According to a TPM reader whose comments were front-paged by Josh Marshall, President Obama’s speech last night might have been too rational and responsible to head off anti-Muslim hysteria caused by 9/11-al Qaeda-ISIS, amplified most recently by the San Bernardino shootings and avidly fomented by GOP frontrunner Donald J. Trump and the establishment pols trying to play catch-up:
The president’s speech was just what I expected. Serious, reasonable, thoughtful. But will it do anything to cut into support for someone like Trump? Will it actually reassure anyone who is genuinely frightened of Muslims becoming radicalized and launching attacks in their backyard? I don’t think so. Obama’s speech, as sound as it was on policy grounds, won’t do any of the things he hopes in terms of convincing the skeptical public that he is doing enough or all that is possible.
[snip]I would propose that at this point, it may be necessary to act a little stupid to prevent, hopefully, a worse response down the line.
I don’t really know that this possible, but I do think that the public now wants something more than a call for calm and some weak sauce gun control measures, and if Obama isn’t willing to give it to them, the risk is that they will vote for someone like Trump or Cruz who will.
What might a response that reassures the public look like? I don’t know. A six month moratorium on Syrian refugees, maybe. Perhaps, an increase in surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. through some sort of increased community engagement program. A new public initiative to combat “Islamist Terror” — yes, using that language, despite its costs, to signal commitment.
None of these make a lot of sense as policy. But I worry that if Obama doesn’t do something like this, then when the next attack occurs (not if, but when), the political consequences and ultimate response might be a lot worse.
I think the evidence is pretty clear that accepting a political opponent’s framing just gives it legitimacy, no?
Baud
Wait, I thought Salon said liberals need to let Republicans win next year so we can have a glorious 2020. I thought Obama was simply following their advice.
Now I’m confused.
agorabum
Perhaps some more stirring rhetoric was called for, but for those of us who are rational, we like the call of ‘keep calm and carry on’
JenJen
Dollars to doughnuts, I bet that TPM reader is Andrew Sullivan.
Felonius Monk
Is this idea part of the God can’t save America, but Donald Trump can movement?
max
I think the evidence is pretty clear that accepting a political opponent’s framing just gives it legitimacy, no?
Yes. And Obama has done too much of that already (very likely having decided to try out the very strategy that guy is advocating for) with regards to American Exceptionalism and the Near East and boy, that hasn’t worked out at all, hasn’t.
max
[‘Been there, done that, got the book, and all we got out of it was this lousy Trump dickhead.’]
Germy
God forbid we have a too rational and responsible president. Imagine if McCain had won a second term? “I’ve instructed my vice president Palin to…[fill in the nightmare of your choice]”
Here’s a question for balloon-juice computer people:
I went to amazon to order some gift baskets. I get a warning message:
Safari can’t verify the identity of the website “z-ecx.images-amazon.com” The certificate for this website is invalid. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be “z-ecs.images-amazon.com” which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?
uhh… fuck no; not after a warning like that.
Can someone tell me what happened?
The Other Chuck
Just spitballing here, but the OTHER cromulent response would be to say to this commenter, “Shut the fuck up and crawl back into your hole, you fascist bigoted ignorant piece of shit.”
schrodinger's cat
Let me guess, the reader expounding this brilliant solution does not belong to one of the ” undesirable groups” that Trump targets, that’s why he/she is blithely suggesting that Obama should be Trump-Lite to counter Trump.
The Other Chuck
@Germy: It’s probably just a cert management fuckup on amazon’s part, likely just an expired cert, but trust your instincts, and let amazon know.
catclub
@agorabum: GWBush was widely criticized for telling people to go shopping. But he was basically right on that.
Yes, the government is doing things that make flying less convenient, but still keep flying when you want or need to travel.
Yes, the government is activating many resources in the WOT but unless you are one of those government employees, your life will not change much.
