Scary black guy is scary.
Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) on Tuesday accused President Obama of “threatening” the Supreme Court as it prepares a ruling on the constitutionality of the healthcare reform law.
Speaking a day after Obama warned against “unelected” judges overturning the law, Johanns said Obama crossed the line with his remarks.
“What President Obama is doing here isn’t right,” Johanns said Tuesday in an interview with local Nebraska radio station KLIN. “It is threatening, it is intimidating.”
Seven more months of “But he’s The Uppity Kenyan Colonialist Gangsta Thug! Hide your nubile daughters!” is going to be awesome like a migraine surrounded by smaller autonomous migraines. Then again, it’s not like Republicans can run on issues or anything, so the full court press on BLOOGITY BLOO HE’S BLACK is pretty much their entire hand at this point.
I for one think people would remember 15 months of this in 2007-2008 not working, but it really hasn’t stopped these guys from regularly visiting the dog whistle factory, ordering crates of dog whistles, melting them down into slag and then using the slag to paint HE’S BLACK in 50 foot tall letters on the side of every skyscraper in America as a stimulus project.
I swear if the President ever gave anyone the side-eye, there would be Articles of Banishment to the Phantom Zone before the end of the day.
kooks
Stand your ground, Johanns !!!
Jerzy Russian
It is like these guys cannot remember what they were saying last week. The Rude Pundit had a pretty good sampling of quotes from Republicans bitching about the Courts, using language that was much stronger than what Obama used.
Phoenix_rising
Can we get a new tag: “…and what happened after you asked Barry Obama to bust up that chifferobe, miss?”
Credit to whoever typed it first.
Karen in GA
I’ll see their “intimidating” and raise them a “Justice Sunday.” Fuck ’em.
David Koch
Jon Stewart was wringing his “liberal” hands last night over Obama’s Court comments.
Fucking punk.
nellcote
Everybody got the memo…Nikki Haley’s calling him a “bully”
quannlace
Ha! Editorial in our paper talking about the exact same thing. Quoting Reagan when he was on the campaign trail, saying how we was going to ‘strip’ the court.
It’s simply astounding how those on the right have become mean-spirited and little hot-house flowers all at the same time.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
You know what’s really intimidating?
Considering a future where thousands of Americans get fucked out of health care access because of a judicial hissy fit that even conservative judicial scholars feel is baseless. That’s what fucking intimidates me, that we might end up with decades of gilded medical access even worse than before because of a nakedly partisan court ruling.
And on a separate but partially related note: I’m swearing off any more Trayvon Martin coverage from hereonin. It seems like the die has been cast to where one side has gone from ‘Calm down, wait ’til all the facts are out!’ to ‘SEE! SEE!! RED ON HIS HEAD, THAT PROVES THAT TRAYVON WAS A VIOLENT SUPER THUGGY THUG LIKE ALL YOU GODDAMN BLACKS!!!’ I mean, FUCK, people are actually using ‘Trayvon’ as shorthand for ‘Black, Scary, and Obviously Criminal’ now, and that’s fucking depressing on so many fucking levels.
Tom65
Fuck them, all 27% of them. I’m tired of reacting to their constant fucking whining.
cervantes
Of course, no Republican would ever complain about unelected judges overturning the law. I mean, I can’t remember any of them ever doing that . . .
AnotherBruce
Who knew that Jimmy Carter could be so intimidating?
AnotherBruce
Who knew that Jimmy Carter could be so intimidating?
Forum Transmitted Disease
Well, he is black, which is enough for that crowd, I suppose. But really, crybabies…
FDR threatening to pack the court was intimidating. Nixon telling the entire legal system that the President could do anything that crossed his mind with no legal recourse was threatening.
Obama just picked up the ol’ “judicial activism” cudgel that the Republicans just left on the ground somewhere and is beating not just the Supreme Court but their entire party with it. Unpleasant and very, very embarrassing? Oh yeah. But not intimidating.
catclub
Given how good Obama turns out to be at lots of things. I think he could do an incredibly scary black man if he wanted to. Second inaugural would be a good time.
He has definitely been very good so far at NOT doing the scary black man – Jackie Robinson good.
Satanicpanic
@David Koch: Jon’s act isn’t cute anymore.
pseudonymous in nc
Hey, Senator Ho-hands — who the fuck are you, anyway?
Apparently, you’ve been in the Senate for over a year and this is the first thing we’ve heard from you? Now go and shuck some fucking corn.
jl
If race baiting is all they have, I guess they will try to use it, in all its baroque variations, and subtle very high frequency dog whistle versions.
