The Georgia state senator who ranted about excessive black voting and vowed to fight a move to expand early voting in DeKalb County defended his remarks on Facebook.
[…] Fran Millar (pictured), wrote that in a comment responding to others on his post where he vowed to end Sunday balloting in DeKalb County because that area is “dominated by African American shoppers” and has “large African American mega churches.”“I do agree with Galloway and I never claimed to be nonpartisan,” Millar wrote. “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters. […]”
Twenty first century, folks.
Face
I’m sure he’ll be punished for this by winning re-election in a landslide.
Georgia = Alabama + Atlanta
elmo
But-but-but Party of Lincoln! Robert Byrd! George Wallace was a Democrat!
scav
Sooooooooo, is it the shopping or the church-going that is code and evidence of being uneducated, mmmmmm? Please go on. . .
TR
I’d prefer more educated legislators, myself.
Bill Arnold
What exactly does he mean by “educated voters”? (Serious question; this sounds like it might be a common usage in his circles, with a commonly accepted meaning.)
Elizabelle
That’s not even dog-whistling.
Emma
@Bill Arnold: White. SASQ.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Dictators historically tend to be quite well educated Mr Miller, not to mention we could could get rid of all these useless talking head senators and representatives who take the public money for such useless service.
TR
@Bill Arnold:
There is an element on the far right that uses “educated” to mean “brainwashed in the Glenn Beck canon.”
It’s funny that the people who are the most afraid of a communist dictatorship are the ones who act the most like one.
JPL
@Bill Arnold: That’s my feeling. The Deal administration has some ethics problems, but the state won’t investigate him. How can we be educated when the information is hidden from us.
It’s been a bad week for blacks in Atlanta with the Hawks owner and general manger releasing racial statements and this jerk who thinks blacks are not educated. I for one am sad.
Belafon
@Bill Arnold: “Educated voters” don’t shop where blacks mostly shop, nor do they go to black megachurches. What group do you think fit’s that description?
Kay
Because voting should be accessible and convenient for some people, the people who have cars and driver’s licenses and work regular hours, but not for others.
That’s like…reverse…unfairness.
I love how he’s ranting about “church and state”, too. This dope knows Bds of Elections regularly locate voting locations INSIDE churches, right? Mine is in a white church. I have never heard a peep out of the majority Republicans in this county about the “unfair advantage” there.
JPL
@Kay: I live in Roswell, north of Atlanta and yes, I vote in a church.
Amir Khalid
So Millar wants an end to early voting on Sunday explicitly to keep eligible black voters away from the polls? That’s blatantly indefensible, from a Constitutional point of view let alone a moral one, and the admission that he has a partisan motive only makes it worse.
Redshift
So he’d be fine with a civics exam to qualify for voting, right?
Kay
@JPL:
There are millions of us. He’s a moron who doesn’t know anything about how elections are administered.
How much do I love how LOW the bar is for white people? He knows not one thing, yet here is he OPINING, and not only that, he’s weighing in on “educated voters”!
White people better start worrying about the “soft bigotry of low expectations”. A lot of us are embarrassing. We have to raise the bar, and call out our own!
Frankensteinbeck
@Bill Arnold:
He means ‘white’, but you knew that. I’m guessing you want a little more detail. The racist doesn’t just dislike the Other. They think the Other is inferior. In America, traditionally racist whites believe that blacks are: Lazy, inherently criminal, stupid, primitive, more ape than human, and because of all of this will only make selfish and irresponsible decisions. Oh, and because they see blacks as a sort of neanderthal, they believe that blacks are physically superior – it proves that whites are more civilized, see? There are a number of traits they believe are part of that, but frankly I feel dirty already. The basic point is that guys like Millar don’t just hate blacks, they have a whole mythology built up about it.
balconesfault
Good that the Supreme Court has already ruled that voters don’t need protection against the likes of Rep. Millar.
After all – per Justice Roberts, there’s no basis for protecting against discrimination “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.”
Kay
“So Democratic eyes are fixed on Kansas. But they aren’t just looking at Brownback and Roberts. They want Kobach, too. He has the tea party resume that liberals loathe, and he’s also up for re-election. Now it looks like Democrats have a realistic chance to unseat him.
The KSN News/Survey USA poll released Monday found Democratic candidate Jean Schodorf leading Kobach by three percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent. That is within the margin of error, but it is a significant reversal from June when Survey USA found Kobach leading Schodorf, 47 percent to 41 percent.”
This is good news, but I have a quibble with Talking Points Memo (who are generally excellent on election issues).
Koback is no Tea Partier. He’s an elite in GOP election policy circles. He’s the BEST they have. They all follow him. He was Mitt Romney’s advisor and he’s a policy leader on the Right. Portraying him as some fringe nut isn’t accurate and it protects powerful people in the GOP.
Hawes
If it wasn’t for the mouth breathing yahoos who are busy “coal rolling”, buying AK 47s before the UN takes over and damning Obamacare as they sign up for ACA, Republicans wouldn’t win an election to dog catcher.
Hawes
@Kay: Is there really a difference any more between the Tea Party and the GOP elite?
The Wall Street elite, maybe. But the GOP?
Geeno
Sooooo. How’s that minority outreach going?
scav
Also “educated” good, but then there are those ‘over-educated’ elitists that also don’t make the cut. Goldilocks and the GOP-locks for voting. Basic test is looking in a mirror and cooing “Just right.”
Tone In DC
This guy does David Duke, Rick Perry and George Wallace proud.
Maybe some of the “uneducated” folks down there can check on his ethics compliance.
Hey, if you’re not doing anything wrong, g00per, then you have nothing to worry about.
jheartney
Well, the guy is a state senator. Once they get up on the national level they learn not to say such things. In public.
