Just for the fun of it, here is a short list of the dangerous blinking red don’t-go-there topics that have given the Republican party seizures in recent years.
* Inequality of income and of opportunity. People are pissed about this. You can tell in a lot of ways but my favorite is how you started seeing climate deniers try to paint scientists as elitists promoting this stuff to gobble up all that lucrative grant money. (I worked on NOAA grants. You eat a lot of ramen.)
* Immigration. They will need hispanic votes to survive but the worst and nastiest anti-hispanic bigots happen to be voters they need right now. It’s a rock and a hard place.
* Rape.
A bunch of Democratic staffers three pitchers into a happy hour would have a hard time coming up with how one could combine those three into some sort of party-destroying perfect storm Voltron sharknado monster. And yet.
[D]etails of a book published in 1993, however graphic, aren’t the only thing that made the story explosive. When Mak reached Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, for comment he first asserted that “by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”When [Tim] Mak[, author of the book Lost Tycoon, The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump] reminded Cohen that that isn’t true — New York’s “marital rape exemption” law was struck down in 1984 — Cohen “changed tactics,” threatening to sue The Daily Beast for $500 million if a story with Trump’s name and the word “rape” was published.
The guy is leading New Hampshire by twelve. He has a guaranteed spot in the next debate. Nobody in that room has the same native skill at commanding attention in front of TV cameras. Jeb(!) can barely keep a crowd awake when he’s the only one on stage. Pretty much the best case scenario for the GOP will be if Chris Christie makes the cut and they get in a fistfight.
Oh yeah, open thread. Because even when he’s leading in the polls and borking the entire GOP there remains something a little embarrassing about writing a whole post about Donald Trump.
schrodinger's cat
Is Trump the flavor of the week as we are assuming or is there a slim chance that he could win the nomination?
cmorenc
Well, there was once a man who ran for President after co-starring in a movie with a chimpanzee, who spouted ridiculous nonsense and barely coded racist messages in his campaign. NO CHANCE that idiot could become President.
Gimlet
The Republican long knives are out for Trump with this rape story.
LWA
And Barack Obama shows how to troll the entire right wing:
“If I Ran, I Could Win A Third Term”
Heh, indeedy.
President-For-Life Barack Hussein Obama!
LWA
@cmorenc: This.
I remember distinctly the number of stories that had the impossibility of a President Reagan as their base assumptions.
Gimlet
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politics/obama-approval-iran-economy/
Washington (CNN)A majority of Americans want Congress to reject the recently-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran. Overall, 52% say Congress should reject the deal, 44% say it should be approved.
A CNN/ORC poll in late June, conducted as the deal was being worked out, found that nearly two-thirds of adults thought it was unlikely the negotiations would result in an agreement that would prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The new poll finds a sharp partisan gap on whether Congress should approve the deal, with 66% of Republicans and 55% of independents saying Congress ought to reject it and 61% of Democrats saying it should be approved.
Botsplainer
On the funny side, Ted Cruz is demanding a debate with Obama over the Iran deal, or, failing that, a debate with John Kerry.
He’s like the Black Knight: “It’s only a flesh wound”.
Turtle hasn’t yet begun his crusade for vengeance, either – and he’s got a long damn memory.
shell
With all the endless spoutings from the Donald, Im surprised he hasn’t made the conservative’s favorite “Government needs to be run like a business!”
Hillary Rettig
i don’t know how many Juicers are in Minnesota, but it would be nice if this jerk got boycotted out of business:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/11767119/Cecil-the-lions-killer-revealed-as-American-dentist.html?fb_ref=Default
The jerk being “Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota,” who apparently loves to slaughter endangered and protected species (see article).
TG Chicago
Hahaha!!! I love this headline at Breitbart:
LGBT RAINBOW HATE-FLAG REPLACES AMERICAN FLAG OVER RENO CITY HALL
It’s hard enough for me to understand why anybody would want to fight gay equality. But calling the the LGBT symbol a RAINBOW HATE-FLAG is just delightfully ridiculous.
Tim F.
@Gimlet: if so then it would have to be one of the other candidates. Party hq knows well that rape is a much bigger danger to the party as a whole than it is with a specific primary candidate. GOP primary voters have a weird relationship with consent.
Gin & Tonic
@Gimlet: 52% say Congress should reject the deal
I’d bet a beer that somewhere around the same percentage of Americans wouldn’t be able to find Iran on a map.
Botsplainer
@Hillary Rettig:
Check the discussion on him on the thread immediately downstairs.
White Trash Liberal
This is how they submarined Cain when he was starting to fly high.
I guarantee it won’t lead to a GOP candid discussion about marital rape.
And unlike Cain, Trump will likely surf this wave by embracing personal privacy, his YOOOGE and classy divorce settlement, and pick axing the Bush campaign in the face.
shell
@Hillary Rettig: Check out his Yelp page
Kylroy
@LWA: The difference being Reagan had twice won the governorship of California. In 1979 you could certainly think he was a joker, but had to admit he was a joker who knew how to win elections.
TG Chicago
@Hillary Rettig: Oh man. As if that story wasn’t bad enough, those last two paragraphs…. :-(
MattF
It boggles the mind– Trump, Bush, Walker, Huckabee, Cruz, Perry, at least + perhaps Jindal and Christie all on stage. Carson will be the sane one!
gogol's wife
@cmorenc:
Are you about 12 years old?
kc
I expect the GOP and its apologists will see this Trump thing as a perfect opportunity to revisit all the allegations against Bill Clinton.
gogol's wife
@Kylroy:
I was no fan of Ronald Reagan, but he can’t be compared to Trump.
Gimlet
@Kylroy:
There was strong residual sentiment for Reagan when he lost the 1976 nomination to Ford.
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
Why do people always leave out the part about him being a two-term governor of California? People are allowed to change careers in this country. If you had told me 25 years ago that the guy who played Stuart Smalley would be a US Senator- and not just a vanity candidate but one who was widely praised for his detailed grasp of the issues- I wouldn’t have believed you either.
kc
@Hillary Rettig:
Scum. Of. The. Earth.
Frankensteinbeck
Normally, I would consider this devastating to a candidate’s chances. Trump will most likely deal with it by remaining aggressive, angry, and abusive. If he does, I want to see how well that works. It’s like an experiment, testing my understanding of how the Republican Party operates.
LWA
@Kylroy:
Oh I know- I also know that the tone and spirit of the American people and American media is different now somehow- darker and meaner and stupider than I remember from the late 70’s.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s already established that Trump is an asshole. His constituency is pro-asshole.
