I know John posted on this already, but I was struck again this afternoon by the actual meaning implied by incoming NRA president James Porter’s assertion that Barack Obama is a “fake president.”
Let’s review. In 2008 Senator Barack Obama and his running mate Senator Joseph Biden received 69,498,516 votes, accounting for 52.93% of the total ballots cast. Their principal opponents, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin (yes, that happened) garnered ten million fewer votes, for a 45.65% of the total. Obama and Biden took electoral college victories in 28 states, the District of Columbia, and in Nebraska’s second congressional district, to capture a total of 365 electoral votes out of 538 available.
In 2012, lest anyone has forgotten, Obama/Biden again won an absolute majority of votes cast — 65,910,437, or 51.1% to Romney/Ryan’s 60,932,795, accounting for 47.2% of the total. The President took 26 states and the District to the Republican ticket’s 24 states, and the victors captured a commanding 332 electoral votes to the losers 206.
In other words, Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States, earned and retained his office by every legal measure — handily at that. There’s a strong case that George W. Bush, “43” was, if not a fake, an illegitimate claimant to that office, losing as he did the popular vote in 2000 while gaining his electoral college victory by a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court that one at least of those in the majority now regards as an error.
But Obama? If you accept the idea of small “d” democracy, if you believe that the casting of ballots amounts to an expression of public will, then Obama is as real as it gets.
Which, of course, everyone in eyeshot of this post gets.
So what that’s the corollary to that positive statement?
Easy: anyone who denies the reality of Obama’s right to his office is telling the majority of the American electorate that their votes are fakes too. That public decisions don’t count.
That — given that we’re talking NRA here — the armed rump of the American right, among whom are over-represented amongst those who want to refight the Civil War, are the arbiters of who gets to hold power, and damned be to the rest of us.
I don’t know what you all call an armed minority spreading such stuff, but to me? Well, it ain’t treason until someone actually takes up arms and attempts to enforce that view…but it sure is dancing near that line.
I’m not simply name calling here: this is dangerous talk. There is a responsibility that lands on the elected leadership of the right to reject such talk, to dismiss it, to banish it from public discourse, because the failure to do so expands what Obama wonkishly termed the permission sphere for anti-democratic behavior — along with increasing the potential for political violence itself.
It may be all fun and games for a Republican party that gets to say “hell, we aren’t shooting anyone, so denying voting rights is OK, right?” But if the elected leadership — looking at you Boehner, McConnell, not to mention the 2016ers — fails to shut this kind of talk down, they will be complicit in the results.
Image: Toyohara Kunichika, Sen Taiheiki gigokuden, 1890. (Description, via Wikimedia Commons: Taira Masakado (901-940), an evil usurper of the throne, charges into battle surrounded by look-alike decoys.)
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s called sedition.
Poopyman
JSF beat me to it. Textbook case, IMO.
raven
It’s also called free speech.
Davis X. Machina
This is the climate that breeds Cromwells, and Francos.
No godly country would elect this man, or install this government
This man was elected.
So this is no godly country.
And as a result, not only can it all be swept away, we are derelict in our duty unless and until we sweep it all away.
Parliamentary democracy isn’t really compatible with The New Jerusalem.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: The line between sedition and exercising one’s First Amendment right to be a douchebag is rather blurry. The US, at its best, lets things go pretty far.
BGinCHI
Instead of trying to shut them up, I’d rather have guys like Porter and their intentions attached to the GOP by a strong, visible chain.
Let’s make that party small, irrelevant and diminishing as their members get old and Darwined out of existence.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I agree. Back when I lived in Columbus, Ohio, I used to like it when the Klan chose to have rallies at the Statehouse. Sunlight (a/k/a public ridicule) is the best disinfectant for these fuckers.
hildebrand
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, indeed. But I think the important piece in all of this is to declare – now – with great clarity who was doing the speaking when this stuff was uttered so that those spouting this nonsense cannot try to find a way out of their own complicity when one of the right-wingers decides to act out on the rhetoric.
elmo
Half – or more – of what gets said on the right today amounts to variations on “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”
And it’s considered bad manners to notice.
geg6
@Just Some Fuckhead:
THIS.
Anoniminous
I blame
Obamamy great-grandfather.If he had shot more of the Rebs (when he was marching through Georgia) we wouldn’t be having this problem.
