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Must be one of John Kelly's compromisers

Confederate sticker in Downtown Crossing

Garry Waldeck spotted Johnny Reb's pickup in Downtown Crossing this morning. The truck's registered in Pennsylvania, which, we seem to recall from history class, was on the Northern side during the War of Southern Aggression.

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Dear Leader's chief of staff praising Robert E. Lee and blaming the Civil War on the North's inability to compromise.

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I guess the Dear Leader's chief of staff must of not realized that many of the Southern states succeeding after Lincoln became President really axed any idea of any sort of compromise. And then we have the treasonous rebels bombardment of Fort Sumter.

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Kind of a stretch, ain't it? Trump's a bad president, but not everything is his fault.

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In case you missed it, the Trump's most important presidential aide just defended slavery.

That's not normal nor acceptable.

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In Kelly's view, America didn't compromise enough with the evil of slavery, and so white supremacists were forced to take up arms against America. I think he's suggesting by this that if any other evil should come up soon, America better be ready to compromise with it, or he will take up arms against America too.

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an honorable man?

You are correct, it is Kelly's erroneous view. As I posted before, the South gave their answer to any potential compromise by quickly succeeding and then bombing Fort Sumter. I think you give Kelly too much cred.

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another one) you may want to get clear on who won the Civil War.

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Whining that people who say shitty things are somehow heroes above criticism is for fascists.

Move to Russia or formulate an actual argument.

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Full quote sounds more reasonable the the sound bite:

"I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man," Kelly told Ingraham. "He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it's different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand."

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The Myth of the Kindly General Lee:

Lee’s heavy hand on the Arlington plantation, Pryor writes, nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master’s death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them.

When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to "lay it on well." Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”

And since we're talking about Pennsylvania here:

During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free blacks and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” with the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”

And Kelly is full of shit. The entire history of the United States before 1865 was one of compromise to keep the South happy: The North compromised and allowed slaves to be counted as 3/5ths people, the North compromised on Missouri (which, granted, led to Maine as a state), Lincoln did not initially support emancipation, etc., etc. The South didn't want compromise; it wanted the absolute and unfettered right to enslave people. That's why the South went to war, not because Northerners had failed to compromise.

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The slave owning states wanted slaves counted as whole, while the free states didn’t want them counted at all. It’s all about apportionment and relative strength of states. The South compromised by allowing the North to only count slaves as 3/5ths of a person.

When people get confused about this while explaining how other people are ignorant, I roll my eyes. You and Chelsea Clinton both today.

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What part of the comment you were replying to was ignorant?

The point was that there was plenty of compromise up to the point where the South refused to be denied the ability to populate the newly opened Western states with slave plantations, threw a tantrum, and seceded.

That's not ignorant - that is having a clear understanding of factual reality.

Take your time explaining yourself into a whole on this - plenty of popcorn balls to munch.

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I might have jumped the gun a little bit. Maybe.

Of course, any misstatement on my part is based on the idea that it was okay that the free states wanted not to count slaves at all but decided that counting them as 3/5ths of a person was preferable to counting them as whole persons.

But the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Compromise, and other compromises during the 19th century were right on the mark as far as the criticism of Kelly's comments goes. I'm just saying that the 3/5th rule does somehow through the lens of today make the Northerners look kind of bad, since again, they didn't want slaves counted at all.

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The 3/5ths compromise was the North saying to the South, "you can't have it both ways". The census determined representation in congress. If slaves are people, count them and let them vote. If slaves can't vote, they shouldn't be counted as such in the census.

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And some could (and do) say that the Civil War was about states' rights, but I'm fairly certain that voting rights for slaves was not an issue, since at the time one needed to own a certain amount of property to vote all across what became the United States.

The truth was that the whole enumeration issue was pure politics that in hindsight made all sides look bad (though the anti-slavery people didn't look bad in other issues, like the whole thing about people shouldn't be owned by other people.)

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to the Constitutional Convention wanted slaves included in their populations for the purpose of representation (but not for taxation). Most of the northern delegates thought that it was absurd that enslaved people should be represented in Congress by the people who held them in bondage, and rightly saw the whole idea as a mere ploy to artificially increase the power of the slave states. Nevertheless they compromised, because the slave states refused to join the union without special treatment. Thus the post that said that the 3/5ths rule was an example of the North compromising when the South refused to do so was entirely accurate.

