April 17, 2010: Protesters who gathered to counter Neo-Nazis become a Mob (Photo credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)

The fact that the anti-White Supremacy crowd decided to beat down a few people who may or may not have been Neo-Nazis is just awful.

Just before noon, a bare-chested, middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed to his chest and back entered a crowd of counter-demonstrators near the corner of First and Spring streets.

Counter-demonstrators surrounded him, chanting, “Nazi scum.” One pushed a sign in his face and another jostled him. He was bobbing his head mockingly as the crowd chanted, when pushing suddenly broke out and about a dozen protesters began showering him with punches and kicks as he fell. The wood handle of one sign was smashed so hard into his back it snapped.

Other protesters tried to protect the man. “You can’t fight hate with hate,” shouted one.

After about a 15-second beating, an undercover police officer began shouting and flashed his badge. He pulled the man, bleeding from a gaping wound in the back of his neck, from the mob and past the yellow tape blocking the protesters.

via LAPD enters tactical alert as white supremacist rally prepares to start | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times.

For the paranoid, everyone but our fault white supremacists, this incident will be used as evidence that a race war is brewing between whites and non-whites. Another LA Times update from later today describes even more violence:

Several fights preceded the appearance of the supremacist group. One involved a man holding a sign with flames and a swastika. The man, who was carrying a bullhorn, was suddenly rushed by a mob of counter- demonstrators and beaten near the corner of Spring and 1st streets.

The man, who appeared to be in his 30s, was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds by protesters, many of them wearing bandannas.

About a dozen police in riot gear rushed from near City Hall, running straight into the center of the mob.

“Police!” members of the mob screamed, running down Spring Street.

Once police broke up the mob, the man with the sign began running south on Spring Street. One man caught up with him and slugged him in the face; he collapsed and his face hit the curb. He was quickly surrounded by a mob again until police caught up and pushed the counter-protesters away with their batons.

The man was then escorted away by police as blood spilled from the back of his head.

via White Supremacists stir up oppositon on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times.

The men being beating in any of these incidences may indeed be bigots, but they have a right to free speech and not to be beaten. We, as Americans who would in earnest like to strive for a better country, have a responsibility to keep our anger in check and channel our passion into constructive activity. Mob violence is tyrant’s replacement for justice. Kudos to the protesters that tried to stop the beat down, but those protesters won’t be remembered.

The wire images fit into the white supremacist/militia paranoid narrative of yellow, brown and black thirsting for the blood of white people. The bigots won this day.

In 1930, U.S. officials stood aside as banks failed; the result was the Great Depression. In 2008, they stood aside as Lehman Brothers imploded; within days, credit markets had frozen and we were staring into the economic abyss.

So it’s crucial to avoid disorderly bank collapses, just as it’s crucial to avoid out-of-control urban fires.

Since the 1930s, we’ve had a standard procedure for dealing with failing banks: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has the right to seize a bank that’s on the brink, protecting its depositors while cleaning out the stockholders. In the crisis of 2008, however, it became clear that this procedure wasn’t up to dealing with complex modern financial institutions like Lehman or Citigroup.

So proposed reform legislation gives regulators “resolution authority,” which basically means giving them the ability to deal with the likes of Lehman in much the same way that the F.D.I.C. deals with conventional banks. Who could object to that?

Well, Mr. McConnell is trying. His talking points come straight out of a memo Frank Luntz, the Republican political consultant, circulated in January on how to oppose financial reform. “Frankly,” wrote Mr. Luntz, “the single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout.” And Mr. McConnell is following those stage directions.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Fire Next Time – NYTimes.com.

Mitch McConnell’s position makes no sense, and yet he is keeping the troops in line and is opposing regulation that would allow bad Wall Street Banks to fail without pulling our entire economy into a depression. There is no capitalist in the GOP if they don’t support resolution authority. Instead they love corporate welfare. This is a much easier sell than health care, and a populist winner if there was one. Democrats need to push hard on this.

McConnell’s lies at work below:

Secret Agent Obama holds up double secret signs for all of his co-conspirators/traitors.

See, sneaky Obama ditched the press to see his daughter’s soccer game. The right wing blogs fancy themselves super sleuths and they smell international conspiracy. Seriously.

It just doesn’t pass the test of logistics and definitely smells like some kind of cover up, especially with the casual tone of the report. It will be interesting to see what Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod, and company will say on the talk shows and at Monday’s press conference. But, remember, the truth never changes.

Update: By the way, this is what Obama looks like at a soccer game. Still no pictures–even two days later. Where did the President go? Where is the media? Considering we just disarmed to Russia and Poland’s President and 95 others were killed hours before, and Kyrgystan’s government was just overthrown should raise even more questions.

via Updated: Obama Goes to Soccer Game that Didn’t Exist? | RedState.

Out of hand obsession with the dude.

Tilt the Scale Left: Hillary Clinton for SCOTUS? ( photo credit: David Boyle in DC)

Ugh… (and not because I am anti Clinton…I think she would throw herself into the job and make an excellent justice).

The Utah Republican, a high-ranking GOPer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, implied that Clinton could be a strong nominee.

“I even heard the name Hillary Clinton today, and that would be an interesting person in the mix,” Hatch said on the “Today Show.”

“I happen to like Hillary Clinton, I think she’s done agood job for the Democrat Secretary of State’s position. And I have high respect for her, and think a great deal of her.”

via Hatch mentions Clinton’s name for SCOTUS – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

I think its best that Clinton remain Secretary of State for the duration of the Obama Administration’s first term and into the beginning of a second possible term. There is too much in the world hinging on effective, cohesive US diplomatic engagement to pull a principal out of the cabinet if it can be avoided.

In addition, as moderate as the Clintons have been, nominating Secretary Clinton may just set off the right wing base and unfounded grass roots outrage into an unnecessarily protracted confirmation battle.

Obama will have the opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court justice and Republicans are signaling the same boiler plate “activist judge” opposition.

Closing one era and opening another, Justice John Paul Stevens notified President Obama on Friday that he will retire from the Court when the current Term ends, probably late in June. Stevens made his decision public eleven days before he reached his ninetieth birthday, and about two years short of a date on which he would have become the longest serving justice in history.

via SCOTUSblog » Stevens’ era is ending.

so…rough.