White Trash Liberal
@Frankensteinbeck:
Not to mention the members of the GOP base that believe in the “love honor and obey” aspect of traditional marriage which is implicit about the hhusbandly right of sex.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Gin & Tonic:
Do any of these goobers state why they think the deal should be rejected? I mean, the details are on Wikipedia, and they don’t seem outlandish to me.
Then again, most people don’t realize that the non-proliferation treaty explicitly gives signatories the right to pursue nuclear research for non-weapons purposes (power, nuclear medicine, etc.).
JPL
The primaries are a ways off, but if Trump were to win Iowa and NH, he would be the leading candidate going into the southern states. There are so many in the race, that his twenty-seven percent could win.
Time will tell though.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m listening to Mrs. Greenspan in the car, and holee sheeyit but does she ever have it in for John Kerry!
TG Chicago
Another ridiculous story:
Cincinnati man shoots at 1-year-old boy, is shot by man with concealed carry permit
Of course gun nuts are saying “Thank god that man had his concealed gun!” But if you read the story, you see that the first shooter fired because he was being “approached”. If the first shooter was white and he had killed the guy, gun nuts would be applauding him for standing his ground.
Instead, they’re applauding the second shooter because he “won” the shootout. Yeesh.
Tommy
@MattF: That is what I am worried about. I think more than a part of the public might be pro-asshole. Worries me a lot because I don’t know how you deal with that.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
That’s hardly unique to America. Quite a few stars of Bollywood have gone on to political careers in India. Oscar-winning British actress Glenda Jackson was a Labour party MP from 1992 until this year’s general election. She was also a junior minister in Tony Blair’s Cabinet from 1997 to 1999.
Sherparick
My nomination for “Worst Person in the World:” Dr. Walter Palmer, Bloomington, Minnesota (See: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/28/killer-of-cecil-the-lion-was-american-zimbabwe-officials-claim)
Mike J
There are plenty of Republicans who think marital rape isn’t “real rape.” I don’t see how this hurts Trump, a man who takes what he wants, in a Republican primary.
Gimlet
The U.S. homeownership rate was 63.4 percent in the second quarter, down from 63.7 percent in the previous three months, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was lowest reading since 1967.
MattF
@Tommy: I’m just saying that the ‘rules’ for candidates, as promoted by the media commentariat, are nonsense.
That said, I’d question Trump’s staying power. Assholery gets tiresome. I suspect that a substantial fraction of the electorate would put Trump into the category “People I enjoy staying away from.”
Bobby B.
I’d mention the drug war but that seems to be a bipartisan siezure-inducer.
Hungry Joe
Open thread, right?
A recent bout with bronchitis drove me to daytime TV, which in turn opened my eyes to a lot of what is wrong with a good part of the electorate. Two kinds of shows seemed to dominate:
1) “Cops” and its ilk, in which tough, uniformed hombres and hombrettes go after “the bad guys” (their universal term), usually running them down after a car chase or smashing in apartment doors and pouring in, weapons a-bristling. They bellow, “Get on the ground NOW!” and “LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!” Much wrestling, followed by handcuffs (click-CLACK!) and high-fives. These shows have been around for 20+ years, and it’s easy to imagine certain types of kids watching and thinking, “Yeah, I wanna do that.”
2) Shows re-creating horrific crimes, and how they were solved. Killers and rapists break into houses, terrifying their occupants. Sure, detectives solve the cases, but what stays with you is how helpless we all are against the savage forces around us.
Watching (or at least, flipping through) what seemed like countless variations on those two themes, I came to understand why so many people seem so frightened and angry: It’s a jungle out there … or at least, up there on the flat-screen. Which is, after all, the same thing.
Gimlet
@Mike J:
The mindset is the husband is King of the family unit. Such things as rape of the wife are viewed as part of the despised PC norms.
Alex
@Frankensteinbeck: Eh, this story won’t hurt Trump very much. Mostly because it’s fueled by Trump’s lawyer and he’s apologized. If it gets any worse, Trump can just fire the guy.
There’s not enough to the actual story to get traction — Ivana Trump changed her story after the accusation and there’s no physical evidence to prove or disprove what happened. Even the primary source (the book) has to include a disclaimer saying that the story has been disputed by the primary accuser. Without the lawyer’s tirade, this would have been a bit of backstory to an archive search of Trump and rape.
—
The main fallout is that it sucks up the media oxygen for another day. Huckabee needed his Godwin quotes to be the story, but that’s been trampled over. There’s only one week until the first debate cutoff, and the marginal candidates have to be panicking now.
It also shows the type of people Trump wants to surround himself with. Trump’s lawyer is a lot like Trump — a lot of bluster and anger without any understanding of facts or how to interact politely.
Tommy
@TG Chicago: My thinking on guns has changed almost 100%. I used to say guns are the problem of the owners. I still think that but alas we’re letting too many people be killed. I don’t need a gun to feel safe. If you do well I don’t know what to say. We have to stop this gun culture.
Sherparick
@kc: Yep. Already happening. Of course, it was going to be brought up ad nauseam any way.
Brachiator
When it comes to scandal, the Brits still know how to do it up right. Could even Trump ever, well, trump this?
And yes, Lord Sewel was in charge of family values.
Party like a rock star! Or Charlie Sheen on a quiet night.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3174689/Lord-Snorty-Blair-crony-responsible-behaviour-peers-filmed-taking-cocaine-200-night-prostitute-s-breasts-romp-two-escorts-discounted-flat.html
Chris
@LWA:
“Ronald Reagan? The ACTOR? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady. And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury! I’ve had enough practical jokes for one evening. Good night, future boy!”
brendancalling
@Gimlet: won’t work.
Chris
@White Trash Liberal:
Well, yes, but…
IIRC, Cain’s problem wasn’t that he was accused of abuse. It’s that he was accused of sleeping with a white woman.
Not a problem for Donald Trump.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Why? Because America shouldn’t talk to its enemies – it should defeat them. That’s why. /Teabagger.
Remember Boehner saying “I’m not going to compromise” in dealing with Obama and the Democrats? He knew what he was doing. But he thought he could weasel around and control the monster he was feeding. Now the Teabaggers run the show, and they think they live in a world where bluster and screaming is the same as making sensible policy that advances America’s interests at home and abroad. That nobody else’s opinion or interest matters but their own.
The opposition (like Graham) doesn’t even feel the need to read the agreement before they criticize it. That tells you all you need to know.
Cheers,
Scott.