Botsplainer
If we’re supposed to go all nuts over a set of shootings that Muslims did, doesn’t this put the notion of “we can’t worry about doing anything about random acts of mass violence” to rest?
schrodinger's cat
@JenJen: Reader is Marshall himself trying to get more clicks.
Brachiator
RE: I think the evidence is pretty clear that accepting a political opponent’s framing just gives it legitimacy, no?
No.
sdhays
Thank you! I read this earlier and my blood started boiling. “Let’s round up a few innocent Muslim Americans and make them ‘suck on this’ to avoid us doing something really horrible.” Good god, have we once again come to this? Fuck the pro-terrorist Ted Cruz reaction. How many people is this jackass willing to throw under the bus to “avoid worse things happening”?
MattF
We’re just stuck with an intelligent, rational President. So, STFU.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Botsplainer:
It means we’re only supposed to go nuts over mass murders by Certified Muslims(TM) and continue to ignore the far more common mass murders by Real True Americans. Because, of course, only the people who were killed by Certified Muslims are upset about it. The people who were killed by Real True Americans thought, God bless the Second Amendment as they breathed their last.
Schlemazel
@Germy:
It could be amazon goofed & didn’t update an SSL certificate. It could also be that some wiseass hopped into the middle of your connection & is pretending to be amazon. You did the right thing, you might email amazon but don’t allow a connection to them until it is worked out.
EDIT: @The Other Chuck: yeah, me too!
schrodinger's cat
BTW all this talk of registering Muslims, how does one know if someone is Muslim? Unless they are sporting distinctive religious attire how can one tell?
Judge Crater
You want “reasonable and thoughtful” I give you Marine Le Pen in France and Donald Trump/Ted Cruz in the U.S.
We’ll see if the center holds in the West. It’s 9/11 all over again.
MattF
@Germy: Maybe try the Chrome browser, see if you get a warning.
Germy
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Dear is sitting in his jail cell saying “why isn’t anyone paying attention to me?”
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Care to expound or just trolling?
MomSense
@JenJen:
Joe Scarborough was saying last week that the President was failing to counter Trump. I told my teevee in no uncertain terms that Joe and the rest of the Republicans have been whistling to the Trump supporting fools for decades. The Republicans built this Frankenstein and they have some nerve expecting the Democratic President to clean up this particular mess.
Hoodie
And when that doesn’t prevent the next random nutjob terror incident, time to set up the detention camps? That post is about as moronic as some of the Salon Hillery-Hate, you never win by accepting idiotic premises. I do suspect that post is a Marshall sock puppet aimed at garnering clicks. His sight has a pathetic quality lately, seems like he is constantly advertising for new staff, but manages to post about two paragraphs a day. I guess you get more if you sign up, but kind of hard to justify that with this kind of crap.
gene108
You can’t compromise with despicable racists. The goal posts will keep moving, until you do exactly what they want and more.
Peale
For the first suggestion, nope. Those 10,000 are coming. You may wish to cut it off after that because you want to win an election. But those 10,000 will be coming. Otherwise you might as well draw up your borders. That moratorium won’t be lifted. If you follow the flamers, they are not going to stop with Syrian refugees.
On the second, I’m not certain what that would achieve. Especially since the last two high profile Muslim extremist attacks were from people who stopped participating in their local mosques. I think they are participating in the great online hive mosque that is nowhere and disengaging from their local communities. Short of looking for absentee reports, it would be odd to start harassing Muslims for not participating in their designated islamicCenter activities.
Schlemazel
You guys are way over reacting here. We don’t need to kill any Moose limbs we just need to move ever one of them to detention camps until the end of the war on terror is over. This worked so well with the Japanese and nobody ever complained about that.
It is obvious this is a simple, sane (compared to wingnuts) solution that we need to prevent worse ideas from springing up.
Brachiator
@Germy: What showed as the site address in your browser? The message was saying you were not at Amazon. This is potentially a problem. You might want to contact Amazon, maybe using another device, if you have one. A Google search on the message you got (excerts problem…) might turn up something.