SatanicPanic
For shits and giggles let’s just say he’s not being racist. Isn’t his job to make sure people in his state are educated? Clearly this statement is an admission of failure on his part.
gf120581
@Kay: Yes, I remember Kobach being rather prominent in Romney’s camp, especially on immigration (another reason why Mitt did so poorly among Hispanic voters). He isn’t just some fringe Tea Bagger.
Most interesting reading that TPM piece, I did not know his opponent was an ex-Republican who defected to the Democrats thanks to Brownbeck-style extremism. That seems to be a growing trend in Kansas (both of Sebelius’s Lt. Guvs, the latter who succeeded her as Guv, were both ex-GOP too) as the moderate Republicans revolt against the kind of conservatism Brownbeck and Kobach represent (and has caused major damage to their state).
Mustang Bobby
@Elizabelle: Oh, it’s a Klaxon (ah-OOOOGA!).
JaneE
If he had used “un-educated” in the first place, most everyone would have still known what he meant. When you are honest about your racial basis for voter suppression, the courts can’t allow it. I guess we should be glad that the Republicans get dumber every year.
TR
@Kay:
When I lived in Atlanta a decade ago, my voting place was inside the very-white, very-rich St. Phillp’s Episcopal Cathedral.
Bet he has no problem with that, as all the people voting with me seemed really “educated.” Except one who had a bad sunburn.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid:
Actually, partisan motive is increasingly a legal defense in these cases, because racial discrimination is very specifically outlawed in ways that partisan games are not. The idea is that stacking the deck against blacks is perfectly OK as long as you can say that what you’re really doing is rigging the election against Democrats, and the fact that they’re black is incidental.
Kay
@Hawes:
I think there’s a difference between elite lawyers (like Kobach) and the guy at the top of the page, who is a moron. Kobach knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s a national leader who is taken seriously by people like Mitt Romney. He has much more access and clout than a random state legislator. They take Kobach’s ideas (which are really radical) and put them in outside Kansas and nationally, or they try to. Kobach is an actual threat. Putting him in the “nut” category protects him.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: He’s probably perfectly fine with it, as long as it’s run like a Jim Crow-era literacy test.
shortstop
He’s playing the “I got an award from the DeKalb County NAACP!” card. That worked so well for Donald Sterling.
Reading Millar’s Facebook posts/comments, I don’t think he should be impugning other people’s education. The guy barely speaks English.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Wasn’t Kobach behind Arizona’s papers please law?
schrodinger's cat
@shortstop: Well, Moron is a dialect of English that the Wingnuts are proficient in.
gf120581
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes, he had a significant role in concieving and pushing that law.
He also was behind the disastrous “self-deportation” stance by Mitt in 2012.
Bottom line; Kris doesn’t like the dusky races.
lol
I’d be happy to agree to a civics test as long as I get to pick the question. Fail and you’re banned from voting for 4 years.
Question 1: True or False: President Barack Hussein Obama was born in the United States.
Should eliminate a good swath of the uneducated population I think.
Trinity
Wow.
Bokonon
One of the things that right wing talk radio and Fox News has done over the last 20 years is that they have ratcheted up the level of anger and confrontation, and changed the boundaries of acceptable discourse. That allows people like Millar feel safe in coming out and saying things like this – without shame and without apology. As well as openly pursuing smash-mouth policies that will suppress voting. They aren’t even speaking in code or dog-whistles any longer.
And then these politicians generally don’t pay a penalty at election time. More like, they actually get rewarded if they stand firm and don’t back down. Because their constituents increasingly feel no shame or need for apology either – and are being talked into confrontation and aggression against their many enemies by the same media. If it is a war you want, rather than the regular functioning of a democracy, then anything goes.
And the ratchet continues.
Concerning Kobach, Brownback, and the rest of the GOP power elite in Kansas – the amazing thing is that the polls are even remotely close after the complete wreck that they have made of state government over the last several years. The fact that more than 40 percent of the voters in Kansas are STILL willing to vote for the members of that group after all their failures just shows … well … how many gross mistakes and failures people are willing to accept when they are strong, ideological partisans.
burnspbesq
In some places, perhaps.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bokonon:
Humanity has a long history of choosing hate and ego over their material self-interest.
Villago Delenda Est
Clearly literacy tests are needed before you’re allowed to vote in Georgia.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d only take a drug test if it were take-home.
different-church-lady
Well, at least he’s figured out the N-word is now taboo. I suppose that counts as a kind of progress…
Semi-on topic: I keep seeing phrases like “post-racial America” and “age of colorblindness” popping up in odd places. Sometimes ironically, frequently in sarcasm, but occasionally in places that seem serious (such as the subtitle to this book). I keep thinking, “Who on fucking earth seriously thinks we’re anywhere close to being beyond racial considerations today?”
Can anyone give me a capsule summary of where this concept has come from? It seems like it’s from another planet, yet people treat it seriously.
different-church-lady
@burnspbesq:
We should take these things one step a time: let’s get this fellow into the 20th century first, and then we can think about the 21st.
different-church-lady
@lol:
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
different-church-lady
@SatanicPanic: The shits make sense but I’m not sure where the giggles come in.
askew
Somehow I find that less offensive than Michael Moore saying that Obama will only be remembered for being the first black president because he hasn’t done anything significant. I expect racism on the right. I continue to be surprised and appalled by it on the left. I just read an entire thread at Booman Tribune of purer than thou white progressives who agree with Moore. That kind of racism makes my skin crawl.
Patrick
Like the educated voters that were in favor of Bush’s war in Iraq, or Bush’s tax decreases without any decreases in spending…
One thing I have learned about voters is that stupidity of voters has very little to do with education.
RaflW
@different-church-lady: it seemed like that phrase had some frequency of use in the first year of Obama’s presidency (or first few months?), when there was still some amazement and optimism over his election.
Then the endless ugly that greeted the new political realty dawned, and it is obvious that the country is no more “post-racial” than 1950s Alabama.