(But you knew all that. ;-)
Belafon
@Gimlet: Which is odd, considering this poll (pdf): http://aufc.3cdn.net/e6dca770dc6d71f7d2_tgm6bxklu.pdf.
h/t http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/27/1406112/-New-poll-finds-strong-support-for-Iran-nuclear-deal
Alex
@schrodinger’s cat: Both — Trump could conceivably win. But he’s still a flavor of the week.
The big questions facing Trump–
* Will elite media support eventually turn on him. It won’t take much for Fox News or conservative talk radio to start attacking Trump. He does not need elite Republican Party support, but the media can finish him off.
* Does he actually have a campaign operation. That takes time and resources to build. His website still lacks a campaign store — you can’t buy a Trump 2016 bumper sticker and have the money go to the campaign.
* Will he stick in the race if he suffers an electoral setback. There is actual voting to be done at some point.
MattF
@Brachiator: According to the NYT:
Which is rather amusing. However, he’s now resigned from the House of Lords.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: AFAIK, no one has ascended the heights, that President Reagan did. Its more of thing, in southern India, especially the state husband kitteh’s family is from, Tamil Nadu.
LWA
@Hungry Joe:
Yep, and this mind-killing fear is exactly what the NRA and gun nuts thrive on- they love to portray the world in Walking Dead terms, justifying their fetish.
When I tell them that it is unreasonable to carry a loaded deadly weapon just to get a vente latte, they get actually angry, like I have insulted their most cherished religious creed. Which of course, is about right.
@Gimlet:
And combining the Walking Dead fantasy with the Corey Robin thesis that conservatism is about preserving the private sphere of male hierarchy, you get these guys seeing themselves as Lord of the Manor, dictator of their private little fiefdoms.
cmorenc
@gogol’s wife:
I sometimes wish I was so I could have a few do-overs. But alas, I have an additional five decades and small change on my life odometer.
schrodinger's cat
Since this is an open thread, does Britain owe India reparations for its colonial rule? Shashi Tharoor makes the case. Some of his points include Indian contributions to Britain’s wars, the tremendous transfer of wealth, the death toll in the millions (60 million plus dead in the various British made famines) due to starvation and disease. I think he was being too soft, what do you think?
ETA1: Forget reparations, Britain hasn’t copped to as much as a sorry.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Oh, you too?
For me, what I’m really anticipating is what happens when the rest of the Republicans open up on him with both barrels, with “hey, how can you explain this quote from your past that makes it sound like you’re kind of a damn LIBRUL?” I’m curious to see how much of the GOP base jumps ship over that… and how many of them are so committed to him as Leader of the Angry White Men that they stick by him anyway.
Aimai
@Gimlet: how would that even work? As a party they are formally, literally, and historically on the side of the husband rapist.
Hal
@Gimlet: They should have asked a follow up question; what parts of the deal do you approve/disapprove the most? I’m sure there would have been more than a few disconnected lines.
Jeffro
@Brachiator: 69 and still rocking! I think putting the wife’s pic down was the sign of a class act.
Mandalay
@Chris:
As though being a lawyer, or a businessman or an investor are somehow superior professions which automatically make one more qualified for high office?
Al Franken was an actor. I would vote for him to be our president in a heartbeat over anyone who is running. Actually I can’t think of anyone who would make a better president than him, apart from the community organizer who is doing the job right now.
cmorenc
@Roger Moore:
Of course. But the key to telling a good yarn (as opposed to good journalism) is choosing just the right amount of factual details, the Hell with cluttering it up with excessive details in pursuit of total accuracy. Roger Aisles uses this insight all the time over on Fox News.
Calouste
@schrodinger’s cat: In the last cycle, there was a series of poll leaders (Cain, Bachmann, you name them), who lasted about 3 weeks each before flaming out. Then the primary electorate moved on to the next shiny object, and Romney was in second place all the time. Trump seems to have more staying power than 3 weeks, although it is earlier in the cycle. Trump is of course a lot more well known, as a person if not immediately as a candidate, than the last cycle’s mayflies. GOP primary voters know he is a loudmouthed asshole, and they like that.
Roy G.
@Kylroy: Reagan was a tool, quite literally, of Lew Wasserman and Jules Stein of MCA. Watch the Wasserman biopic ‘The Last Mogul’ to learn more.
The Last Mogul: The Life and Times of Lew Wasserman
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388201/
The Corruption of Ronald Reagan
http://www.moldea.com/ReaganRedux.html
Fair Economist
@Gimlet:
Neat trick. Polling conducted before the deal was even announced is spun as polls about the actual deal. At least some people are going to be aware how incredibly favorable the deal is for the United States.
SarahT
@LWA: Even if all an Obama 3rd term accomplished would be a megaton of wingnut coronaries, it would be a mitzvah
RaflW
@LWA: Re: an Obama 3rd term — not gonna happen, but I love the trolling.
And since Republicans have a memory hole about as wide as a continent, this:
Kay
You’d think we could all agree that is wrong to steal wages and people who do that should be prosecuted, yet the US Department of Labor has to do a full “explainer” on this really simple concept.
That’s how effective conservative propaganda has been over 2 decades. Republican administrations can just deem “enforcing wage and hour laws” optional. If there weren’t a Democrat who is periodically in power and willing to do their job and regulate, people would simply ignore all these laws because they would eventually figure out no one is enforcing them.
Fair Economist
@Calouste:
Not much. Bachmann was already surging in the polls by July, although she peaked in August. What’s interesting, googling up the media discussion, is that a large part of her collapse was another shiny object (Perry) coming along as she was making her gaffes. Not going to happen with Trump.
Bobby Thomson
@Gimlet: I guess it’s a good thing it doesn’t require Congressional approval, then.
kindness
Trump could reach into his pants and fling poo during any debate and the ‘base’ would love him even more. Does that make the Donald an 800 lb gorilla or just another ego-tripping maniac with control issues?
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Of course they do. And to Sri Lanka, to Pakistan, to Malaysia, to Ireland, to Kenya, to much of Africa, to the Aboriginal Australians, to certain parts of the Middle East …
MattF
@kindness: I’m not seeing the difference. Metaphorically, that is– since, in fact, gorillas are rather peaceable creatures.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
Note though, that the franchisees are virtually forced into exploiting their workers by the franchise contracts. Their purchasing and prices are generally set by corporate and they face chronic losses if they can’t somehow exploit their workers, because that’s the only cost they control. It’s all part of the modern corporate model of outsourcing the criminal behavior. Big distribution entities like Walmart do a similar number on their suppliers.
