Must be one of John Kelly's compromisers

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.