Patrick
@askew:
I wonder if Michael Moore would have the guts to repeat that comment to my friend. My friend had a pre-existing condition and thanks to the ACA, she FINALLY has the right to get health insurance. And for Moore to claim that that is not significant is garbage.
different-church-lady
@askew: It still kinda stuns me, but in the summer of 2008 I remember some anon on some board commenting, “When they figure out Obama is not the messiah, they’ll turn on him.”
I thought it was nuts when I read it, because I never bought into the messiah meme — I thought it was a stupid caricature invented by the right to taunt liberals. It really blows my mind that this guy was correct.
MomSense
@askew:
I only lurk at Booman now–because of the comments. It is the same tired schtick with some of those folks.
Belafon
@Bokonon: “As long as the black person under the next bridge neither has a pigeon nor a shower rod to cook it on.”
askew
@different-church-lady:
I don’t think it is about Obama being a messiah. I think a significant portion of white progressives have race issues and don’t realize it. They make excuse after excuse over Bill Clinton, JFK, LBJ or FDR’s record but anything short of perfection from Obama is just another sign that he is a naive, disappointing, inadequate president.
@Patrick:
I think he’d have no problems saying that to your friend judging from the posters who hold the same view as Moore on Booman. Social Security excluding blacks and a lot of women initially doesn’t matter but ACA not being perfect means the whole thing is a failure.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patrick: The problem here is that Obama failed to deliver the utopia that people like Michael Moore demand. It’s somewhat like our “conservative” friends being disappointed in the deserting coward because he failed to privatize Social Security…never mind his other accomplishments, like blowing up the national debt nearly as much as he blew up Iraq and Afghanistan.
RaflW
@Patrick: Indeed.
Likewise my bi-national gay friends who are mid-process to return to the US as legally married. They left 10 years ago as the Belgian faced expulsion, but are being accorded the same Byzantine bureaucracy as straight bi-nationals now.
It’s a big deal, but clearly not to Moore. Is he a homophobe? It’d be irresponsible not to speculate!
(snark)
Belafon
@Patrick:
And there are plenty on the left who state that “health insurance is not the same thing as health care” without accepting that in the US you don’t get the second without the first.
Seanly
For those wondering, “well-educated voters” = white Southerners who watch Fox News and carry misspelled tea party signs.
askew
@MomSense:
It’s too bad because Booman himself has really interesting things to say but his comment board is full of emoprogs who tend to say some pretty racist things about Obama and immigration reform. I’d love to see him commenting here where his posts could have an interesting comment section.
Another example of their double-standard – Eisenhower integrating the troops is a big deal while Obama repealing DADT and letting gays serve openly in the military and making sure they get the same benefits as married heterosexuals is no big deal. Totally not worth mentioning.
flukebucket
Dunwoody is 70% white. You would think the guy would just let well enough alone. Luckily I have seen him numerous times on TV and he is doubling down and claiming it was taken out of context etc, etc, etc.
I would be willing to bet my house that if that happened more Republicans than Democrats in Georgia would fail it.
RaflW
@Belafon:
Well, ACA wasn’t the single-payer utopia, so FAILURE!
I just went to urgent care yesterday and it was $25. Twelve months ago I’d have been out a minimum of $150 and I had “good” individual insurance then, too.
But, I must be disappointed because I have Blue Cross and not Medicare for all, huh. It’s sparkle-pony leftist crap.
Patrick
@Belafon:
I wish those folks on the left would learn a thing or two about reality. In France, a country that right-wingers seems to hate so much, just about everybody has health insurance as their government coverage only covers about 70% of their care. Sweden, another country hated by FoxNews, many folks also utilize health insurance. In Switzerland everybody by law has to have health insurance. I don’t understand some folks on the left and their knee-jerk objection to health insurance.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
He was. He’s the Intellectual Father of a lot of this. That’s why I object to labeling him a kook. He isn’t a kook. He’s an elite lawyer who has an effect on national policy, and is taken seriously. That’s evidenced by how his ideas are adopted outside his state.
I love TPM on voting, though. I don’t think they get enough credit for making this accessible to a huge swath of liberals and Democrats. They write about it in an engaging but accurate way, and they make it less wonky and more immediate.
It started with the US attorney controversy, which was dismissed as unimportant by major media. It was that ultra-savvy “they serve at the pleasure of the President” brush-off they do.
I think that’s because that was ABOUT voter suppression, and that was back in the dark days when only civil rights lawyers were yelling about that. White people of a certain class didn’t get it and they didn’t care. That’s why Bush was firing people. He wanted voter fraud crusaders.
Media and a LOT of lawyers were wrong and TPM was right. Good job! They just kept hitting it until it went mainstream. Now everybody covers it, but that wasn’t true as late as 2006. It really only broke out in 2012. They did that.
shelley
“Double-downing” It’s the Republican’s favorite exercise program.
different-church-lady
@RaflW:
At this point I’m cynical enough to believe that had single payer been delivered, many of these same people would be feeding their frustration habit with, “Socialized medicine is the only answer!”
It seems like for too many on the left, the concepts of goals and tools have been mixed up. Frustration is something you’re supposed to channel into progress — it’s not supposed to be the very point.
Barbara
Although Bruce Levenson of the Atlanta Hawks tried to make himself sound reasonable, in light of these comments, think about what it would take to make middle aged white guys in Georgia be comfortable. Yes, basically, marginalizing African Americans so that they never have power over anything that white people touch.
askew
@different-church-lady:
If ACA had been delivered by President Hillary Clinton, a good portion of these people wouldn’t be bitching. I think too many are given a pass on the double-standard they have towards Obama vs. all of the past white presidents. People don’t want to admit that there is racism on the left as well as the right, but it exists.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@askew: When I moved to San Francisco, America’s Most Liberal City (TM) it took me about three weeks to notice that, unlike my former home in Southern California, whites didn’t hang out with any other races. It took another couple of weeks to notice that no racial groups hung out with members of any other race save for very rare exceptions.