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He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country.

In some minds, no doubt that was (and is) true. But it also was (and is) the definition of treason.

But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.

People of good faith do not make compromises with other people's basic human rights.

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So you're saying both the north and south were wrong? Both sides compromised.

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And let's put aside for a moment that regardless of who compromised, the end result was the same: Millions of people were kept as slaves.

In any case, the South eventually decided it didn't want to compromise any longer.

There's this guy that Republicans today don't mention much, named Abe Lincoln, who discussed this in his Cooper Union address in 1860. It's as long as the Gettysburg Address is short, but does a good job of summing up the issue of slavery from the Revolution until the day he gave his speech, in which he notes:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

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Robert E. Lee was, by many accounts, a gentleman and an honorable man. But that only goes so far: many say the same about Erwin Rommel.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates has an excellent series of tweets, schooling Kelly on the myriad ways others compromised with slaveholders and slave states and the ways Lee was no mere state loyalist but personally brutal to slaves.

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Meanwhile how many stores in Boston sell shirts and people openly walk around with pictures of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, and Che on them? Or display flags with the hammer and sickle? Or distribute the little red book, Mein Kampf, etc... without anyone raising a peep about condoning mass murder, forced labor, and oppression.

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Please point to specific stores that sell such things. I know of one in JP that might sell some of the Communist stuff, but I don't tend to see a lot of people walking around with copies of Mein Kampf (if you do, you might need to find different friends).

But in any case, the issue at hand is not Che Guevara, but officials at the highest level of our government supporting neo-Nazis and trying to rehabilitate treasonous, inhumane and murderous Confederates.

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So you don't have an a problem with people openly displaying the symbols of, promoting the ideology, and trying to rehabilitate treasonous, inhumane and murderous communist regimes?

Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Che, etc are ok to parade around in public, but General Lee is worse than Hitler?

The stupid redneck confederate flag is more offensive than the hammer a sickle despite similar magnitudes of slavery and a greater magnitude of global mass murder under a multitude of red banners?

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You've obviously spent a lot of time thinking up a way to deflect criticism of people at the highest level of government saying nice things about genocide lovers and slavery fans. It must be exhausting; I hope you're able to get a good nap.

I don't know where you live or who you associate with, but I'm not seeing a lot of people walking around with Stalin T-shirts. I am seeing people coming into our state, our city and trying to stir up shit as they try to recreate the 1930s and 1940s and the antebellum period in American history, under the direct encouragement of some of our highest elected and appointed officials.

When a Stalinist cult emerges and tries to take over, then I'll spend time worrying about it.

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The alt-right types are the people who would be wearing Stalin T-shirts anyways. They are all about suppression of the other and winner take all brutality.

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The Intercept: "How White Nationalism Became Normal Online," a short video.

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Do you think you're actually making an intelligent point or is this just grade D trolling?

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Beyond believing that communism was the best choice for an economic structure, Che Guevara has pretty much nothing in common with the rest.

Even Lenin is significantly different from Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot, but I won't quibble over that.

What you wrote is as misleading as writing, "Pinochet, Papa Doc, Saddam Hussein, Ronald Reagan, Batista, Cliven Bundy, and Vidkun Quisling, etc are ok to parade around in public...."

Some of these things are not like the others. Even though they are all defenders & practitioners of capitalism.

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If Kelly was some Boston Common / Harvard Sq nut no one would care what he had to say. Be he isn't. He's the Chief of Staff. He carries out the interests of the President. When he starts defending slavery and racism, it's a pretty big deal.

Got it?

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I've read many of those people, some for college coursework, others out of curiosity, without becoming a Maoist or a Nazi or a Marxist. Reading opposing viewpoints for intellectual breadth: it's not exactly a new idea.

Flaunting a symbol like the Confederate battle flag is something rather different, particularly in 2017, when its fraught history has become a political football.

I don't know where you're seeing lots of shirts with images of Mao, Stalin and Lenin on them, or Russian flags. I see a lot of Che, who has been a fixture of undergraduate t-shirts (and tourist souvenir stands around the world) for decades: that's about as political as wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt these days. The kids like his rock-star glamour, not his politics: they're callow, not commies.