MattF
Well, if you’re going to be bound by the rules of left-wing academic arithmetic, you just don’t get it. Who gets ‘more’ votes is just a matter of definition. In Real Arithmetic, votes of Real Americans count more than votes of… [-sound of dog whistle-]. Much more. Much much much much more.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Plus if you don’t sew the hoods right (surely the consequence of non-union labor) you can’t see through the eye holes.
/Django reference
pseudonymous in nc
@Omnes Omnibus:
And yet, “shut the fuck up, you bloated sister-fucking cracker” is somehow considered uncivil, even though lesser public ridicule is insufficient.
BGinCHI
@pseudonymous in nc: I thought that was plenty civil.
Chris
That’s exactly how they feel, and it’s pretty much out in the open. How often have you heard them bitching that people on welfare shouldn’t be allowed to vote, children of illegal immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to vote, etc? What do you think it means when they insistently repeat “we’re a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY?” They don’t think the majority of the American electorate should get to decide anything, and they say so loudly and proudly.
To be sure.
The only thing that comforts me is that their addiction to the creature comforts of post-New Deal America is probably (should that be “hopefully?”) enough to hold them back from turning words into action.
Well, at least as long as these comforts still exist…
Svensker
@Davis X. Machina:
My wingnut family tells me the opposite: Obama was NOT elected but somehow stole the election via the Black Panthers, ACORN, and Lie-bruls. Therefore this IS a godly country.
Chris
@BGinCHI:
Best scene in the movie, I was howling with laughter throughout. Don’t think the Klan has been ridiculed that well since Blazing Saddles.
JPL
@Just Some Fuckhead: Not to be redundant but it is also terrorism.
also, too… terrorism, not just for brown people anymore
Omnes Omnibus
@pseudonymous in nc:
I don’t see why that would be the case. It sounds to me like you are sugarcoating it.
BGinCHI
@Chris: Best part is once they sort out their costumes they get blown up.
Profiles in courage.
raven
@efgoldman: A guy from my outfit has been really helpful in helping me plan my trip. I made the mistake of hitting his FB page and he is full blast teabag, gun nut, Obama hating wild man. He’s also in a wheel chair from MS. I think I’m going to have to really focus on just enjoying myself next weekend and stay out of politics.
Davis X. Machina
@Svensker: Same thing. E-propositions are convertible, as their subjects and predicates are both distributed.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
That was the most hilarious part of a pretty grim movie.
raven
@Amir Khalid: Blazing Saddles, grim?
BGinCHI
@raven: Do NOT wear your “Is it gay in here or is it just me?” t-shirt.
/that is an actual t-shirt at the place in my ‘hood and though I’m a flaming heterosexual I’ve been wanting to get it
TG Chicago
In fact, it would appear that you can include Porter in that number. As mentioned in the linked story, he also referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.
So he’s not only flirting with treason here, he’s celebrating the last major group of traitors the nation faced.
raven
@BGinCHI: I don’t even want to think about what he thinks about the new law there. We are having a luncheon with the governor and legislators so I guess I’ll find out. My suspicion is that everyone will be cool.
scav
@Anoniminous: We’ll split the blame, my great-great grandad can shoulder some of the blame on the march. Just found a book on his regiment too, so I can figure out exactly where he should have tried harder.
raven
@efgoldman: He did advise me that two days on the Seven B’s out of Galilee would be heaven. I think I’m going for that!
raven
@efgoldman: Ah, I tried to backtrack upthread but got lost. I thought Django was funny as hell. When he waxed the Belle with the shotgun it was classic!
JPL
At the NRA convention, Sarah Palin brought a prop along, chewing tobacco. I didn’t watch the video, because doing so might cause harm to my computer, but I don’t get it. Was she promoting the right of people to get mouth cancer? Wouldn’t it be easier to just promote shooting themselves in the head?
Pokeyblow
That fat flameass fuck should be turned into the most famous man in America.
raven
@JPL: What head?
raven
@efgoldman: I’m a fishin fool. “A bad day fishin is better than a good day at work” and shit like that.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: My great-great can also shoulder some of the blame along with the rest of the 32d Wisconsin.
Ben Franklin
Tea Bags aside, there is air for those who wish to clear the decks of unresponsive government/legislators.