So yeah. Liberal race issues. It’s a thing.
Villago Delenda Est
@flukebucket: The thing about literacy tests in the South was they were administered so the African Americans will college degrees “failed” them, while Morans like Lynn Westmoreland and Fran Millar passed them.
Any attempt to measure “education” would be based on the color of skin, not the content of character. Guys like Wesmoreland and Millar fear a content of character measure, because they’d fail it.
shortstop
@Kay: This is a good reminder for me. I get frustrated with TPM because they’re so unbelievably sloppy over there, but they do break stories, especially voting rights stories, that no one else has bothered to bulldog.
CaseyL
If you haven’t been following the Scottish Referendum, you should. It’s been fascinating, seeing how the prospect of independence has energized the Scots, both pro and con. They’re asking real questions about national identity, citizenship, and engagement in the political process.
When I hear how Scots are tired of being governed from “far away London,” which has little understanding or interest in Scotland’s concerns, I can only marvel.
We’ve had our national government stolen right out from under us, and a lot of state governments too, by Big Money. The Scots are fighting hard to get rid of their ties to plutocrat-friendly Westminster. If they succeed, I wonder if we’ll be able to do anything like it.
Keith G
@askew: So just to be clear, it is your thesis that Michael Moore’s criticisms of Obama (which I think are wrong) are based on his racism?
Kay
I just wanted to brag about Ohio’s voter protection effort this year. Not myself! I am actually way behind on the training, but I will catch up this weekend! :)
It gets better every year. We have a group of volunteer lawyers who are learning this every cycle, and many of them stick around after they start. It’s cumulative, the training. They get further into the nuts and bolts every cycle, and after you’re around for a while you’re comfortable with the basics and can move onto “advanced”. These aren’t election lawyers. They’re a very varied group of people who are volunteers.
If you know a billionaire who wants to export this to other states, I think it’s a good investment. In 2015 we will be in Year Ten of this effort, and it’s really pretty impressive at this point. Take it to the south! It’s ready to ship!
shelley
And they actually think it’s some kind of compliment to say, ‘but they’re so good at sports.”
********
See that Romney is coming to my great state to co-host Chris Christie’s birthday fundraiser. Tickets range from $150 to 25,000, according to access. If you can’t afford any of that, you can sign his birthday card for 10 bucks. Sweet Jesus.
Gravenstone
This moron does realize that he has African American voters in his own (neighboring) district, right? And that they’re likely to remember his seemingly dim view of their “educational levels”. Talk about cutting off ones nose in spite.
different-church-lady
@shortstop: Seconded. I frequently find myself wishing Josh would figure out exactly what he wants TPM to be, instead of flirting back and forth between advocacy and “straight news” and repeater/aggregator site. Just go for it, Josh — all your personal stories are straight up advocacy, but the rest of your site is trying to be three other things at once. (And while you’re at it, fix up the technical aspects of your editorial standards.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Patrick:
Because what should be a system for covering catastrophic health needs evolved into one that is required just to visit a doctor for a checkup.
The idiotic assumption that health care is a consumer good like toothpaste or a big screen TV drives the health care delivery meme in this country, and it’s fuckheaded…llike so much else in our anti-Adam-Smith economic system.
Shakezula
But The SC assured us that the conditions that made oversight of voting regulations in some part of the country no longer exist!
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: Truman issued Executive Order 9981, so I find it really bizarre that Eisenhower gets any credit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gravenstone: This is nothing new. Tom Tancredo (look…last name ends in a vowel!) bemoaning hearing Spanish spoken in the streets of Little Havana in Miami.
Morans is what these people do.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shakezula: One of a multitude of justifications for placing John Roberts’ head on a pike on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Villago Delenda Est
@shelley: Is there a poison pen option for signing the birthday card?
Kay
@shortstop:
I know people get angry with them, but I honestly don’t get it. He just strikes me as a well-intended and earnest person. Is it sometimes a little screechy and sloppy? Sure, but he has to actually make money at it because he pays his people. I’m for that, paying what are employees. It’s not someone’s blog. It’s a business.
Keith G
@askew:
Maybe due to age or geography, I hang around a different type of liberal than you do, but the folks I know have been easily able to find and express disappointment with actions taken by the president’s you list above. Volumes of histories have been written by left-leaning academics about the missed opportunities of those presidents.
different-church-lady
@Villago Delenda Est:
The example I’ve been using is: We have auto insurance — we use it when we have accidents, but not for oil changes. We have house insurance — we use it for fires and trees falling on your house, but not for repairing the front stairs. But with health insurance we have this idea that you can’t do anything without the insurance company being involved.
As little at 20 years ago that wasn’t how we viewed it. The shift has been almost entirely unnoticed and uncommented upon.
scav
@Barbara: Southern white guys must be catered to and be made comfortable and not see anything deeestressing to their tender expectations when out in the world, especially in sports venues. Tender Christians must not be deeeestressed by hearing seasonal greetings applicable to others during the midwinter, nor yet tender traditional marriages be deeestressed by seeing happy pair-bondings other than their own, let alone seeing such bondings become more permanently recognized by others! Nor all the protecting from deeestress of the minds of the chillen we must do to protect these tender tender subset of bipeds. Entire fucking world, society, media and nation must warp and wrap about them like a cozy comforter. Bubbles are so fragile and that scarey thing outside them so very messy and filled with complex issues that don’t have immediately identifiable and immediately available perfect solutions that are not inconvenient to the status quo.
Belafon
Omnes Omnibus (at 81 because FYWP): if I remember correctly, Eisenhower disagreed with integration at the time Truman issued the order.