Unlike those dopey college kids, I think most people sporting the symbols of the traitorous, racist, secessionist South have a very clear idea of what they mean.

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I could not have said it better and it was just what I was thinking.

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"What about" arguments do not negate the initial point.

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Mao, Stalin, Lenin, and Che may have been murderous assholes, and promoters of a murderous ideology, but, unlike the Confederacy, they never declared war against the United States.

The hammer and sickle flag may represent a brutal, totalitarian, oppressive ideology, but, unlike the stars and bars, it was never flown in battle against the United States.

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Although Che really doesn't belong in that list, no matter what your opinion of him.

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This loser has been parking in the pedestrian zone almost every day for a few months. I've seen his truck ticketed but why the hell aren't they towing his lazy racist ass if he is breaking the law and driving in the pedestrian zone every day? Example #54767565461 of criminal drivers being coddled while pedestrians get screwed.

He also used to have a confederate plate in the front of the truck but now its gone. I guess he gave that up like how the confederacy gave up after getting their traitorous asses kicked.

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If the driver ("loser") has commercial plates - he/she may be working on a construction site nearby - needing access to tools or to the vehicle.

I'm not a fan of the stars and bars being flown (outside of historical locations/events) but if it bothers you to that extent (over the course of 6 months), why not try to engage the driver's ("lazy racist ass") in some meaningful conversation?

Would seem to be more productive than ranting online and tossing insults around.

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They do not have commercial plates.

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The truck's registered in Pennsylvania, which, we seem to recall from history class, was on the Northern side during the War of Southern Aggression.

Nice missive about "working people", but, heh, I'm afraid that you are the one who needs to learn to do your homework. "Would seem to be more productive than ranting online."

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If a truck is in an area with many ongoing construction projects (and parked daily in a shared auto/pedestrian area) - it's a fair to assume they might have a commercial plate or placard (even being from Penn) - not sure how you managed to twist that one into a "gotcha" moment for yourself. And trust me - if the driver were repeatedly parked illegally - the city would be more than happy to tow it (rebel sticker or not).

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You screwed up by not reading the description and you are doubling down with but but but but

Sorry, but a commercial plate from out of state does not count - not that this loser even has one.

My bet: making it in Massachusetts under the table, while not paying taxes on it anywhere.

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He does not have a commercial plate and not everyone with a commercial plate can drive and park in the pedestrian zone(if Boston treated pedestrians with respect no one would be able to drive in it). He is just an entitled hick who thinks he is above the law.

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So that's a no on the conversation...and yes to more name-calling online. Roger that.

And is your beef with this "hick", or parking, or vehicles in general (or Boston?)?.

Note: Boston parking officers give out a LOT of tickets daily...

Sound the alarm - we must be under attack by hundreds of "entitled hicks".

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Again, It takes a really special person to trivialize SLAVERY in order to gripe about HIS not being given special treatment. Undercover bigot maybe?

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why not try to engage the driver's ("lazy racist ass") in some meaningful conversation?

What sort of meaningful conversation might you suggest? What could you say to him that he hasn't already heard? what could you tell him that he doesn't already know?

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Any step toward dialogue has gotta be more productive than "bravely" taking a picture and posting it online - or sitting behind a computer and calling the driver names.

What does that accomplish? Zero.

If someone is so worked up as to post a photo or resort to name calling online surely they have the fortitude to take a stance and try to show someone the error of their ways through conversation.

Outraged by the sticker? Really want to effect change? Then hang by the person's car and invite them to share their thoughts/hear yours. Evidently, they have had 6 months to do so.

Otherwise, what is the point of calling it out in the first place? If nothing else, you just gave the driver a larger audience for their (in my opinion) skewed worldview.

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Any step toward dialogue has gotta be more productive than "bravely" taking a picture and posting it online - or sitting behind a computer and calling the driver names.

I've noticed lately that racist apologists like you tend to be big fans of "dialogue" when someone calls one of your idols an asshole because they're doing an asshole thing. It's a variant of concern trolling, I suppose, akin to the tactic used by toddlers of trying to prolong a settled argument, and might have worked somewhere once; however, after nearly a year of white supremacists in the White House, don't you think that the jig is up?