TPM says Romney will try out a different tactic: projecting his own weaknesses onto Obama. That might be considered an inverse retrograde variation on the Rove move of attacking your opponent’s strengths.
So, looks like Romney will try calling Obama a flip flopping, obfuscating, strategically vague phoney for a while.
I think signs are doubtful that Romneyfying Obama will work, but it might keep the racist dog whistles (Edit: and circus steam calliopes and fog horns) to Congressional back bencher campaigns for awhile.
Romney To Obama: I Know You Are, But What Am I?
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/romney-to-obama-i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i.php
Ryan S.
The latest Arizona craziness
Can we godwin yet? plz
Yutsano
Oh just go ahead and say it. Say that N word. You can feel it building in the back of your throat like a growl from a lion. Let it go. Yes you’ll look like a totes racist dick but think of how you’ll FEEL.
Catsy
@Forum Transmitted Disease: This, and other similar comments.
The brazen shamelessness of their whining is staggering. They’ve spent more than four decades complaining about “unelected tyrants in black robes” and “judicial activism”.
They routinely attack the SCOTUS in terms far, far more more vicious and pointed. It’s practically Republican boilerplate.
I’d call it a lack of self-awareness, but I think they’re entirely aware of how awesomely dishonest they’re being. They just don’t care–they’re willing to say anything.
jl
@Ryan S.: Cripes, that would shut down this blog right quick. Sound the alarm!
Fanshawe
To paraphrase many great thinkers, racism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Tony J
This is the meme they’re going with in every comment site across der Interons. “Obama tried to intimidate the Supreme Court! Obama doesn’t understand the Constitution!” It’s fingers in the ears/mouth wide open time yet again on Planet Wingnut.
They sort of had to go that route once Obama clarified his statement for the hard of thinking and the Professional Moderates in the MSM started writing OpEds that took it into account. Got to keep the outrage machine in a high gear to keep the rubes happy, and when the ‘Liberal Media’ won’t carry the Kool-Aid it’s hoisted onto the sturdy shoulders of their stalwarts in Congress.
It’s a dirty job, etc.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Idiots. Americans really like their leaders to stand tall and talk tough, with macho swagger. Reagan worked that angle like a pro. Who was the last US President to be voted out of office for being too tough? Now if you are campagining against an unknown challenger, then you can play the “In your guts you know he’s nuts” card, but against an incumbent, this is political malpractice of a high order.
Zandar
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
All the other non-white ones, apparently.
AnotherBruce
@jl: Sure, let the Arizona police just try to arrest my internet trolling ass.. C’mon coppers, you’ll never take me alive!
Pococurante
Reality is threatening to these folks. So he was half right.
@Ryan S.:
That just put most of the right wing noise machine out of business.
Martin
@Yutsano: Its truly sad to see so many people endure lives of quiet desperation in the closet that they dare not emerge from. Be free, I say! Open yourself up to the world around you! Do not be ashamed to be who you are! Stand forth and proclaim loud to the world “I hate niggers and I’m proud!” Demand the world accept you for who you truly are!
jl
I suggest ‘Impeach
Earl WarrenJohn Roberts’ signs.I heard those were all the rage back in the day. I never saw one waved by a little old lady in Pasadena, though, but that was a little before my time.
Actually I think the idea of accountability of the Supreme Court is a valid issue. Difference between a little old lady Bircher from 1950s Pasadena and me is that I think there is a better case against Scalia and Thomas, and anyone who voted via Supreme Court decision for Bush in 2000 than there was agains Earl Warren (a good old fashioned CA GOP progressive, but they way).
So, good response is is to say that the Supreme Court needs to be accountable to something. Might want to read one of the more obviously incoherent and inane passages of a Scalia opinion to illustrate the point.
Only problem is that, unfortunately, I think the Obama administration likes some of Scalia’s national security and civil liberties decisions, no matter how bad.
Tonal Crow
There’s a meta point here.
The content of Republicans’ crazy emissions means very little. It’s not intended to reach the rational mind, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s true, false, unknown, unknowable, or any mixture of these.
All that matters is that it’s calibrated to tell citizens’ emotions that Obama/liberals/Democrats are a threat.
Why? Because emotions drive most of what most people do. The intellect follows behind to rationalize (both meanings intended) the result.
While it’s sometimes useful to rationally dissect and refute some of the more prominent emissions, that involves only the intellect, leaving the emotional base untouched.
it’d be much more useful to develop our own means of reaching citizens’ emotions and to use them regularly.
Not that we need to lie and bullshit. Truths can also reach the emotions. We just need to package them in the right way, as in “The Republican War on Women”.