Peale
@Gimlet: Pretty much. it took a long time to get get the idea that there could be an abusive husband to sink in as well…remembering how much the religious right were opposed to any public funding for battered women’s shelters and rape crisis hotlines back in the 80s…because feminists were associated with those and shelters were just breaking up families by allowing mostly uppity wives to desert their husbands.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: How long were the British in Malaysia? BTW whenever I see the smug face of Niall Ferguson extolling the virtues of the Empire, I want throw something at the TV.
Belafon
@Fair Economist:
And in a bad sign for the President, much of that growing negativity about the economy comes from those in his own party, particularly younger Americans. Among Democrats, 58% call the economy “good,” but that’s down 18 points since April, when 76% said it was very or somewhat good.
I wonder how much of that change is due to Sanders talking about the economy on the campaign trail.
Karen in GA
@LWA:
I think this is what I think someone like that hears:
“You can’t get coffee without a gun?”
“It’s dangerous out there.”
“Bwaha ha ha ha! You coward!”
So here’s his magic bang stick, showing what a tough guy he is, and you’re pointing out that just by virtue of the fact that he needs it, he’s not that tough at all — in fact, it shows him as the coward he really is. Which makes him want to look tough, which makes him need the magic bang stick, which you just showed actually makes him a coward, which makes him want to look tough, which makes him need the bang stick, etc. He always ends up where he didn’t want to be, with his worst insecurities reinforced and displayed. Hence the anger.
Shorter version: cowards hate when people point out that they’re cowards.
That is my theory, which is mine. And probably not terribly insightful. But hey, slow day at work.
Mike J
@Kay: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to a Republican who who had seen workers demanding rights, and their responses are always, “they should be thankful to have a job.” I’ve never once heard a Republican say a business should be thankful for having workers.
Chris
@Hungry Joe:
It’s not even that. It’s the fact that these shows have created an image of the kind of world that cops operate in, which shapes the perceptions even of people who aren’t especially right wing otherwise. Assumptions that these shows are based on include 1) the life of a cop is only slightly less dangerous than that of an infantryman on the front lines of Verdun; every day brings a new batch of people trying to kill him. 2) The system is absolutely stacked in favor of the defendant; major criminals get off on minor technicalities all the time. 3) Internal Affairs, lawyers, elected politicians and all others who constitute a restriction on the Divine Right Of Cops are sleazy, untrustworthy, politically motivated scum who will always try to hinder the cops in their righteous mission to bring dangerous criminals to justice. 4) Because of 2) and 3), sometimes cops have no choice but to go off the reservation and take the laws into their own hands – and that’s okay. 5) Torture works.
I think the time I noticed this the most was during my Leverage-binge about a year ago, when a few of those tropes managed to resurface in the “Leverage does 24” episode in Season 5, and a couple seasons earlier when Elliot had to torture a guy (off screen) to get information. It hit me at the time because Leverage is neither a cop show, nor much of a right wing show – these tropes have just become so commonly accepted that they’re picked up by osmosis even in fiction that’s not especially conservative.
(On the other hand, the original pilot episode of NCIS, of all things, took the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario and flipped it very neatly around against the pro torture argument. Which was awesome. I’m not wild about NCIS, but I was quite pleased by that one).
mdblanche
@schrodinger’s cat:
Everybody’s default assumption is that this is 2012 redux. That’s not a bad starting point, but… ¡Jeb!’s polling noticeably worse than the unloved Mittbot was at this point. In fact Mitt was leading and the revolving frontrunner thing didn’t get started until Rick Perry’s late entry. This is a real difference but only one of degree. Second, there were enough anti-Mitts running last time to always keep that vote fractured and none of them could pull away even when they took the lead. If Trump is smothering the rest of the klowns, does that really benefit ¡Jeb!? Is he more likely to be a Huckabee or a Cruz supporter’s second choice, or is Trump? His chances are slim, but if he has staying power, still a big if, this could be a difference in kind from 2012.
@MattF:
The broader electorate, yes, but we’re talking about Republican primary voters here.
Steve in the ATL
@Mandalay:
You know, there is a reason why so many lawmakers are lawyers….
Fair Economist
@schrodinger’s cat:
In a moral sense, absolutely. Exploitation of India provided a large portion of England’s wealth for about 150 years. The estimates I’ve seen are 1/6 to 1/3 of English growth from the late 1700’s to WWI. Whether current reparations can in any way help is less clear. There’s not much exploitation going on now. It’s very different from the American slavery situation where exploitation and brutalization of blacks continues, just at a lower level.
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore:
Because it’s irrelevant. Rick Perry was a two term governor of Texas and is still a moron, loon, and a racist whack job. Same for Ronnie. I was there.
bystander
Just heard that idiot Chris Cilliza say that some of the people who are loving Trump don’t necessarily like what he says but they like his refreshing honesty. Of course, they all love what he says, they love the racism, they love the bragging, and there’s not a single honest cell in all of Trump’s being.
Thanks, Chris! Keep up the good work.
Mandalay
@Steve in the ATL:
But the reason isn’t that they are more qualified…
Steve in the ATL
@Kay: As a management side employment lawyer, I find the DOL to be quite effective in resolving wage issues. When we get hit with a complaint, I tell the boss to get out his checkbook because there’s no real way to defend against these suits. Plaintiffs counsel often comes to the mediations in private jets. Adding attorneys fees to the statute really juices its effectiveness. In my experience, the wage and hour folks are much more effective advocates than the EEOC.
Mike J
@Mandalay: Knowing how to read a law and knowing how a court will interpret a law are valuable skills for those people who are writing laws.
schrodinger's cat
@Fair Economist: Look at Bangladesh and tell me that the effects of the Raj (first the Company Raj and then the Queen) are not being felt even now. Global warming/climate change is not going to be particularly kind to them either
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
From about 200 years ago; the East India Co. leased Singapore from the Sultan of Johor in 1819.
Steve in the ATL
@Mandalay: I disagree. In general, lawyers are much better at writing laws than non-lawyers.
bemused
@bystander:
Some people feel that way about Ted Nugent too.
Mandalay
@Gimlet:
Trump comes out of the story looking like the victim, while the Daily Beast and Trump’s lawyer compete for the the honor of being the biggest turd in the bowl.
This is what his ex-wife, Ivana, said:
This story doesn’t hurt Trump it all.
lol
@Fair Economist:
Trump can double and triple down on the dumbass, the base will love it and there is literally nothing the Republican party can do to stop him.
Unlike the other occupants of the clown car…
Kay
@Mike J:
It’s weird because we have two “workers” and I’m not necessarily “thankful” for them but I completely get that they have to get paid. This was never a big area of philosophical conflict for me. I’m not sure when work = wages became a matter of opinion. I guess I could make more if I started stealing from them but I could also knock them down in the parking lot and grab their purse. Neither of those is a management technique or theory.
