Plus Ça Change

...the more it's the same stuff on a different day.

1. Shark-fu at the top of the hour post:  On the Iowa caucus.
   

   I like to think of Iowa as being the political version of when a single person logs on to an internet dating site and sets up preferences…with Iowa being the first narrowing of the field…
   
   …and New Hampshire and South Carolina being a set of disappointing coffee dates at Starbucks.

2. And a double header from Ta-Nehisi Coates:  
   1. "Banality of Racism"
      

      It certainly is possible that Ron Paul never read a publications produced in his own name, just as it's possible to sincerely believe that the Civil Rights Act destroyed personal liberties, and it's possible to sincerely believe that if you are going to vote, you should be able to read the names of the candidates, or that Lincoln destroyed the original values of the republic. But it's also true that those beliefs have long been used to shield more odious ones. Forgive me for being suspicious when I see them employed in combination.

   2. and an article comparing Ron Paul to Louis Farrakhan:
      

      I have heard this reasoning before.
      
      As surely as Ron Paul speaks to a real issue--the state's broad use of violence and surveillance--which the America's political leadership has failed to address, Farrakhan spoke to something real, something unsullied, which black America's political leadership failed to address, Both Paul and Farrakhan, in their glamour, inspired the young, the disaffected, the disillusioned.
      
      To those who dimly perceived something wrong, something that could not be put on a placard, or could not move the party machine, men such as this become something more than political operators, they become symbols. Substantive charges against them, no matter the reasons, are dismissed. The movement they represent means more. But as sure as the followers of Farrakhan deserved more than UFOs, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, those of us who oppose the drug-war, who oppose the Patriot Act deserve better than Ron Paul[.]

3. Roy Edroso thumps Republican libertarians:  [ETA:  via Skippy; Edroso provided link to Digby below, so I owe Skippy twice.]
   

   These guys can always work together, because they all came out of the same Big Bang of hatred for the New Deal and its legacy: Big Government and the coalition that sustains it -- blacks, gays, unionized workers, women, et alia. Each conservative tribe has its own relationship to that legacy -- some of them (the more intelligent ones, generally) are deeply cynical, and some are as sincere as any schizophrenic street preacher. But all of them deeply hate that a bunch of minorities have coalesced to get something that they think belongs by right to them and people like them, and many of them have learned that it would be more effective (and, these days, more popular) to strike at the state that enables that coalition than at the minorities themselves.

4. Digby points out some inconsistency in Ron Paul's positions:
   

   When I talk about Ron Paul's antebellum politics this is what I mean --- a reversion to the way the country was fashioned before 1860. Indeed, these states' rights arguments stem from the original arguments over slavery. In this case, the position is being held by someone who believes that gays should be executed under biblical law. The entire idea of inalienable rights under the US Constitution is called into question by this kind of states' rights (which is interesting since the whole thing is supposedly predicated on an originalist view of the Constitution.)

I'm listening to vocal group harmony from the '50s. Because that's what we really built this city on.