Chris T.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Doesn’t that mean that these white guys are the “effete elite” they hate so much?
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G: The “missed opportunities” are often cited without a very good understanding of the limits of what could be done at the time. To get Social Security, FDR had to exclude many workers to get the votes needed to pass the thing in the first place. Domestics, for example.
I think LBJ was the bravest of them all, he knew that the Civil Rights Act would lose the South for the Democrats for a generation (he was an optimist in that regard) but went ahead with it anyway because it was the right thing to do. Yet he’s still vilified for Vietnam (not without justification) because it, too, was a political price that had to be paid given the conditions at the time.
Short of violent revolution that will utterly transform a society (and who knows what it will be transformed into) one is not going to get the sort of radical change some people desire, but increments. The arc is long.
Calouste
@askew:
In the end, Micheal Moore is a rich white straight guy, has President Obama done anything significant for them?
In a possibly unrelated question, what do you buy for the person who already has everything?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris T.: Well, yes, but not from their point of view. You and I revel in the clear lack of self-awareness of these clowns, but they think they’re perfectly normal, and we’re the weirdos.
Belafon
@different-church-lady: And the obvious reason for that is that I don’t really want to pay $250 for a visit for a cold. As we’ve said before, if I can’t afford to get things like oil changes done, I can choose not to have a car. I can’t choose not to get sick.
Now, maybe if people saw how much they pay in advance just to go see the doctor for a cold, they’d probably rethink paying for that in advance. But then again, I’m also willing to pay so that those who can’t afford it can go.
This does boil down to not treating health care like a commodity that you can choose not to have.
scav
@Chris T.: Oh no, White Guy levels and expressions of violence are Just Right. See also their level and expression of gun violence and open carry and
JimJoe! Walsh et al fathering.Calouste
@different-church-lady:
From a policy perspective, you want health insurance to cover preventative care, because that is a huge money saver in the long term and people tend to skip it if they have to pay for it out-of-pocket, leading to far larger bills later.
different-church-lady
@Calouste: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Democrats ever done for us?
different-church-lady
@Belafon:
Except that before the HMO mindset took over, it didn’t cost $250 for a routine office visit. It was only after insurance became a wall instead of a safety net that the price of routine care skyrocketed, because “someone else” was paying for it.
Mike in NC
He probably meant to say “dominated by African-American shoplifters”, right?
Mike in dc
That probably should be the litmus test for identifying racists: ask them to name 10 black men(and women) who are clearly smarter than they are. Even if they manage to acknowledge that such people exist, and spell out a list, the look of irritation on their faces will be an obvious tell.
SatanicPanic
@askew: Yeah, I like Michael Moore, but that’s pathetic. Anyone not saying the ACA is a big deal is a fool or they’re just trying to get page clicks from fools. Even if they don’t like the private insurance mandate, doesn’t a huge Medicaid expansion mean anything?
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady: From a broad policy perspective, encouraging preventative care is good, because it forestalls much more expensive treatment down the road.
But then again, the entire ecology of humans is diced up into little pieces that someone sees as an opportunity to make a profit from, and the broad impacts on the entire population are ignored, or of no concern, to the atoms that make up the entire body politic. For example, HFCS is a profit center for agribusiness, but may very well drive up health costs due to the externalities of its consumption over the long term. This is of no concern to the execs of ConAgra or ADM, of course. They won’t have to pay the price, even though it’s quite possible to trace back the burdens on the health care system and society in general back to their decision to sell the shit for a quick buck.
Chris T.
@Villago Delenda Est: What, you don’t wait until the dentist has a sale on Cavity Filling to get your teeth fixed?
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: ACA is a big fucking deal, yes it is.
Smokin’ Joe for the win!
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I used to say that Needles is the worst city in California, but lately I’m thinking its San Francisco.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in dc: One of the obvious ones is the near sheriff himself, and of course this just fails the test from the getgo.
The man is obviously much smarter than me, because he’s four years younger and he’s President, and I’m not.
Cacti
Michael Moore declares his disappointment with POTUS, says he won’t be remembered for anything but his skin color.
Good thing there’s no white liberal racism.
ETA: I see I’m late to the party on this one.
But really how pitiful of Moore. Reduce a man to his skin color. Doesn’t get much more racist than that.
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est: Hell yeah, when he said that I had an unironic America Fuck Yeah! moment
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Eisenhower did disagree with it. However, you’ll note he didn’t reverse it when he took over from Truman.
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: That moment was almost as great as the one that I wished for, but knew would never happen:
Obama saying “Excuse me while I whip this out” prior to his inaugural address.
Bokonon
@CaseyL: If a push for more local control DOES happen here, I don’t think it will go down the way you think it will. It will be tied to right-wing issues. That’s where the money and the anger all is. They are the ones that would benefit.
There are already secession referendums that have been floated in California and Colorado on that basis … with the claims that it is all about freeing rural areas of the states to do their own thing.
But those referendums are bankrolled and supported by right wingers, and the “freedom” agenda they claim is pretty noxious. Basically … guns, gays, abortion, fracking, and liberal-bashing.
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady: It seems to me that part of the problem is how health insurance got started in the first place…as a benefit used in lieu of wages during WWII, when wages were frozen as part of the war effort, to prevent labor disruptions that might harm materiel production. Unintended consequences, classic edition.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bokonon:
In this case “doing their own thing” means becoming even more impoverished than they are now, but I guess this has to do with the sparrows roasting scenario.
shortstop
@Kay: I don’t have any problem with screechiness or personal advocacy, though. I get so sidetracked by the abysmal writing and plentiful (and easily avoided) factual errors that sometimes it’s hard to focus on the message. This goes way past churlish nitpicking — it’s reached the point at which Marshall’s and the whole team’s credibility suffers.
TPM hasn’t been a labor-of-love blog for a long time now; it’s a major media enterprise. I want him to run the place like a business and pay his people properly. I’d like one of them to be a copy editor.