Selected quotes by Jefferson about ‘rebellion’:
“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.” –Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Take it easy on them. You know their rifles were made out of sharp cheddar.
SoupCatcher
I’m comforted by the thought that, 150 years ago, the Army of the Tennessee had crossed the Mississippi. Grant was coming for Vicksburg.
And it’s never a bad time to link to Tennessee Ernie Ford singing, Marching through Georgia.
Chris
@TG Chicago:
It’s a truly fascinating political environment where people who celebrate separatism are held up as the most “patriotic” and “really American” part of the country.
I mean, plenty of countries have regions that are rife with separatist sentiment, but I’ve never heard of Corsican, Basque, Quebecois or whatever separatist movements trying to hold themselves up as the ultimate arbiters of what is and isn’t appropriate and patriotic for the rest of the nation.
BGinCHI
@Ben Franklin: Too bad his slaves didn’t Django him right before the end of his life.
I like a little rebellion in the house of hypocrites.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Hey, they never got shredded.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
Speaking of your flaming heterosexuality, how is your family? I believe it’s been some time since we got to see any pictures.
BGinCHI
@Chris: I’m amazed by this too. Illogical victimization.
It’s like the South has never heard of Colonialism. Hmm, wonder what might be in the way of that argument?
Ben Franklin
@BGinCHI:
If you want to dispense with all the hypocrites, only scorpions and crows will be left.
BGinCHI
@Amir Khalid: Grand, thanks. Trying to get Xavi to like Liverpool but I don’t think constantly yelling “come on you bums!” is working.
His mother is going to get him to be a Man U fan at this rate.
He’s a happy rambunctious 16-month-old. Not sure how to post pics here without letting the whole world into Mrs. BG’s dropbox account….
BGinCHI
@Ben Franklin: Let’s get started and see how it works out. It’s nice to test the platitudes now and then.
RaflW
@raven:
Right. Which is why Tom calls for elected officials and candidates on the right to personally repudiate the comments, not to have the asswipe (or you) arrested.
You see, there is free speech. And there are social and cultural consequences. The right to speak freely is not, ever, anywhere, guaranteed to be free of being called a jerk-wad in response. Capiche?
raven
@BGinCHI: Get a flickr account and it’s easy to publish with a blind URL like this.
BGinCHI
@raven: I do need to do that. Right now I’m grading giant stacks of papers, so I’m tempted to spend 3 hours on it and then clean the toilets and do some touch-up painting.
trollhattan
WaPo has a teeth-grinding article about how arms dealer Rene Carlos Vos buddied up with LaPierre in the ’80s to bring us today’s privately held military rifle stash.
Yeehaw, pass the Freedom and praise the ammunition.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nra-lobbyist-arms-dealer-played-key-role-in-growth-of-civilian-market-for-military-style-guns/2013/05/03/4ee1945a-b268-11e2-baf7-5bc2a9dc6f44_story.html?hpid=z3
Ben Franklin
@BGinCHI:
Let’s get started and see how it works out
That sounds more like something an anarchist would say, rather than the mild-mannered progressive I’ve grown accustomed to.
TFinSF
Principal, not principle. Or, if you were saying that Crazy Gramps McCain and his idiot sidekick were opponents of principle, then well played.
raven
@RaflW: I was responding to JSF, Capice?
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Re Bloq Quebecois, Herri Batasuna, etc. and these people.
They’re not separatists, is the difference. Separatists want to leave.
They don’t want to leave the US, they want to restore it to its natural, pristine, uncorrupted state — in other words, Dothan, Alabama, from sea to shining sea. They are the remnant of the real USA. The Lost Tribes. Our own Voortrekkers
In this they’re the true children of the Confederacy. So long as the slave power could run the entirety of the US, thanks to the 3/5th clause, and Doughfaces and such, no one seriously gave a rat’s ass about secedeing.
Secession was plan B. Extension of slavery first to the territories, and then a post-Dred Scott federal law making it legal everywhere, was plan A.
These jamokes want to return to Eden, and provide us all with the same opportunity to the natural, pristine, uncorrupted United States — in other words, ca. 1956 Dothan, Alabama, from sea to shining sea.
BGinCHI
@trollhattan: Would love to have a peek at LaPierre’s tax returns.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@BGinCHI:
You married up, huh? Good for you!
raven
@BGinCHI: Post the kid playing hoop video and claim it’s yours!