I have these insane discussions with young low wage workers ” I’m quite confident stealing wages from you is illegal”. That’s my professional opinion :)
I think we need PSA’s on it – ‘you are not a volunteer”- basic definitions and concepts, re-education.
Peale
@schrodinger’s cat: I kind of get that…I mean India had about 1/4 of the global GDP…and then ended up with less than 2% when all was said and done. But is the Indian experience of colonialism under the British different than elsewhere? Would China get reparations from the British for the opium trade, or would basically all the great powers including the US and Japan be responsible for the carnage?
Speaking of colonialist apologies – I went to see the King and I a few weeks back as it won a musical revival tony and it is just unwatchable at this point in history. Colonialism is reduced to the issue of ending slavery (Yay! Harriet Beecher Stowe) and introducing the Thais to the concept of romance and love. Bleahhhh. I guess it kind of evens the rest out…what the West was really good at was spreading love around the world…you can’t understand colonialism without love.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Its the reserve army of the unemployed that keeps the one with the jobs in line. That’s why the 1% don’t want a full employment economy. Workers put with crap, because they are thankful to just have a job.
Mandalay
@Steve in the ATL:
Do you really believe that the people who get voted into Congress write every word of every law that gets passed?
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Right now, I think that Trump will flame out, or get bored and drop out of the race. But there is no accounting for his huge ego. Right now, he keeps climbing in the polls, but this is not the same thing as going through the rough slog of a political campaign and winning primaries.
He has had fun spanking the other presidential pretenders, and touched a nerve with his slimy immigration speeches, but aside from some boastful speechifying, has not really said anything substantial about domestic or foreign policy. I have no idea whether he has any political advisors or his position on a number of important issues.
Right now, Trump is a fantasy candidate. He’s all new and shiny and tough talking, but is little more than a blowed up snake oil salesman, promising anything to everybody. He’s more straight talk than McCain ever was, more rogue than Palin, more promising plutocrat than Romney, which pleases a segment of the public who like noisy shows, but he hasn’t shown that he is more than hot air.
srv
You people clearly have had a rose-colored gliberal view of what has historically made for a great American leader.
Trump would have fit right in with your heroes in the late 18th and early 19th Century.
boatboy_srq
@Mandalay: I think you missed something back there….
schrodinger's cat
@Peale: They could start with a sorry and then return the stuff that was stolen from India and now sits in the British museums.
ETA: What I find most egregious is the famines that resulted from extremely bad economic decisions. One of the famines in the Victorian era killed more than 10 million people, while the British Viceroy was importing wheat and other grains to England.
Tommy
@Steve in the ATL: Yes. I worked in advertising for 15+ years. Sure I did some shit you hate. But I admit it. There was a time where I might work for a firm that would work for Trump or Bill if they paid us enough money. We often sold our souls, but even now not sure either has enough money to buy us out!
Mike in NC
@Fair Economist: Nobody should trust a CNN poll further than they can throw it.
RaflW
@Gimlet:
I don’t know about where you live, but there has been a massive apartment boom in the Twin Cities. I think there are also plenty of rational people who look at what happened over the past decade and say, “nope, not going back into the ownership racket.”
I know the American story is that home ownership is touted as our dream and our main source of equity, but it doesn’t always work out so well. Heck, a shocking chunk of black household wealth in the US was stolen by deeply unscrupulous lenders in the last housing ‘boom’ (aka bubble), so I don’t see declining home ownership as an automatic bad thing.
Homelessness is another problem, as are rent to income ratios that are unsustainable – those issues need to be taken on head-on. But ownership percentages declining? Meh.
Mandalay
@boatboy_srq: Probably so, and after your post I’m still none the wiser. :(
Tommy
Watching Last Night. Wow Larry is all in slamming Cosby.You go boy!
Calouste
@mdblanche: I think there are a couple of important differences with 2012:
1) Jeb has to share the business-wing vote (or whatever you want to call it) with Walker. Romney had that to himself.
2) Trump the person is a lot better known than the flame-out candidates in 2012. He doesn’t have as much of the new shiny to him that wears off and causes candidates to flame out when they get better known.
3) Trump is far, far better at keeping the attention on himself, preventing new shinies from even getting any attention.
Amir Khalid
@Peale:
If I’m not mistaken, Thailand was never actually colonised by any Western power, unlike its neighbours to the south (Malaysia) and west and east. It’s something they’re very proud of.
Anna Leonowens was in real life a low-ranking foreign employee at the Royal Palace, and she would have had little if any contact with His Majesty. Certainly not as much as her story suggests
Belafon
@lol: But is he Pinocchio or Ultron?
MattF
@Brachiator: But Donald has a seeecrit plan to beat ISIS. He says.
ETA: Learned that from Nixon, I guess.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
I presume you’re referring to Larry Willmore. Did you just call a black man “boy”?
different-church-lady
Skip the trifecta, let’s go for a thematic grand-slam here.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: It’s a bad day when your best excuse is “foot deeply in back of mouth”.
Botsplainer
@RaflW:
Thank you. If I had life to live over again, I would never buy real estate, and would retain the flexibility and lack of maintenance responsibility by only doing rentals. I’d move to where I needed, as I needed, acquiring less “stuff” along the way.
Calouste
@Brachiator: Since when do Republican candidates need to say anything substantial about policy? I certainly can’t remember Romney saying anything that was separated by more than 2 degrees from the usual talking points list. The GOP has been talking about replacing Obamacare for 5 years and they still haven’t come up with anything more substantial than a 6 page document with 2 graphs on every page.
And Trump won’t get bored unless he is no longer getting attention. And he is very good at directing attention to himself.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: That is a perfect example of what he is talking about on his show. You say “you go boy” wasn’t said in a racist way on my part. But you go there. Long ago I have have not figured out the words I can use. Can I say gay? Black? Homosexual? I guess I wish there was a log where I knew what words were OK.
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: @schrodinger’s cat: Two or three weeks ago I would have agreed. But you can see that Trump has steamrolled over everything that would have been an obstacle to anyone else and his numbers are skyrocketing. I expect that Trump will make it at least to Super Tuesday, and that there’s a significant groundswell among the Teahad that is prepared to demand he go that far even if he gets tired of the campaign. This may be the campaign that sees the GOP/Teahad split: the inmates can’t be allowed to run the asylum, yet their votes are what puts the wardens back in place. Trump, in that situation, is highly useful to drive that wedge deeper into the Grand Old Party.
Mandalay
@Tommy: Chill – there was nothing wrong with what you wrote.
muddy
@Tommy: This one is easy. Do not refer to a black man as boy at any time, with any intent.
