Motley Moose – Archive

Found on the Internets …

Georgia Issues New Confederate Flag License Plate

In Georgia, the state Department of Revenue’s Motor Vehicle Division approved of a new specialty license plate design that features the Confederate battle flag. Under state law, all license plate proposals are submitted to the Motor Vehicle division to screen out insensitive or offensive license plate designs.

[The design], proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, features a more prominent Confederate battle flag across the background, the emblem of the SOCV on the left side, and a dedication to the organization in a banner across the lower-center of the plate.

Maynard Eaton, spokesman for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called the display “reprehensible” and added “we don’t have license plates saying ‘Black Power’.”

So I guess that glorifying a rebellion that led to the deaths of about a half a million Americans and honoring “confederate veterans” who fought to continue the enslavement of an entire race of human beings is not insensitive at all!!

Or perhaps it is only “insensitive” if you are a member of the race of human beings who were enslaved.

Of course, this honoring stuff is part of Georgia’s Southern heritage and has nothing at all to do with the actual war, why it was fought, and the racism that the flag has symbolized since the 1860s.

So if the “Sons of Nazi German Soldiers” wanted to have a license plate with a swastika, would that be okay? Surely those sons should have a chance to celebrate their heritage.

Or how about this: “Sons of the Guys Who Burned Atlanta” with an American flag and a logo showing screaming white people looking at their plantations on fire.

Stay classy, Georgia, and remove this license plate from your approved list.

This is the first part of two posts describing a fascinating election in Georgia. The second part can be found here.

Georgia is a red state. It votes reliably Republican; the Republican Party controls every level of Georgia’s state government. It would be miraculous for Barack Obama to win the state in 2012.

However, Georgia used to be a very blue state. It belonged to the Solid South, a Democratic stronghold for generations. As early as 1948, however, the first signs of change came. Backlash against the Civil Rights movement and the growth of Republican suburbia eventually destroyed the Democratic Party in Georgia.

The 1980 Georgia Senate Election

I have come across a very interesting election which illustrates this shift. To the best of my knowledge there is not any election similar to what happened in the 1980 Georgia Senate election:

More below.

This is a pretty substance-free diary. I was just looking at some pictures (Hubie’s, I think) being posted in another thread, and noticed that some of you seemed to be reminiscing or missing places you’ve left. They say, cliché as it is, that home is where the heart is.

If that’s true, then here is my home, my heart:

That’s the way the world – or at least this presidency – ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

The Bush Administration’s incompetency in foreign affairs has reached its apogee with the debacle in Georgia.

Whatever the delicate rights and wrongs of the problematic borders there, and Georgia’s applicatio to join Nato, Bush and Rice’s foreign policy initiatives have been a model of inconsistency. First they encouraged Georgia to be ridiculously adventurous, then they failed to stop them when they overreached, and now all they can do is utter hollow threats at Moscow without any means to back it up..

Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum of talking quietly and carrying a big stick has been reversed:

Shout loudly and carry a wet fish