BGinCHI
@Ben Franklin:
Great. Now I’m one of those guys.
I can see I need to spice my posts up. Maybe Burns will show up and provoke me.
Chris
@BGinCHI:
To the extent that I can make sense of it, I think it’s the original “We didn’t leave [the United States], it left us!”
Justified, especially from the elites’ POV, by the fact that Southern slave owners were the original High Society of the United States – you see it in the choice of national capital (convenient distance from the big Virginian plantations), some of the original presidents (Washington and Jefferson), the original constitution (not just where slavery was concerned, but other things too like the way the Senate was specifically designed as affirmative action for lightly populated states and as a check on democracy). I could see the Confederacy’s leaders being the original “well, this was supposed to be our country, but now that it’s been taken over by rabble, it’s not anymore” people.
What I find surprising is the number of people willing to validate their beliefs in the rest of the country.
BGinCHI
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Oh, that hurts.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
The Capone treatment would be perfect for LaPierre and the NRA. Bring on the IRS and a RICO investigation–double-whammy!
BGinCHI
@trollhattan: Honestly, I can’t believe someone hasn’t done that already. These guys have to be grifting.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Davis X. Machina:
There are times that I wish that the powers that be in the Union had just let ’em go just when the first big Egyptian cotton crop was being loaded on to ships bound for England and France. A few years later, shortly after the Suez Canal opened (and cotton started shipping from the Subcontinent), the bottom fell out of the market. Imagine the Southrons begging for reunion…
Hill Dweller
If only the President had had a drink with Porter, this never would have happened.
Tom_B
I bet the NRA is responsible for more violent deaths every year than any LISTED terrorist organization, except maybe Al Qaeda itself, as they are operative internationally.
fuckwit
I have to repost this. Again and again and again:
http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly060315.htm
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
Beat me to it… But like I said, the most surprising thing to me is the number of people in the rest of the country to accept their “we’re the realest Americans ever! YEAAAHHH!” spiel (even among liberals who think that’s chauvinism and not a good thing). Related – the number of people waving Confederate flags outside of the South (and, most ironically, in West Virginia and other parts of the South that were actually anti-Confederate as hell).
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Funny story about that – early on in the war, the South tried to force Britain into the war by slapping a cotton embargo on it, in order to “prove” that they couldn’t survive without Southern cotton. Instead, the British took it as a slap in the face and simply accelerated their plans to grow cotton in the colonies so they wouldn’t need to rely on the South anymore. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@efgoldman:
Holocaust would have been a possibility, but in the antebellum, slaves- as property- were increasingly being used as collateral in loan arrangements. Not sure how the banking interests would have taken the destruction of their assets.
raven
COUNTRY GAZETTE ”A Traitor In Our Midst”
I might take you back.
pokeyblow
Obama shouldn’t have a drink with Porter. He should, however, treat him like the fat fire-out-of-his-bunghole racist loser he is.
Weekly radio address: “this week, the NRA elected a leader who preaches sedition, longs for the days of slavery, and refuses to recognize the electoral results of our democratic process. We can no longer allow anti-American elements like the NRA compromise either our safety or our national unity.”
Of course, he CAN’T say that, right?
trollhattan
O/T Hardy har, SEK from LGM toys with Jonah Goldberg to comical results.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/05/i-feel-like-a-bad-person-3#comments
Yutsano
@Hill Dweller:
Only if, during said drinking session, Obama immediately resigned with nullification of every law enacted immediately upon said resignation. Submitting himself for arrest with a capital charge of treason would be icing on the cake.
pseudonymous in nc
@Davis X. Machina:
Domestic revanchists.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Way to shoot yourselves in the foot.
They learn slow. They are still trying to shoot themselves in the foot. If only more of us would be just a little bit smarter…
I wish they would acquire better targets on their own bodies and accelerate the process but still their foot is better than nothing.
JPL
@Ruckus: The problem is that they will use Obamacare to treat that injury.
RobertDSC-eMac 1.25
X-ring at 1000 yards, Tom. Thank you.
Narcissus
@pseudonymous in nc: I think it was volume 1 of Shelby Foote where I got my first glimpse of what the Confederates and their contemporary boosters really wanted: a Southern dominated, aristocratic slave-labor United States with an eye for Latin American adventurism.
