Welcome. Today I have to tell you that even though I am black, I am not bitter. (Scattered laughter).

Bitter some of the time, but not here.

And I would tell you that the guy who made the comments sent me in an email last night, in a supposed apology, which is even funnier, but I won’t take up the time.

Sorry, John.  It seems your reputation for disenfranchising minorities and making racist remarks precedes you.

He took the nation to a war of choice under false pretenses — and left troops in harm’s way on two fields of battle. He embraced torture as an interrogation tactic and turned the world’s champion of human dignity into an outlaw nation and international pariah. He watched with detachment as a major American city went under water. He was ostensibly at the helm as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression took hold. He went from being the most popular to the most disappointing president, having squandered a unique opportunity to unite the country and even the world behind a shared agenda after Sept. 11. He set a new precedent for avoiding the general public in favor of screened audiences and seemed to occupy an alternate reality. He took his own political party from seeming permanent majority status to where it is today. And he deliberately politicized the federal government, circumvented the traditional policymaking process, ignored expert advice and suppressed dissent, leaving behind a broken government.

To me, the terrifying thing is that a third of the country is just fine with all of that, so long as he didn’t get any hummers from interns.

You think I’m kidding? Via Froomkin again:

Jay Nordinger of the National Review writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “I will miss his decency and directness and honesty. I will miss his fundamental goodness.”

After Froomkin’s indisputable listing of horrors, the only possible remaining interpretation of the phrase “fundamental goodness” as applied to Dubya is that he’s a white Republican and, so far as anyone knows, he’s got a Bible lying around somewhere. In Lower Wingnuttia, that is seriously all you need in order to qualify for “fundamental goodnes” status. It’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, and hire a hooker or two so long as you still have that “fundamental goodness” around.

This is the crap the country fell for in 2000, the idea that we needed a president with that “fundamental goodness” and that there needed to be a “return to decency.” Never mind that peace and prosperity deal.

Mark my words, in 2012 the Republicans will be running on the old “return to decency” platform again, no matter what Obama does in the intervening four years, and by “return to decency” they will mean “elect a president who is neither a Democrat nor a Negro.” I’m serious; I’m gonna have this post bookmarked for the next four years just so I can say I told you so.

Via TPM:

In that incident in August 2004, Voting Section Chief John Tanner sent an e-mail to Schlozman asking Schlozman to bring coffee for him to a meeting both were scheduled to attend. Schlozman replied asking Tanner how he liked his coffee. Tanner’s response was, “Mary Frances Berry style – black and bitter.” Berry is an African-American who was the Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from November 1993 until late 2004. Schlozman forwarded the e-mail chain to several Department officials (including Principal DAAG Bradshaw) but not Acosta, with the comment, “Y’all will appreciate Tanner’s response.” (emphasis added)

Wow.  John Tanner was cheif of the voting rights division at DOJ, the more important job of which is to ensure that minorities, especially African Americans, are actually able to vote and not discriminated against.  And apparently, he really hated uppity black women who wanted him to do his job.

I might be reading too much into that, though.  Tanner’s apologized.  And the term, bitter, of course, “meant no sugar in the coffee, and was not meant as a reflection on [Berry] or [Berry's] attitude towards a challenging situation.”

Right.  ‘Cause the comment makes perfect sense that way.

Yeah, no worries. It’s not like there’s a crisis or anything. (h/t TPM)