YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO…Watch this vulgar man show his stuff, while America cowers in embarrassment pic.twitter.com/C9yLG4QoOK
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 18, 2015
Outreach!
Open thread.
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Davis X. Machina
A president who’s funny on purpose? — represents quite a step up over the last one.
gogol's wife
My God, my racist meter has just done broken.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Random question: can a lender really say that you have to pay them what they would have made in interest in order to pay off a loan? Because this seems like bullshit to me.
(Short version: my mom signed a pre-payment contract for her future funeral services, and the funeral home says we have to pay off the full amount of would-have-been interest in order to pay off the loan. This is after her down payment and 5 payments on the account. WTF?)
Pogonip
I hope Cole’s paying you overtime, your ten fingers have been flying lately!
And what of pupdates? How long, oh Lord, how long?
Just Some Fuckhead
We all live in a metaphorical ghetto.
Elizabelle
Our post-racial president just began his speech on combatting extremism at home.
C-Span 1.
Gravenstone
Can D’fuckwit do anything other than project like a fucking multiplex?
Helmut Monotreme
Yes, let’s totally talk about politicians embarrassing the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnOnDatqENo
PurpleGirl
WTF does that colonial apologist mean? So President Obama was taking a selfie, what of it. D’Souza’s really delusional, isn’t he. I think he needs some serious medication and soon.
Gravenstone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Unless there was a specific clause about no penalty for early payment, I think they can treat it that way. Basically all interest accrues the day the loan is signed, and the installments simply break that total into even pieces. I would call it usury, but then I’m not a greedhead banker.
Elizabelle
That’s so over the top I’m guessing Dinesh’s twitter account was hacked?
However, if it’s real, who give a sh*t what Dinesh has to say?
Watch a smarter person. C-Span. Now.
beth
Well, they’ve called him “boy” now. How long until they bust out the N word? I never thought they’d make it this long.
Marc
So vulgar! A man of refinement would cheat on his wife, commit a felony, and call the President of the United States of America “boy.”
A Ghost To Most
Mighty bold words from a felon in a halfway-house, instead of jail, where he should be.
dmsilev
We should always address Mr. D’Souza by his full name and title: “Convicted Felon Dinesh D’Souza”. It’s only polite.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I’m watching MSNBC, I see a funny Kenyan being unfunny.
Iowa Old Lady
Somebody find me a global troll filter to set on this preposterous person.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gravenstone:
I understand that there would be A penalty and some interest to be paid. But a penalty in the amount of the original loan and not in the amount of the current balance? That seems like bullshit to me.
beergoggles
Indians have had a long and ugly past with the ‘kaffir’. Looks like someone inherited it.
Lee
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
It might depend on the state (I have no idea). I know in Texas there is absolutely no penalty for early payment. With every loan I have taken out, I have either asked or they have stated that explicitly that there is no penalty.
JPL
@beth: KKK is now mainstream in the republican party. The group wanting to support Judge Moore sent out a note saying to make sure to wear suit and ties. They didn’t say what they would use those ties for, though.
uhoh..Obama said they are not religious leaders, they are terrorists.
Napoleon
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Ordinarily yes in a business transaction (though what you are talking about sounds more consumer transaction to me). This is really something you need to talk to an attorney from your state who is familiar with this type of thing.
jl
Too stupid and tired and sad and boring. This must be hoax. Tell me it’s a hoax. Otherwise I feel sorry for D’Souza. Rih, Rand and Huck can churn out better bigotry dog whistles in their sleep.
Elizabelle
@BillinGlendaleCA: Glad to hear MSNBC is carrying the speech. So are CNN and Fox. And C-Span.
Network affiliates in DC area? Nope. Dr. Phil and local crap.
Iowa Old Lady
This stuff about how important it is to the right that Obama say “terrorism” rather than “act of terror” and “Islamic terror” or whatever made me think of the stuff Chait said the other day about PC language. This is the right wing’s version of it.
Another Holocene Human
YOU CAN TAKE THE FELON OUT OF THE PRISON but he’s still a tax cheat and a marital cheat and will never be as rich as Ann Coulter
Poopyman
@PurpleGirl:
Hemlock?
Another Holocene Human
Dinesh Deranged.
Another Holocene Human
@Iowa Old Lady: They’re way past PC and into 1984 territory and/or Stalinism.
jl
I think some other GOPers have already used the ‘can’t take the boy out of the ghetto’ trope. I forget who. D’Souza’s peddling a balding retread. Somebody should sue him for bigotry plagiarism.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Iowa Old Lady: The magic words are “Radical Islamic Extremism”, the President is making a good case as to why that’s a dangerous framing.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
“Prepayment penalty” is a thing that exists, but this particular contract is probably regulated by state law in which case the legality “depends.”
Sleazy as all hell, to be sure.
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m in a place where they have CNN on, muted, so all I’m seeing is the speech with captions. But just from the look of them, even the serious unfunny Kenyan is totally trolling the RWNJs. “We are not at war with Islam.” “No one religion is responsible for terrorism.” Morning Ho’s head gonna go all splody tomorrow.
Elizabelle
Good. A nice word about the non-criminal poor. Which is vastly most of them.
And that O bin Laden came from vast wealth. Thank you, PBO.
Economic and educational opportunity absolutely play a part.
And poor education leading to conspiracy theories: the middle east and Africa? Hell, we are seeing it here.
rlrr
Hawaii has ghettos?
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, I like how he’s respecting Islam but calling out the bad players.
And now a word for educating girls and women. Yesh!!
How was the ballet?
Another Holocene Human
@Lee: in TX they also can’t take your homestead in BK, one of the few progressive laws in the state and part of what keeps home prices reasonable
(I could snark and say “Texas” but Georgia had one hell of a bubble and it’s not like the weather there or anything is a dream, high prices in the exurbs of ATL is one thing but this was like on the SE coast–whatever.)
trollhattan
In which I learn the existence of “bra holsters” and wave goodby to a Republican Party apparatchik I never heard of, in one swoop.
Pity.
FlipYrWhig
Uh, isn’t it kind of important to Obama’s personal story that he never WAS a boy in the ghetto, but rather a black man who chose to go to the ghetto once he was already grown? And is the ghetto known for a proliferation of selfie-sticks now?
jeffreyw
The crab apples are disappearing twice as fast this year.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): At the risk of sounding glib, that question is best posed to an attorney who is admitted to practice in the state where your mother signed the contract, and who has read the k. It’s the only way to get an accurate answer.
Elizabelle
All of the stuff he’s saying holds for the US of A too. Right down to having a political voice.
This is not all about Africa and the middle east.
trollhattan
@rlrr:
Kenya does, duh!
Elizabelle
@jeffreyw: They’re singing.
boatboy_srq
@gogol’s wife: No words. Just no words.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle:
No shit, maybe he said it on purpose that way just to watch the right backpedal and deny it.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: That was my initial thought — his account was hacked. I’ve not followed Dd’S’s public pronouncements closely because I have more interesting things to do, such as cleaning lint traps and corralling dust bunnies. But the vague impression I have of him is that he’s one of the “intellectual” wingnuts who attempt to manufacture philosophical cover for the knuckle-draggers. This is KKK-level shit. If it’s Dd’S, he’s forgotten how to gild the turd.
Another Holocene Human
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Better call Napoleon.
jl
@Iowa Old Lady:
” This stuff about how important it is to the right that Obama say “terrorism” rather than “act of terror” and “Islamic terror” or whatever made me think of the stuff Chait said the other day about PC language. This is the right wing’s version of it. ”
And if he does use the magic phrase they want (whatever it is), Fox will have a ‘gestural’ or ‘facial expression’ expert to divine how Obama didn’t really mean it, Or didn’t say it right.
All this stuff, while still nasty, has already been very boring and old for some time now. I think most normal people, GOPer or Dem, must filter it out now, kind of like political traffic noise.
But, even the base must crave new material sooner or later. Unless they are simple minded….? No, never mind, don’t answer that.
beltane
Dinesh is a grade-Z troll, not clever enough to even get under my skin.
JustRuss
@dmsilev: Hey, that’s ” Adulterer and Convicted Felon Dinesh D’Souza” to you!
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Hoe will just scream about magical words, he got pretty well schooled by Katy Kay this morning.
Another Holocene Human
@Gravenstone:
Relevant.
He was reduced to selling DVDs to right wing cranks to send in mass mailouts.