Or, basically the country from the mockumentary CSA:Confederate States of America.
Ruckus
@JPL:
Good catch although I was thinking of them shooting themselves(or each other, that’s acceptable, no?) in a spot that will bleed out before the paramedics arrive. Of course if they have their way there will be no ACA to help them anyway.
RSA
@Svensker:
In the comments to a news article about those idiots with rifles marching on Washington, someone claimed that voter fraud was responsible for 10 million extra votes. Ten million! This is nutpicking, but there are such people out there.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
If the Founding Fathers had been half the men the wingnuts claim they were, they would have told them to STFU wrt state’s rights. THAT is the achilles heel of this great experiment with democracy – the ability of unreconstructed troglodytes to put up the middle finger to the rest of the country and their own citizens, all in the name of supposed “freedumb.”
West of the Rockies
So has there been any blowback on this NRA guy? Has any conservative outlet done even the “Well-I-wouldn’t-have-worded-it-that-way” dance yet? Has the MSM picked up on this story at all, or is it only us silly little progressives on blogs discussing this point? I truly have not heard anything about these quotations other than what I’ve seen on BJ and Daily Kos.
Elie
Aww — leave ’em alone… I think its necessary to have their extremist leaders rouse them to their maximum numbers. There is a ceiling and they are just about at it, is my guess. They represent the eventual losers of this debate about who are the Americans of this century… they even know it themselves, hence all the talk about armed rebellion and having to take up arms to assert themselves… having lost the political arguments and the social reality, of course, this must be their last vision o how to dominate, right? Problem for them, of course, is that the gun lobby wants their guns bought and sold — and lots of folks on the left and many of the “darkies” are pretty armed up too. And the numbers just dont work for them just using regular arithmetic.
Oh, don’t get me wrong — these folks have been around and will be around for a while — grieving their lost ownership of the vision of White America as being the ONLY America. They will remain like a continual boil — filled with resentment and fear until their grandchildren and their children assimilate into this big evolving America — which they are and will…
Till then, it is better to let them rant — and do their occasional evil thing… we can’t let them break up all the house and furniture though… we keep our eye on them and work on their kids —
Chris
@efgoldman:
The Germans are fairly unique in that respect. Even then, there’s been a lot of whitewashing in WW2 history, but at least the central point – “Nazis = BAD” – isn’t in dispute. More than we have in the South… or the rest of the country WRT the Indian genocide, our colonial history, etc…
@Ruckus:
I wouldn’t mind, except that their method of “shooting themselves in the foot” takes a form that involves hitting the entire rest of the country as collateral damage. (And getting it to pay to clean up the damage).
Chris
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
The Achilles’ heel of THIS great experiment in democracy is the degree of disproportionate power it grants to rural, low-population, and conservative-as-fuck parts of the country. It gives them tools to stall progress that their counterparts in more representative governments can only dream of.
States’ rights are a huge part of that, to be sure. I imagine it would be even worse if senators were still chosen by the state governments; it’d make it even easier for powerful local elites to simply dictate who it would be.
raven
Charlie Strong introducing the Derby Jokey’s!
Mark B
I recently had a run-in on a sports site with someone ranting about how ‘Obama is a fascist’. I guess it came up because the coach of the Spurs contributed to Obama’s campaign, but the connection to sports was beyond peripheral, and it was super stupid to bring it up in a sports forum. Not to mention that this guy had a completely incorrect idea of what the word fascism means.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, come on, Tom.
The
manboy is a ni*CLANG*. He can’t POSSIBLY be the legitimate president. He’s worse than Joffery could have ever been, even in a fictional universe.JPL
@efgoldman: A good friend who is black believes that the War was about States rights. Since we live in GA, I told her to read the secession papers and call me back. Talk radio should be outlawed.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman:
At the time that Fort Sumter was attacked, the Southerners were adamant that their action was to preserver slavery. That’s what it was all about.
Come April 1865, after their armies of traitors had been crushed, the revisionism started, immediately. It was about tariffs, or it was about “states’ rights”…it was never, ever about the “peculiar institution”. All the Southern bluster of 1861, and their rationale, went down the old memory hole 80 years before Orwell came up with that name for it.
Lincoln fucked up. The South should have been cleansed of the planter class, and their underclass allies.