Schlemazel
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m becoming a fan of the paper bag test. Anyone darker than a grocery bag is by default a Muslim. Can’t be too careful for the not jobs will demand worse!!!
MattF
@gene108: Good point. The Klown Kar riders are all doing the ‘no enemies to my right’ routine– why should Obama join them?
Germy
@Brachiator: the regular amazon site address showed up in the browser, but i got the little pop-up warning “invalid certificate”
Peale
ISIS may be an cult pent on bringing about the apocalypse, but I’m still not certain why preventing them from achieving their aims would accomplish. What’s in it for us?
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemazel: There are plenty of Muslims who could pass for white.
Adam C
I’m going to go Greenwald on this and suggest that Obama has a responsibility to oppose crazy Republican shit. Anytime he goes along with it, or even meets them halfway, he legitimizes their position in the eyes of a majority of the population – as he did when he passively decriminalized torture. If both Obama and the GOP think Muslim Internment Camps are a good idea, then it must be so. Bipartisan agreement!
JMG
There is on this site and others a basic misunderstanding of French politics. Yes, the Paris terrorism helped the National Front in local elections yesterday. But they were going to win anyway. The overriding issue there is anger with the EU, not just for refugee policies, but mostly for EU (read: German) imposed austerity. The alleged Socialist government of Hollande repudiated its anti-austerity stance directly after getting elected. This has led voters to the always anti-European unity party, the Front.
JenJen
@MomSense: Scarborough and the Morning Joe crowd have sucked up to Trump ever since late summer when it appeared his candidacy was not a cruel joke. It has made me sick to watch even establishment types twist and contort to make Trump appear serious and legitimate.
rikyrah
I’ll repeat this..
I am SO glad that Barack Obama is President right now.
And no, I don’t trust Hillary Clinton to have made the same speech. Not one ounce of trust that she would have made the same speech.
Freifechter
So let me see if I follow: The only way we can stave off a reactionary group of nuts riding into power is if we tacitly accept that the paranoia that is giving rise to these people has legitimacy. In this case, that means acknowledging the rampant Islamaphobia currently going into overdrive through formal policy that would infringe upon the human rights of both citizens and refugees.
Who the hell is this moron? They’ve got the spine of a jellyfish and a quarter of the brains.
Amir Khalid
I think BF feels your no-drama president is being too no-drama for the occasion, which demands — what? King Kong-style chest-thumping and draconian measures? A bit of “Let’s all cower under the table” togetherness? BF seems to be saying that Obama needs to validate people’s fears and prejudices to keep them interested in what he’s saying. No leader ever needs to do that, and certainly no leader ever should. In fact, Obama’s speech lays out the reasons not to do it.
Iowa Old Lady
In terms of danger to me, the SB shootings don’t feel qualitatively different than shooting up a movie theater. I’d be in as much danger of being randomly on the scene in either case. But apparently, to most people, they feel different. Is it the hype surrounding the magic word “terrorism”? Is it the amount of media coverage and breathless fear stoking?
I guess not as many people found it useful to hyperventilate about the theater shooting.
Chris
“Oh, let’s give the fascists SOME of what they want! Then maybe things’ll go better for us!”
Fuck. You want to know who the real “appeasers” are? This is them.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Many Muslims are white.
MattF
@JMG: Looks like Art Goldhammer disagrees with you. And he can’t be accused of not understanding French politics.
hells littlest angel
These days I look over TPM to see if there are any intriguing headlines that don’t sound like “one weird trick”-style bullshit. If I see anything interesting, I look for write-ups of the story elsewhere.
I think I only bother to do this because I like the layout of their front page. The content is truly terrible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JenJen: Time zones and stubborn morning routines spare me from seeing Scarborough live– seeing his twitter hysterics quoted by others is bad enough– but this week I’ll be making a point not to drift over to MSNBC in the car during the Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd hours. I’m sure John McCain is getting powdered up for a Very Serious Talk with Mrs Greenspan, leaving Lindsey for Chuck.