You may call a black male child “A boy”, but even though they are boys, probably should not address them in this manner.
boatboy_srq
@Mandalay: It was a line from the movie, where the guy who traveled forward first Saint Ronnie speaking on television – and at first wanted to know what movie the scene was from.
Dr. Dave
@RaflW:
Also, too, is there any chance that some of that decrease in homeownership is our aging population selling the family home and moving into rental housing? Or an influx of urbanite hipsters to places like Brooklyn where rental is more economically feasible than ownership? Too many competing demographic trends there for me to disentangle. Let’s stick to the gap between rich and poor, the accumulation of wealth, and the stagnation of real wages as our measures of what’s wrong with the economy and think about how to fix those. (Hint: raising the minimum wage, the top marginal income tax rate, and the capital gains tax rate would be a good start.)
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
An almost interesting question. Do the Mughals owe India for its centuries of conquest and repression? Do maharajah’s owe the people of India for oppression, rapine, transfer of wealth?
You left out the exploitation and neglect of West Pakistan in the modern era.
Colonialism was terrible, but from a larger perspective, the sadness of history is that almost everybody owes somebody something.
Tommy
@Mandalay: I get mad when I am accused of what I think is racism. That is literally the last thing I thought of when I posted that comment.
Mike in NC
@Mandalay: “I Hate Mexicans” has been #1 on the Wingnut Hit Parade going back at least 10 years, and Trump knows what tune his audience wants to hear.
mdblanche
@Calouste: All good points.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
For what it’s worth, I think you were being careless rather than racist.
Brachiator
@Calouste:
Romney had a record as governor even if he ran from it or denied it.
Trump just has bluster. I don’t know how long he can go on, even with his ego, on the sheer power of bluster.
@boatboy_srq
Preference polls are interesting, but they are still only noise. Trump will become a serious candidate to the extent that he wins primaries. But I still don’t know whether he has staff and advisors or anything more than his own blather. Does he have any kind of political organization?
Trump is just odd. He did appear to have a fairly strong and loyal team as part of his business dealings. But he is, to me, still a political cipher. And so I don’t have any strong opinions on how far he might go. But I see some of the milestones he must successfully get to in order to really be able to challenge the others in the GOP presidential klown kar.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: Trump is also insulated from most of the fact-finding that trashed the ’12 primary field. His dirty laundry has been aired regularly for the last three decades, and even the latest “revelation” is from a twenty year old book. There’s probably little left to learn, and what’s known is apparently appealing (or at least insufficiently unappealing) to a good portion of the GOP. Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman, Perry and the rest suffered badly when their reputations gained national scrutiny; Trump’s history has been front-page tabloid fodder for a very long time, so the surprise reveals that killed the others are extremely unlikely.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: I think you are very wrong. But I can see your POV.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: The Mughals became Indians, it became their home, they didn’t drain the Indian coffers and take it back to another country. The scale of death and then disease in British made famines in India is nothing short of genocidal. Nothing the Mughal Emperors or other indigenous rulers did, even comes close
The British continued heavy taxation of these starving peasants, offered them little help and basically left them to die while exporting the much needed grain back to England. These famines happened with frightening regularity in British India and killed millions of Indians. That makes them a policy preference not an act of nature.
From Wikipedia: A photo of some of the desperate famine stricken peasants in the 1876 famine
jl
A problem for the GOP presidential primary that is discussed less often than others, partly because, among the corporate media VSPs, it would broach topics considered dangerous, unfair and unbalanced: Trump does not differ from other GOP candidates much on substance, but much more so on style and presentation.
Trump says ‘idiot’, ‘dummy’ rather than emit some polysyllabic dog whistles that have been tested by political operatives.
Other than that, there is not much difference. Even in terms of spending, GOPers are fine with deficits and fiscal stimulus, it is just who they want to pay to dig up bottles and then bury them again, and actually the fact that they really do not care whether the money is spent for a useful purpose (actually care much less than Democrats), but they care much more about who gets the cash.
One thing I disagree with, Jeb! is not a complete soporific, since there is some drama in how badly and ornately he torture himself by flubbing a response to simple questions, getting simple facts straight or making a what should be a simple statement. Walker is more soporific, unless you have a real obsession with hot rolls and ham.
Peale
@Brachiator: I think the Mughal comparison is a problem – there aren’t any Mughals or countries claiming to be their successors (maybe Pakistan on one of its “we used to rule this whole place until those Hindus stole it from us days)…For all intents and purposes, the Mughals are fairly impoverished while the British most certainly are not. No one is asking Mongolia for reparations, and there are quite a few countries whose “golden ages” ended with them.
I think I have a tough time with the “Brittain needs to return the treasures of India” from its museums as part of the reparatins. France has a very impressive collection of India art on display at the Guimet Museum. Do we assume that all that was acquired honestly while the British obviously must have stolen their collection?
RaflW
@Dr. Dave: Yep. I actually wrote a comment on Brooks’ crap anti-minimum wage column the other day saying, basically, tax me more. I get quite a bit of income from cap gains and dividends, and I can see that I am under taxed.
Moral cowards like the Koch brothers would think I am insane, but I’m not. I just happen to be in community with real people and see the harm that unchecked inherited wealth does.
Also, too, the carried interest deduction is one of the greatest scams ever perpetrated on average taxpayers by a tiny cadre of very slimy and rich men (I suppose a few women are hedge fund wealth-leeches too, but I’m willing to wager there aren’t many).
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: We’re months away from the first primary – but normally the poll frontrunner does well in at least some of those. Nobody so far in the GOTea pack has cracked 20% before Trump. I’m willing to wait for confirmation; but at this point all I see is a candidate willing to say outright what the rest can’t say without hiding behind dogwhistle and bad innuendo, the primary voters apparently lapping it up, and the rest of the field looking like cowards and “Beltway insiders” for having to mealymouth the stuff Trump says outright. Trumpmentum is too high for him to quit in the near future, and unless he gets trounced early on he’s going to be going for a while; and that kind of trouncing would have signs by now (seamy backstory item that surfaces, horrid misstep that costs him points etc) and I can’t think of anything that could damage him that isn’t already public knowledge or causing him to gain (not drop) in approval ratings.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
Jeb’s ineptitude in such a basic aspect of politics is surprising. Was he like that as a two-term governor?
schrodinger's cat
@Peale: France can return the stolen treasures too, if they want. The British history in India is far bloodier than the French. The French were kicked out of India by the British by early to mid 19th century.