Chris
@efgoldman:
Maybe not, but turn the question around. Would you have been comfortable with the 2008-2010 House – the one led by Nancy Pelosi, which passed a distinctly more liberal health care bill that actually did have a public option – having had more power to enforce its will? Would the reaction to the crisis not have been much more energetic if the mandarins in the Senate hadn’t had the power to squash or water down so many liberal initiatives? And wouldn’t that, in turn, have made it much more difficult for the wingnuts to win big in 2010?
As with filibuster reform, it goes both ways.
Davis X. Machina
Ms. Palin was telling us yesterday that “freedom is destroying itself” — I guess the only way to preserve freedom is to not exercise it for a while. Think of it as sending freedom off to rehab for a bit.
The best place to start freedom’s little enforced bed-rest program — temporary, mind you, just till freedom is feeling better — is probably that whole representative-government thing. It’s exhausting, and you can tell it’s not really working that well, based on the results lately.
Mike in NC
Novelist Harry Turtledove wrote several alt-history books where the Confederates prevailed in the Civil War.
My wife and I went for a leisurely walk one day when we first moved into our present community and we spotted an odd flag flying over someone’s garage. She asked and I said that I thought it was the national flag of the CSA. I went by a couple of days later and left a note in the mailbox. The flag quickly came down and hasn’t been seen since.
As a gun owner and collector of militaria, I used to go to lots of gun shows. In the 90s in MD and VA, you would always find a table or two or three with all sorts of anti-Clinton crap, like three dollar notes with Bill’s face on them and dozens of nutty bumper stickers. Oddly enough, I went to a gun show in SC two or three years ago and there was next to nothing in the way of anti-Obama garbage. Need to get out more.
raven
Why doesn’t someone jump over on the handy Pat Lang post and ask his confederate ass what he thinks?
raven
@Mike in NC: How many Jane Fonda urinal targets did you see?
JPL
ot .. someone is gonna win the derby.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est:
er “preserve”. Spell checker fail! Writer fail! It’s all fail!
raven
ORB!!!!!!
Ben Franklin
Obama’s putative absence is key to creating the political space Senate Republicans need to negotiate in good faith. As Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) revealed in an interview about the gun bill’s failure this week, “There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” (Toomey is one of the Senate’s most conservative members, but will face a tough re-election in 2016 and not coincidentally was an author of the failed gun bill.)
If the senators can use that space productively, their efforts will be part of a two-pronged strategy: First, force House Republicans to choose between cooperation and rejectionism by building strong bipartisan support for a budget bill in the Senate; second, let Republican Senators, rather than Obama himself, be the emissaries for that legislation.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…..argain.php
WTF? Wasn’t Obama out front with the gun bill? The push=back against the theories of governance around ‘permission’ bona fides is this productive space theory?
Did Jon Favreau have final editing authority for this story?
GregB
@raven:
I used to enjoy his take on international news but had to bail out after one too many of his trips to the Confederate well.
Not to mention guns.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
“We are letting freedom destroy itself.”
What does that even MEAN? Liberals are destroying our freedoms, okay. But freedom destroying itself? There some kind of dog whistling message in there or is it just word salad?
(It’s Palin… probably the latter).
Ben Franklin
working link
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/obamas-permission-structure-and-his-last-best-chance-for-a-budget-grand-bargain.php
JPL
OT.. Orb just won the derby but the jockey who raced him speaks broken english. Do we know whether or not he is legal?????????
JPL
@Ben Franklin: Thanks for the link. That makes me miss the good old days when Bush had Congress suck his..well you know.
Tokyokie
@JPL: Well, it was about states’ rights, inasmuch as the only state right Southerners were interested in preserving was that of their upper classes to steal the labor of of their lowest classes.
HinTN
@efgoldman: My lord, that was a proud and ELECTRIC moment in Celtics history. I was truly proud of that crowd. And, of course Philly did just that and Dr J got his ring.
Redshift
@Chris: According to Lakoff’s research, when people on the Right talk about “freedom,” it means freedom to do the right thing. If you do the wrong thing, you’re “abusing your freedoms.” (And of course, people in authority are the ones who determine what’s “right.”)
I’d guess that bizarre idea was probably the input to the Palin word-salad generator in this case.