Belafon
@Villago Delenda Est: Agree, that’s why I put in the part about “at the time Truman issued the order.” While Eisenhower disagreed at the time of the order, I think he saw that the world didn’t fall apart, and therefore saw no reason to change it. He was also involved in some of the decisions regarding desegregation, so he changed his mind on the issue at some point.
He could have also been getting ready to run for president when he made that original statement.
Tenar Darell
@different-church-lady: Wait, wine? Explain more about the beverage from grapes, or something else….
Bobby Thomson
@Kay:
I don’t follow. The Republican elites in GOP election policy circles are all fringe nuts – especially Kobach – and there’s not a dime’s bit of difference between the rebranded Koch/Tea party Republicans and the rest of the party. You’re positing a dichotomy that doesn’t exist.
Bobby Thomson
@Hawes:
My point exactly. None at all. SATSQ
Bobby Thomson
@Kay:
How so? He’s a very dangerous, influential, and dare I say it, educated nut.
Patrick
@Cacti:
From the 2008 Ohio Democratic primary:
the result in Ohio’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday. First, racism undeniably played an important role. CNN exit polling indicated that 20% of voters said the race of the candidate was important factor (undoubtedly a lower than truthful response), and 59% of those supported Clinton.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-coryell/racism-and-clintons-victo_b_90219.html
I realize some of those voters were Republican voters who wanted a prolonged Democratic contest by voting for Clinton. But undoubtedly a fair number were Democrats who didn’t like Obama because of his race. Racism is alive in both parties.
Eric U.
@different-church-lady: I suspect there are some upper class, socially liberal circles of know-nothings that don’t pay attention to much of the world around them where the white people feel like they are fully accepting of their black peers. And the fact that their black peers get treated poorly when they travel outside of that circle is never brought up because it wouldn’t end well.
Bobby Thomson
@Patrick: Fuck Michael Moore. He’s been ratfucking for Republicans, even if unintentionally, for a very long time.
A Humble Lurker
@Keith G:
The fact that he made “Roger and Me” and “Sicko” and says all President Obama’s got is that he was the first black president at the very least makes him ridiculously oblivious.
Cacti
@Patrick:
For that matter, in 2012, Mitt Romney captured the highest percentage of the white vote in 24 years.
Don’t see how that happens without some crossover voting.
As for Michael Moore, he first showed his political savvy in 2000 by saying there was no significant difference between Bush and Gore.
But seeing him venture into out and out racism is just plain disappointing.
different-church-lady
@shortstop:
Matt McIrvin
@askew:
I find Obama disappointing, but less disappointing than every other Democratic president since probably Roosevelt, and Roosevelt had problems too. Johnson would have been awesome had it not been for, well, that Vietnam thing.
Kay likes to point out Obama’s bad choices on education policy, and Brad DeLong has said a lot about his administration being too timid on monetary policy, which probably made the recession worse than it could have been. But most of the disappointments of his era just come from his having been dealt an incredibly weak hand, and the fact that he actually got ARRA and ACA passed during the brief time that he had a Congressional majority was remarkable.
Basically a strong progressive today is going to be disappointed with anyone who can actually get elected President of the United States. I won’t say that the US is a “center-right nation” by US partisan standards; the broad center is really somewhere in the Democratic camp. But the US electorate is just not liberal or progressive in the way that an activist would like; that’s a minority even within the Democratic Party, and a major challenge is just winning hearts and minds on one issue after another.
askew
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s fine to be disappointed with Obama but where I have problems is the number of white progressives who claim that Obama has done nothing or been so much worse than previous white presidents especially Bill Clinton. Considering Obama has spent much of his time in office cleaning up Bill’s messes with zero credit or cover from the Dem party, it makes me sick to read that Bill was such a superior president.
Of course Bill didn’t have his ex-SoS undermining him at every opportunity.
askew
@Cacti:
I find it equally as disappointing that liberal blogs and liberal media just shrug at Moore’s clear racism and then go back to bitching about Obama or talking about racism on the right.
schrodinger's cat
@askew: I have criticized Obama on his economic policies but I think Bill Clinton was far worse, and I am afraid that Hillary is going to be more of the same. My magical pony would be a President in 2016 to the left of Obama. That’s what the economy needs after 30+ years Reagonomics.
ETA: I am more than happy with Obama’s thoughtful foreign policy stances.
Turgidson
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I lived in San Francisco for ten years and that wasn’t my experience at all. It’s certainly not as integrated and inclusive a city as it claims to be, but it’s nowhere near as segregated as many other major cities.
The gushing fire hydrant of tech money washing into the city the past few years is doing it no favors in this regard, however. My wife and I both have fairly prosperous careers and were easily priced out of the SF real estate market, except for a handful of neighborhoods we didn’t want to live in. Relatedly, over the last maybe five years, I went from loving the city and swearing I’d never leave if I could help it, to moving to the East Bay and hardly missing the place at all, other than some of my favorite restaurants. The douchebag quotient is rising at a geometric rate in SF, and it was certainly somewhat on the high side to begin with.
askew
@schrodinger’s cat:
Bill Clinton was much worse and not just on economic policies but he is white and had a better PR team so that is what matters to media and many progressives.
I am pulling for O’Malley for 2016. In a perfect world, Hillary would just stay retired. She is out of step with the party and the electorate. We don’t need her hawkishness and triangulating in the Oval Office.
cckids
@different-church-lady:
This may be true; it is similar to the college costs argument; that they have skyrocketed because of federal grants & loans are available. I’m not an economist & really don’t know if this is true or just correlation, but the same answer applies to both: what to do about it?
The Ron Paul answer of just eliminating federal aid to higher education isn’t actually an answer.