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Just pointing out that posting a photo online, ranting about the person, and tossing insults from behind a keyboard does nothing to change the mind of someone that would see fit to post a sticker like that on their car. Whereas actual conversation might.

That makes me an apologist? Um nope.

In your derogatory response / comment you immediately resorted to generalizations, assumptions, name-calling, and insults.

Now I can see why you aren't a huge fan of dialogue.

Good stuff.

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What ever would we do without the Tone Police!

Who cares about the facts YER BEIN MEEEEN!

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When I see the confederate battle flags on vehicles driving around in NH, ME and MA.

Talk about disrespecting our flag, not much more disrespectful than flying the flag of traitors and later lynch mobs.

General Kelly needs to go back to UMass and read up on the number of compromises in 19th Century American politics.

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The people who fought and died to end slavery and preserve the union came from those same areas as these despicable neorebel wannabees.

Simply sickening when you look at all the civil war memorials scattered throughout the countryside.

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For all we know, that was a historian who just likes to display his area of expertise while gittin er' done!

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From James Carville when discussing the voting patterns of the Keystone State: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with a whole lot of Alabama in between.

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Went to school in the area. I’ve even seen one PA redneck with a confederate flag tattoo. Honestly the only difference between Central PA and Alabama is that they scream “We Are” instead of “Roll Tide”

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Their football program just wins whearas Penn State builds statues for people who protect pedophiles.

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some that combine the banner of racism with 'Bama symbols (spend about 20 seconds on Google Image Search if you doubt me: try "crimson tide confederate flag"), while some Penn State fans continue to defend a pedophile. Both have had winning football programs. So I guess I'm not sure I see your point.

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call the middle if the state Pennsyltucky.

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Grew up in "central" PA. Called it that all the time. Also, the confederate flag on the back of trucks is fairly common there, which is ridiculous/annoying.

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Living in North Carolina and seeing a Confederate Flag: meh.

Living in New England and seeing a Confederate Flag: makes your eyes bleed.

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Can you explain to the class why that might be?

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And I saw *TONS* of Confederate flags. It's nothing new, or particularly unusual.

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time than you (all my life, actually) and I have never seen TONS of confederate flags. We must be traveling in different circles?

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Unless you're from Walpole, W Mass, or Stephanie Pollack's click, you wont see a Confederate Flag in Mass

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Right near the turnpike entrance, on the same flag pole with one of those yellow coiled-snake flags.

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Remember the dukes of Hazzard TV show? That show spawned all kinds of general Lee look alikes, Confederate flag front plates (MA had one plate on the back of yer cah in those days). I saw plenty in Dorchester and surrounding areas as a kid.

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Sounds like the start of a SPLC inspired Confed map: but for New England. I agree. It isn't a few choice communities. Its everywhere.

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We're never gonna see the end of these guys.

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I was recently in the Northern-most part of New York, less than 20 minutes from the Canadian border, and saw TWO trucks with no mere stickers but an actual Confederate battle flag mounted and waving from the back of the cab. One of them, I wish I was making this up, had a freakin' "Dixie" horn, like the Dukes of Hazzard.

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All this in an area where people are frequently harassed by border agents who have no business demanding identification from people not planning to cross the border?

Although they would make nice target practice for the Mounties.

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As a historical note, (and without implying approval) approximately 2,200 Pennsylvanians served in the Army of the Confederacy, including 6 Generals.

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One of the reasons the Confederates drove to Gettysburg is that there a connection between the people who settled around there and the people who settled in the Shenandoah Valley, who came through Pennsylvania to get to Virginia. So a Confederate flag on a truck from Pennsylvania, while seemingly odd, is not as odd as, say, the same thing on a truck from Maine.

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You don't need to leave MA to see the stars and bars and other confederate/racist paraphernalia. Just head to some of the less affluent rural towns west of 495 where there are plenty of people proudly displaying their hatred in various ways on their cars and houses.

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Just head to some of the less affluent rural towns west of 495 where there are plenty of people proudly displaying their hatred in various ways on their cars and houses.