Chris
@JMG:
Euroskepticism is certainly part of it, but anti-immigrant sentiment’s got plenty to do with it as well. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Botsplainer
Goddamn, I hate wordy lawyers. Fifty minutes into a telephonic hearing, and this mook won’t shut the fuck up.
His voice is giving me an STD. He’s accomplishing nothing, but making me hate him just for not shutting the fuck up.
Sloane Ranger
This morning the BBC carried interviews with some people putting flowers on the shrine near the centre where the murders took place. All the ones they broadcast had people saying he sounded weak and his proposals did not go far enough. I report this as fact without any comment of my own.
Schlemazel
@schrodinger’s cat:
sorry, did I need to add a sarcasm tag to my post?
@Amir Khalid:
Sorry my joke was not more obvious. I keep forgetting that the world is so fucked up it cannot be outpaced by sarcasm.
I thought this went well with the insanity of detention camps I had posted earlier. I’m just trying to help PBHO come up with acceptable levels of insanity to prevent the worse levels TPM has promised if he doesn’t. I guess I am too believable.
RP
The reader’s email is stupid for the reasons mentioned above, but more importantly because he or she cites no evidence that Obama’s calm approach will lead to “something even worse down the line.” Republicans should be wringing their hands re Trump, but the rest of us shouldn’t. I don’t see any reason to believe he has a realistic shot at beating HRC.
But, more importantly, I think Marshall’s comment about combining terrorism and gun control is even dumber. The silver lining in the most recent attack is that it links gun control and terrorism (even if they weren’t really working for ISIL), giving Obama and the rest of us an opportunity to revisit the gun control argument. Why shouldn’t he try to take advantage of that?
Also, Marshall says “But people intuitively grasp that a hardened extremist is not going to be deterred or stopped by the kinds of limited restrictions we are at all realistically talking about when it comes to gun control.” How is that any different from saying “gun control is pointless because criminals can still buy guns”? Making it more difficult to acquire AR-15s is a net positive, even if it’s not a perfect solution.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: That too! I guess also depends on how you define white.
Tyro
@agorabum: for those of us who are rational, we like the call of ‘keep calm and carry on’
The president’s job is to represent the interests of all Americans, however, not just the rational minority.
Schlemazel
delete for duplicate
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemazel: No I got your sarcasm, just saying that Muslims don’t have an identifying characteristic and not all Muslims are from the Middle East either.
Redshift
@Iowa Old Lady: The difference is that in one case, guns aren’t the problem because it’s mental health, and in the other, guns aren’t the problem because terrorism.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Why would Obama want to cut into the support of someone like Trump? Trump or Cruz as the nominee is an instant general election victory for Hillary. I mean, if I were him I’d do anything I could to drum up support for Trump over someone like Rubio or even JEB, hapless as he’s been so far. Support for Trump is good for Democrats.
Schlemazel
@schrodinger’s cat:
OH SURE
I gave you a defining characteristic that would satisfy the nut jobs and you jump all over me.
I suppose I could add or wear turbans or have beards. Would you be happy then?!?! I know the nut jobs would. And, of course (we have after all Josh’s word on this) that would calm the nut jobs down & make America great again!!!
amk
@Tyro: Yeah, the president should govern as per the crazy wishes of the irrational and lunatic majority. That’s the ticket for sanity.
Nutella
I read Obama’s address and two things struck me most: The adult approach to the problem, and his using the much better phrase “war on terrorists” rather than “war on terror”.
I only wish he had added that the Colorado Springs killer is a religious fanatic and terrorist just like the San Bernardino killers and we need to fight a war on all terrorists.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@schrodinger’s cat:
@Amir Khalid:
If you’ve ever read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he talks about how going on hajj converted him to more mainstream Islam because he met a lot of people there who would have been “white” in the US who treated him as a brother Muslim regardless of his skin color. It made him realize that the problem was not skin color, but that American culture was sick at its core.