Brachiator
@RaflW:
WTF? I don’t get this one. Black folk lost wealth through crooked real estate deals, so it’s best not to try to have that wealth in the first place? Uh, no. Sorry,
Black people and Latinos, among others, were very hard hit in the lending mess. On the other hand, more prudent practices have allowed a significant number of people to sell their homes at substantial gain, and move back to the South, and still leave a substantial legacy to their children for the future.
Stagnating wages, declining home ownership, persistently high levels of unemployment. This is not the way to grow an economy.
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: It doesn’t matter what you think, we can’t read your mind. Calling a grown black man a boy in any context is offensive.
rikyrah
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
.
No, because that would mean getting away from Frank Luntz-approved language and being honest:
We want WAR again in the Middle East.
JR in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
They did the same thing in Ireland, it was called the potato famine because there was a crop failure, but there were other crops.
Those crops, however, were valuable on the market, and so were taken for export to England.
Leaving the Irish farmers to starve!
Just like the Indian farmers during the Raj / English colonialism.
rikyrah
@Kay:
keep on bringing the truth, Kay
boatboy_srq
@jl: The flipside of that is what’s telling. Trump isn’t afraid to skip the dogwhistle and go straight for the meaty insulting term; what we’re seeing on the other side is horror that a) someone would be honest about the xenophobia, racism, sexism, etc etc and b) having someone be that honest shows the rest up as at one just as bigoted – but embarrassed about it and trying to cover it up. They’re realizing that Trump is blowing the lid off Atwater’s way of getting around saying unacceptable things; and that contrary to Atwater’s original thinking, “niCLANG niCLANG” is still an effective way to reach a not-insignificant portion of the electorate. So the people using dogwhistle are being made to look just as bad to anyone who was mollified by the dogwhistle even a few months ago, and the people who tolerated the dogwhistle as a means to get their racist sexist anti-Otherist way are running to the guy who doesn’t bother with the code words. Trump may spell the end of the Southern Strategy and its abuse of language.
schrodinger's cat
@JR in WV: They tried the same techniques that they had perfected in Ireland, in India. Probably other places too, that I don’t know of.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
The GOP isn’t interested in governing. They have proven that, over and over. And, neither are their voters. Trump is feeding them filet mignon. They don’t want the Frank Luntz-approved language. They want the Trump ‘ straight talk’. And, he’s giving it to them.
Jeb went on a Spanish Network and gave an entire interview in Spanish.
Me…I don’t like him or his policies, but I give him credit for being bi-lingual, which I wish I was.
The GOP Primary voter?
Will look at Jeb SUSPECT for being able to conduct an interview in Spanish.
RaflW
@Brachiator:
I absolutely did not say “it’s best not to try to have that wealth in the first place.”
What I am suggesting is that home ownership is significantly oversold as a mechanism for wealth accumulation. It works some of the time, but less often than our real estate & banking industries would like us to believe.
I also think it can be a rational response for some black families (or white, or asian, etc) to decide that, after the debacle of the last decade (and other housing crises – I lived in TX for 14 years, 1980-1995, and saw two stretches of net equity loss in those years if people had to sell in either serious slump), that it may make better sense to rent and build assets through other means.
I didn’t spell all that out in my earlier comment, but I never suggested that blacks or any group not try to build wealth.
Brachiator
@boatboy_srq:
Early preference polls don’t mean squat. They are noise, not data or information. As I noted before, here is where we were in July, 2007:
Fred Thompson? Hah! He is now little more than a footnote.
Right now, it is impossible to say whether Trump’s apparent support has any depth. The debates and early primaries may tell us something. And as I noted, I don’t know whether Trump has built a political organization to get him through the primaries.
And I am not looking for a misstep from him. But I don’t know whether voters want to know more about his positions on, say gun control, abortion, same sex marriage, civil rights and how it aligns with the GOP platform, or whether they are happy just watching him make the GOP uncomfortable.
Paul in KY
@Hungry Joe: According to South Park, married couples like watching the 2nd items & getting frisky.
they called it ‘murder porn’.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: Jeb Bush giving an interview in Spanish will not sit well with a base that believes that English should be declared our only official language.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
I disagree with you here. The GOP thinks that they are the only legitimate political party, and will do anything to prevent the Democrats from governing. But when the GOP rules they have a consistent platform and demand that it be voted on. Look at what they are doing on the state level.
But you’re right that GOP voters love Trump, even if Trump makes the regular GOP nervous.
You’re also right that the nuttiest GOP voters are having a fit over the idea of Jeb! being able to give an interview in Spanish. And even though I detest Bush, I give him credit for sticking to his strategy of reaching out to Latinos even as Trump insults them to the applause of the worst xenophobic fools in the Republican base.
gene108
@Brachiator:
Maybe
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/donald-trump-is-buying-a-new-hampshire-campaign-wholesale-20150707
Nobodies exactly sure how serious the guys working for him are or if it is just for show, but he’s making the right noises to be considered serious.
geg6
@boatboy_srq:
Great minds and all. I was talking with my ex a couple of weeks ago (don’t ask and yes, it was a perfectly polite conversation) and made that exact point. He hadn’t considered that and was intrigued by the thought. I seriously considered asking him if he wanted to subscribe to my newsletter, but stopped myself when I realized he would never, ever get the reference.
Capri
@LWA: In all fairness, Reagan was the govenor of California before running for president and a fixture in Republican politics. He was light years more of an establishment politician than Trump is.
boatboy_srq
@Kay: Notice that it’s the franchisee who’s on the hook and not the franchisor. Papa John’s managed to insulate itself from the bad acts of the dba holding the restaurant(s). Going after the franchisee is good – but we need a way to go after the franchisors who make the behavior possible.
I’ve looked at franchise agreements: they’re nasty, with the franchisee taking nearly all the risk and fronting a surprising amount of cash, and the franchisor often providing little besides branding, a name and (often) a long and costly list of required basics (“THIS particular ingredient from THIS vendor at THIS [inflated] price – just because we say so”).
We also need to find a way for franchisees to comply with both labor laws and their franchise agreements without going broke. A lot of the “small business persons / job creators” jargon the Reichwing uses is based on franchises, which fit under SBA guidelines even though they’re the public face of the local yoooge enterprise. If we can wrest that group away from the Teahad we’ve both undermined the GOTea talking point and made it possible for these people to keep their franchises and be successful.
schrodinger's cat
@boatboy_srq: You are right, the franchisees have to fork over a percentage of their sales (not profits) to the parent company.
Brachiator
@RaflW:
As compared to what?