JPL
@Tokyokie: At the time, South Carolina was one of the wealthiest states and they never were able to adapt to the new realities. When you read the secession papers, you realize that they thought the Constitution was on their side. (it probably was)
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: You can be so free — say, free to marry another dude, for example, or vote without running a gauntlet of Dobermans and firehoses, or worship this lil’ guy — that you forget what real freedom is really all about.
So, because you’re being free all wrong, none of us get to be free.
raven
Lee Marvin is so good in The Wild One!
Ben Franklin
@JPL:
I think I’ll have to look more closely at TPM.
TriassicSands
69,498,516 votes cast by fake Americans.
65,910,437 votes cast by fake Americans.
The criteria for being a REAL AMURKIN are pretty clear:
1. Active member of NRA.
2. Resides in state that votes Republican — preferably one that fought against Northern aggression in 1861-65 — and would never consider voting for a Democrat.
3. Hates minorities and the poor — at least those who don’t qualify according to criteria #1 and #2.
Fake Americans, by definition, elect fake presidents.
Oh yes, to be a legitimate president the candidate must be white and male. Exceptions to this may be made in 2016 and beyond if the GOP sees fit to nominate Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, or another similarly superior candidate.
ruemara
@pseudonymous in nc: I see nothing wrong or uncivil or incorrect.
Mike in NC
@raven: “I’m not Fonda Hanoi Jane” was a classic.
OzoneR
@Mike in NC:
would argue too that the Assault Weapons Ban became the flagship issue for Clinton opposition whereas Obama hadn’t touched gun control until this year.
Chris
@TriassicSands:
“At this time, we are accepting candidates of all genders and backgrounds [some restrictions apply; offer may not be valid if the candidate is or looks Muslim; see local party for details]. Nonwhite candidates are encouraged to apply, particularly if they are virulently racist towards people from other ethnic backgrounds and openly dismissive of demands for equal opportunity from people who share their backgrounds. However, any objection to their place in the social order will be grounds for immediate dismissal. It is not for you to determine whether your white peer has chosen poorly in naming his ranch after a racist epithet.”
jefft452
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them … against domestic Violence.
Roy G.
God forbid, though, that the godless Blue states and coastal elitists quit involuntarily donating their federal tax money to these shitkickers.
Cacti
@Ben Franklin:
I wonder if Tom would have approved of a rebellious spirit among the human chattel that tilled his land.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC:
The ultimate upshot is, however, a genocidal fascist government comes to power in the Confederacy after the Great War (USA/Central Powers vs. Britain, France, Russia, and the CSA) and is ultimately destroyed by the Union.
ThatPirateGuy
@efgoldman:
Why do people think that slaves don’t make sense for factory labor?
Woodrowfan
1. FWIW, if I remember right, SC was the last state to get rid of property requirements to vote, and the last to let women serve on juries.
2. More seriously, I am increasingly convinced that we will start to see wide-spread political violence within the next 5 years or so. I hope I am wrong….
TriassicSands
@Chris:
Amen.
Chris
@Woodrowfan:
I hope you’re wrong too, but I don’t think so.
Question is, what exactly do you mean by “widespread?” I’ve always taken it for granted that once conservatives got it through their heads that it’s over, they’re never going to take “their” country back, they’ve lost the future… then you’ll see a big upsurge in right wing violence. But by “violence” I mean like the white supremacists in the fifties and sixties or the left wing radicals in the seventies and eighties (more in Europe than here) – enough to get a lot of perfectly good people killed, but not enough to seriously threaten the system or reverse the course of history.
But, you sound like you’re talking about more than that, like major insurrection. If that’s what you mean, I’d say no – if only because I think Bismark’s “bribe the people not to revolt with a welfare state” system worked. Too many people have too much invested in society to want to risk full revolution.
priscianus jr
This shmuck is far from the first one to suggest that Obama is not a legitimate president, so I’ve had this realization for quite a long time. we had an election asshole. It wasn’t even close.
I have a few additional observations. First of all, I think these guys are so full of spite that for them it’s just tit for tat. It’s like politics is football. You say Bush was illegitimate, so we say Obama is illegitimate. Clinching argument: at least Bush was white.
Second of all, 56% of the people who voted for Obama in 2012 were white. A February 2013 Gallup poll found that 60% of those identifying as Democrats are white.