PurpleGirl
@Poopyman: I was thinking more along the lines of psychotropic drugs, maybe thorazine, etc. But hemlock would work too, it would be more permanent.
jl
@trollhattan: They can outlaw bra holsters. Gun nut guys will still be able to shoot their junk off with the regular kind. Probably a lesson there for us all, but not sure what it is.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
The ballet was really terrific. I’m so glad I listened to my heart (and Tommy) instead of my head (and most of my Facebook friends), and decided to go. It was a balletic interpretation of “The Winter’s Tale,” and the creators managed to turn one of Shakespeare’s weirdest, most complicated plays into a semi-coherent plot line. The dancing was extraordinary, especially King Leontes portraying jealousy — he did things with his spine and arms and shoulders that I didn’t know could be done. Amazing. Music, sets, costumes, all wonderful. I think the Royal Ballet is going to release it on DVD in a few months, and it’s decidedly one I will buy.
tl;dr — it was good
beltane
@Betty Cracker: Maybe D’Souza thinks this type of thing will make him more popular with the younger wingnut ladies. His 2nd marriage must be stale by now.
Another Holocene Human
@PurpleGirl: What he needed was a hanging judge who would have sent him to medium-security prison with no furloughs instead of this work release halfway house bullshit. The judge he got even stated at sentencing that D’Souza was swanning around claiming he was persecuted and not taking a dram of responsibility for his actions, but still gave him the kid glove treatment. I realize this kind of thing isn’t completely out of line for the justice system in that area but this guy didn’t even try to pretend to be sorry for a damn thing. Now if a poor man is in front of a court or parole board, taking responsibility for your actions is a major factor when they rule.
feebog
Maybe if Obama took a selfie while choking on a pretzel?
Elizabelle
I am loving this speech. That we cannot deal with people just through profiling and law enforcement and criminalizing them.
This is such excellent outreach to young people and anyone who might feel marginalized. Whether they see it or not …… well, it’s not like this was in the public interest and our great networks should carry this speech on such a vital topic (scary ISIL!!! Look!!) live. Because they’re using the public airwaves.
The first mosque was in North Dakota? Do tell.
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: I am so jealous. I live in the middle of nowhere.
jl
@Another Holocene Human:
” He was reduced to selling DVDs to right wing cranks to send in mass mailouts. ”
The poor guy doesn’t even use fronts for his cheap scams. Far too vulgar for the likes of Newt, Huck, or Erik E.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Republican birth control.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Depends on what the agreement says. I’ve seen a lot of secured financing agreements that say that if the borrower terminates early, the lender gets some measure of lost interest as liquidated damages. It’s not illegal per se, but in a consumer lending context there might be a decent argument that it’s unconscionable.
YMMV, this is not legal advice, get a lawyer, etc.
Another Holocene Human
@beltane: Are you sure? Based on her blog she seemed nuttier than him.
The problem is between them they fucked up their Xtian grift … bad Dinesh … you forgot if it’s not white it’s not right … white English religious grifters can “fall” again and again (as long as they’re not gay) but you only get one chance …
Yeah, he hates Obama because it’s always projection and Obama to D’Souza just has teflon, he keeps going and going while D’Souza fucked up the one good thing he had going. In D’Souza’s fevered mind Obama is playing some sort of tokenism grift with teh Libruls, just like he was trying to pull on the Cons. D’Souza seems to think they are soulmates or something, witness his utter obsession with Barack Obama, Senior, the whole immigrant thing. It makes D’Souza crazy. Why is BO president and he is in disgrace? Things like empathy, integrity don’t compute for D’Souza so he will never understand.
PurpleGirl
@Elizabelle: I don’t think education is the problem. Among the September 11th hijackers I believe most of them had college or advanced educations. The problem was being able to use the education and find a job in their home countries. It’s that lack of opportunity and a secure future that motivates many terrorists. (The US will have/has a similar problem with so many young people either unable to find jobs that use their educations and/or provide the income that will allow them to love decently and pay their college bills.
Elizabelle
I am so proud that’s my president.
He’s probably had enough, but I’d be happy if he did a third term.
The Blog Dahlia
“Boy”, eh?
Bystander
This made me LOL. The comments are superb.
mai naem mobile
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): i don’t know what the rules are now under the CFPB but you could do it in home loans and i had one when i got my car recently but it was only to get the lower interest rate and it was only applicable for one month. I wouldn’t be surprised by a prepayment penalty but theres usually a reasonable amount of time. I would call your AGs office first and then the CFPB. Also, I have a friend in AZ whose mom just died and had a prepaid funeral plan with the burial plot and they added several fees at the end.When he called the funeral board to file a complaint they told him.he had to call.the Dept of Real Estate regarding the burial plot. The RE lady told him they get tons of complaints but can’t do anything about them.
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig:
The gentrification is getting out of control.
MomSense
Wasn’t his nickname in the 80s something like Distort D’Newsa?
This is more bullshit mountain type stuff. These people are so frustrating. The president made a funny video to encourage young people to do the personal responsibility thing with their health insurance.
Elizabelle
First caller on C-Span, woman on Republican line: Obama can’t say “Islamic terrorism.”
He is “whitewashing terrorism.” Makes me sad we have such ugly people in this country.
“He should leave office. His background does not fit America.”
Not her America.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Luckily, I am currently in touch with an estate lawyer in Illinois who’s helping my mom do her estate planning, so I will probably end up forwarding this to him with a “WTF?”
To make it more fun, the fine print seems to say that the contract is under Indiana law since the funeral home is owned by an Indiana company. Oy.
Another Holocene Human
@mai naem mobile: I’d call the Attorney General’s office. If I lived in California. There might also be a Consumer Affairs office or office of Business Regulation to call as well.
If you’re in a red state, forget it.
ETA: @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Indiana? Ugh. Well, have fun with that. Hope the lawyer can help.
The Blog Dahlia
@JustRuss:
I like how his tweet happened to coincide with the story discussed below about GOP PACs. It’s like if you say “grifter” three times, like beetlejuice, D’Souza shows up. You rang?
Elizabelle
The people on C-Span’s GOP line are delusional.
We have an old white cracker lady on now. Southern accent. Obama hasn’t done anything and everything is his fault.
I am thinking of the toilet for negroes only somewhere in her home. Probably the basement.
jl
@Elizabelle: I’m suspicious. Too many boxes ticked off too neatly. How much she get paid for that trolling? But, she does very efficient work, I give her that.
Probably a premium for people who can do quality work on call-in TV.
@Elizabelle: Now I’m even more suspicious.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle:
How does her tongue not twist back and obstruct her gorge when she tries to say ignorant, illogical stuff like this?
How does her brain not explode when the sound of her voice reaches her ears?
WTFITS FFS
Elizabelle
C-Span callers are saying — second or third now — that “Obama is not qualified to be president.”
The memo went out.
boatboy_srq
@trollhattan: It’s moments like these that I think maybe the 2nd Amendment shouters should be allowed to pack heat just how they want.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: LMAO, that reminds me of my inlaw, a Southern wannabe aristocrat who a couple years ago was so freaked by student protests in Spain, “Oh no it’s so horrible, don’t even think of going there.” I live in FL. You live in SC. Your brother lives in TX. All places more dangerous than SPAIN FFS OMGBBQ!!! Had to hold my tongue, brain was boiling in its pan.
Elizabelle
This caller hasn’t realized this whole conference is about combatting extremism HERE in this country.
They think the problem is entirely “over there.”
Bystander
I don’t seem able to link so here’s an excerpt from a story on TPM.
“Christina Bond, 55, shot herself in the eye in St. Joseph, Mich., on New Year’s Day, the Kalamazoo Gazette newspaper reported in January. Although investigators at the time said the death was accidental, it wasn’t until Wednesday that the St. Joseph Public Safety Department explained to the Gazette how the event unfolded.
Bond “was having trouble adjusting her bra holster, couldn’t get it to fit the way she wanted it to,” St. Joseph Public Safety Director Mark Clapp told the newspaper. “She was looking down at it and accidentally discharged the weapon.”
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: More like the light went out, nobody’s home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_5:_Qualifications_for_office
I’ve read it twice, nowhere do I see the words “of the White race” in there. Damn.
Elizabelle
Yeah, C-Span’s lines are all primarily Christians calling in to complain. That’s organized. It was so one-sided. C-Span cut away just now. Enough.
Last caller: what’s the president’s religion?
Another Holocene Human
@Bystander: I… I can’t. Even. WT … what.
jl
@Elizabelle: Yeah, Sounds like some callers on a payroll.