Hal
@Bobby Thomson:
Brilliant.
schrodinger's cat
@askew: Agreed. As for the economic policies I think Obama has been respectful of conventional wisdom in economics when it deserved no respect, but that’s much better record than Clinton. Clinton and his buddies Bob Rubin and Larry Summers along with the Republican Congress dismantled much of the regulatory infrastructure put in place after the New Deal.
bemused
@Bokonon:
Fox, rightwing radio, etc, did give the bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic rightwingers permission to be a more openly vocal, not just to their like-minded crowd and also encouraged them to believe that they were well educated in current events, politics and the way the world is and liberals don’t know crap.
Bobby Thomson
@askew: So her response to Syria would have been to empower IS by taking out Assad, leaving them as the only credible alternative. Not surprising, and unfortunately not limited to her. We really will miss the Obama Doctrine of not doing stupid shit.
Turgidson
@askew:
…I do not mean in any way to start a Glennzilla flame war here, but a consistent refrain I hear from the usually affluent liberaler-than-thou acquaintances of mine (having lived in SF and now living not far from Berkeley, I know a lot of these people) is to raise drones and NSA issues so far above every-fucking-thing else that they can’t be bothered to even consider the idea that Obama has done a lot of good things. They’re just so angry about the above issues that they can’t tolerate hearing that Obama is anything more than a traitor to the cause, a Bush clone or worse, blahtyblahblah. Why isn’t it possible to appreciate and celebrate the progress he’s managed to make on a bunch of important issues, while also being frustrated with his mistakes or lack of progress on other things? I just don’t get it.
And for all the shit that idiots like Ron Fournier rightly take for their Green Lantern faux centrist mendacious wanking bullshit about how everything that happens is due to Obama’s failures to leeeeeaaaad, a fair number of liberals I talk politics with are no more realistic about what Obama has had to deal with. So when they do talk about the ACA, etc., it’s to bitch that their dream bill didn’t get passed. Even when Obama had majorities, he had to deal with fucking assholes like Joe f’ing “if the Medicare buy-in idea I campaigned on just 2 years ago is in the health care bill, I’ll filibuster it” Lieberman, Ben Nelson and, prior to Franken getting seated, co-Presidents Snowe and/or Collins to get things passed. And yet they bitch and moan that the ACA is a giveaway to the insurance companies, that Dodd-Frank does nothing at all, that Obama is a tool of the banks, blahblahtyblah. No nuance, no room for “he’s made mistakes, he’s not perfect, but he’s done some really good things, even if I would have liked even more.” Nope – he’s just a sellout failure, end of story. The institutional constraints Obama faced in trying to move the needle the right direction are completely cast aside. The proper target for their blame on many things (mostly the GOP’s raging insanity, but also Democrats refusing to help him) is rarely mentioned – bitching about Obama is all they’re interested in doing.
Even as I share many of these frustrations with the Obama era (if not the burning need to blame him personally for every disappointment), I find this attitude extremely irritating. And I found it sort of hilarious when Hillary (who some of these people occasionally express regret over not backing over Obama in 2008 due to all of Obama’s alleged sellouts and failures) gave the interview with Goldberg, and they were like…ohhhh that’s right, now I remember why I voted for Obama. Yeah, no shit. And you’re going to be astounded at how much you miss him when he’s gone, too, assholes.
To be sure, I’d have strongly preferred a more progressive, less bank-focused Treasury Secretary than Geithner, I hated the nomination of Tom Wheeler to the FCC, I hoped Obama would change his mind about surging in Afghanistan, I think they fucked up by not passing a Kick Wall Street in the Balls bill much faster, and so on. But Obama is still the best president we’ve had in a long time and is almost certain to be better than his successor (unless, FSM willing, we manage to kick the GOP House majority to the curb sometime soon and the next Dem president can actually govern for more than a few months).
/pointless rant
Jebediah, RBG
@shelley:
Can you sign it any way you want? To rephrase a comment somebody made here the other day:
” I know you haven’t seen me in a long time, but happy birthday anyway-
– your schlong”
burnspbesq
@RaflW:
I don’t know whether Moore is a racist or a homophobe (or, for that matter, a misogynist).
I have no doubt that he’s an idiot.
Death Panel Truck
@different-church-lady: Apparently you didn’t read the description of the book, which contains the following passage: “…this book directly challenges the notion that the presidency of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness.”
The author is arguing against the notion that racism is diminishing in America.
Matt McIrvin
@askew: A lot of that is, indeed, probably race.
Some of it is also presentism (problems are always scarier now than they have ever been, because it’s now now) and fundamental-attribution-error (I distinctly remember progressives being perpetually disappointed and pissed off at Bill Clinton when he was in office… but his second term coincided with an incredible economic boom, which makes it easy to think of his era as a wonderful rosy time, even though we spent the era freaking out over Clinton’s sexual misbehavior and the impeachment push).
It was Clinton’s centrist welfare-reform policies that created a lot of misery once the boom was over. The delay made it harder to make the political connection.
Villago Delenda Est
@Death Panel Truck: “Post racial” America looks a lot like “Racial America”.
The only difference is you can’t say “ni*CLANG*” over the airwaves…but there is no doubt it is being thought.
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt McIrvin: Going along (by signing) the repeal of Glass-Stegall as part of Gramm–Leach–Bliley is a sin that can never be forgiven.
This stupidity led directly to the Great Recession. You cannot trust, ever, the Ferengi shitstains of Wall Street. They must be monitored heavily, to the point of them having to raise hands to get the attention of a GS-4 to let them take a leak.
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: Krugman is terrified at the prospects of an independent Scotland that is still in a currency union with the UK. He thinks they’re heading for Spain-in-the-Eurozone troubles because they won’t be able to let their currency drop.
Matt McIrvin
@askew: Obama’s failure to repeal DADT was one of his major disappointments to these people up to the instant he (and Congress) repealed DADT, then it went down the memory hole.
