - or should I say the radical right in general, because while you may have not said it, you certianly haven't distanced yourself from that sort of black and white absolutist crap. So if you have an issue with McCarthyism, go look in a mirror and fix it. To equate coded support of Jim Crow, or past support of Jim Crow, to standing up to a bully and a tyrrant like McCarthy, is laughable. Beyond that, you are essentially saying, if you can follow the logic here, that saying "no" to rampant witch-hunt anti-communism which was primarily driven out of a mad power grab, in which people are saying they don't support communism WHILE AT THE SAME TIME they don't support witch hunts. What about being opposed to Jim Crow laws is wrong? What witch hunt practice are you seeing here? Who is saying that we need a House UnAmerican Activities commission on clandestine Jim Crow supporters. In essence, being opposed to McCarthy was standing up against tyranny. What precisely are you standing up FOR (or against) if you oppose getting rid of poll taxes, litmus tests, literacy tests?

Your exageration and hyperbole appears to know no bounds.

PB,
I'll see your Strom Thurmond and raise you Robert Byrd.
The left doesn't use 'disparaging code words?' So when the left says 'fundamentalist Christian' that isn't code for simple minded mouth breathing creationist?
I guess you could say that the left cares more about poor people in the sense that they do everything possible to keep them poor.
Good comparison! Rosa Parks - American hero who fought injustice with dignity. Jose Padilla - ex-con thug who trained with Al Qaeda and spoke of attacking America. Lots of similarities.
I don't recall the right spreading stories of rape gangs in New Orleans. My recollection is that the MSM uncritically reported these urban legends in a (depending on your point of view) display of their laziness and desire to hype every story *or* transparent attempt to discredit the administration's handling of the catastrophe.
In many cases the left has gone from fighting injustice to outright race baiting. Exhibit A: Ted Rall's execrable depictions of Condi Rice. Exhibit B: The black New York blogger's depiction of black republican Lt. Gov/Senatorial candidate Michael Steele in minstrel makeup and calling him a "Simple Sambo."
Other than that your logic is, as always, flawless.

Would pb throw Oreo cookies at a black Republican?

Exibit C:
Kweisi Mfume's spokesman adding that folks were just saying what everyone knew and was obvious.

Exibit D:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial on Oct. 31 claims that Justice Clarance Thomas may be a black man on the supreme court, but since he doesn't accurately represent blacks across the nation he should have an asterix.

Shameless plug:
http://baddablogger.blogspot.com/2005/11/milwaukee-paper-claims-clarence-thomas.html

First, Byrd...

The issue was that folks like Thurmond (conservative, white) opposed Parks, and continue to oppose people who think like Parks (specifically, that injustice and inequity are to be challenged).

Hamdi is a case of inequity and injustice, as is Padilla. It is not the defense of the popular which is easy, it is the defense of the unpopular. Rosa Parks was profoundly unpopular in the South in her time. I doubt very much Padilla will ever be seen as popular, but his case is equally important. It sets a need - stopping communism - against another equally important need - due process, the right to trial, the prevention of suspending Habeus Corpus. You see easy black and white cases are not a problem, the hard ones cause us to think, to consider what is the right course.

As for policies that keep them poor. Chriss, candidly, that kind of claptrap is not something that advances the discussion. It's jingoistic, selfjustifying nonsense. I suppose that MY support of a reasonable minimum wage, of a 40 hour work week for non-managerial employees (which was the standard in the 70's btw), etc.. KEEPS them poor right? Your BS about handouts stripping them of the will to work.. sure, have you lived on welfare lately? There are undoubtedly some who prefer to not work, but they'd prefer it regardless of the stipend provided by the Government, and just to be clear, I supported Workfare - it was called jobs programs in the 30's, long before anyone on the right even dreamed of it. In fact, the right supports the exposure of the US labor market to foriegn labor, not immigration labor, but foriegn labor as some sort of unavoidable eventuality of capitalism. It may be both unavoidable and a result of capitalism, but then that is an indictment of capitalsim, that it would wilfully slit it's own throat by destroying consumer buying power through the act of moving huge numbers of jobs overseas - in an unending pursuit of cheap (and ill-educated) labor - without regard for the impact on the nation. We have replaced the paranoid freak right wing one world government aluminum foil helmet, with the reality of MNC control of governments leading to the flatlining, or worse deflation, of wages in developed coutries. The counter argument, that the West will wind up "managing" the emergence of the third world, is so much bullcrap. First, those jobs will exist THERE not here, second, there aren't enough jobs to move from HERE to there to create internal economies. We are sinking our own capital into communist China, which is gladly taking it, and the result has been developed cities, but they need 10% of their population to make roughly $1500-$3000 per year to reach self-sustainment - according to a business consortium report on globalization. To do that, roughly 12 million on shore tech jobs in the US and Europe, need to employ 130 Million Chinese and/or 140 Million Indians, 8 Million Koreans, 5 Million Philipinos, and 60 Million Indonesians. Given that this equates to almost 400 Million people, it seems unlikely to happen.