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human: My sympathies!
grumpy realist
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Depends on the contract. If there isn’t an express clause about having to pay the extra express interest for a pre-payment there shouldn’t be a problem.
Violet
Wow. I can’t even…
Iowa Old Lady
@Elizabelle: Seriously? First, that is so out of date.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Surprised they didn’t bound it a little: “Is the president Shi’a or Sunni?
Mike J
@Elizabelle:
The National, a newspaper from Abu Dhabi, had a column a few days ago with a hed something like, “why is Europe exporting all these jihadis to the middle east?”
Poopyman
@Elizabelle:
The Confederate States of.
schrodinger's cat
Dinesh D’souza is a Goan. His ancestors are from Goa, India. It is a beautiful and idyllic place with miles of pristine beaches, and the people are lovely, the sea food is great. But Goa was also a Portuguese colony.
To show allegiance to their new rulers, some upper caste Indians converted, became Catholic and some of them started behaving more Portuguese than thou, holding all other Indians in contempt. D’souza belongs to that category of self loathing Goans. I know his ilk, they are rather pathetic. He doesn’t understand that no matter how much he sucks up to the GOP, he is never going to be white.
Elizabelle
@Iowa Old Lady: They tried to take luster off the speech. The C-Span guy was not enjoying the calls.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Might be above their paygrade. Trolls they were.
SatanicPanic
Clearly the felony charge and the cheating has caused Dinesh’s life to unravel. He’s starting to look like Amanda Bynes. Sad.
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: Yup. Hence my calling him a colonial apologist. I guess he’s a royalist, too.
Elizabelle
@PurpleGirl: Good comment. Everyone needs to be concerned about the lack of opportunity in this country, even for the college educated and trained. No mobility or reward for honest effort is corrosive.
I think that’s why Obama went so heavily for the Affordable Care Act. A lot of people — including well heeled and well-insured Democrats I know — whinged about “why didn’t he focus on jobs first?”
What happens when employers won’t pay fairly and health insurance is hard to get via employment for many?
I am glad Obama started to decouple health insurance from work.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Because Europe is full of racists, even the liberal ones, who discriminate in housing and employment, and a small number of the downtrodden will become right-wing extremist true believers, same as it ever was … same way France radicalized Germans after WWI, starve ’em and kick ’em in the head, although to be clear there is a difference between radicalized members of a marginalized group and radicalized members of a majority group, PR separatists in 1950s did kill some people but not the same phenom as KKK … I think PR separatists are a pretty good analogy, actually.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: He can suck up to the GOP all he wants, but if he were to show up at my local diner in rural white America, the Republican-type people there would assume he was an Arab terrorist or other type of scary brown person. He kind of reminds me of Pam Geller cavorting with neo-Nazis in the belief this makes her some kind of honorary Aryan.
ruemara
We’re so fucking post racial. I’m glad so many find d’ Souza to be nothing to pay attention to. Since it’s not like racism seems to be roaring back into power or nothing.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Yeah, it’s actually about jobs, it allows some people to leave the labor market and others to start small businesses that couldn’t before because of pre-existing conditions, and small businesses are a bigger job engine than the big ones.
Another Holocene Human
@ruemara: Has d’Souza ever been worth paying attention to, though?
ETA: D’Souza became a laughing stock all due to his own actions alone. It’s hard not to chortle in glee every time he shows out.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
I see a money-making opportunity. I’m doing the next set of their little laminated script cards.
“She-ya” “Sue-knee” “You-sur-per” “Tie-rant” “So-sha-liz-um”
And so forth. Let’s go, my crackers!
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human: I agree totally. I heart the Affordable Care Act. It’s an honest start. Could be better.
SatanicPanic
@ruemara:
Back from where? When did it leave?
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Ayuh. Come on out to Catoctin County sometime (or at least what the idjits in western Loudoun County want to make separate from Loudoun). You’ll hear the same things.
dedc79
Why can’t the President treat the White House with more respect? He should follow the better example set by some of his white and therefore non-ghettoized predecessors in office. Let’s pick one at random, shall we:
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: I think it’s cruising for a bruising in Georgia, actually. I can’t wait for the squeals of pain when they first start losing statewide races and then lose control of the Lege.
They were, and are, so evil that seeing them go down will be the sweetest.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: @Poopyman: @Poopyman: TABMITWH. Plain’n’simple.
muddy
@dedc79: But but he looked so presidential!
Belafon
@SatanicPanic: It’s come out from rocks it was hiding under.
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human: Preaching to the choir but: a friend took me out to lunches with some SoCal friends who were literal rocket science entrepreneurs. Very cool 30ish-40ish guys who’d been in aerospace and now had small firms working on contracts.
And do you know what both guys also had?
A wife in secure public employment: school teaching and I think the planning office. So the young families had health insurance.
jonas
This tweet makes no sense irregardless of the rank racism. Ghetto thugs are into selfies or something? Really? And what “ghetto” is Obama supposed to have come “out of”? He grew up in a middle class (white) home in Hawaii, attended a prestigious prep school, and went on to Columbia and Harvard.
And if Americans cower in embarrassment at anything, particularly in front of foreigners, it’s over our batshit insane wignut pundits and politicians. Like Dinesh D’Souza.
Another Holocene Human
@dedc79: Wow, sounds like Bush II’s Minerals Management … which I see has been “reorganized” and has a new name, hookers and coke down the memory hole then? We are living in 1984.
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq: um, which means?
ETA: JFIO. Just figured it out. And you’re not incorrect!
Chris
@SiubhanDuinne:
I thought his line about the KKK and ISIS the other week was totally trolling. I mean, yes, something like that needed to be said, but I maintain that he knew exactly how many wingnuts would see red and was probably quite happy that his statement to the Muslim community doubled as a “fuck you” to our theocrats, especially since it was done at a National Prayer Breakfast.
Schlemazel
D’Souza knows that his white folk consider him every bit as much a ni**er as Obama, right? Obviously his dog whistle broke but I doubt he will walk this back. My guess is he will cry foul, you people are playing the race card.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Good to hear! Would have been a bummer to miss such a terrific show.
You must come back to Virginia this year. Gift certificate for Murphy’s and all ….
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: Cat like typing detected!
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
Heard the same exact reaction from a Northeastern robber baron’s daughter.
These people are such delicate and easily terrified little flowers. How the fuck do they ever expect that they’ll be able to use guns against their attackers, or do anything other than piss themselves and scream?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat: We had lunch with an Indian friend, originally from Hyderabad. He’s been here since 1973 and is a US citizen. Unsurprisingly he’s a pretty serious D, and when I first asked him about Dinesh, his response was “He’s Portuguese, his family.”
At lunch my friend was talking about education in India, which he believes was a good thing that resulted from British rule (along with some infrastructure). I asked him “what about the whole Portuguese thing?” and his response cracked me up. He said. “I’m glad you asked, because I’m not really sure; I need to research that. I can only guess that the British didn’t really need the port at Goa, so they didn’t bother.”
schrodinger's cat
@jonas: irregardless? sounds like Dubya English.
dedc79
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah, they pulled a Marlboro/Altria and rebranded.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Standard Sactown joke: show me a small entrepreneur and I’ll show you a State worker spouse.
We know how much WalMart et al leverage public support programs to pay below-poverty wages but how many bidnez startups rely on government-supplied benefit packages? In some regions, a LOT.
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human: Atlanta in particular is getting a big influx of people, so maybe you’re right.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: I think I’ve figured out why government workers are such ugly right-wingers. It’s because gov’t work is sought for its security, and who wants security but the insecure and fearful, right? And who does conservative politics appeal to but the chronically fearful? Of course it’s all illogical because it doesn’t come from logic, it comes from lizard brain firing out of control.
Doesn’t make it any less maddening but it does make sense.
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Bombay was Charles II’s dowry from his Portuguese Queen. So you can argue that British got their toe hold on the west coast of India thanks to the Portuguese.
ETA: Goa is pretty tiny and Portuguese were rather inconsequential in India. The French were the main rivals to the British.
ruemara
@SatanicPanic: if you can tell me when an elected official could say that blacks don’t need more funding for education because they have crazy checks, and still have a career, ok. When you can have endless discussion about an obviously accomplished man like Obama and it’s always about how he’s a failure and lacks accomplishments and he’s the fucking POTUS, ok then. There was a point where the public shame kept this dickishness underground. Now, you can actually argue that talking about slavery is unAmerican and people consider that serious.
Hungry Joe
Woody Allen once wrote that the Russian Revolution broke out when the peasants learned that the Czar and the Tsar were the same person. I’ve been trying to adapt that gag to ISIS and ISIL, but so far I got nothin’.
(That’s a classic cheat-move I stole from Jorge Luis Borges — he’d write that he had an idea for a novel, explain the idea, publish it as a short story, and not have to write the novel.)
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: Since Obama became President, the bigots feel like they don’t have to hide their bigotry and racism anymore.
The Blog Dahlia
@schrodinger’s cat:
No, and he never will. He knows this deep down. Hence his racism towards the president; he wants very badly to be white.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: I was in North Georgia near the AT trailhead. The state parks had an amazing rainbow of people, some of them first gen immigrants to the US, traveling from ATL for a day trip. But a short drive away were Dahlonega, where an acquaintance of mine was told by a local that they don’t let his kind stay there after dark, and Helen where I found racist crockery being sold on the main drag.
Rural GA is still using intimidation and violence to try to keep Blacks from voting. But ATL dominates the state population and has going concerns bringing in transplants not all of whom share the Lost Cause ideology or who frankly have any interest in adopting it. (Heaven knows there are plenty of Northern whites who are eager to sign up to that shit.) Central ATL is healing from the ravages of white flight and urban renewal (er, highway right through town) and the inner ring suburbs are desegregating and turning.
It’s much like Virginia.
trollhattan
@The Blog Dahlia:
Somewhere, “Bobby” Jindal/Kenneth the Page is furiously scribbling notes.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
Because it’s easy to wax poetic about the glories of the private sector and the free market and the importance of taking a chance that maybe the business you start might fail but hey there are no guarantees in life and that kind of risk taking entrepreneurial spirit is what made America great… when you know you’re never going to have to actually face that. Hence, wingnuttism proliferates among federal employees and contractors to a much larger extent than you’d expect at first glance.
(The bitching about lazy, overstaffed, inefficient federal agencies plays into that in the sense that when they call for “trimming the fat,” it’s with the understanding that “the fat” means either all these other government agencies, so that theirs can get more funding, or all these co-workers they don’t like, so that they and the people they do like can be left to running the agency their way).
MomSense
Since this is an open thread I just got home to find the puppy curled up with the senior citizen lab I’m dog sitting. The puppy has zero interest in me when she usually greets me by wiggling her whole body and giving me kisses. I came in the house and she barely looked at me. They are adorable together though. I’ll try and get some pictures.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: Big doggie must remind her of her dog mommy.
Another Holocene Human
@ruemara: I wish they would talk about crazy checks. Instead they’re still dog-whistling about super sekrit Blacks and/or Hispanics only welfare. Please, tell me about this special welfare that only “they” get.
Even people ON public assistance will spew this garbage and when you drill it down with them they’ll admit it’s not true. But they’re still pissed, damnit!
SatanicPanic
@ruemara:
You don’t think that’s just because we hear about what some random pol from wherever says because of the internet? I’m sure they were saying the same things 20 years ago, we just didn’t hear about it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat: That would certainly explain why they let Goa slide, LOL. I’m pretty sure Swammy knows (or knew) that, but it was an interesting conversation. M.Q said “only you can ask an Indian an obscure historical/geograhical question about India and have him reply that he’s glad you asked and he needs to research that.” My reply to M.Q was something to effect of
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m not sure it’s “don’t feel like they have to hide their racism” so much as “just can’t help it.” Simply having a black guy named “Hussein” in the White House is a permanent “fuck you” to their ideology in a way that even William Jefferson Clinton, race traitor though he may have been, wasn’t. They can’t stop themselves from being enraged.
The Blog Dahlia
@schrodinger’s cat:
So, a Quisling. That would explain a great deal.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: something something union something something merit
Some white guys cannot get over being in the same job or even having less seniority than or a boss who is b-b-b-buh-buh-buh-buh-bulllACK.
ThresherK
@dedc79: I’m remembering something I read on paper before the Internet (ergo no cite)*, but I thought it was Harding’s father who said that about WGH, and not about “saying no” to the ladeez, but to all the “friends” WGH had. (Start with the original Fall Guy, and etc etc.)
Don’t know how self-aware Harding was. Didn’t he once say “I can handle my enemies, it’s my friends who keep me walking the floor at night”?
(*Please someone invent a shorthand for this.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hungry Joe: You’re stealing great stuff; I’m impressed but not surprised. I saw an interesting interview where Jason Isbell talks about why he loved Infinite Jest. I can post a link if you’d like.
@MomSense:
You g*ddamned well better do more than try. LOL.
The Moar You Know
@rlrr: Like you would not believe. There are quite a few very seriously poor people in Hawaii, and they live in some really shitty places, between the rats and the rain and the meth labs you wouldn’t stay for an hour.
And they can’t get in a car or a bus and pack up and go someplace better.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
Could be. He’s a gentle giant of a dog. He weighs about 90 lbs and is super calm. She is climbing all over him and giving him kisses. It’s really very sweet.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: That’s not fair, D’Souza was in the club, he was hobnobbing with Very Serious People in the 80s and 90s. And the VSPs espoused some very racist stuff (Moynihan Report retreads, culture arguments and then there was The Bell Curve in “even the liberal” New Republic. But really vile openly racist shit like that just wasn’t said. That stuff had been shamed into the closet, restricted to “quiet rooms”. Or the whites-only golf course. (Back in the 80s they didn’t allow Catholics or Jews, either.)
No, this is the end state of the GOP realizing that race hate is all they’ve got with a shrinking racial majority, and the cover that Obama provides by making racial slurs “political speech” instead of race-baiting, which it is, which is all it ever was.
Another Holocene Human
@The Moar You Know: And a sickening number of them are Native Hawaiians.
MomSense
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
HA! I already got a load of crap from my kids who are convinced I love the puppy more than I love them because I take so many pictures of her. Funny thing is that they take a ton of pictures of her too.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Someone should do a survey of entrepreneurs propped up by state or federal spousal employment. I suspect it’s a big factor.
David Leonhardt? You checking in?
Another Holocene Human
@ThresherK: It’s hard out there for an upper class twit.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: Korra is quite photogenic.
Mike J
@Chris:
I like Fred Clark’s line. The national prayer breakfast is bad for the nation, it’s bad for prayer, and at $500 a head, it’s bad for breakfast.
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human: I’m not sure I agree that promoting a book that says people are dumber based on their race is less bad than the crazy welfare checks comment. Or the Willie Horton ad. That was about as openly racist as you could get. Let’s not even start on Jesse Helms.
MCA1
@rlrr: Well, if it does, apparently they’re just like all ghettos everywhere, i.e., full of people taking selfies and eating chocolate chip cookies.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Saturday I’m going back to the “puppy class” which is really a half hour of puppies socializing. I cleared my phone so I can get some videos of the next class. Picture a bunch of puppies running around playing together. Last time there were about 10 puppies and it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
Of course I’m terribly biased and think she’s the cutest puppy in the whole world!!
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t watch MJ, and Raven has been pathetic recently (“You had ONE JOB!”), so do tell!!
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s a fucking idiot.
Hungry Joe
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yes, please! (As much as I like “Infinite Jest,” I have to say I prefer his non-fiction.)
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: They were always this racist they just had to use dog-whistles or couch it in “rational” or “fact-based” terms, whereas now they can use ugly slurs in the open.
SiubhanDuinne
@Iowa Old Lady:
There seem to be participating theatres in Ames, West Des Moines, and Cedar Falls. Are you near any of those?
http://www.fathomevents.com/mobile/theaters
Elizabelle
@MomSense: Puppy videos, or puppy still photos, are worth 10-12 Dinesh or Jeb! threads. Bring it on!
Happy and smart and curious stuff, please.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
Am I idealizing the past, or would it be fair to say that in the old days, Republican right wingers weren’t quite as automatically racist, especially when “the right kind” of foreigner or immigrant was involved? I have the impression that especially in the context of the Cold War, there was more willingness to work with nonwhite, non-WASP communities with reason to be anti-communist. Chinese and Vietnamese and Korean, various Latin Americans, Middle Easterners…
Nowadays, it’s pretty much just the Cubans. They’ve run everyone else out of the party.
I dunno, I just feel like the older, Cold War generation, if you handed them the post-9/11 world for example, might’ve been more willing to reach out to the Arab and Persian American communities – which are teeming with people who fled from the Taliban, the Ayatollahs or these kinds of folks – and try to bond over common enemies, possibly even over “look at those liberal milquetoasts, they think we can talk to evil! Those appeasers!” To some extent, I feel like that’s even what the Bushies were trying to do with their “we are not at war with Islam” thing, but the overall Republican Party simply won’t allow it anymore – “we ARE at war with Islam,” period, end of story, and all These People aren’t fellow enemies and victims of Islamism, they’re all terrorists or potential terrorists or terrorist apologists.
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: Cedar Falls is next door. I’ll check it out.
ETA: Oh it’s the program that shows the Met too.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Will do!
Although just a minute ago it looked like something Santorum warned us about.
Cckids
@beth:
And this crap is the stuff they are comfortable saying- no – promoting- in public. You don’t have to have much imagination to think of how they talk amongst themselves.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris:
From the comments I’ve seen, today’s speech appears to have been a National Prayer Breakfast speech on steroids. I’m really sorry I didn’t hear it; I hope it will be up on the WH site later tonight so I can watch the whole thing.
Hal
@The Moar You Know: I have a cousin who insists everyone in Hawaii lives in paradise. How could they not? I told her people in Hawaii have problems just like people everywhere else, but she thinks living on a tropical island means no one can be depressed, poor, sick or anything of the sort. I think plenty of people have that opinion about Hawaii.
Also, selfie sticks are ghetto?
MomSense
@beth:
They have hundreds of years of racism to justify. There is no way that they would ever treat him with
respect. He can only fail or their world falls apart.
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human: I suppose you could make a case that open racism is making a comeback after being hidden for a while. Jesse Helms “Hands” ad was pretty openly racist. And again, I don’t agree that the Bell Curve was any less obviously racist than burning crosses on someone’s lawn. I don’t know, I kind of think people were always openly racist, people just didn’t pay as much attention.
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: I don’t see any difference. Racist dumbass is racist dumbass. And he’s D’nesh D’ipshit for a reason.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Chris:
I’m not sure if it’s that you’re idealizing the past or if the non-racist Republicans have all fled the party and left only the hard core behind. A little bit of both, probably — remember, one of the reasons Jack Kemp became persona non grata in the Republican Party was that he actually thought he was supposed to help Those People become homeowners while he was the head of HUD when the Reaganites wanted him to prevent that kind of thing.
Michael G
This will probably end up in moderation because of the copious links, but hopefully it eventually makes it way through…
Pope selfie: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/10277934/Pope-Francis-and-the-first-Papal-selfie.html
Bush selfie: http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/funnypictures/ss/Best-Political-Selfies_4.htm
Bush self portraits: http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/8/3966678/hacker-reveals-george-w-bush-self-portraits
Jeb selfie: http://chicago.suntimes.com/news-chicago/7/71/378063/jeb-bush-tells-chicago-crowd-im-man
Bush senior selfie socks: http://www.today.com/news/jenna-george-bush-sr-s-selfie-socks-evidently-he-likes-2D11699364
McCain selfie (technically not a selfie but still…) http://www.blacklistednews.com/ISIS_Terrorists_Post_a_Selfie_with_John_McCain/36110/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Romney selfie: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/mitt-romney-zach-braff-selfie-102613.html
Cruz selfie, bonus Palin: https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/459742657665699841/photo/1
Note to others: if you search for “Bush selfie”, you may want to have safe search on.
SatanicPanic
@Chris: There were right wingers praising Jonas Savimbi, it’s hard to imagine them doing that now, but then again, maybe not. The RWNJs and the real-politik guys were always pretty separate. Then again, Pat Buchanan was always pretty damn racist so who knows.
WaterGirl
@SatanicPanic: I have a sticker on my car that says: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
I will edit that for a moment and say that if you’re haven’t seen a whole hell of a lot more blatant outright racism since President Obama was elected, you’re not paying attention.
The internet was around long before 2008.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Interesting trivia, Jack Kemp and Obama both attended Oxy.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I’ll be curious to see if the nipping at your youngest son stops happening while you’re dog sitting.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
So far so good. She is completely focused on the big dog.
SatanicPanic
@WaterGirl: maybe so. I’m from a place where open racism was no big deal so I spent a good deal of the 80s and 90s hearing it and that is probably skewing my opinion
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I will cross my fingers, hoping that an interruption in the behavior because of the presence of the big dog might just end it completely.
What did the behaviorist have to say?
Mike in NC
Lots of self-loathing going on with both Jindal and D’Souza.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hungry Joe: The comments are at 19:18. I also adore DFW’s nonfiction, probably more than the fiction. Though IJ is special, in many ways.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Almost surely in July, en route to Boston* for my friend’s 70th birthday party.
*(Assuming the snow has melted by then. Damned if I’m going to park in an 8-foot snowbank.)
David Koch
@Mike in NC: you mean, Piyush Jindal
Emma
@schrodinger’s cat: Yup. The annexation of Goa was as messy as most such things are, and many upper-class Indians were as opposed to it as the Portuguese.
Redshift
Aaargh! CBS News is doing “when are Muslim leaders going to speak out against ISIS?”
If only there was some organization whose purpose was finding out and reporting what is going on in the world, so they’d know about it before opening their mouths…
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Thanks! That is … succinct.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
We’ve learned some new techniques. She thinks of my son as another puppy so now he says
“ouch”, leaves the room, and ignores her for 30 seconds or a minute. He is also petting her while holding treats in his other hand and making her wait longer and longer for the treat. Obviously if she is not gentle she doesn’t get a treat. It’s working pretty well.
Turgidson
@Elizabelle:
Those people are, of course, idiots. Because he obviously did focus on jobs first – it’s called the ARRA. And all political will for job-creating legislation was promptly lost, partly due to pollyannaish administration projections, based on faulty preliminary data, that the ARRA would be enough by itself, partly because the GOP was determined to destroy him regardless of the human cost and he was never going to get one of the Maine Senators to sign on to another stimulus bill, and partly because his party was full of fools and cowards who also never would have voted for another stimulus (and many of these Dems were ironically digging their own political graves in so acting). With a big assist to the right wing wurlitzer and the complicit elite media in allowing a bunch of discredited know-nothing frauds and cranks to spew economically illiterate and dangerous nonsense nonstop and poison the well by turning low info voters against anything they could label a “bailout.”
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: A lot of first gen Asian immigrants voted GOP. 2nd gen distrusts them and it’s getting worse. The ILL EAGLES campaign convinced a lot of Asian Americans that the GOP was not safe to vote for.
Lurking Canadian
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I do not know the laws ofCalifornia, but that is how my mortgage works, as I discovered when I tried to renegotiate some years ago after interest rates collapsed.
And can someone explain what D’Souza is even talking about? On my phone it looks like the president is holding a fireplace poker at the en garde position which, though strange, is not what I’d call “ghetto”.
David Koch
Turgidson
@dedc79:
This trope still gets a rise out of me even though I should know better. The not-even-really-hiding-it racism is nauseating, of course, but the people who kissed the ground George W. f’ing Bush walked on right up until it became politically inconvenient have about as much right to talk about “degrading” or “disrespecting” the office as Tiger Woods has of lecturing others on marital fidelity.
That piece of shit sent our military to occupy a foreign country based on lies and then was enough of an asshole to fucking joke about it.
And Obama is a monster because he goofed around with a selfie stick trying to get young people to get health insurance. Sure, whatever you say, you fucking fucks. Shut the fuck up and play in traffic. Assholes.
jayjaybear
I can’t quite put my finger on why my mind leaps to Dave Chappelle’s Clayton Bigsby character whenever D’Souza addresses comments to Obama…
dmbeaster
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Scan and arrange to send me the contract if you want a more precise view. This does not sound like a loan, but an installment payment for a service/plot. What they can lawfully charge depends on how they set up their paperwork. Sometimes installments are simply so many payments of the amount owed, with no interest stated. But if it does state a lesser amount and then interest, then it has to also say that there is a prepayment fee. I question the legality of a prepayment fee for the entire loan period of interest, though you do not state how many months and how much interest vs. principal.
Prepayment clauses are common on large loans secured by real estate because for a lender, it incurs significant expense in placing loans, and wants to realize a certain amount of profit from that loan before it has to turn the principal over into a new loan. I am familiar with a prepayment penalty for the first five years that declines as you go through the first five years. Whether or not this funeral arrangement contract has an improper clause depends on the overall raw numbers and time periods involved.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: The point is that the Bell Curve was the camel’s nose for racist “thought” at the time. Most people associated white supremacy with inbred yokels and affirmative action was still, like, a thing. We were still in a process of trying to transform institutions to make them more integrated but all of that ground to a halt in 2000 and we’re in retrograde motion now, losing legal ground. The Southern Strategy chickens have come home to roost and it seems as though Bush II was truly the last hurrah of old school aristocratic GOPitude where you try to appeal to the embarrassed plutocrats of every ethnicity. That all changed in 2010. Bush said nothing. The “big tent” (of would-be 1%ers) is over. It’s all down home white supremacy all the time.
I’m not dismissing the reality of white supremacy in the 1980s, I mean institutionally whites had considerably more power than now, arguably, but it was the middle of a too-brief era of institutional transformation, whether it was business, government, or communities.
I think the fear factor for whites losing power is a lot higher now than it was in the 80s.
It is pretty wacky to see upper crust people using shit-kicker kind of racist drivel. That is a change. They used to appeal to kind of “everyone knows” high-sounding paternalist crap.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch: If you’re looking for religious assholes who endanger our Constitution and our society, there is absolutely no need to look abroad. They’re all here domestically and they have the same agenda as ISIS: submit to “God” as we define him, or die.
Another Holocene Human
@Turgidson: *slow clap*
Another Holocene Human
@Turgidson: ARRA WAS AWESOME. PLUS ONE WOULD VOTE FOR AGAIN.
Seriously, I’ve watched ARRA projects in action. Be hard pressed to find a better example of good government in the modern era. Although TIGER is pretty close.
Those shmucks will never ever admit it, though. They’ll take the feddybux cursing Obama and the Democrats all the while.
Kay
I’m not cowering, or embarrassed.
Imagine waking up every day and walking around, deluding yourself into believing you speak for “America”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: They don’t speak for me, and I will throw their militarist memes right back in their smug chickenhawk faces.
Another Holocene Human
@Redshift: CAIR needs to take a page from GLAAD and B’Nai B’Rith and start playing hardball with those motherfuckers.
They need to recruit some college students and do a social media campaign. But adopting a harsh, wounded tone, having thick skin and being relentless, and leaving reasonableness to, like AU or ACLU, would go a long way. Stop playing; they’re not playing. Not since 2010’s summer of hate. THOSE FUCKERS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Should probably schedule your trip for the end of July, just to be safe. July 4th (or thereabouts) is looking iffy.
Howard Beale IV
Dinesh D’souza is the Prince of Lies. And you all know what that means.
He’s the anti-Christ incarnate.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): There were a lot of old-school conservatives in the Reagan admin it seems who went to Washington with the best intentions and found out that not only was it the cesspit they feared but that the Republican Party was a big fat lying con as well. More than one of Reagan’s so-con’s had a crisis of conscience in office because they actually believed all that shit Jesus was yammering about on that hillock and didn’t realize it was just lip service so they could kill brown people, raid the treasury and enrich their friends, and pursue “moral” crusades to achieve sadistic, covert sexual satisfaction while pretending to moral rectitude.
I’m not talking about the Nixon retreads–they knew exactly what they were doing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Howard Beale IV: Perhaps he’s just a co-7th King with Obummer?
I’m pretty much convinced that the scum that is the spawn of Billy Graham is the actual anti-Christ. He’s exhibiting all the right traits.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human:
Guys like the Dark Lord and von Rumsfailed.
Howard Beale IV
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, the one you can blame for foisting D’Souza on us is that heinous cretin William F. Buckley. He brought him along on one of the NPR debate shows and after that, it was all over.
I’ll tell ya this much-D’Souza isn’t aging very well, either. Even Ann Coulter had the good sense to dump his sorry ass.
Tree With Water
What republicans don’t understand is their erstwhile dog whistle tactics are inoperative in today’s America; that, or they endorse those tactics. They all may as well be yelling “nigner, nigger, nigger”* for all the wink-and-nod cover it provides nowadays. People have either wised up, and recognize it when they hear it; or they’ve grown braggart proud of the own profound bigotry and endorse the sentiments expressed.
*tip of the hat to Lee Atwater
SFAW
@Turgidson:
It is exceedingly difficult to improve on that one.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: Jesse Helms and some of his contemporaries were pretty openly racist but he was a truly regional politician. He ran Bill Weld out of the party, who did not run on racial resentment … exactly … well, there was some, but it was very subtle … and directed against Catholics.
Mass GOP does appeal to white male outrage now … that’s a new thing. They did not run on that back in the day. Mass is in a dangerous place right now, one can only hope that union leadership will gently transition into being more, um, diverse, and that the educated and the young will hang in there and replace the old school Irish/Dem straight ticket voters who are dropping like flies and being replaced with selfish exurb assholes. If some of the unions flip parties and go GOP because their leadership is still holding a grudge about women’s lib, uh-oh. Mass GOP is so evil now.
Howard Beale IV
@Tree With Water:
I believed he also atoned for that bit of chicanery as well.
danielx
Dinesh D’Douche calling someone/anyone vulgar? Said the pot to the kettle, how sadly sooty and grimy is your arse…
Another Holocene Human
Part of it is hate radio, and then FOX. Back when Reagan did the amnesty thing most people got their news from far less hysterical MSM sources–nightly broadcast news and mainstream papers and TIME and Newsweek.
This super politicized all for party crap is also new and much much worse.
I think also that in the 80s most people felt that both parties were pretty much for the whites, if you will, although the Southern Strategy was all about convincing voters on the national ticket that the Dems were n***** lovers. White supremacy wasn’t politicized because nobody outside of the Black liberation movement was talking about it. Other than in terms of point-laugh-Klan.
SFAW
@Tree With Water:
I’m not sure that’s accurate. My general sense is that understanding dog whistles for what they are is significantly more prevalent among the blogerati, than among the general, non-RWTM populace. This is, of course, not based on any data, and might as well be pulled outta my ass, etc. But I think some of the less overt racist memes gain far more traction than they should among the non-RWTMs.
Tree With Water
@Howard Beale IV: You must have an inside source about such things that no one else on the planet has… well, Pat Robertson, maybe.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: They knew they were doing evil. I know “know what they’re doing” could mean something else, as you so deftly point out, they certainly didn’t know how to prosecute an invasion and occupation very effectively.
The Turks should thank us, we really make them look good in retrospect.
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW:
Dude. Yes. And the thought that their kids might learn something other than that in AP History class or in an after school program (Radical Brownies–oh yeah, there was a RW freakout) or get a hint of that on TV (defund PBS) or in school (homeschool! private!) or on social media (troll troll troll!) terrifies them.
Chris
@Tree With Water:
I’ve thought this for a long time. They’re coasting on the success of the Southern Strategy, and don’t understand why it’s not working like it’s used to. Basically, their TV remote has stopped working reliably, and they’re still at the “press buttons, smack remote angrily” stage rather than “go get new batteries, the old ones are drained.”
SFAW
@Howard Beale IV:
Perhaps I’m less forgiving than you, but I don’t think a deathbed conversion/confession counts for too fucking much, unless you can actually use it to effect real change in some way. Which he didn’t. Doing it so that you might have a better chance of getting into Heaven – which is pretty damn close to what he did – does not really count for much with me. But that’s because I’m an intolerant asshole.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: The Southern Strategy cancer has infected the brain.
SFAW
@Chris:
Might want to check your assumptions. Or did the last election turn out differently than I remember?
Keith G
@Elizabelle:
No. Just no. I have heard others say this. No.
I am sure that after 8 years we need the energy of new ideas and new procedures. We also have to be aware that having one clique of authority figures running the executive branch for an extended length of time is a recipe for abuse – whether that abuse be inadvertent or calculated.
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW: They’re in the bargaining stage. They win with gerrymandering, voter suppression, chicanery. And a corrupt, politicized Supreme Court. They know “the American people” will eventually do something about that. What’s their path to victory in 2016? They can’t demoralize Obama. He is kicking their ass. Dems are going to be fired up and ready to go. What are they going to do? Assassinate him to shut him up?
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G: Hilary 2016?
jl
@SiubhanDuinne:
‘ the serious unfunny Kenyan is totally trolling the RWNJs. “We are not at war with Islam.” ‘
Just returned from short trip during which I was involuntarily exposed to talk radio. If Obama is trolling them, he had done the job with admirable competence and effectiveness. Lordy, what a stink people are making. A lot of the callers seem organized like the C-SPAN callers a commenter mentioned earlier. Same talking points over and over.
This is a thing? really? Bush II said almost identical things after 9/11, it was not a thing then, but considered sound judicious leadership then. What’s the difference?
True, Bush II’s actions later made his statements ‘inoperative’ for all practical purposes. And a whole bunch of his flunkies did not give a damn what their boss said. But still, I do not remember it being a thing.
What oh what could be he difference now? (Who oh who could be the difference now? -rhetorical question I guess).
And I read O’Reilly is talking to his geriatric dead enders that we are in a Holy War. Fer Gawd’s sake.
In a better world Dub might come out and comment on one of the very few things he did right. But I guess he has to sit still for his ‘smarter brother’ to bumble some smart ass comeback. Maybe Jeb! is not as bad as the others (I’ll wait and see but won’t bet on it).
May be hard to tell, depends on how badly Jeb! bumbles his comments.
Chris
@SFAW:
… which part of the phrases “not working like it used to” and “stopped working reliably” were too complex?
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: My grandparents might have had an issue on race. Not pretty. That was not the house I was raised in. You can break the string of things if you just try a little.
jl
@Keith G: Obama seems set on building and defending his legacy, and seems (I hope better than Bill Clinton) on preparing the way for better Democratic performance in 2016, and Democratic successor. That is good enough for me.
And, has not the poor man been through enough? He’s almost all gray now. His pics from just 6 years ago look like some plump 30 something dude now, with still a smidgen of baby-fat on him. No weary lean, and weary look. Obama can ‘snap-to’ and crack a smile, but in between, I’m starting to see ‘weary’, ‘let me outta here soon, please!’, and maybe a month count-down in his head.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: My racist mother barely breathed a racist word through the 1980s. She was a bit a of an authoritarian follower and racist bilge was just not acceptable. I am very grateful that I didn’t find out how she really felt about Blacks and Jews until later.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
Much though I’d like to believe that, I don’t think 2014 was about that. It’s an underlying condition, always there, likely will eventually die off, but a rational electorate would have accelerated that dying-off by now. The destruction of public education has helped the RWTMs retain an ignorant base.
Yeah, and GHWB was at 90 percent approval (or something pretty high) in 1991. The RWTMs will do what they have always done: character assassination, lie about Hillary (or whomever), play the fear card. And the negatives that most of us here attach to Jeb will miraculously disappear, once the MSM decides that Al Gore (or Hillary) is fat and no fun.
I can’t tell you how much I hope that I am wrong, but Mencken could have been writing/speaking about this century, not the last.
jl
@Chris: And last election was a midterm of a two-term presidency. I would hate to think what things would look like if their tactics worked like they used to.
Chris
@jl:
I just hope whoever his successor is is smart enough not to run from his legacy as the Village will undoubtedly be telling him to.
SFAW
@Chris:
What part of the 2014 midterm results was too complex for you? Because the the expanded Southern Strategy seemed to have worked pretty fucking well.
The results went far beyond the gerrymandering and voter suppression. (Although I think there was a larger vote-suppression component than before, and it will only get worse, until the Dems get their shit together.)
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW: That would rely on Dems and left-wing PACs not exploiting JEBs long, sordid history of shady financial and political dealings. Forget his wife, forget his kid with the coke and the no prison time. Dude just cannot keep his OWN hands clean.
Now how dumb are the Democrats? Pretty fucking dumb. But the GOP seems to be putting on a damn good show of dumber-er.
jl
@Chris: I don’t see who will do that. Everyone will have to distinguish themselves, find artful critiques of Obama that will take advantage of his unpopularities and statements of solidarity that glom onto his popularities.
I don’t think any Democrat will be dumb enough to run. Some tactics might make Obots angry. I can see the Dem nominee talking up improvements in health care reform while avoiding terms like ACA, if the whole package still has net negative polling. But who cares, if they do that to highlight all the popular components that the GOP will not be able to match with anything of substance.
On other hand, if reform works quickly enough to make the whole package a net positive, then I would expect to see ‘Save Obamacare’ plastered all over the country.
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW: The GOP has picked up a few points of the white vote, at the cost of the non-white vote and whites are a shrinking demographic.
Go ahead. Do the math.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: I know what you speak of. My grandparents were racist. Their views not allowed around me. Not for a second I don’t see color, well I guess I totally do, but don’t care is one of the best things they taught me.
Chris
@jl:
Then check the presidential elections of the late sixties through the late eighties.
Change is always palpable at the national level before the local one. Democratic senators, governors and congressmen continued to be a strong force in the South until Gingrich’s 1994 flip, long after Nixon and Reagan had made the region safe for Republicans. Republicans remained a powerful force in the North for decades after Roosevelt’s New Deal had expanded the Democratic brand in that part of the country. So yeah, color me unimpressed that a midterm election all about local politics gave the Republicans a good year, especially when lined up with the usual midterm factors.
The increasing Republican hysteria is no less real for it, and the way they were completely blindsided (Karl Rove’s meltdown on national TV) in 2012 illustrates it quite nicely. They thought the fix was in, that Obama was just a one time fluke caused by an exceptionally bad economy, and that the Silent Majority and Center Right Nation principles would reassert themselves because hey, doesn’t everyone agree with us about Obama’s Failed Presidency? As it turns out…
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Dems can run on a “stay the course/finish the race” platform. Obama put it all out there so the platform isn’t new, it’s going to be old hat, and it ties in well to Senate and House races. It’s going to be “did you like this, do you want it implemented? oh, look who’s been blocking it. *sad trombone* get off your ass and vote out the Orange Man and the Turtle”.
No need to “triangulate” or try to distance oneself from Obama. Schweitzer and Webb are fools.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
You do realize that W’s corporate history was almost as sordid? And he was certainly a failure at running companies. Harken Oil with (I think) lots of (probable) SEC violations – didn’t hear too much about that during the 2000 Election, though, did we?
If the MSM decides it’s going to anoint Jeb, then he’ll turn into Aaron Feuerstein before our eyes.
Chris
@SFAW:
… Once again with feeling;
Which parts of the phrases “like it used to” and “reliably” were too complex?
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: They are also completely flipping out that white supremacy and white (males) no longer control the media. With twitter, with the decline of old institutions, with a new generation of activists in the streets, they have lost control of the fucking narrative and are lashing out like the pathetic little trolls that they are.
Black journalists are being subjected to incredible smear campaigns by cesspit dwellers like Breitbart and Chuck Johnson, and it’s not working. Their level of rage has almost reached “Gamergator” proportions.
SFAW
@Chris:
GMAFB.
If it didn’t work “like it used to,” then Harry Reid would still be Majority Leader, for one, and the RWTMs would not have their largest House majority since Caligula. Just because they’re not using the “nigger nigger nigger” tactic doesn’t mean it’s not the Southern Strategy.
Another Holocene Human
I’m not understanding the 2014 disaster porn. Yes the D Senate candidates ran shitty campaigns and we shouldn’t have lost in CO. (Or MA-Gov but that isn’t really a big deal pace all the people who don’t understand how Mass gov’t works.)
But the fuckity fuck, nobody showed up, yeah the Kochs/ALEC own the state houses, so what’s new, old bitter white people vote against the near sheriff, film at 11. How do you see the activism that has been going on in the last year on the issues of race and law enforcement and justice and think “boo hoo hoo our country is going down the shitter, GOP will win everything”?
When the Boomer bulge displaces the Silents who dominate the olds now will there be thinkpieces about how the olds have changed their minds when actually it’s a different tranche of olds? Oh yeah, 2006 and 2008 were last hurrah for WWII gen, more of them are dead now than voting.
Tommy
Let me just say this. For the first time in 80 years. Let me say that again, 80 years no Republican has won my district. The Republican won last time around. We are doing something wrong!
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW: The plain fact of the matter is that it took the GOP two cycles longer than they thought to grab the Senate. 2014 was a bad year for Dems to be defending because of the states in play.
But I think you’re more interested in gloom porn than facts right now.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: STL and its ‘burbs are confronting racial issues that the rest of America faced decades ago. That’s doing something right but the confrontation hurts.
Chris
@SFAW:
Right, the fact that they did well in a midterm election, six years into a Democratic presidency, and when more red-leaning than blue-leaning states were in play, proves that it’s totally still 1972, or 1984.
GMAFB yourself. The New Dealers had a shitty time in the late forties between voter fatigue and the economic bad times. The Nixon/Reaganites had an even shittier time in the late seventies after Watergate and that whole mess. Didn’t reverse the trends towards rising Democratic/Republican influence in either case.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SFAW:
Actually, given the record low turnout rate in 2014, I would be more inclined to blame voter suppression than a sudden upsurge of success for the Southern Strategy. If there was a sudden upsurge of success, it would require, well, an overall upsurge in the number of voters, not a drop.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
Think what you want. You’re wrong, of course, but far be it from me to try to change your closely-held beliefs.
As far as “two cycles longer than they thought” – what they thought and five bucks will get them a ride on the 7 Train. If they had chosen to run non-insane candidates (Akin, Angle, Mourdock), they might have succeeded. (Running insane candidates is not a part of the Southern Strategy, as far as I know.)
You call it “gloom porn,” I call it “not deluding myself into thinking the Dems are going to kick ass anytime soon.” The 2016 results will be interesting, if Hillary runs and wins, perhaps her coattails will be long, but I don’t think she’ll be as inspiring a candidate as Obama was.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SFAW:
Of course, W lost the 2000 election by 200,000 votes and had to have the Supreme Court hand the office to him.
Let’s please not pretend that Bush was the popular choice in 2000. He lost the popular vote by a decisive margin.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Maybe self-suppression, rather than state suppression.
jl
@Tommy: It was also slowest and crummiest most dispiriting economic recovery in almost 80 years that spanned more than one election. And that just might include the recession of 1937 making it damn near almost 80 years. Now job market looking up, but wages still stagnant. Let’s hope current job and inklings of wage progress continue for next 20 months or so.
Part of that is Democrat’s fault for not asking for more fiscal stimulus right after Obama election, some Obama being being too neoliberal-curious or conflicted and confused on macroeconomic and financial policy (remember his ‘soul mate’ or some such thing he called Geithner).
It was a bad mess, but I think mistake to assume country suddenly started thinking like GOP on a whole range of issues.
Turgidson
@Keith G:
Despite your legit concerns, count me among those who would happily vote for Obama again if he were allowed to (and wanted to) run again. I am more comfortable with him making the big decisions than I’ve been with any other president in my lifetime (granted that only goes back to Carter, but I’d probably go back to at least Ike to find someone comparably sane and reasonable) and have absolutely no expectation that our horrific, hopelessly corrupt political system will accidentally allow someone as grounded and judicious as he is to win again any time soon.
I’d be willing to tolerate the risk of some sclerosis in the Oval Office if it meant keeping Obama in there. But instead I’ll vote for Hillary when the time comes and hope she romps to a big enough victory to actually sweep in a saner Congress.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
And the day that they abolish the Electoral College, that will matter. (And, yes, I’m well aware that he actually lost that too, except for Fat Nino refusing to recuse himself, and Sandra O’Connor sticking her head up her ass.)
But Bush should not have been anywhere near the stadium, never mind in a competitive race, given his history. And yet, here we are.
(I think W had more like 500K fewer than Gore, but maybe that was W’s margin over Kerry. My memories are fading fast. And, no, I’m not going to Google it.)
ET
O for cripes sake. Some/many Republicans need to get a sense of humor…. stat
SFAW
@jl:
Tons of polls have showed that the country has been supporting liberal (or quasi-liberal) policy choices for a long time. Until someone says that they’re “liberal” policies. Sort of like Obamacare without that name attached gets a lot more support than it does when the name is used. This is in no small part because the RWTMs have successfully (re)defined what liberals are. And when you have a Dem party unwilling to stand up and say “Fuck you, you fucking liars” (or, as Turgidson says, “you fucking fucks”), they get away with it. And getting away with that is a gateway drug to playing on the fears of the electorate, that “the scary blackity-black black Mooslim fascist socialist is coming to take yore freedumb, so vote for us patriotic, caring-about-the-little-guy, we-love-wimmins-darkies-poors-and-other-lesser-folk, and we mean it, RWTMs”
And it’ll keep working until there’s a coordinated effort to stand up to their lies and evil.
SFAW
@ET:
The Mets will win the World Series and the Jets win the Super Bowl before that’ll happen.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: I live over the on the IL side. But race is something we are still working with. Very touchy and not something we have figured out!
@jl: The so called liberal in my district ran against this guy:
Give him this, he was in your face in my district. Bill was not.
jl
@Tommy: Low turnout had a lot to do with it. I think unmitigated doom and gloom is not warranted and not helpful. I cannot understand your shock and dismay that such a loon won your district, though.
I do agree with SFAW that Democrats still run scared from their beliefs and that is not good.
Ruckus
@jl:
I bet he does have a short timers calendar hidden somewhere. In the service everyone I knew had one. And everyone of them was NSFW. They don’t have to be that way but they all were.
Keith G pointed out that we shouldn’t have some one in power for too long and he’s right. There’s just too much chance that the old adage that power corrupts absolutely will be re-proven, as of course it has been many, many times over. There must be exceptions somewhere but I’d bet it’s a pretty short list. Nelson Mandela?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
FDR?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SFAW:
Voter suppression is voter suppression. You don’t think all of that was a happy coincidence that just happened to benefit the Republicans, do you?
Like it or not, all of the ISIS/Ebola/we’re all gonna die fearmongering by Republicans worked to suppress the vote. The fact that it all turned off like a lightswitch the day after the election should have been your clue that the fix was in.
sparrow
@PurpleGirl: I donno, but I don’t think it’s lack of opportunity either. I think it’s a shitty culture (for lack of a better word) in which you are steeped in bullshit ideas which lead you to think killing a lot of other people is a good idea. It doesn’t just happen there (it happens aplenty in suburban America too). But I don’t think it’s reasonable to conclude, “oh I couldn’t get a job, so I guess it’s Jihad for me!”. That seems like extremely simplified thinking.
Matt McIrvin
@Iowa Old Lady: In that case it’s not even PC language, it’s just a rigged game: the right thing to say is obviously whatever specific phrasing Obama didn’t use.
Or it’s just made up. George Will goes on to this day about how Obama uses the word “I” freakishly often in his public speeches, even though people have done the textual analysis many times and it’s objectively not true.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: I’m generally opposed to term limits, because they drive competent politicians out of office when people would rather keep them in.
But I can understand the Presidency of the US being a valid exception, because of the President’s dual role as head of state (the closest thing to an American king) and head of government (the closest thing to a prime minister), which makes it more likely that an abusive personality cult could appear at a place where it could do a lot of damage.
Matt McIrvin
@jl:
Actually, the wingnuts hated that he said that. The “religion of peace” phrase they keep mocking all the time was Bush’s. The only reason it didn’t stick to Bush’s reputation was that he went to war anyway.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): And if Teresa LePore had not rolled out that awful butterfly ballot in Palm Beach area, which confused elderly Democrats into voting for Pat Buchanan (!), losing Gore thousands upon thousands of votes, Florida would not even have been in contention for Jeb! and the chicken dance lady.
Sherparick
@Matt McIrvin: The reason the Presidency was term limited was a specific Republican reaction to FDR in the 80th Congress, joined by Conservative Anti-New Dealer Dems and the usual Neo-Confederate Dems from the South. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I believe that the only reason FDR ran for a third and fourth term was because of WWII, He did like being President, but I doubt he would have broken the custom, or gotten away with breaking it (since there was a lot of internal Democratic opposition to a 3rd term) but for the fact of the war.
Subsequently, it has been Republicans who have regretted this amendment as Eisenhower (an later Reagan), ware very popular at the end of his second term (as was Reagan) and I doubt would have been opposed in the Republican Party if he had run for third term (and with Reagan, Republican opposition was unthinkable by 1988).
brantl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Not unless it’s in a contract.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: That is damned funny!
Hunter
That would be convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza cowering in embarrassment, right?
basement cat
Ghetto like His Holiness Pope Francis, who also took a selfie with some young people in St. Peter’s.
John M. Burt
Dinesh D’Souza: YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO Watch this vukgar man strut his stuff….
Me: I know you are, but what is he?
SFAW
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
You’re welcome to your opinion, I guess, but to me, self-censorship is not the same as government censorship. Might have approximately the same result, but one is structural, one is personal preference. Or: externally-imposed versus self-imposed. (No, I don’t want to start a debate regarding what causes self-censorship in the first place. At least, not in this thread.)
Self-suppression caused by excessive ID etc.requirements is not really self-suppression. But I don’t think that was necessarily what was going on in November.