Similarly, same-sex marriage: I think it was Choire Sicha who wrote a hard-hitting “face it, Obama hates same-sex marriage and he’s never going to change his mind” essay that appeared the day before Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. I was as frustrated as anyone that he took so long, but he doesn’t get a lot of retrospective credit for announcing it right in the midst of his reelection campaign, in a political culture that still regarded voters grossed out by gay marriage as a crucial constituency that defeated Kerry in ’04.
Patrick
@Matt McIrvin:
I imagine part of why it took so long was that he had to save our country’s economy first, which was in a free-fall when Obama took over.
askew
@Matt McIrvin:
The left spent a hell of a lot more energy bitching about how Obama was going to sell us out on DADT repeal than they did in crediting him for DADT repeal. Rachel Maddow was one of the worst. And the never-ending bitching takes a toll on Obama’s approval ratings. If 90% of the news from the liberal media is anti-Obama, why would anyone be enthused about or even know about what good he has done?
different-church-lady
@Death Panel Truck: To clarify: I did not think the book embraced the concept — I understood that it argues against it. What I found surprising is that the subtitle did not include any indications the term was being used ironically.
It sits on my coffee table, having been given to me about a week back, and awaits some decent attention time to be cracked.
different-church-lady
@Turgidson:
They’re not angry about the above issues: they just hate anyone that is president and are using “above issues” as a justification.
The raision d’etre is to be in opposition. The circumstances are flexible. There will always be something wrong with the world, and that thing can always be cited asn an “above issue” to be blamed on a president. To acknowledge that something is right with the would would give them no pleasure, so it is not done.
les
@Kay:
Too right. My fine sec o’ state is the GOP go-to guy on anti-immigration and voter suppression–he wrote Arizona’s show your papers law, he advises all over the country on that and voter i.d., he’s a major snake.
dww44
@Face: The truth is that Millar hails from Atlanta. Maybe not inside the beltway but just outside of it in Dunwody, which is in the Northern part of DeKalb county which is now a majority-minority county. Accounts for why he’s down on this Sunday voting.
FYI, as a resident of an area far south of the Atlanta Metro area, the rise of elected conservative Republicans has largely come from Atlanta and Northwards. Gingrich territory….Broun territory. The only AA Congresspersons are from inside the Atlanta city limits. Otherwise the Tea Party. slightly establishment, Republican is largely what’s on offer elsewhere.
Turgidson
@different-church-lady:
I think you’re right about many of these types. Now I’ll pointlessly rant a little more.
In my experience with this crowd, there’s also an odd fixation on the need to push back against what appear, from my view, to be completely imaginary legions of mindless zombies supporting Obama on everything all the time (again not to Glenn-bait, but he’s one of the biggest public proponents of this crap with his “dear leader” bullshit and a bunch of the liberals I talk to are big, and ironically, unquestioning, fans of his). I’m the closest thing to an actual OBot I know, and I have plenty of gripes with him. Are these Obots all hiding in Alinsky’s Gulch, palling around with Bill Ayers? Where are they?
This “Obot zombie army” belief includes an abiding certitude that MSNBC is nothing more than an Obama-run propaganda network – just the other day, Greenwald and Billmon were exchanging heh-indeeds on Twitter about MSNBC wanting to put Obama on Mt. Rushmore or some shit. I certainly don’t see much Obama worship when I tune in. To say nothing of the fact that they give Scarborough three hours a day to was idiotic about shit he doesn’t understand and catapult conventional wisdom, Matthews ping pongs between loving the guy and ranting incoherently about some betrayal or other. Maddow goes after him regularly for all sorts of real and perceived misdeeds, as does Chris Hayes. I find O’Donnell annoying, so I don’t watch him much, but he keeps his focus more on the GOP being morons. Ed is on before I’m ever home from work, so I don’t know what he’s up to. But he told his viewers not to vote for Democrats in 2010 because the public option got dropped. Some Obot he is. So when is all the Obama propaganda aired, exactly? During the daytime shows?
OK, now I’m done with my stupid ranting. For now.
JR in WV
I’ve been to Atlanta several times over the past 40 years. A couple of weddings, some football bowl games with family gatherings, etc.
At the most recent (30 years ago?) wedding, we were in Decatur, GA, at a United Methodist (IIRC) church. The best man, one of my best friends, told us during the gathering, that one of the members of the local church asked him, seriously, “How do you all keep the Nigras out of your church up in West Virginia?”
We were all horrified at the question, as well as the lack of an answer for the poor dimwit asking the question. It was obvious that they were desperate to keep black folks from trying to attend their church. Probably since Sherman came through Georgia!
I personally think Sherman should have hung many more traitors than he actually did. More should have been hung after Lee’s surrender, including Lee. That might have crushed the racist wanna-be slave holders from the get-go, as opposed to allowing the KKK to take control of the south for 80 odd years.
I suppose it must be better now than it was 30 years ago in DeKalb County, Ga. But not much.
mclaren
Welcome to post-racial America. Now don’t let the sun set on you in this town, ni**er.
Matt McIrvin
@Turgidson:
I think Greenwald genuinely believes that Obama is specifically worse than Bush, and anybody who doesn’t acknowledge that he’s worse than Bush is part of the liberal Obot zombie army. I think “worse than Bush” is the relevant threshold.
You can get to “worse than Bush” fairly easily by focusing on drones and NSA surveillance, because those two specific things are things that, by today’s standards, were just getting started under Bush. Bush surely would have done them as much as or more than Obama has, but he didn’t have the technology yet, so he just did less sophisticated things like mounting a huge ground invasion of Iraq for made-up reasons. But if those two things are the most important things in the world, then, yes, Obama is worse than Bush by default. They’re things I don’t like either, but sometimes I get the impression that people are reasoning backwards from the consequence to the set of priorities.