(Nation of Islam is to mainstream Islam what Mormonism is to mainstream Christianity — it takes a few of the basic tenets and then piles a bunch of really weird American-based stuff on top.)
GoBlue72
We live in a fearful, racist country. And if we’re not careful, the GOP will ride that fear & racism to the White House.
Not sure what to do about it, but is what it is. The hateful morons who elected Bush twice haven’t gone away.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
There’s really no formal definition of “white”. One can only cite examples. I mean white like Richard Thompson, white like (the former) Cat Stevens, white like this daughter of two Irish-American converts who wrote in Salon some years ago about growing up Muslim.
schrodinger's cat
@GoBlue72: Some of them have changed, JC is not the only one.
NorthLeft12
I am seeing some of this same crapola up here in Canada. The only way to fight it effectively is to call these measures exactly what they are……the anti-democratic, illegal, cowardly, weak, mean, and evil actions that will stain the history of our country for generations.
We can be better than that.
Myiq2xu
I love this blog.
Richard Mayhew
So basically it looks like radicalization will be this election cycle’s Ebola. Actually addressing the problem is boring, quiet and non-exciting while the loud, visible, ‘common-sensical’ solutions are ineffective at best and more likely long run counter-productive.
J.
Clearly, Obama needed Luther, his anger translator.
NickM
More like destroying a village to save its idiots…
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: I don’t accept that disagreement, even brief, is necessarily trolling. I had to step away for a moment, and thought I might have to respond later.
But you can consider, even accept for consideration what an opponent offers and still reject the proposition. It might even be a better course than a rhetorical armed camp where it’s always an us v them debate.
And in the real world, outside of social media and the Internet, the question is whether our leaders will actually do something stupid or remain cool. Obama cannot do it all himself. I am looking to see whether sensible Democrats and sensible Republicans, if any, can come together.
And I am caring less what any pundit writes about anything. I guess it gives an idea of the pundit’s fear level. And the question being asked is whether it is good to surrender to fear a little now in order to avoid a potentially larger mob response later. I considered the question. The answer is no. The pundit even admitted that it was a stupid policy position. What else is there to deal with?
Nutella
@Tyro:
The president’s job is to be 27% crazy? And 50% Republican?
No, the president’s job is to govern well and uphold the constitution.
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I read that about 40-45 years ago and found it very moving. The guy really grew as a human & his acceptance of Islam was a big factor in that growth. I think he would have been an amazing help to the civil rights movement had The Nation not gunned him down.
And, again, I was making a sad joke; I thought at the expense of the nut jobs but I guess my humor fell flat. Not for the first time ever
Schlemazel
@Myiq2xu:
If only it loved us back!
PaulW
@schrodinger’s cat:
There are plenty of Christians who can pass for Other.
I still remember some poor Greek Eastern Orthodox guy, scratch that it was a PRIEST, getting jumped when a Rambo-wannabe confused him for Mooselum. http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/tampa-police-marine-reservist-attacked-greek-priest-he-mistook-for/1050707
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Good examples, I was also thinking about people who have no European ancestry that they know of but are light skinned and have green or hazel eyes. Indian actress Aishwarya Rai, is one example. My grandma’s sister had green eyes and was light skinned too.
ETA: Another example is Kashmiris, both the Pundits like Nehru and Muslims like Farookh Abdullah.
Hoodie
@RP: Marshall also makes the following non sequitur:
No, that would be exactly the type of incident that has made the gun control debate more difficult, because that person is just dismissed as a nut, even though he isn’t necessarily any different than SB shooters. The SB shooters hung out on jihadi websites, Deer was into the Army of God. If anything, the SB incident is the best argument for gun control that’s come along in quite a while. Those folks probably would have had a very difficult time assembling an arsenal if there was anywhere near effective gun control. They were amateurs. In contrast, the shooting in Paris was an international conspiracy pulled off by trained operatives and thus, was mostly a failure of surveillance and intelligence, not French gun controls, which forced those terrorists to smuggle weapons and thus increased the risk of exposure.
redshirt
Lets destroy the Village and see where that takes us. A better place, I’d bet.