If they keep up this approach they are going to get their ass kicked but good.
S. Holland
@elmo: That is what terrifies me……
priscianus jr
@jefft452: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them … against domestic Violence.”
This is called the Guarantee Clause (Art. IV, Sect. 4). The militia referred to in the Second Amendment was intended to implement the Guarantee Clause. Taken together, these clauses “make it overwhelmingly clear that the Constitution was framed to forbid, prevent and punish insurrection against its own laws…” (Garry Wills)
See also Darren Mulloy, American extremism: History, Politics and the Militia Movement (2004), 128-138
Hardaway, “The Inconvenient Militia Clause of the Second Amendment” … pp.98-100. St John’s Journal of Legal Commentary 16.1 (2002).
Carl Nyberg
Obama got more votes, but when you look at the votes that matter, White people with above average incomes, it becomes clear that Obama would not have won if there was a sensible system of restricting who can vote.
That’s how they see it.
Chris
@Carl Nyberg:
Yep. People on welfare and illegal immigrants’ children put him over the top.
BobA.
@Chris:
Actually, 24 counties of West Virginia, about 2/3’s of the state, voted in favor of the Confederacy. They were included in the state against their will, as most of the state was. The devil is in the details.
jefft452
@priscianus jr:
“The militia referred to in the Second Amendment was intended to implement the Guarantee Clause.”
Yep
“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections”
StringOnAStick
I’m shocked that no one has mentioned that this new NRA president is most likely referring to all the birther crap when he says President Obama is a “fake” president. How soon we forget, and my, my, how long they hold a grudge….
JR in WV
I believe that the tools provided to the United States government will be more than adequate for putting down the coming attacks of the stupid.
The DHS and active military will be able to deal with insurrection quite handily, after dealing with it in multiple countries all over the world for the past century… you can’t fight A-10 Warthogs with a Browning shotgun!!
And also, too, what about those drones? Quite capable of locating, identifying, and attacking crowds of people around a burning cross late at night.
Kenneth Almquist
Sorry to rain on your parade, but Tom Levenson is taking a button and pinning a vest on it.
James Porter used the phrase “fake president” on June 9, 2012, in a 20 minute speech to the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. I’ve reproduced a few excerpts below.
This is not a carefully crafted speech read from a teleprompter. You can see that some of the phrasing, even after being cleaned up a bit, is not something that a professional speechwriter would ever write. It is generally clear what Porter is saying, but that’s because there is a fair amount of redundancy in the speech, not because every single word has been carefully crafted to convey the precise shade of meaning that Porter intends. It’s not a speech which can be understood by focussing on a single word (“fake”) in isolation.
The “fake president” reference occurs in a transition to a section of the speech where Porter reveals himself to be either dishonest or delusional. (I would guess he’s both.) His claim is that the Obama administration is, “anti-gun, anti-freedom,” and “anti-Second Amendment.” It makes sense to assume that the word “fake” relates to this. The implication is that people who don’t buy into Porter’s distorted view of Obama have been fooled, that the Obama that reality based people see is “fake.”
It does not make sense to assume that Porter is questioning “small ‘d’ democracy.” In this speech he’s talking about defeating Obama in the voting booth, by getting gun owners to the polls. The notion that he opposes “small ‘d’ democracy” runs counter to one of the central messages of his speech.
Tom Levenson links to an article which quotes two words from Porter’s speech, and that’s it. My guess is that Levenson simply didn’t care whether what he wrote about Porter was true or not. It’s possible to disagree about what Porter meant by the phrase “fake president,” but if didn’t look at the speech in an attempt to understand what Porter meant in context, we aren’t talking about a good faith disagreement about what Porter meant; we are talking about Levenson making a claim about what Porter meant without making any attempt to determine whether that claim is true.
Similarly, the article Levenson links to doesn’t state when the Porter gave the speech. Levenson attempts to rebut Porter by citing the results of the 2012 election which occured 5 months after Porter’s speech. A reader who assumed that Levenson was writing in good faith would assume that the 2012 elections preceded Porter’s speech. Again, my guess is that Levenson didn’t know or care about the date of Porter’s speech; all he wanted was an article, true or false, which would convince gullible readers.
Excerpts from Porter’s speech follow:
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opjdxnag3TE&feature=youtu.be