More emotional punch, less rational dissection please!
MikeJ
@Satanicpanic: It’s been stale since his “both sides do it” rally.
WaterGirl
@Ryan S.: Strip searches, they’re not just for jay walking and parking tickets anymore. Annoy someone on the internet, it’s time for a strip search.
What could possibly go wrong with a bill that makes it a crime to annoy someone. Yikes, on a really bad day, I could get all 3 strikes in one day.
Legalize
Does anyone at this point believe that the Prez doesn’t know what he’s doing? Every time he pokes the freakshow with a stick, they take the bait and start screaming bloody murder. At which point, the GOP’s numbers take a crap and pull Willard’s negatives even higher as he’s forced to join along in the chorus of mournful howls.
No one outside of the 27% gives a shit about the Prez talking shit about judges.
Amir Khalid
I have read Obama’s statement referring to the PPACA case before the US Supreme Court. All he said was, he was confident the Court would uphold the law rather than overrule Congress, especially given the legal experts’ consensus that the law was well within Congress’ powers.
For the life of me, I don’t see how people who are not making shit up could label that as making threats.
Martin
@Amir Khalid:
Everything a black person says is a threat according to the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.
Fanshawe
The same way that some kid reading a Harry Potter book is a threat to Christianity even though everyone knows and agrees that Christianity is the one true religion and nothing can ever change that.
If you’re not worried about cognitive processes there isn’t any dissonance!
Schlemizel
I hope to hell they saw this coming and already have push back prepared. Like the Congressional double-dealing this was foreseeable so they should have their guns all primed & ready
Calouste
Didn’t Gingrich say a month or two back that he was going to send the marshalls to arrest Supreme Court Justices who won’t agree with him if he was elected president?
jl
@Calouste: No, I think Gingrich was saying he would get rid of half a dozen of them, just like Jefferson did. I think Gingrich implied that he would do it like Jefferson did, with a well aimed sledge hammer, coming down at midnight on a midnight judge’s big arrogant pointy head.
/snark
Roger Moore
@Tonal Crow:
While this is undoubtedly true, it has a critical limit; this kind of emotional appeal is much more effective at rallying people who agree than convincing those who don’t. If you aren’t already afraid of Blackity Black Obama at some level, the Republicans can shout themselves hoarse without having the tiniest effect on you. Shouting louder may help to get out the base*, but it isn’t going to do much to the squishy middle.
*Or maybe not. I don’t know how long they can keep their energy up, and constant calls to the barricades may wear them out by election day. Also, too, they may get depressed and lose their enthusiasm if they decide that their klaxon call isn’t warning the masses of the danger they face.
Martin
@Calouste:
Yeah, but that wasn’t a threat. Newt’s white.
David Koch
40 years ago, then minority leader, Gerald Ford tried to impeach Justice William O. Douglas for writing a magazine article.
http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/speeches/700415c.htm
I’m just sure it gave Broder a case of the vapors. Or not.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Amir Khalid:
The same way people can perceive a kid walking home with a can of iced tea as an imminent threat to the life of the armed man who stalks him. Because blacks are sc-c-c-c-caaaaary.
I’ve basically come to the conclusion that most of my fellow white folks are pathetic cowards. We’re still shitting our pants over Nat Turner. Whenever one of these quivering cowards tells me that they cross the street to avoid coming near one of those spooky negros I want to just beat the living shit out of them and take their money as an object lesson that white people can be scary too. Sadly, I can’t do that, so pointing out how stupid and cowardly they are has to suffice. It never does.
Because every one of these people has been fucked over many, many times by a white person. Many have directly been the victim of a white person’s crime and the rest have been victimized by white owned big business and big finance. But it will never, ever occur to any of these fucking idiots that it’s because white people are especially dangerous. And we’re not especially dangerous, but you can make a better case for fearing the white man than you can for black folks being inherently dangerous.
But cowardly white folks aren’t racist. I’m the real racist for talking about this shit.
Anyone who wants to whine and moan about how Obambi needs to be tougher, just remember this freakout over a speech in which he stated that there will be consequences if the Supreme Court chooses to gut the commerce clause just to spite those damn liberals. You’d think he was brandishing a .45 and talking like O-Dog during that speech judging by the right-wing reaction. What the fuck would happen if Obama ever really sounded threatening? He’d be the only President ever assassinated in “self-defense”, that’s what.
Fuck cowardly white people.
Phoenix_rising
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Yeah, I have to give this one to Michael Moore, who is fat BTW and said it better first:
Every time I have been fired, hit by someone’s car, had my wages garnished, had a paycheck bounce–the perp in every single instance was a white man.