Jager
@schrodinger’s cat:
Will they round up the rich, Southern California, Iranian Muslims living in castles with Ferraris in the driveway?
Brachiator
@JMG: Good point about the French elections. A BBC news report I listened to talked about the vote as expressing anti Establishment frustration. Maybe this is similar to some of the pro Trump sentiment here.
Similarly, the ouster of the socialists in Venezuela is a reaction to what is perceived to be the failure of the political leadership.
elm
Are there any voters on the fence between voting for Trump or voting Hillary in 2016? Do idiots deserve reassurance in their idiocy?
Why did Marshall elevate the comments of a moron who wants Trump’s policies in a nicer-sounding package?
schrodinger's cat
@Jager: May be Trump will make exceptions for his tribe (fellow rich).
scav
@Tyro: Represent the interests, not pander to the worst instincts of and obey the delusions.
Schlemazel
Since my attempt at humor bombed let me post a real knee slapper from Asshole Assholeson:
@EWErickson
Brachiator
@Jager: You mean the ones living in Beverly Hills? More are Persian and Jewish rather than Muslim.
However, when fear ruled and Japanese Americans were demonized and put into camps, there was not a wealth exception. We have been here before. We know what this ugliness looks like. The question is, do we know how to avoid giving in to it.
BTW, the Canadians also put its citizens of Japanese ancestry into camps. This woeful bigotry is not just an American sickness.
Peale
@elm: He wants trump policies temporarily while trump wants them permanently. A time limited state of emergency, you see. Like the doc fix and the emergency farm bill.
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemazel: What is Asian food? Asia is a continent and not all Asians have the same diet. Dumbass is dumb.
schrodinger's cat
@elm: Its click bait. Blogs must troll for clicks. AL’s post about how the baby made Malik do it was an example of the same genre.
elm
@Peale: I bow to you Sir and/or Madam.
Chris
@Brachiator:
My problem with this is that France has plenty of anti-establishment parties. A little nebula of ones on the far left, the Greens, Bayrou in the center, and a couple of paleoconservative ones between the center-right and the FN. Many of these parties also object to the EU, at least in its current form, and to the neoliberal establishment.
But it’s not any of these parties that benefit from “anti-establishment” sentiment. Time and time again, it’s the FN – despite the myriad other options available, it’s been the biggest “protest party” in France for a generation at least. Time and time again, the anti-establishment vote has gone with the party that’s pretty universally recognized as the face of racism in France – it was founded and, until recently, run by a guy who was best known for toeing right up to the line of Holocaust denial, waving at everyone, and going “heeey, looooook what I’m doing!” (and, occasionally, stepping right over it).
This kind of party thrives on economic downturns and anger at the establishment, but its staying power goes much deeper than that. People don’t vote for Holocaust deniers simply because they’re angry at corporate greed or government inefficiency.
Schlemazel
@schrodinger’s cat:
No Pad Thai today, have to get even with them Japs!
Sorry son, That Pho will have to wait until the 8th of December
We will skip the Moo Goo Pai Pan as a memorial for the brave boys at Pearl.
Sadly, this is probably a huge hit with his followers. They not only all look alike they all eat alike too! I don’t know what corner of Hells shit hole he grew up in but I will bet my mortgage there were no Japanese restaurants there when little Asshole was growing up.
benw
Both the left and right have their own bedwetters. The RW bedwetters want guns, a police state, and endless war, while giving the finger to the left. For some reason, the LW bedwetters want to give the RW bedwetters what they want, while giving the finger to the left.
ruemara
@Sloane Ranger: It’s a conservative area. I’m not surprised.
pseudonymous in nc
@MomSense:
Where are the moderate Republicans to combat the rising numbers of radicalized extremists?
muddy
@hells littlest angel: @elm: I quit looking at TPM after Josh Marshall freaked out over an email I sent. Didn’t front-page it like this stupid one, but he kept emailing me back about it. Said that I was “obsessed” and “projecting”. All I kept saying was, You’re the one who keeps emailing me repeatedly, who exactly is obsessed? He wrote to me 6 times over it, it was bizarre. And kind of freaked me out, actually. I kept thinking he was done, and then I’d check email and he’d have another message to me saying about how *I* am obsessed. Alrighty, dude.
