Song "Take Down Your Flag" spreading across America

A great catchy song with a message:

As of Friday morning, more than 60 musicians, from the Midwest to Great Britain, had posted videos of themselves covering Milwaukee singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey’s political protest song “Take Down Your Flag.”

Mulvey wrote the song last Friday in response to the still-raging debate surrounding the flying of a Confederate battle flag over the Capitol in South Carolina, the state where nine people were shot and killed on June 17 in a historic African-American church during a bible study. “I didn’t see any of this coming at all,” Mulvey said in an interview Friday. “I was really just writing the song to keep a nostril above water. I feel like I’ve just been yanked from wherever I was. A current swept this song out of my hands and took it out way beyond me.

Defending the Confederate Flag, Rush predicts American Flag next!!! This is not the Onion!!

Like Joseph Goebbels before him, Rush has fixated on one specific group, liberals, vilifying and branding them as anti-American fear mongers worried sick the American flag will turn citizens to the political right. I must have missed that email. 

Like an Onion parody, Rush takes reality and twists it into fun filled propaganda that low information conservative voter believe hook-line-and-sinker. Hat tip to my conservative friend in Milwaukee, who sent me this, writing in the subject line (shortened here):

"This is true I've said it 4 years. When the State Department has decided not to fly the American flag at embassies because it's afraid they might offend and when you can't wear an American flag t-shirt in a high school … it's already here hope you're proud."

Rush Limbaugh's prediction is humorous to me, but scary to those right wing hypocrites that can't stop talking about defending the 1st Amendment:

“The next flag that will come under assault, and it will not be long, is the American

flag. It is gonna happen. We are trending that way. It makes perfect sense. If you take a look at the timeline of progression of events, the speed and rapidity with which the left is conducting this assault on all of these American traditions and institutions, if you don’t think the American flag’s in their crosshairs down the road, you had better stop and reconsider.

The American flag is what? It’s the symbol of America. The left, what? Doesn’t like this country very much and never has and it’s getting angrier and angrier about it seemingly every day. The American flag stands for the United States of America and as such, everything that’s wrong with it. And you wait, it isn’t gonna be long before the American flag is gonna cause chills, fear, scary thoughts … [because] it’s a symbol of hate.”

Rush's thoughts are crazy, but the underlying premise is real; the repeated use of symbols denoting patriotism have not just given the U.S. Constitution to the GOP, but the flag as well. Troll tweeter LizzieFiles alerted me to this weird study. Wanna bet we're going to see an avalanche of flag display requirement laws throughout the nations Republican legislatures:

Shock Study: U.S. Flag Only Boosts GOP: Exposure to even a tiny American flag turns Democrats into Republicans.

Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don't believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science.

What's more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power. "A single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants' Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months," the study found. "These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability."

Another recent Harvard University professor's study that found that kids who attended a July 4th parade ended up leaning Republican when they grew up.

It's also sure to prompt GOP presidential candidates to add more U.S. flags at their events and speeches.

Democrats could learn a few things about marketing...I mean propaganda.

State Conservatives now say Democratic Party responsible for flying/protecting Confederate Battle Flag?

For years and years, Republicans have not just defended and made the Confederate Battle flag their own, but they've waved it proudly as a free speech right. Now, suddenly a few conservatives here are trying to say it's a Democratic flag.  They want us to forget how the parties flipped after the civil rights movement. Sorry, but this debate is going on now, not the mid 1800's.

They want us to forget....

It became a divisive and violent emblem of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist groups.

Forgetting would be the only way they can make their next loony tunes argument; they have always hated the Confederate flag.

Check out a "Stand with Walker" string of tweets to the right. Marvel at the disconnect. Clinton and Gore...Confederates?

Ever wonder why racism is now so pronounced and open? Since Obama became president, the Republican Party has worked hard to rationalize away their inner racist feelings, with distractions like his birth certificate, supposed Islamic faith, "imperial presidency," relationship to terrorists, weak foreign policy, etc.. The picture below says it all.

Here's one example of the spin:

The GOP wasn't involved? Only if all the black ministers and NAACP were Republican. Here's what really happened:

A 1994 nonbinding referendum placed on the GOP primary ballot found that three-in-four voters said the flag should keep flying. That same year, black ministers and the NAACP threatened a boycott of the state if the flag didn't come down, and business leaders sued to remove the flag.

But in 2000, a compromise was reached — the battle flag would be removed from atop the dome and a smaller, square version would be placed at a less-prominent place on the Statehouse grounds — on a 20-foot pole next to the 30-foot Confederate monument. But that didn't end the controversy, and many years of protests, criticism and boycotts followed.

How about that Southern "Democratic" stronghold Mississippi?

Many Southern states' current flags are inspired by the "Rebel flag." Mississippi's state flag remains the only one in the U.S. that still features the battle flag prominently. In 2001, Magnolia State voters decided to keep the current flag by a wide margin. The University of Mississippi, or "Ole Miss," has also faced controversy. In 1997, waving Confederate flags at football games was banned. "Colonel Reb," their Confederate soldier mascot, was retired in 2003 and, "From Dixie With Love" was dropped from the marching band set list.

Check out the brisk Neo-Confederate Party sales action at Amazon.com. These are the hot items. Yea, we're so over that race thing...

NOTE: Amazon and other sites have already pull all Confederate products off their pages. That was quick.


Gov. Nathan Deal is sticking with the offending state license plate, like a good Democrat....I mean Republican would. 

Really? Republicans praised for finally removing Confederate Flag?

It seems to me Democrats had been asking for the removal of the Confederate flag for decades. Now that 9 people were killed by a white racist with a gun and a Confederate flag, many Republicans are suddenly running for the exits trying not to look like the neo-confederates we know they really are inside.

These people aren't heroes. They aren't insightful. They aren't fooling anyone. They're not erasing their past rabid support of the Confederate battle flag, ever. They were forced into taking this position, and they should be embarrassed: