.
Dylann Root: I'm a terrorist! Read my shitty manifesto!!!!
FBI: Sorry. You're not a terrorist unless we entrap you first (@PrototypeCube)
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) June 20, 2015
Eugene Robinson, in the Washington Post, “America will only end racism when it stops being racist“:
If American racism were a thing of the past, nine men and women who went to church last Wednesday evening would be alive.
What happened in Charleston, S.C., is not unfathomable or even ambiguous. It’s a story much older than the nation, a story that began when the first Africans were brought to Jamestown in 1619: the brutalizing and killing of black people because of the color of their skin.
The weekend displays of multiracial unity throughout the saddened city were inspiring, but they cannot be taken as a sign that the country has moved beyond its troubled racial past. The gunman who so coldly killed those innocent worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church did not exist in a vacuum. He inhaled deeply of the race hatred that constantly bubbles up like foul gas from a sewer…
Some conservatives have been quick to absolve society of blame by pointing out that the accused Charleston shooter was mentally disturbed. But of course he was mentally disturbed; normal, well-adjusted individuals do not commit mass murder. And the fact is that the Charleston killings were intended to advance a specific cause. To look past Roof’s racism would be like ignoring the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers, who committed the Boston Marathon bombing, believed in a violent, twisted version of Islam…
Are we as a culture sufficiently honoring the emotions and voices of people with sentimental, ahistorical thoughts on the confederate flag?
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) June 20, 2015
Professor Krugman, on “Slavery’s Long Shadow“:
… [R]acial hatred is still a potent force in our society, as we’ve just been reminded to our horror. And I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens.
My own understanding of the role of race in U.S. exceptionalism was largely shaped by two academic papers.
The first, by the political scientist Larry Bartels, analyzed the move of the white working class away from Democrats, a move made famous in Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Mr. Frank argued that working-class whites were being induced to vote against their own interests by the right’s exploitation of cultural issues. But Mr. Bartels showed that the working-class turn against Democrats wasn’t a national phenomenon — it was entirely restricted to the South, where whites turned overwhelmingly Republican after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon’s adoption of the so-called Southern strategy.
And this party-switching, in turn, was what drove the rightward swing of American politics after 1980. Race made Reaganism possible. And to this day Southern whites overwhelmingly vote Republican, to the tune of 85 or even 90 percent in the deep South.
The second paper, by the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote, was titled “Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-style Welfare State?” Its authors — who are not, by the way, especially liberal — explored a number of hypotheses, but eventually concluded that race is central, because in America programs that help the needy are all too often seen as programs that help Those People: “Within the United States, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare. America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.”…
Baud
Hmmm. Can’t read the paper now, but given how well Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I did nationally, amd how poorly Obama has done with that demographic, I’m skeptical of this claim.
Valdivia
Excellent Krugman piece and those two studies seem very very interesting.
OzarkHillbilly
For a really good overview of how our economy was constructed post war and beyond to reinforce the existing racial stratigraphy, take a listen to this Terry Gross interview w/ historian Richard Rothstein.
“We have a myth today that the ghettos in metropolitan areas around the country are what the Supreme Court calls ‘de-facto’ — just the accident of the fact that people have not enough income to move into middle class neighborhoods or because real estate agents steered black and white families to different neighborhoods or because there was white flight,” Rothstein tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross.
“It was not the unintended effect of benign policies,” he says. “It was an explicit, racially purposeful policy that was pursued at all levels of government, and that’s the reason we have these ghettos today and we are reaping the fruits of those policies.”
Germy Shoemangler
Never underestimate the power of comedy.
Germy Shoemangler
Old poisons, new bottles.
(roof being the new bottle)
Mustang Bobby
A plane belonging to film score composer James Horner crashed in California, killing the pilot. The coroner has not released the name of the dead, but Russell Crowe tweeted condolences to Horner’s family.
JPL
The news media wasted no time, in proving what Obama was saying on racism. I saw on mediaite that Megyn Kelly is sick of the President picking on poor little Fox news. lol
@Mustang Bobby: I saw that earlier. Although the article was vague, it does sound like it was him.
Elizabelle
Yeah, re Mr. Horner. His “long-time lawyer” confirmed to the LA Times that it was Horner’s plane, and that no one has heard from him since. Sad.
Applejinx
@Mustang Bobby: I know people who are personally gutted by the loss of James Horner because they actually know him and he is their friend.
But I look at my life and I’m sorry, I cannot mourn a guy who owned five airplanes. I’ve got to the point where I don’t care what he did, he could be bringing world peace and curing cancer and personally making snacks for homeless people in San Francisco and he still might as well be on the far side of the moon, might as well be another species.
I need to shower and make breakfast. I am starving and getting shaky with hunger, and it’s funny how being physically in pain from hunger stops you from crying over dead rich people. After breakfast I can manage more common decency but right now I’m not physically capable of it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: Can’t find it now but the Guardian said it was him. Maybe they jumped the gun and pulled the article.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler:
Or the power of a British accent.
JPL
Michael Oren was just on Morning Joe. I know Joe’s ratings are in the tank, but does he really think interviewing someone who dissed our President and country, deserves his audience. Oren needs to spread his bullshit on Fox.
Princess
I am reading this morning that the cops bought the killer a hamburger at Burger King after they arrested him, “because he was hungry.”
I thought I knew about racism in this country. But I have learned so much since this killing.
OzarkHillbilly
Yet again, House Republicans are taking aim at family planning. Last week, the House Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2016 that would remove all family planning funding under the Title X program. The Title X program provides access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care, including cancer screenings, contraceptive care, STI testing and much more, for 4.6 million people.
(….)
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Title X is actually a huge cost-saver to taxpayers. For every public dollar spent on contraceptive services, $3.74 is added in Medicaid savings. This is clearly a fiscally responsible choice, and yet Republicans are trying to end it.
The House GOP just declared war on it.
JPL
@Princess: What? Do you have a link?
Baud
@JPL:
Every day, it seems.
WereBear
This argument reminds me of the people who get all conspiratorial about Jewish people being in banking and jewelry. They get subdued when I ask if they were aware of the centuries old practice, during the middle ages, that banned them from most other professions.
Mind you, these are very often people who are doing what their father did, who is doing it because HIS father did…
Baud
France gets 2024 Olympics.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Poor France.
danielx
@Baud:
They can have it.
Kathleen
@OzarkHillbilly: That was a fascinating interview. I had heard the original broadcast and appreciate the link to revisit.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Boy, did they get screwed. Who’d they piss off this time?
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Gota punish the sluts, it’s the Republican way.
Baud
Oh wait. I may have misheard the news. Looking for confirmation about Olympics.
ETA: All France has done is indicate they will bid for the Olympics. Why this is reportable news is being me?
WereBear
Are the die-hard Confederates (but I repeat myself) going to get upset with their Party for caving on the flag issue?
Naaah, what am I thinking. It will be, as usual, the liberals “making” them do it. Too bad we can’t do that about gun control.
Mustang Bobby
@WereBear: My point exactly.
Baud
@Baud:
Beyond me
satby
“If we solve a symbolic problem and leave the rest untouched, then what will really change?” Booman
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/6/23/04028/1875
Sherparick
@Baud: Among white northern working class voters, Obama about 50/50, which is why he won states like Maine, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Neveda, and the West Coast. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/08/1350197/-The-Myth-That-Working-Class-Whites-Didn-t-Vote-for-Obama Of course, a substantial amount of the white northern working class, particularly the groups with strong ethnic identities in urban areas (Italian, Irish, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, etc.) are northern with “Southern Sympathies,” and they have tended to vote Republican since Regan. For all “Southern Working Class Whites (whether Southern by birth or Sympathy, there is a belief that “those People” have all been getting over, going on cruises with their welfare checks and buying lobster with food stamps. Then when they fall on on hard times (since by definition working class means that they live from paycheck to paycheck and are one health crisis or accident from misery), they are amazed how niggardly and difficult it is to get the benefits “that they being paying taxes all their life” to support. However, they think they are being treated this way because they are are white, and somehow “those People” (Blacks and Hispanics) get some sort of imaginary better deal because this is what right wing radio, talking heads like Ann Coulter, and politicians like Sam Brownback (dependency on Government is “evil” etc.) tell them. See http://www.thenation.com/article/208977/life-and-death-red-america And so they keep voting Republican as the health collapses and the plutocrats send their jobs to China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc. http://www.amazon.com/Out-Sight-Corporations-Outsourcing-Catastrophe/dp/1620970082
ThresherK
@Mustang Bobby: Condolences to a creative fellow. I really mean that.
Side note: He wrote “My Boat will Go Down” from Titanic, a song which I despise. However, I’ve been laying blame for this at Diane Warren’s feet since I heard it. (It’s an easy mistake, isn’t it?)
So, in front of the entire internet, I apologize to Diane Warren.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Gota punish the sluts, it’s God’s way.
FTFY, you’ll get my bill in the mail.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: In Republicanland, is there any difference?
WereBear
Getting racism out of a bigot’s mind is not as easy as untying a knot and yanking on some strings.
But they get vital feedback from seeing that flag flying over their capitol or on passing pickup trucks. They shouldn’t have that, it’s that simple.
We need more of this kind of societal pressure, not less. We have such a group taboo on things like running around naked that everyone wears clothes. We regard running around naked as a sign of great mental disturbance or being incredibly out-of-it. And it’s not because “it’s the law.” It’s because we all agreed, for everyone’s mutual mental and physical comfort, that we all wear clothes.
It’s powerful. It’s how we change a bigot’s mind.
@satby: Glad to here the good news about Belle in the other thread!
SFAW
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Not in their own “minds.” The rest of the world, not so much.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: To all those who say removal of the Confederate Flag is pointless, I say they could not be more wrong. To accept a symbol of racism makes the racism itself more acceptable. Does removing the symbol remove the racism? Hardly, and no one is saying it will. But it is another step in the right direction, one that for all too long this country has refused to take. And if we can’t do even this one small thing, what chance do we have to do any of the really difficult things?
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: You noticed!
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: My reply seems to have vanished somehow, but basically, I agree. This is how it starts. If we can’t do this, how can we do more difficult things?
Pee Cee
@OzarkHillbilly:
Exactly. In South Carolina, that flag flying in front of our state house enables our racists. They see that flag, and know that their racism has the tacit approval of the state. Removing that reinforcement can only be a good thing.
EconWatcher
I think pulling down the Confederate flag right now would actually be a big deal–bigger than if it had been taken down at some uneventful time before. If it’s taken down now, that’s at least a tacit admission that the mentality associated with the flag has some responsiblity for the actions of Dylan Roof.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Agree.
Kryptik
Considering the cartoon that acts as the kicker here, I feel like I should share something I posted elsewhere on the whole thing:
lamh36
A relative of mine shared this that Walmart story via a post of mine on FB. One of her white coworkers or friend or family member (not quite sure, but she is married to a white man, so it could have been a relation) responded with the whole “Southern Pride” meme. Now, normally I don’t like to detail another person thread on FB or social media, but with the events of past week, I felt the need to say something to this woman. I pointed out all the things you mentioned. Threw in sone Ta-Nehisi Coates links for good measure. Then I guess cause I was calling her on her BS she started throwing up some Conservative talking points on the “myths” of the Confederacy aND then had to nerve to say I was the ignorant one, cause excuse me for ya know…facts.
Then she threw up this but of commentary and I knew it was time to give up this discussion with this woman.
I finally just gave up cause I didn’t want to continue to threadjack my fam. But I find myself in the age of Obama and approaching 40 that I’m tired and done with to move some folk Black or White, especially on social media. Its just not worth the time or effort to try to reach a grown ass person to challenge their world view. I’m as emotional as the next person and yes I see defend some things based on emotions & sentiment, but as a scientist when confronted with facts, I listen and I try to re-evaluate my emotional defense. People like the woman I mentioned are just not worth my time when I don’t know them personally and I can just ignore or block them anyway.
*Pasted from my phone so please excuse all errors.*
J R in WV
So for some very strange reason this punk kid can’t be a terrorist.
But wasn’t there a guy a few years back who took a long gun to LAX and shot a huge slew of people standing in the security checkpoint line? finally shot down by a cop or armed security guard, right? He was a terrorist, for sure, wasn’t he? How many did he kill? I bet it was less than the nine this kid punk shot!
Why isn’t this punk kid a terrorist? He killed more than the brothers in Boston last year, 3 times as many, in fact, as were killed in the initial bomb blasts. They were terrorists, even after they shot a campus security guard, right?
I’m saying it, This shooter was a racist terrorist, just like the Jim Crow Citizen’s Committees who killed the freedom riders and the KKK folks burning crosses on the lawns of integration workers. Just like the people who pulled their kids out of public schools, which were unfunded by the racist school boards who weren’t going to pay their hard earned (stolen) money for integrated schools with black students in them.
Then they built a whole school systems with no blacks allowed, all over the South, so as to perpetuate racist beliefs and to keep black kids from getting good educations. Can’t be a MD if you can barely read, don’t know about science, and never learn how to talk like educated folks. And if you’re spending $50 a head for schools, you aren’t going to be turning out Ivy League champions, are you?
See how this works? There are swaths of this country where every aspect of black people’s lives are ruled by evil racists. Where they live and the schools their kids go to. How they behave in public. “Don’t you yell when your kid gets a dIploma, I’ll put you in jail!” Remember that? It was just last month, for God’s sake! And then that racist bastard turns around after a week or two and says, “Well, because I’m a good guy, we won’t put you in jail This Time! But you better ot let it happen again, right?”
There were those PhD educated black community organizers who got their black neighbors registered to vote, and got them to show up to vote, and put black educators onto the county school board. Then they all got arrested for felony vote fraud, because everybody knows that no blacks are going to win a fair election in Georgia, amiright?!?!
It took 3 trials for those folks to finally get aquittd, even there was no NO evidence that any crimes were committed, none. No racist power structure in Georgia, right!?! Just send armed goons around to arrest a whole bunch of local, PhD level educated school employees, round them up and put them straight into jail, and keep them there, because they had the brazen belief that they could win an election with no seriously negative repercussions! Were those folks crazy? Or did they just believe what we are told about America being a free country???
Post-Racial country? Only in the places where guy named Obama won enough votes to become president! Twice!! The rest of the country is still a swamp of fetid racist hatred, where no one with a lick of power does anything but kick their black population in the face every time they act like they might get ahead just a tiny bit.
Makes my bowels knot up something awful, thinking about how my father thought we had worked through the whole desegregation thing on his generation’s watch, and his kids and grandkids would all be free of racist hatred. Not so much, Dad, sorry about that. We gotta keep working hard, and getting shot while we’re trying to fix things. Just like in the 1950s and 1960s.
And it is the Republican Party’s fault, for taking political advantage of the fact that LBJ and his leadership of the Democratic Party pushed a real Civil Rights Act into power, that really did end a lot of public segregation. Reagan, the jolly smiling actor, was a stone racist. I don’t think Nixon was any more racist than he was anti-semitic, but he was worse, willing to take advantage of racist hatred that he knew was phony for his own benefit.
Right now the American Republican Party is the largest terrorist organization in the world. That’s what their political stands are built upon. And Faux News is the mouthpiece for the worlds largest terrorist organization. Dedicated to keeping whole races of and classes of people powerless and exploited for their own benefit! Think about that for a few minutes!
That’s the whole problem in America right now. Willing to destroy the world’s climate, agricultural system, the livelihood of millions of well-off middle class machinists, to maintain their power and wealth, and to keep that power and wealth away from Black People and Liberals!
HUckster from Arkansas is a terrorist leader, using distorted religion and warped politics as tools to keep black folks ground down underfoot. Miss Lindsey Graham is a terrorist leader, doing all he can to keep LEOs from being prosecuted for shooting unarmed black guys.
Mustang Bobby
@lamh36:
To quote John Ross Bowie, the Confederate flag was as much a symbol of “states rights” as the swastika was about “fixing the German economy.”
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
TNC’s article on reparations is another good source for information about the ghettoizing forces.
Baud
@lamh36:
I’m impressed at your phone writing ability.
I also have developed an extremely low tolerance for people, so I sympathize. But you’re a nice person, so I hope you are better able than I was to resist sociopathic tendencies.
debbie
@Princess:
I heard about this yesterday, and along with the very genteel perp walk (a gentle hand on the bulletproof vest), this is absolutely definitive proof of the disparate treatment of African Americans.
debbie
@JPL:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/dylann-roof-burger-king-cops-meal-article-1.2267615
lamh36
I consider myself to have a nice diverse group of friends & coworkers. But I’ll tell ya if it came to having a less diverse groups or acceptance of folk in my social group who truly believes that the Civil War was about “states rights” then I’d prefer less diversity in my friends and acquaintances. Those “friends” will find themselves with one less friend and those coworkers will find me less inclined to acknowledge them outside of work related subjects. Life is too short and I have enough friends that I don’t need to associate with folk who are willing to cling to such ignorance.
Elizabelle
Have “My Heart will go on” as an earwig this morning. No!
But RIP Mr. Horner. 61 and in the prime of productivity. Aircraft seems to have been a 2-seat military trainer.
debbie
@Pee Cee:
I like how the enablers say the flag celebrates their heritage, not slavery. When the foundation of their heritage was slavery, they cannot be separated. Does this ever get pointed out to the flag’s supporters?
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: Don’t be mad at him for people throwing money at him for what he did. Sort of an accident of history that his job left him so well compensated. 700 years ago, he’d have been playing for a meal at the local tavern.
PurpleGirl
@Baud: Uh, Mr. Bartels, no; lots of northern working class whites — including union members — began voting Republicans as Blacks began getting their rights protected. Let me tell you about my family members…
bemused
@lamh36:
Huh, she evidently believes slavery had nothing to do with the economy of the southern states at the time.
I don’t think they bother to read links containing inconvenient facts. Even if they do, their built-in translators alter uncomfortable truths to fit their beliefs.
Paul in KY
@Sherparick: Basically, back in the South, there were a lot of social events that revolved around the local political parties. When desegregation happened and blacks could now safely and proudly attend these functions, the whites did not want to be intermingling with them and have their kids socializing with the black children of Democratic supporters. Thus, they switched over to the party that they knew (by that time) black people would not support.
It is that simple, really.
bemused
@lamh36:
Huh, the southern pride defender must believe that slavery had nothing to do with the economy of southern states at the time.
I don’t think they bother to read links with inconvenient facts. Even if they do, their built-in translators alter uncomfortable truths to fit their cherished beliefs.
SFAW
@lamh36:
@Mustang Bobby:
If the Dems had their shit together, they’d hammer on the “states’ rights” bullshit for a few months. Would not change the minds of the dyed-in-the-wool racists, but would probably get some of the hitherto-ignorant to rethink their positions. (“Ignorant” used in the sense of “Stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed.”)
I hope I’m not too optimistic (re: the iggerant).
OzarkHillbilly
@lamh36:
States don’t have rights, they have powers. People have rights.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: The Northern states were awash in slaves in 1860, completely awash, I tells ya!!!!!
Why, you couldn’t shake a stick in Wisconsin, without hitting 2 or 3 slaves. Derp.
Paul in KY
@Mustang Bobby: ‘Fixing the economy’ by employing all males as soldiers, putting all women in armanents factories & trying to take over the world.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: Text her that Mustang Bobby quotes & then put LOLing after it.
Belafon
And this is why Sanders will need to adjust his idea that economics solutions will fix everything. There are too many people in this country – who, by the way, reliably vote – who think that enabling blacks will destroy this country.
PurpleGirl
@Mustang Bobby: I heard about Horner on NY1 within the last half-hour.
Germy Shoemangler
@Paul in KY:
And those who won’t fight or work can be put on fox news as on-air talent.
J R in WV
Testing to see if I can post any comment.
J R in WV
So for some very strange reason this punk kid can’t be a terrorist. Not military enough?
Wasn’t there a single guy a few years back who took a long gun to LAX and shot a huge slew of people standing in the security checkpoint line? finally shot down by a cop or armed security guard, right? He was a terrorist, for sure, wasn’t he? How many did he kill? I bet it was less than the nine this kid punk shot!
Why isn’t this punk kid a terrorist? He killed more than the brothers in Boston last year, 3 times as many, in fact, as were killed in the initial bomb blasts. They were terrorists, even after they shot a campus security guard, right?
I’m saying it, This shooter was a racist terrorist, just like the Jim Crow Citizen’s Committees who killed the freedom riders and the KKK folks burning crosses on the lawns of integration workers. Just like the people who pulled their kids out of public schools, which were unfunded by the racist school boards who weren’t going to pay their hard earned (stolen) money for integrated schools with black students in them.
Then they built a whole school systems with no blacks allowed, all over the South, so as to perpetuate racist beliefs and to keep black kids from getting good educations. Can’t be a MD if you can barely read, don’t know about science, and never learn how to talk like educated folks. And if you’re spending $50 a head for schools, you aren’t going to be turning out Ivy League champions, are you?
See how this works? There are swaths of this country where every aspect of black people’s lives are ruled by evil racists. Where they live and the schools their kids go to. How they behave in public. “Don’t you yell when your kid gets a diploma, I’ll put you in jail!” Remember that? It was just last month, for God’s sake! And then that racist bastard turns around after a week or two and says, “Well, because I’m a good guy, we won’t put you in jail This Time! But you better not let it happen again, right?”
There were those PhD educated black community organizers who got their black neighbors registered to vote, and got them to show up to vote, and put black educators onto the county school board. Then they all got arrested for felony vote fraud, because everybody knows that no blacks are going to win a fair election in Georgia, amiright?!?!
It took 3 trials for those folks to finally get acquitted, even there was no NO evidence that any crimes were committed, none. No racist power structure in Georgia, right!?! Just send armed goons around to arrest a whole bunch of local, PhD level educated school employees, round them up and put them straight into jail, and keep them there, because they had the brazen belief that they could win an election with no seriously negative repercussions! Were those folks crazy? Or did they just believe what we are told about America being a free country???
Post-Racial country? Only in the places where guy named Obama won enough votes to become president! Twice!! The rest of the country is still a swamp of fetid racist hatred, where no one with a lick of power does anything but kick their black population in the face every time they act like they might get ahead just a tiny bit.
Makes my bowels knot up something awful, thinking about how my father thought we had worked through the whole desegregation thing on his generation’s watch, and his kids and grandkids would all be free of racist hatred. Not so much, Dad, sorry about that. We gotta keep working hard, and getting shot while we’re trying to fix things. Just like in the 1950s and 1960s.
And it is the Republican Party’s fault, for taking political advantage of the fact that LBJ and his leadership of the Democratic Party pushed a real Civil Rights Act into power, that really did end a lot of public segregation. Reagan, the jolly smiling actor, was a stone racist. I don’t think Nixon was any more racist than he was anti-semitic, but he was worse, willing to take advantage of racist hatred that he knew was phony for his own benefit.
Right now the American Republican Party is the largest terrorist organization in the world. That’s what their political stands are built upon. And Faux News is the mouthpiece for the worlds largest terrorist organization. Dedicated to keeping whole races of and classes of people powerless and exploited for their own benefit! Think about that for a few minutes!
That’s the whole problem in America right now. Willing to destroy the world’s climate, agricultural system, the livelihood of millions of well-off middle class machinists, to maintain their power and wealth, and to keep that power and wealth away from Black People and Liberals!
Huckster from Arkansas is a terrorist leader, using distorted religion and warped politics as tools to keep black folks ground down underfoot. Miss Lindsey Graham is a terrorist leader, doing all he can to keep LEOs from being prosecuted for shooting unarmed black guys.
After all, how you gonna keep the
niggersuh,darkiesum, Negroes down, if you can’t shoot them down in the street, in public, on TV, in the back, unarmed, without any repercussions? Isn’t that the question of the day for Republicans?Because that’s their plan, and they’re going to do it tomorrow just like they did it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. As long as they need to, that’s how long they plan to do it. In WalMart, in the park, beside the thruways, wherever they feel the need to, that’s where they will do it, in front of God and everybody. On TV. In public.
Shoot them in the back, while fleeing for their lives, knowing that there will be a bullet, or 6 or 8. Imagine running as hard as you can, but knowing that the cop behind you is aiming his gun at you, and intending to shoot you down like a mad dog. Because if a black guy thinks that he has any chance of acting like a white man and getting away with it, he is as crazy as that mad dog, and deserves the same results as far as those racist cops are concerned.
SFAW
@Germy Shoemangler:
Outstanding!
Germy Shoemangler
Is this now suddenly a thing? Yesterday my local news reported a house was for sale for $150. You had to write an essay and pay an entrance fee ($175 or something like that) and the winner of the essay contest would get the house for $150. The catch was, they had to receive a certain amount of essays (the total entrance fees came to something like $400,000). The house was valued at $300,000.
Nice house, indoor swimming pool, acres of property. I looked online, and this is happening all over the country. People raffling off their mansions and getting more than the home value with “contest entry fees”
FlipYrWhig
@Sherparick: Well said and extremely accurate to my experience with avowed Republicans and conservatives other than the born-rich ones.
ThresherK
@Elizabelle: I’m sorry, but that’s the unfortunate side effect of something I had to do.
Please remember two of Ms. Warren’s “shoulda quit while you’re ahead” achievements, Tell it To the Moon and Solitaire.
PS The latter is a rewrite of a French song, with English lyrics just grafted onto a tune that originally had nothing to do with it. This method usually sucks the big one, but this works.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: If it were up to the House membership, every family would be like the Duggars. Of course, not all families would have the money or resources they have.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: I was thinking concentration camps for Fox News talent :-)
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy Shoemangler: As I recall it started in Spain a few years after the crash when you just couldn’t sell a piece of real estate for anything near what you owed. They still have 24% unemployment. My wife has been trying to sell her parents condo in Mallorca for over 3 years now. Not happening.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
Tearing down swastika flags in post-1945 Germany clearly wasn’t going to be all it took to end the legacy of Hitler. But I think it’s fair to say that if swastika flags were STILL flying over Germany, we would be saying the legacy of Hitler had not been addressed.
J R in WV
The racists intend to keep the Black/Latino/Asian worker communities down. One of their main tools for this is having the ability to shoot black people down at will, with no repercussions. In Walmart, unarmed, on his phone, shopping for a kids’ birthday present, killed dead, no repercussions. Never lost a day’s pay.
Many, many examples of all sorts of people, shot down, unarmed, in the back in broad daylight, on TV. No repercussions. Kid with a toy gun, shot down in 2 seconds, no looking around to see what the situation is, not a second surveying to see who is in danger, just BangBangBang and a 12 year old is dead, almost instantly.
Imagine running for you life, and knowing, knowing, that the racist cop behind you is drawing a bead on your spine, and is going to shoot you down like a mad dog.
But as far as the Republican party, and the racist enforcers are concerned, if you are a Black, or Indian, or foreign, or NOT White, you are a mad dog if you think you can act like a White Man and get away with it. Bang Bang Bang, and you are no longer a problem for the power elite.
If some educated Black community leaders get together, organize, register voters, and win an election, why, just arrest them for voter fraud, we all know that’s the only way for blacks to win an election in deep south Georgia, so don’t even look for real evidence, just send the town cops around and arrest them. Then let them try to defeat the whole state’s judicial system! Ha!
Well, they did get out of jail, and after the third (third!!) trial they got acquitted, so some things change slowly. But next time they’ll probably get shot attempting to escape, and there will be no repercussions, even if there is a dash cam showing them getting shot while handcuffed and locked in the back of a cruiser.
The Republican Party is leading these racist terrorists as they shoot down black men and women, and Mexican, and Navajo, and so forth. Liberals, some times. Or just arrest them, put them in solitary, for life. Make them work chain gangs on giant farms. There is more than one was to use people like slaves. Balance the town budget on the backs of the poor blacks. Prison work farms do OK. Just keeping them in minimum wage jobs and stealing all their OT works.
You can wrap a terrorist in a $8,000 hand-made suit, but underneath the expensive duds is a person willing to kill (or maim, or torture) for his political cause. Sounds like the Republican platform to me.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: That is absolutely right. Removing that flag is only one thing, but most things are only one thing, and they all add up.
Kay
@Sherparick:
Not this time. This time they will “open markets to American goods”. Just forget about every other trade deal that went before this one, including Obama’s with South Korea, where they didn’t enforce any of the provisions that “open markets to American goods”.
rikyrah
The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning’
A friend recently told me that when she gave birth to her son, before naming him, before even nursing him, her first thought was, I have to get him out of this country. We both laughed. Perhaps our black humor had to do with understanding that getting out was neither an option nor the real desire. This is it, our life. Here we work, hold citizenship, pensions, health insurance, family, friends and on and on. She couldn’t, she didn’t leave. Years after his birth, whenever her son steps out of their home, her status as the mother of a living human being remains as precarious as ever. Added to the natural fears of every parent facing the randomness of life is this other knowledge of the ways in which institutional racism works in our country. Ours was the laughter of vulnerability, fear, recognition and an absurd stuckness.
I asked another friend what it’s like being the mother of a black son. “The condition of black life is one of mourning,” she said bluntly. For her, mourning lived in real time inside her and her son’s reality: At any moment she might lose her reason for living. Though the white liberal imagination likes to feel temporarily bad about black suffering, there really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black: no hands in your pockets, no playing music, no sudden movements, no driving your car, no walking at night, no walking in the day, no turning onto this street, no entering this building, no standing your ground, no standing here, no standing there, no talking back, no playing with toy guns, no living while black.
Eleven days after I was born, on Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Now, 52 years later, six black women and three black men have been shot to death while at a Bible-study meeting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. They were killed by a homegrown terrorist, self-identifed as a white supremacist, who might also be a “disturbed young man” (as various news outlets have described him). It has been reported that a black woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter survived the shooting by playing dead. They are two of the three survivors of the attack. The white family of the suspect says that for them this is a difficult time. This is indisputable. But for African-American families, this living in a state of mourning and fear remains commonplace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html?_r=0
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: All too true, all too true.
shawn
Open Thread: I listened to WTF with Marc Maron with President Obama last night. I didn’t vote for him either time but after hearing this episode, I see that I should have. The vote to not re-elect is really the indefensible one. I couldn’t vote for him the first time – he just didn’t have the experience (I didn’t vote for his opponent either for obvious reasons – I abstained – which is maybe an idiot/d*ck move but whatever). He also showed just how very much lacking Hillary Clinton (and yes every Republican primary runner) is as a candidate and a leader.
lamh36
Another blog comment turned into longer blog post.
No Time For Stupid People…Or…Bish Wut?
rikyrah
she could have gotten a Black man, at the very least, thrown in jail – and that’s the positive part…
and then, it could be a lot worse…(yes, thus is being Black in America, where actually just being thrown in Jail is a positive)
and she has a ‘difficult struggle’?
GET DA PHUQ OUTTA HERE.
40 Years ago, this could have found a Black man hanging from a tree.
…………………………….
Woman Claims She Was Attacked by Black Men, Actually Attacked by Makeup
Jay Hathaway
Filed to: Hoaxes
6/22/15 2:45pm
This weekend, in the wake of last week’s racially-motivated mass shooting in Charleston, a Texas woman claimed on Facebook that she’d been brutally beaten by three black men outside a Texarkana Walmart store. It now appears as though she made the whole thing up.
……………..
In following up on the story, the Daily Dot learned that Walmart wasn’t aware of any violent incidents taking place at the store during the time frame in question, and that Texarkana Police have no record of the attack.
When asked why the Facebook post accusing Martin of faking had been removed, police told the Daily Dot, “We were informed that she is emotionally disturbed and that they are attempting to get her the assistance that she needs. We have removed the post to avoid contributing to her difficult struggle.”
http://gawker.com/woman-claims-she-was-jumped-by-black-men-actually-at-1713108369?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
rikyrah
@J R in WV:
can’t say you are wrong in the least
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Saw that, rikyrah.
Illustrated with a picture of Mamie Till Mobley standing over Emmett’s open coffin, with photos of him attached. He would not have looked the same, after he had been beaten to death by white men and thrown into a river.
Very important article. Claudia Rankine is a poet, and it shows.
This is true. Unless facing down a psychopath, being a middle aged middle class white person is going to get me some amount of deference, however small or brief, and at least a chance to be heard.
People of color are not accorded the same respect, and too many people — including Supreme Court justices, which is a tragedy and a shame — assume they have the same opportunities others take for granted.
We need to talk about that, and not get sidelined by taking down a flag of treasonous rebellion and white supremacy, even though that is a great symbol and a start.
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: Yeah, I can’t be mad at him, it’s not like that. One sausage and one egg and the smallest possible portion of oatmeal to stretch it later, I’m OK for at least a couple-few hours. I gotta work out what else I can strip down.
I make music too. This is me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boEtZmLd6-0
I’m glad he had a good run, he made some cool music. I’m not sure he needed five airplanes, but then technically I don’t even need one. This world is very strange and needs debugging. Five airplanes is a symptom, not the mark of Cain. I’ve seen that very man talk about composing for Aliens and then for Titanic and working with Cameron, and Horner seems (seemed) like a very decent, down-to-earth guy. Of course now he seems like Icarus, right?
I can’t mourn. At least you had it all, guy. He had a very good run and seemed the type of person that he could appreciate it. A life well lived. Well played, Horner.
Steve From Antioch
@debbie: no doubt there is disparate treatment, but the police response here has been fantastic …. Roof was talking nonstop to officers, giving lots of information that will prevent deploy,net of an insanity defense.
Good cops, like good military interrogators, understand that kindness and respect is the best way to get people talking.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
“Feel TEMPORARILY bad” is the key word.
I’ve been going to church again lately (driving an older relative, who isn’t mobile much anymore) and Charleston was the topic of last weekend’s sermon. The most telling thing was the priest (white, like most of the congregation) using the analogy of a “storm,” which it was important to weather together, as a country, as we had weathered many such storms, yada yada.
… Sorry… it’s not a “storm.” It’s not a crisis that just emerged and will eventually pass. It’s a permanent feature of life for large parts of the population. You perceive it as a “storm” because you’re only aware of it occasionally and temporarily, when something happens that’s egregious enough to put it on the media radar, but nonwhites getting killed by racists is a thing that happens all the time. If it’s a “storm,” we’ve been “weathering” it for 500 years and its end is still nowhere in sight.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@lamh36:
I love how ignorant (mostly) white people insist they know better than the ACTUAL WORDS OF THE ACTUAL SECESSION DOCUMENTS, most of which specifically say that they’re seceding so they can continue to own slaves.
gogol's wife
@shawn:
Neither of your failures to vote for him is defensible. He was giving speeches in both campaigns that should have convinced any sentient human being.
ETA: Oh, and you damn well better vote for Hillary Clinton.
Woodrowfan
@lamh36: “the north had slaves too” Actually there were about a dozen slaves left in New Jersey but that’s it. otherwise the remaining slaves were in the border states but the slave owners in those states didn’t have quite enough political power to get their states to join the confederacy.
magurakurin
@lamh36:
You should have asked her, “So, what your saying is that if the South had WON the war then you fuckers would still have slaves today, right?”
I mean, was slavery a bad thing or not? It’s not really that hard…
opiejeanne
AARGH!!! First thing you see in the morning is NOT Megyn and Santorum on the tv. I do not know why it was on in the lobby of this little hotel, because usually it’s CNN, but there they were, him bleating about not politicizing something and her asking how it was sitting next to the leader of the Black Lives Matter campaign and whether he was moved by the church service.
BLEARGH!
Thank goodness all of the tables in the lobby were full and we weren’t tempted to sit down to eat because I would have thrown something at the screen and their smug smarmy faces if I’d sat down for even a minute.
Elizabelle, how did you do this all day???
Chris
Somebody on CNN is talking about what a “proud moment” it is for the GOP that candidates are standing against the Confederate flag.
Yes. A party that waves its “party of Lincoln” credentials in our face at every opportunity actually finally dares to take a stance against the Confederacy – 150 years after the war – and this is a big accomplishment. Low bar much?
SFAW
@Chris:
“Proud” the way a two-year-old is proud when he doesn’t smear his shit all over the walls. But is still not potty-trained, of course.
SFAW
@opiejeanne:
Gotta be large quantities of pharmaceuticals.
AnonPhenom
James Comey on Domestic Right Wing Terrorism following lockstep in the footsteps of J.Edgar Hoover on the existence of the Mafia. Probably for the same reason (fear of their precious institution being corrupted) and likely to end in similar fashion.
debbie
@lamh36:
Any reason given other than slavery is called Rationalization.
Kay
This is nice. The day the trade deal gets rubber-stamped in Congress they finally release some actual projections:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/upshot/what-you-should-know-about-the-trans-pacific-partnership.html?action=click&contentCollection=TPP®ion=Article&module=Promotron&abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0
For all of you who were saying the opponents “didn’t know” what was in the trade deal or “didn’t understand” the trade deal the answer is “yes, they did”.
Service sector jobs of course pay less than manufacturing, and (big bonus!) they’re more often non-union.
Can someone tell me why Congress and the President are working so hard to put downward pressure on wages?
gene108
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Yeah, but 95% of the people, who fought for the CSA did not own slaves. They were not fighting to preserve what they did not have, ipso facto presto chango the South did not secede because of slavery.
Maybe some people seceded over the slavery issue, but it was not most people, like my great-great-great-great grandfather, who fought in the war.
/Southern apologist
Incredible how we, as a species, can recoil from facts that challenge our preferences.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Glenn Beck was shrieking almost to the point of popping capillaries about how the Confederate flag issue is taking priority over the deficit, ISIS, lost wars, slaughter of Christians, stealing our guns, and on and on. He’s sure it’s the Progressives’ ploy to distract the people from the real problems we’re facing.
One hour of that was enough for me.
AnonPhenom
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Ta-Nehisi has a great article up today with excerpts from those documents (and other contemporary sources).
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie:
How could you manage an hour? Was it some sort of Clockwork Orange thing where you were strapped into a chair?
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I am an a Obot on everything other than the President’s economic policy, which is of the neo liberal Chicago School variety.
Mandalay
Virginia’s governor, Governor Terry McAuliffe is getting rid of the Confederate flag from Va license plates, including existing ones!….
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I am an a Obot on everything other than the President’s economic policy, which is of the neo liberal Chicago School variety. Remember the fixation with deficits and the grand bargain?
Germy Shoemangler
@Mandalay: Wow.
And I thought I was the king of unintended consequences. (Everything I do always ends in the opposite of what I intended).
I hope Ish Kabibble Roof is seeing all the news.
schrodinger's cat
@Princess: I don’t object to police treating this assassin humanely while he is in custody. However, I also think that they should apply the same standard to anyone in their custody irrespective of their race.
Chris
@AnonPhenom:
“After all, the Klan is an old American institution!”
– HUAC, explaining why they were not interested in investigating it.
lamh36
Chris Rock once made a joke about people being proud they “never went to prison” or “they never sold drugs”. Rock was like…mutha…that aint an accomplishment, no one grows up wanting to go to prison!
The spineless son of a bigot, sees polls turning so now he gets forceful about the flag’s meaning…IT’S ALWAYS MEANT THIS!
So now I’m supposed to pat you on the back…Mahn Fuq Rand Paul, but I guess fan-boys will love it.
@Jamie_Weinstein
.@RandPaul finally breaks silence and speaks out — forcefully — against the Confederate flag:
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Free traders discredit themselves. They absolutely refuse to sell these deals honestly.
Later today when you hear them assuring everyone they promise a big win on Trade Adjustment Assistance, be aware that we’ve had TAA since 1974 and it’s a reauthorization. They’re “giving” people something they already had.
Last week they said they can’t do trade deals in “even” years, meaning election years. Gosh, I wonder why not?
“Big winners- Hollywood and Big Pharma”
Is that the Democrats’ working and middle class message for 2016?
I do think it was generous of them to wait until people had (somewhat) recovered from the financial crash before knocking them down again. There was starting to be some upward pressure on wages. Can’t have that!
Belafon
@Kay: So, the TPP has already passed?
AnonPhenom
@Chris:
They ever figure out how many committee members actually had hoods and sheets hanging in their closets?
bemused
@Mandalay:
I would imagine those who chose the flag license plates are not going to be happy campers. I wonder how that will play out.
Kay
@Belafon:
Fast Track will pass and Fast Track is passage of the TPP.
They don’t work 5 years to put together crappy trade deals for them to fail.
Insurance is a big winner. I guess Democrats are locking down those crucial Connecticut electoral votes again. You’d think we would have those 5 or 6 times over by now, but better safe than sorry.
Chris
@lamh36:
@magurakurin:
@gene108:
What I find fascinating about all this is that everything that’s said about the Civil War can be applied equally well to World War Two. After all, 99% of Germans didn’t work in concentration camps (so clearly we should just ignore the fact that the entire regime was based on racial supremacism, out of respect for all these good nice honest well-meaning German soldiers who were just angry at Versailles and the Great Depression). After all, the Allies weren’t fighting to free the Jews, or out of anything except their own self-interest, and weren’t interested in fighting at all until Hitler left them no other choice, so ending the Holocaust was just a “by-product.” After all, the Allies weren’t a bright and clean and spotless knight in shining armor, between British colonialism and American racism and Russia’s purges and gulags a lot of Nazi Germany’s flaws existed in those societies too so it’s clearly hypocritical for anyone to judge the Nazi regime… etc, etc, etc.
And yet for some reason World War Two is “the good war,” which continues to justify everything we did seventy years later and which we all demand a big cookiee from the French and Dutch and Belgians for having fought in… but the Civil War is this big senseless tragedy where we need to be very careful not to hurt the descendants of Southerners’ fee-fees (even though anyone who fought in that war is dead and buried and we should long ago have stopped giving a shit even if that was a legitimate excuse).
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused:
They will display the flag on every square inch of their bodies, clothes and homes. They are PISSED.
Watched a tiny bit of CBS this morning with Charlie Rose; they showed a brief clip of a flag apologist, the leader of some southern group or another, and he was NOT calm.
“Suh, this is an outrage! An outrage, I say suh!”
Ben Cisco
@lamh36: Outstanding, and I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve got a little over ten years on you, and my fields of you-know-whats are truly fallow, barren, and salted. So done with the willfully and aggressively ignorant. So done with their enablers, comforters, courtesans, and fellow travelers in the mainstream press. So done with all of those who are quite literally scared stupid. Time to get on with it.
Kay
@Belafon:
Yiu can tell what a big political winner the Senate pro-trade deal Democrats think it is by looking at their Twitter feeds. Here’s Patty Murray:
https://twitter.com/PattyMurray
Let’s see- minimum wage, sick leave, Title IX, where is that job creating trade deal we’ve heard so little about?
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: I sure hope things improve for you. Best wishes!
Edit: Listened to your song. Pretty effing good!
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Don’t forget how Lee is the hero of the Civil War in popular culture while Grant and Sherman are portrayed as the villains.
SFAW
@Chris:
Interesting analogy, but I don’t think it really holds up.
Paul in KY
@Woodrowfan: KY was a little smarter than those states below.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
A bunch more “patriots”, potential domestic terrorists for police forces to be concerned about.
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy Shoemangler: At least they will be showing us what approve of rather than what the State of Virginia does. They’re outraged because they’re losing the state seal of approval.
Paul in KY
@gene108: Gene, they could always own slaves if their financial situation improved. Don’t think they didn’t dream of an upswing in their personal situations when they had won the war.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
Goody, more “patriots” for police and everyone else to be worried about.
Paul in KY
@gene108: Gene, they could always buy slaves if/when their financial situations improved. Don’t think they didn’t give that some thought.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
@Kay:
This subject is not my area of expertise, but it’s my impression that free trade is one of these things liberals have been squeamish about forever, partly on account of their political alliances in the U.S. If I recall correctly, one of the divides among the rich all the way back in the New Deal era was that tycoons who made most of their money from international businesses were much more likely to support liberal reforms than tycoons whose businesses were based in the U.S. and were therefore more targeted by New Deal type legislation… which meant an accommodating stance between a lot of liberals and the people with an interest in free trade. You see this in both parties – in the Eisenhower years, the Republicans at the national level might have resigned themselves to accepting more regulation and taxation and all the reforms that liberals had passed on businesses at home, but they were as hardcore as ever in protecting the right of American corporations abroad to behave the same way they had in America during the Gilded Age – Iran, Guatemala, Zaire…
That was back in the supposedly good old days (economically speaking), and the acceleration of globalization, the Democrats’ switch to the DLC stuff, and the general return of laissez-faire dogma since then can’t have helped.
bemused
@Paul in KY:
It seems similar to the present day thoughts of non-wealthy Republican voters who support tax cuts for the wealthy believing that some day they too will be the “overtaxed” rich.
Chris
@SFAW:
Well, I don’t think the argument holds much water for either war. But you could make the same one in both cases – presumably, we don’t do it for the Germans because that was an actual foreign country, whose descendants (spiritual as much as actual) don’t live here and vote.
shawn
@gogol’s wife: thanks for not being an @sshole about it :P
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: One of the effects of globalization is that, what is good for multinational corporations is not necessarily good for the citizenry. The corporations and the investor class (the true Republican constituency) has recovered quite well from the 2008 debacle, thank you very much, the 99% not so much.
AnonPhenom
@lamh36:
My wife would frequently critique my discussions with family members and friends with “you’re not going to change anyone’s mind when you speak to them like that” .
“that” generally being me calling bullshit on some half assed talking point or CW that ‘everybody knows’ is TRUE.
She stopped critiquing me when I explained that I had long ago given up trying to change people’s minds about what they believed and that my self appointed purpose is to make those people look and feel as foolish as possible so they STFU. At least in my presence.
Try it. It’s fun!
Elizabelle
@opiejeanne: It was a one-off. Did not develop a Fox News habit. Can still point and laugh and vow to stay away from them. Cliche, but they are who we thought they are.
The Balloon Juice fu protects me.
Kay
@Chris:
It’s really more complicated than political considerations. The rap on free trade agreements is that the US has effectively ended most trade barriers to imports. What they haven’t done is open up other markets to exports. That’s why people are pointing to the Obama South Korea trade deal, because that was supposed to create exports.
In addition, the charge is trade deals are less about “trade” (most US barriers are gone) and have instead become a mechanism to pile up goodies for the international business class that wouldn’t get thru Congress without Fast Track.
There are also complaints about the US Trade Representative,. the entity that does the work. A huge number of them hop between private sector work where they promote the interests of the same companies and sectors that are at the table in the trade deal. So are they working “for the US” or are they working for their former (and perhaps future) employer?
Archon
@gene108:
A lot more than 5 percent of white southerners owned slaves. It some states (like Mississippi) it was closer to 50 percent, in other states it was around 25 percent. The vast majority of white families that did own slaves however only owned one or two, although they all had dreams of being the big plantation owner one day because owning a large plantation was the cultural and economic apex of being a white southerner.
ruemara
@Applejinx: I understand, but don’t let it take your heart. Wish you were closer, I could share what I have.
Kay
@Chris:
My point is media and, unfortunately, the President, painted objections to this trade deal as “political”- Democrats were pandering to parts of their base.
There are real substantive objections to this thing. They understand it. Trade is a huge area of interest for labor unions and environmentalists.
Dismissing this as “political” simply wasn’t true, it’s NOT a slam-dunk “good thing” for the US, no one has botheered to make a case why it should be a “slam dunk good thing” and I think that’s why you saw some real anger in response to the White House.
piratedan
@lamh36: I think pointing them to the official state articles regarding Secession shuts that noble cause and state rights crap right up. Not to say that they don’t mention states rights, they do. The particular right that they specifically mention is a right to own slaves. Period. Stop.
Here’s an excerpt from the official article of secession for South Carolina
SFAW
@Chris:
No, the two situations were pretty much completely different, i.e., between the War of Northern Aggression and WW2.
ETA: To (perhaps) add a little clarity to my comment: having some superficial similarities does not make the two situations close to similar. Doughy Pantload tried to tell us that Hitler was a vegetarian, and liberals are vegetarians, so ipso facto and QED. No, I’m not saying that you’re like Jonah, by the way.
gogol's wife
@Chris:
thank you
SFAW
@Applejinx:
What kind of work do you do, and in what part of the country do you live? Not that I have any work to give, but others might.
Kay
@Chris:
This is CWA, communications workers:
These mechanisms they set up for labor protections are useless. The US has enough trouble enforcing their own labor laws. They’re now going to enforce in Vietnam?
However! The special system they set up for investor- to-state dispute resolution seems to work very well when there’s a conflict between a business entity and a state.
Why are the terms of trade deals enforced for some people and not other people?
Read more at: http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/cwa_statement_on_senate_cloture_vote_on_fast_track_trade_authority
jonas
@lamh36: So this is apparently the new neo-Confederate meme, eh? The “north had slaves, too.” I see.
Punchy
Any word on the Brady hearing? Can Goodell give him MORE than 4 games for being such a lying POS?
lamh36
lamh36
@piratedan: Oh, I send any number of helpful links to that bish…but then I gave up on her. Her last comment was the one I mentioned about “the North had slaves too”.
She started an avalanche now though. My FB friends are probably like…damn gurl…what happened
OzarkHillbilly
@lamh36:
A gnat is smarter than that guy.
Cacti
@lamh36:
Anyone who believes the above is delusional, an ignoramus, a liar, or some combination of all of them.
Way too many people believe that ahistorical rubbish.
Germy Shoemangler
Jail Starves Mentally Ill Man To Death, Sheriff Is “Sorry”
PurpleGirl
@Kay:
What they haven’t done is open up other markets to exports.
Realistically, it is very hard to increase exports because there is so little that is manufactured in the US these days that isn’t a big ticket item that can sold elsewhere — car, power plant machinery, etc. If you read all those little addresses of the companies who make the things you buy what you have is a company name, an address in the US and then the statement ‘Made in China.”
AnonPhenom
@SFAW:
If Chris’ analogy dosen’t hold up, it’s because today’s Fascists aren’t dumb enough to use those arguments (they just outright deny stuff happened).
Chris is not comparing the two wars, per se.
Chris is applying the comparable lies and historical revisionism of our Modern Southern Defenders of Treason in Defense of Slavery to a more recent and more familiar event to highlight their absurdity.
Though personally, I think John Calhoun was an inspiration and hero to Hitler.
;-)
Kay
@PurpleGirl:
Sorry, but that’s a bit of a myth:
You can’t really run a country moving money around and selling insurance and debt products.
What the President says about 21st manufacturing is true. There are fewer employees and they’re higher skilled. That doesn’t mean US manufacturing is unimportant. My middle son works at a facility that is brand new. They have 30 employees. Huge output, 30 employees. They don’t “make” anything- they maintain the machines that make things. Every one of them makes 25 dollars an hour or better and every one of them has as much overtime as they want.
The South Korea trade deal was sold explicitly as beneficial to US manufacturing by the same people who are selling this one.
http://manufacturing.gov/mfg_in_context.html
Brachiator
@Baud:
The paper is longer than I have time to give it as well.
But one thing that’s interesting is from the 2012 exit polls. In short, whites in the South overwhelmingly voted against Obama. This was not the case elsewhere. The idea that Obama did not do well with working class whites does not tell the entire story.
Kay
@PurpleGirl:
It’s not personal to me. Two of my three grown children work in other fields and my middle son will be an electrician. He has the lowest level cert and he gets job offers in Pennsylvania. He is up to join a IBEW program so he will probably be a union electrician, if he follows thru.
Like I said, I don’t think we can run a country on finance, lending, insurance and providing each other health care. Germany figured it out. Why can’t the Best and the Brightest in DC figure it out?
PurpleGirl
@Kay: Okay, I have to take your facts, but I look at what I buy and all I read is “Made in China.” Even yarn that may be skeined here is actually spun in Turkey or elsewhere. (I like Lion Brand yarn, but they do not manufacture the yarn, they buy the yarn from someone else and skein it and put their name on it. Some of their nicest yarns come from Turkey. DuPont sold some of their operations to the Koch Brothers and they stopped making certain chemical products (acrylic yarn). And DuPont acrylic was a nice soft yarn that was very usable in crochet work. I miss it a lot.)
I pass old factory buildings in my extended neighborhood — manufacturing that left a few decades ago and hasn’t been replaced no matter what the politicians tell us about the need to get manufacturing jobs for Queens. Maybe living in NYC skews my view, but that is what is.
Brachiator
@Kay:
This is a fair point. On the other hand, what is the alternative? I don’t see tariffs or protectionism saving or protecting jobs, now or at any time in the past. Not for the US or the UK when they were a world leader.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
And the Internets make it real hard for people to remain ignorant unless they desperately want to be.
One can read the editorials of all the leading Southern newspapers, where defense of slavery, not some abstract idea of state’s rights, is the clear motive behind secession.
There used to be a site dedicated to Harper’s Weekly, which had great reproductions of documents from the era, year by year of the Civil War. A great, and free, educational resource.
For a while it was also available as an inexpensive DVD. Might still be.
http://www.paperlessarchives.com/cw_harper_s_weekly.html
Paul in KY
@bemused: Exactly the same, IMO.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh36: Oh, bullshit. The rebels stated, quite clearly, in all their secession declarations, that it WAS about slavery.
This shit makes me stabby.
fuckwit
This Krugman post filled my heart with hope.
I’m very glad that more white progressives are, at last, tracing the origins of the the “KILL THE POOR” economic policies of this country that we’ve always fought against, back to its roots in racism.
Paul in KY
@Kay: Excellent recap, Kay. Not too happy with Pres on this.
LAC
@lamh36: I am with you on that. I am done with what I call the ” magical negro” exercise with grown ass people who know better.
Paul in KY
@Kay: When the Pres. says it’s a good thing, it seems to me that he is embracing trickle down economics.
Paul in KY
@Punchy: I sure hope so. However, that would mean that he has lost all hope of ever being invited to one of Kraft’s weenie roasts.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: Multiple people involved need to do a stint in jail. A few should get 20 years or more. That is fucking disgusting. Could happen to your kid.
SFAW
@AnonPhenom:
No, it’s because his analogy doesn’t hold up, nothing to do with historical revisionism. And “today’s Fascists” are viewed, for the most part – far more than for the “states’ rights” morons – as completely full of shit. Kind of on a par with AGW deniers
Chris said:
As I said, it’s an interesting analogy, but wrong.