I can well imagine John Cole replying 6 times in high dudgeon to a reader who emailed one time because they had an issue with the wording of one of his posts. As if.
elm
@benw: Perhaps the purported “left-wing” bedwetters don’t have any interest in liberal or radical policy and solutions at all, but merely want a more cultivated and reasonable-sounding fascism.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Its not hard to see why, white supremacy is in the very fabric of society of the ex-colonial powers. Things were so much better, when they (colonial powers) were large and in charge. Perhaps, that’s the glorious past Le-Pen followers dream of.
Calouste
@Chris: Euro-skepticism and anti-immigrant sentiment go hand-in-hand. They’re two sides of the same xenophobia coin. There is not one party in Europe that is one but no the other. The label of Euro-skepticism just allows people like Farage to cover up the rampant anti-immigrant sentiment and racism in his party.
schrodinger's cat
@pseudonymous in nc: Most of them have left the party, it seems.
Wapiti
@Schlemazel:
I think rounding up anyone with a beard might be part of a solution, but baseball (America’s favorite pasttime!) will not be the same without all of the neck-beards.
0h. [/sarcasm]
Brachiator
@Chris: I am just telling you what was reported. The BBC story even noted claims that the French party was trying to purge antisemies and other extreme hate mongers. I have no idea how sincere this effort has been. And yes, you can deny that the anti Establishment sentiment is real, but then what?
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
Erick Erickfather, father of Erick “Son of Erick” Erickson, probably wouldn’t let him play “Chopsticks” on the piano that day either.
benw
@elm: our beloved media calls those the “serious” liberals, whose left-wingyness somehow always enables the right. If you actually care about liberal policy and call the right wing out for the proto-facists they are, you are so deeply deeply unserious as to not be worth listening to at all. But hey, if we just put Muslims in concentration camps until the 2016 election, we can stop a Republican president from putting Muslims in concentration camps!
Schlemazel
@Wapiti:
You have a point, also the NHL would have issues, particularly in the spring.
Maybe the nut jobs know that Muslims wash before prayer so we could just send anyone who washes their hands to the relocation camps! It will be like the dark ages again when clean people were viewed with suspicion.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nice catch! I may post that on FB – and claim it as mine!
FlipYrWhig
Why does anyone on the Democratic side need to do anything to head off Trump? Trump is the frontrunner FOR THE OTHER GODDAMN PARTY. Trump does stupid shit and sounds like a bloodthirsty loon _because that’s what Republicans like_. Is that what Democrats like? No. Democrats are half the country. Why does Big Media insist on treating Trump supporters, to wit one third of Republicans, as Salt Of The Earth America Whose Opinions Count, Infinity? Fuck them. Let them act like idiots and want stupid things. The rest of us are trying to have a country here.
opiejeanne
@schrodinger’s cat: My best friend when I was a kid was Syrian. She had blond hair and light skin. Her mother’s hair was auburn and she had light skin too. Her grandparents were bit darker but I’ve seen darker Italians.
I need to give her a call.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
In all honesty, this is one of my pet peeves about blogs, including this wonderful place. It’s shocking how many times “Republicans” and “Americans” are treated as interchangeable.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat: But you also have virulent Hindu nationalism in India, the repression of Muslims by Buddhists in Burma, and all manner of supremacist sentiments in other countries. And you have white supremacist bigotry in Denmark and other countries that never had much of a colonial empire.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Who denied it was real?
David Koch
This isn’t the first time Josh Marshall has pissed his pants.