So as for supporting policies that keep the poor , poor, you may want to look in the mirror.

In any event, Chriss, the right has a well-deserved reputation, based on history and conduct, of being opposed to progressivism, racial equality, and fairness. While the left has it's own boogeymen - including counter-discrimination, an equally repugnant approach - comparing being opposed to Jim Crow laws to opposing McCarthy - which was the point of my response - is ridiculous. What exactly are you in favor OF if you oppose Jim Crow statutes? That is a question McCarthy never allowed to be asked, because his stance was that opposition, at any level, was to be labeled as FAVORING communism. Mitch failed utterly to understand that McCarthyism was about totalitarian abuse by comparing opposing Jim Crow (a totaliarian mechanism) to totalarianism and squelching of free speech. In reality it is opposition to such laws that is most akin to opposing McCarthyism. Mitch called black "white" here, much like we call making war "winning the peace."

Welcome to 1984.

PB

"I doubt very much Padilla will ever be seen as popular, but his case is equally important. It sets a need - stopping communism - against another equally important need - due process"

Padilla is a communist? I thought he was an Islamo-fascist.

PB -- And how, exactly, do raising the minimum wage and mandating a 40 hour work week help fight poverty? They don't. They feel good and seem helpful but they are not. A minimum wage job won't support a family whether it's $6/hr or $8/hr. Mandating overtime pay will reduce the hours that workers work, and therefore reduce their income. I didn't mean to be jingoistic about liberals loving the poor so much they make more of them and keep them that way (OK I did), but I just honestly believe that a conservative economic policy is better for people of all income levels than a liberal economic policy. You can tell me I'm wrong and misguided, but don't tell me that I -- and other conservatives -- don't care about the poor. I became a conservative precisely BECAUSE I came to believe that the left's ideas and methods for 'helping' people did nothing of the kind. Here is how not to be poor:
1) stay in school
2) don't have a child before 21
3) don't have a child before marriage
If you follow these three simple rules you have only a 1 in 10 chance of living in poverty. If you break all three you have a 8 or 9 in 10 chance of living in poverty. This is not taught, and to teach this is seen as racist/classist. We do not teach children how not to be poor, and we should.
There is a kind of reverse McCarthyism at play. You are right about Joe M -- anyone who didn't completely agree with his methods of fighting communism was labeled a communist. Today anyone who doesn't agree with the left's orthodoxy of government control and racial preferences is labeled a racist (or, in the case of African Americans such as Bill Cosby who preach personal responsibility, as 'House Negroes' and sell-outs).
And yes, we must protect the civil rights of even unpopular people, but comparing Padilla (convicted criminal turned possible terrorist) to Parks (otherwise law abiding citizen fighting peacefully for what she believed was a just cause) -- while accusing Mitch of hyperbole -- bespeaks a moral equivalence that seems so prevalent among the left these days... along the lines of 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' There is a difference, a real black/white (not in the racial sense) difference.

PB, I am conservative and white. I am nothing like Strom Thurmond.
Like Robert Byrd, you are liberal. If you are white, can I therefore safely assume that you were once a grand wizard of the KKK?
There are racists on both sides. To be sure the ranks of the republican party include a (minute and shrinking) relics of the days of segregation. To be equally sure, the ranks of the democratic party include both unreconstructed racists like Byrd but also reverse racists who impugn the motives of black republicans and who paint everyone who doesn't march in lock step with the same racist label.

Chriss..wow, hate much?

Second, your recipe for not being poor sounds fine assuming:

1. You don't live in a neighborhood and culture that questions at it's very core the ethical rectitude of a society that for the past 120 years has done a whole lot to keep it as an underemployed, underclass.