Would you care to put a number on that "plenty"? I live in one of those "less affluent rural towns west of 495", and while I do rarely see a stars-and-bars (and I'd say 50% of the time it's an out of state plate), I don't think you could call it "plenty". But then, I did study college level math.

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There's a truck parked at the Lowe's in Westboro every day. Big red truck, big tires, stars and bars on the hood and/or rear gate, and "GENERAL LEE" printed on the back.
Just bad.
Sorry, no pic.

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Why is that bad?

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Why is that bad?

For the same reason a truck bearing a Nazi flag sticker and "Adolf Hitler" in large letters would be bad.

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What I heard Lt. General Kelly say was that in those days, Robert E. Lee put statehood first, which was common then. When Jefferson Davis wanted to keep the war going, Lee refused. If we are going to tear down memorials for bad people start with modern racists like the KKK's Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) whose name is on every building there and his fellow Democrat that Byrd weeped over, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Byrd crying on the Senate floor, "Ted, Ted, I love you, I miss you, Ted!" is a CSPAN classic.

If Ted Kennedy's name was Edward Moore, he would have been charged at minimum with vehicular homicide and unlicensed operation. I would have made a case for murder and allow the jury to decide. Of course the Democrats went to the old Nashua Street Registry the next day and backdated a license while Ted appeared in his Thomas neck collar. With a loyal Judge, I think it was a $25 fine for killing a girl.

Now we spend $15 million in military money to build the useless Ted Kennedy Bar and Grill on Columbia Point (almost no visitors) while tearing down Confederate statues? Is there any effort to tear down the JFK library for what was done to Dr. Martin Luther King by JFK and RFK? Wiretapping the Civil Rights leader for womanizing while they were far worse? Democrats wonder why they keep losing seats. Most people can see through it.

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of the so-much-winning by now. His record of accomplishments is truly singular, starting with the lowest approval rating of any President barely one year into his term. There's also all those executive fiats that Trump used to slag Barry for writing. Except Obama actually orchestrated some tough legislative accomplishments while he had a Congressional majority. Don? His ineptitude at actual governing is staggering, unprecedented, except for appointing the kind of bureaucrats who are dedicated to undermining the central missions for which their agencies were created. Those will leave a mark. (Also, Gorsuch, but McConnell really owns that one.)

But dragging out Ted Kennedy's millionaire-son ability to elude justice (and avoid serving in combat -- hmm, who else do those two things that remind me of?) in defense of racism is the kind of whataboutism that only the dimmest bulb on uHub could tender. Ted got away with manslaughter, then dedicated his life to the effective pursuit of legislation to uplift and protect the poorest and weakest among us. MLK was a philanderer -- how crowded is his company among right-wing politicians there, including Trump, ferchrissakes? -- but also the greatest civil rights leader the West ever produced. Ten months in, Trump already looks like he will be remembered as the smallest, most selfish, most corrupt leader of a first-world democracy in history, even if he never has to face the music for cozying up to a mortal enemy for political gain.

At least Howie Carr has the excuse of making a living out of flogging the long-dead horse that liberals hold some kind of blind worship of Teddy or MLK, in a feeble effort to distract from Trump's naked awfulness. Mouth-breathing bigots like Fish have no such fig leaf.

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Papi, Clovis, Manafort, Gates, all will sing like birds.

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IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/YAn3K0Z.gif)

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Those guys won't cave. You'd cave in a heart beat though. Those guys will hire high priced lawyers and lawyer the shit out this BS until it's old news. You'll still be hurling insults li!e a child having a tantrum li!e you always do and they'll retire with pensions and full medical.

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accusing others of throwing childish tantrums. What, you haven't looked at Twitter for the last 500 days in a row?

Your hero is a spoiled, red-faced, shitty-diapered two-year-old trapped in the body of a 71-year-old man with declining mental faculties.

He's about two indictments away from switching to ALL-CAPS MODE permanently. The walls are closing in.

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Yeah, sure - just like the ones they are destroying for everyone else.

You know, people who worked hard their whole lives so they wouldn't have to die in poverty are about to have their 401K accounts drained to pay for their destructive pogrom.

Looking forward to seeing you starve to death with the rest of us, fungating cancers and all.

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That one of the Kennedy's turned him down for a date.

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after all.

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