He supported invading Iraq, cuz…… panic!
Never mistake his calm tone for strength.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: WTF? I can’t speak for AL, but it should be perfectly obvious that we don’t have marching orders from Cole to maximize clicks on this blog. Trust me, we’re not that organized. I’m mildly insulted by the insinuation that we’re a page view-driven blog here, honestly. I don’t get paid for this fucking gig, and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it.
RSA
Translation: Let’s either insert moles into religious communities or ask people to inform on each other to the authorities.
Yeah, that’s worked pretty well, in both fact and fiction!
rikyrah
@David Koch:
Thanks for reminding us of that.
Ruckus
@muddy:
Cole would tell you to go fuck yourself on the front page. Maybe.
Most likely wouldn’t say a word. Cole is somewhat like me, our time isn’t worth a lot but it’s worth more than that. Marshall has paid staff to do the grunt work, so what else occupies his time than freaking out and trying desperately to gather eyeballs? Oh and getting more people to pay him to freak out and gather eyeballs.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I was not referring to your post at all, but Josh Marshall’s original post. As for AL’s particular post, I thought it was a bit trolly. YMMV.
I enjoy your posts, your doggies and most of all your illustrated stories. Please, not to has a mad.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: True, we human beings are vile. We can always manufacture a reason to hate on our fellow human beings.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
It would be nice if we could somehow more marginalize tDump, if only to give us a little insurance that not enough totally crazy assholes would vote for him when he wins the nomination. My best scenario is that he wins just enough primaries to have a contested repub convention with 2 or 3 front runners which warms up the back room circle jerk and they pick little jebby as their candidate. That creates a massive tDump supporter backlash to go along with the already existent jebby backlash and the repubs get exactly 27% of the vote, half written in for tDump.
However, your point about we are trying to have a country is spot on but I’m afraid that a good percentage of our population has a completely different idea about what a country is than say, most everyone here.
bobbo
The EXACT same reasoning that led Democrats to vote to authorize the Iraq War.
catclub
@Wapiti: Also Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m not mad, but your comment originally struck me as unfair to AL, and it seemed to insinuate something inaccurate about the blog. Maybe we have differing definitions of “trolling” and “click-baiting.”
As we all know, writers absolutely do say provocative things to make a point, incite a controversy and generate a response. Maybe that’s what AL was doing in that post. I don’t know. But there’s a long tradition of that, going back centuries before “A Modest Proposal.”
To me, click-baiting is something much baser, i.e., manipulating readers for profit. Like someone who doesn’t even really like pets running a blog about them to lure gullible pet lovers so they could profit from Friskies ads. There’s a connotation of grift in “click-bait,” IMO.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel: Be my guest.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: OK now I see your point better, by click bait I meant, writing to generate a greater response, i.e. clicks. No I don’t think AL’s post was profit driven either.
Fr33d0m
In order to remain relevant, any law that results in rounding up Muslims would have to be aimed at rounding up people who belong to groups who threaten us–which, by the numbers would be white right-wingers. We could call the camps “Galt” camps.
Keith G
@rikyrah:
The thing is, while this was a decent enough speech, we really do not know what the best speech (as if there was just one) would be.
We cannot know because we are in the middle of it and 20 years hence it will be up to historians to try to figure out how all the pieces could have fit. There will be events weeks, months and years from now that play off of what our government did and did not do – dynamics that are invisible to us now.
I think Obama’s instincts are more correct then they are wrong. I just do not know how right they are. Short of time travel, I can not know that. I expect that we can not see and process all that needs to be known. The means assumptions have to be made.
It will be interesting to see which of the president’s assumption are on target.
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
Duh, there are plenty of Muslims who are white by almost any definition. Paper bag test or not.
Or, what he said: @Amir Khalid:
schrodinger's cat
@J R in WV: That’s exactly what I am saying that you cannot identify that a person is Muslim unless they are wearing some distinguishing marker like a scarf.
Matt McIrvin
“Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.” -TMBG