2. You feel you have any hope of being other than the janitor, garbage man, shot at.

3. You don't see death and mayhem and police beating up your brother simply for being black and driving in a car with 2 of his friends.

4. 25% of your peers don't wind up in prison by age 25, with another 10-15% winding up dead.

The point is, conservatism at it's base assumes the world reality it understands applies to everyone else.

I would LOVE for people to do as you've said, they are, after all, a big part of moving forward in life. The problem is your approach consigns anyone who doesn't do as you say to a life of no hope, and MANY who DO do what you say, to the same life of no hope.

If you don't want to be accused of not caring about the poor, stand up for policies that will help to prevent poverty, rather than simply prostelitizing.. however, Chrisss, I will hand you this, you and only a couple of others at least made an attempt to engage in a civil discourse. I will treat you civily in return.

The larger paradigm that blacks (and whites) have to face is the application of foriegn labor to the US labor market. Even getting a good education in no way assures you of not being poor. India turns out 1 Million Engineers each year, by contrast, we are creating about 50,000 in all areas. The work is leaving, the good paying work is leaving, whether you are smart, educated, pregnant, over 21, under 21, or anything else. It's a reality that is FAR larger than juvenile pregnancy (which by the way continues to decline).

The issue is that we seem unwilling to do anything to address the fact that our own companies - because WE, citizens chose to buy from Walmart (et.al), are pursuing these ever cheaper sources of labor.

This means that we are facing a crisis of class - that education (which has certainly not improved under no child left behind), will no longer be a savior.

The other facet, that many on the right fail to face, is that wealth is normally not earned by work or insight or pluck. Most wealth is inherited. Often it is squandered by dullard children or grandchildren, but with the massive sums being accumulated currently by our elite class, it will take a lot of squandering.

My point is that black teenage illiterate pregnancy PALES to nothing next to the impact of global labor markets, while you all fiddle with your list, the heads of companies gladly watch their own bank accounts swell with ever higher profits derived from paying next to nothing to labor.

So if you want to know what the minimum wage has to do with poverty, it's simply this, until labor starts demanding a fair share of the profit slice, no matter where it is, or until it is legislated that it must be paid, no matter where it is, we're all headed for a craphole. If industry wants to use labor, whether it is in Geneva ILL or Ghana, it should provide a reasonable portion to the worker who created the product.

PB

Oh, for tiresome, but...

"1. You don't live in a neighborhood and culture that questions at it's very core the ethical rectitude of a.."

Here's an idea: MOVE.

"2. You feel you have any hope of being other than the janitor, garbage man, shot at."

Here's an idea: Go to school...to learn, not to sit and impress everyone with your thuggishness.

"3. You don't see death and mayhem and police beating up your brother simply for being black and driving in a car with 2 of his friends."

I'll bet.

"4. 25% of your peers don't wind up in prison by age 25, with another 10-15% winding up dead."

Just for walking to church on Sunday morning...

It's all a load of crap and you know it. When the white people have to walk down the sidewalk on Nicollet and keep their eyes averted and walk in clumps so they don't rile the thugs hollering and hogging the sidewalk, I'm pretty sure we're not the problem.

PB, your bias is showing. Avoiding poverty is really very simnple. Complete these four steps and you have a better than 90% chance of avoiding it irrespective of your race.

1) Graduate high school
2) Get married before you have children and stay married.
3) Work, at *any* kind of job, even minimum wage.
4) Avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

Note that *nothing* in list has anything to do with minimum wage: two wage earners will make more than the poverty line of $18k for a family of four if both are earning minimum wage. Further, most research shows that raising the minimum wage decreases jobs for beginning workers.

PB, I hope you're still checking this post. Globalization raises the standard of living for everyone. It has been happening since the beginning of commerce. It cannot be reversed, nor should it. For every manufacturing job that is "lost" overseas new opportunities are created here in the US. For every product imported into the US the vast majority of the economic activity surrounding that product occurs in the US.
You can choose to look at the world as a miserable place that was better in the past or would be better under some impossible-to-achieve conditions.
Or you can choose to see the world as an incredible place of opportunity, with no better time to be alive than now.
Put up trade barriers and load up on social welfare programs and we become a big France. It's working out great for them though.
As to the perception of inner city kids: Why do so many thrive when held to higher standards and expectations? Why not teach them how not to be poor?