I do take your point about the impact of previous housing crises, but this is part of a larger problem. If people don’t have well paying jobs, and no worry of layoffs, they have a big hurdle right in front of them that prevents them from buying a home or doing much else with any sense of security. And if a chunk of their income is going for rent and food and other essentials, they don’t have spare income to do any kind of wealth building.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sorry, this is not quite accurate and is reductive. The Mughals ruled India. Some of the excesses of the later Mughal rulers created a discontent that allowed the British to come in.
You had someone like Akbar who saw himself, perhaps, as Indian. His descendant, Aurangzeb, became the poster child of religious bigotry, repression and persecution. And although his reign may not be as bad as some of his detractors assert, he was responsible for the destruction of some of the most sacred Hindu temples in the country. He also squandered the treasury on wars of expansion. He also appropriated a great deal of the country’s wealth and sent it to establish ego-driven shrines in Mecca and Medina.
And we have this assessment:
Oddly enough, some Islamic extremists view Aurangzeb as a role model and yearn for a return to his example as an overlord over subject peoples.
schrodinger's cat
Double comment deleted
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Aurangzeb was bad, but the British were far worse. Aurangzeb’s tactics in the Deccan were the reason for the rise of Marathas and the also the fading out of the Mughal Empire in India.
And I don’t see how Aurangzeb’s wrongs make what the British institutionalized for almost two hundred years in India, right? Is Aurangzeb the standard you are going to judge a self proclaimed enlightened democracy, by?
rikyrah
@boatboy_srq:
Hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re absolutely right.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Aurangzeb was bad, but the British were far worse. Aurangzeb’s tactics in the Deccan were the reason for the rise of Marathas and the also the fading out of the Mughal Empire in India.
And I don’t see how Aurangzeb’s wrongs make what the British institutionalized for almost two hundred years in India right? Is Aurangzeb the standard you are going to judge a self proclaimed enlightened democracy by?
I reject your false equivalence. Its like saying the Czarist Russia also had pograms so what Hitler did was no worse. The sheer scale of what the British did in India dwarfs what one horrible Mughal Emperor did in his lifetime.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: You don’t need to school me about how terrible Aurangzeb was. He killed his brothers to become the emperor and imprisoned his father, Shah Jahan the builder of Taj Mahal. He also taxed his Hindu subjects. However, he died a bitter old man. His tomb is in Deccan, in Aurangabad, far away from Delhi. He also saw the Mughal empire crumble around him. So he got his just desserts, in his life time.
The seat of Aurangzeb’s power was Delhi, which is in India, the last time I checked, so again he was not a foreign despot.
How this in any way is related to the British legacy in India, I have no idea.
different-church-lady
@muddy:
And if you slip up and do it innocently, just apologize immediately. Otherwise we all reserve the right to assume it wasn’t innocent.
different-church-lady
@Paul in KY:
The animation of record.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
I agree that the British were worse. But I reject your assertion that the Mughals became Indian. They were conquerors and saw themselves as separate from the people they had conquered.
And I don’t mind people making arguments about reparations. But I think it inherently faulty to focus on colonialism as though it is the only or even the single worse instance of oppression. It is in some ways just a moment in history. You are being arbitrary to select it as the focal point for making a moral claim for reparations.
And as another poster noted, the Mughals have faded away, so even if one wanted to sue them for reparations, they no longer exist as an entity. The same would be true if you wanted to seek reparations from the Roman Empire. But whether or not reparations are “owed” is a separate question.
Non Muslims saw him as a foreign despot. You could not be serious in trying to portray him as Indian.
The Mughals exploited India. The British exploited India. To suggest otherwise is a tiresome evasion. If you want to focus on British colonialism as the only exploitation deserving reparations you are simply being arbitrary. And when you discuss Bangladesh and then pretend that its post 1947 exploitation and neglect by the larger Pakistan entity did not contribute to its problems and focus solely on the British, you are arguing in bad faith.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Your equivalence is false and you are changing the topic by including what Mughals did or did not do.
60 million plus people died in the famines that resulted directly from British policies, that is a fact. There has been no famine on that scale after 1947 or before the British era. Period. The British policies were genocidal. No Indian ruler even comes close to what they did.
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: the reparations that Britain owes Ireland, India, South Africa, et al are too huge to ever be seriously considered.
schrodinger's cat
@satby: Too true.
satby
@Tommy: uh, no; he’s really not. That was careless of you and black men would take that as a slur, because it has been.
And at one in their mid-forties should know that.
schrodinger's cat
As for your contention that the Mughals did not consider themselves Indians, how did you figure that?
Aurangzeb was the sixth Mughal emperor. His family had ruled much of northern India for five generations. The seat of their kingdom was Delhi not Babur’s ancestral motherland in Central Asia. For all practical intents and purposes the Mughal Emperors were Indian.
Yes Aurangzeb was a despot and was a horrible to his non-Muslim subjects that is however extraneous to the issue at hand.
Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor was the figure head for the first war of Indian Independence in 1857, he considered himself an Indian, as did the British and the Hindu and Muslim sepoys and princes who fought in that War.
The British even exiled him to Burma as a punishment for his audacity.
satby
@JR in WV: the population of Ireland before the famine was 8 million. After the famine and the exodus of Irish to places where they wouldn’t starve to death,the population of the country was cut in half, and it still hasn’t recovered to this day.
Another Holocene Human
@Belafon: If the polls are including youth and their parents, remember it’s summer, when youth unemployment soars. Some demos (that means Black) can’t hardly get a job at all.
If I’m right, Dems will be giving the economy a thumbs up again when September starts.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Just a repeat of what they’d tested version 1.0 in Ireland a few years earlier, scaled up.
Howard and Nester
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/youth-unemployment-rate.
This is not the case. It varies by about a percentage point at most, even in bad years.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval_economy-2820.html
As far as a seasonal trend goes, I don’t think that this is the case. Do you see a marked dip in the summer followed by a fall improvement? I don’t.
Obama’s approval on the economy has improved some, but to paint the current dip as cyclical is mistaken. Democrats having a much more negative view about the economy is pretty troubling. And honestly, they’re not wrong. The short-term economic indicators are superficially acceptable; the longer-term ones (EU and China’s economic health, income inequality, white vs. nonwhite median wealth, trade deficit, and of course the declining federal deficit which centrists mistakenly see as a good thing) are uniformly bad.
Frankly, I’m pretty troubled at how Hillary Clinton, or rather her supporters, are handling the Sanders’ insurgency. Yeah, his campaign right now probably isn’t going anywhere but all that means is that she and the rest of the ‘lol, stupid white ivory tower progressive’ Serious Folk are about to step on an economic landmine 2016-2018. Better hope that those Supreme Court vacancies happen in that two-year window, eh?