By the logic of cowering white people, I should break every mirror in my house.
Tonal Crow
@Roger Moore:
It’s hard to conceive of an argument that isn’t more effective at preaching to the choir than at seeking converts.
The issue is that Republicans are reaching the public’s emotions, while Democrats are still concentrating on reaching their intellects. This is not universally true (e.g., “Republican War on Women”, “Ending Medicare”). But we need to shift the balance radically toward emotional arguments.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Tonal Crow:
Bin Laden is dead and GM is still alive works for me.
In an earlier thread I suggested: Even eels don’t trust Mitt Romney. They think he is too slippery.
jl
@Tonal Crow:
” The issue is that Republicans are reaching the public’s emotions ”
Main problem I see is that the emotions they have been reaching lately are mostly disgust and outrage.
The disgusted white guy above has it right, though. As a fellow white guy, easily mistaken for a corny white conservative dude, I done get stuff told to me by careless corny white conservative dudes, whose main attitudes towards minorities are fear and contempt.
Fear, that once in a majority they will do the same thing to whites that whites have done to them for hundreds of years. Basically, they echo what I heard a bearded white WV guy say in a clip during the 2008 campaign.
Contempt, out of a sheltered false belief that anyone not like them does not have to, and does not want to work hard, unlike fellow corny white dudes who totally deserve everything they have attained, and worked sooooo hard for. I am good at poker faces, which come in handy when some corny white guy, born and bred in middle and upper class with post WWII gummint helps for him and his parents role out that line.
I think this corny white dude attitude is dying off as younger people have more experience with different races and ethnicities, and more youngins preceive themselves (correctly in my view) to be an oppressed class denied advantages that this society can afford, and has afforded their elders, but are now withdrawn due to selfishness and self interested ideological myths held dear by people who just happen to benefit greatly from them, despite no visible evidence that these mythologies are true.
Roger Moore
@Tonal Crow:
I think the Democrats do this more than we probably realize; it’s just that we see what they’re saying as so obviously correct that we don’t notice the emotional appeal. A good example is Obama’s “you’re on your own society” quip. It seems obviously correct to me, but it’s much more emotional than factual.
ABL 2.0
i cackled when i read that.
danimal
It’s hysterical to see the, well, hysteria of the Right when Obama uses their idioms and arguments.
“Activist judges” is beyond the pale now? WTF?
gocart mozart
@WaterGirl:
Nah, the trolls might like it.
Tonal Crow
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That’s good stuff. It’s simple, punchy, succinct, and contains no cites to statutory language. That’s the kind of thing we need to use much more. While it seems obvious to the point of stupidity, that’s exactly the point. The intellect loves complexity, but the emotional mind craves the simple. Since it runs the show, by all means let’s give it the simple.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Roger Moore:
Obama uses emotive language quite a lot, but it either doesn’t get noticed at all or is deprecated in the progressive blogisphere because most of his statements which use emotional appeals are aspirational and normative, while the blogosphere prefers to be contrarian and gloomy.
Tonal Crow
@Roger Moore:
Yes, it’s good: it succinctly summarizes what Republicans want in a way that reaches the gut.
Huh? It is most certainly “factual”: it tells a truth about Republicans. It’s not a lie, nor bullshit, but a truth. “Emotional” and “factual” are not antonyms. I think what you meant to say is that it’s not an “intellectual” argument.
Poopyman
“Threatening”? You know what was threatening? The “Brooks Brothers Riot”.
Bribes
It will be “awesome like a migraine surrounded by smaller autonomous migraines.”
Great phrase.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Ahem.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/19/newt-gingrich-ignore-supreme-court-president
—-
Newt Gingrich has pledged that on his first day as president he will set up a constitutional showdown by ordering the military to defy a supreme court ruling extending some legal rights to foreign terrorism suspects and captured enemy combatants in US custody.
The Republican contender told a forum of anti-abortion activists ahead of South Carolina’s primary election that as president he would ignore supreme court rulings he regards as legally flawed. He implied that would also extend to the 1973 decision, Roe vs Wade, legalising abortion.
“If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it,” said Gingrich to cheers.
The Republican contender, who has made no secret of his disdain for the judiciary, said that as president he would expect to have repeated showdowns with the supreme court. He said the court would lose because it is the least powerful and least accountable arm of government.
—-
Tonal Crow
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: Right, but you see, libtard, when a Republican does it it’s patriotic, because Republicans are patriotic. And when a libtard does it, it’s treasonous, because libtards are treasonous. Get it yet? Do I need to dumb it down more?
rikyrah
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