The Trump campaign, not racist or anything, just number one with white supremacists as Team WIN THE MORNING accidentally commits journalism to tell us.
The Ku Klux Klan is using Donald Trump as a talking point in its outreach efforts. Stormfront, the most prominent American white supremacist website, is upgrading its servers in part to cope with a Trump traffic spike. And former Louisiana Rep. David Duke reports that the businessman has given more Americans cover to speak out loud about white nationalism than at any time since his own political campaigns in the 1990s.
As hate group monitors at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League warn that Trump’s rhetoric is conducive to anti-Muslim violence, white nationalist leaders are capitalizing on his candidacy to invigorate and expand their movement.
“Demoralization has been the biggest enemy and Trump is changing all that,” said Stormfront founder Don Black, who reports additional listeners and call volume to his phone-in radio show, in addition to the site’s traffic bump. Black predicts that the white nationalist forces set in motion by Trump will be a legacy that outlives the businessman’s political career. “He’s certainly creating a movement that will continue independently of him even if he does fold at some point.”
Yes, that movement is called “The Republican Party” as Bloomberg News reminds us.
Almost two-thirds of likely 2016 Republican primary voters favor Donald Trump’s call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S., while more than a third say it makes them more likely to vote for him.
Those are some of the findings from a Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies PulsePoll, an online survey conducted Tuesday, that shows support at 37 percent among all likely general-election voters for the controversial proposal put forward by the Republican front-runner.
“We believe these numbers are made up of some people who are truly expressing religious bigotry and others who are fearful about terrorism and are willing to do anything they think might make us safer,” Doug Usher, who runs polling for Washington-based Purple Strategies, said in his analysis of the findings. “This indicates that, despite some conventional wisdom expressed in the last 48 hours, this is unlikely to hurt Trump at least in the primary campaign.”
Why would it, when the entire party is currently running a dozen nativist assholes for President and has been as loudly and as boldly racist as possible for a long time and virulently so since Barack Obama came on the national scene? Why would it when a bunch of Republican governors are trying to kick brown people out of their states? Why would it when you have a racist asshole base that finds Trump’s nuclear-powered foghorn hate speech towards anyone darker than a paper bag a refreshing reason to vote for the guy?
Trump is not the cause, he is the inevitable result of today’s GOP, and much like herpes the body politic breaks out in overt racism and produces pustules like The Donald time and time again in American history, it’s just a matter of how big they get and how sick we get before they are lanced. The names are different, the disease remains the same, and America has been infected with it since the start, kids.
The fact is if he was the GOP nominee, he’d get 45% of the popular vote minimum. Maybe he’d lose 55-45 to Clinton or Sanders, but maybe not. And if anything, Trump is heavy cover for the kinder, gentler racist fascism of Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and the rest of the GOP. The country club section of the party on their fainting couches saying that Trump doesn’t represent them were very happy to support calls to limit Middle Eastern immigration to Christians.
Trump is just the latest face on this evil Mr. Potato Head of nativist hatred, the problem is with all the Republicans who like the cut of his jib…and oh yeah, the Democrats looking the other way and/or still playing the “not a dime’s worth of difference” game.
We’re just going to have to weed out the garden again, and that’s going to take work. It’s what we do, but damn it would be nice if we just got a backhoe and dug up the whole place one of these decades, huh.
rikyrah
GOP timid in condemning Trump anti-Muslim plan
Rachel Maddow shares some early polling that shows Republican primary voters responding favorably to Donald Trump’s proposed block on Muslims entering the U.S., and Republican politicians not ruling out supporting Donald Trump as the party’s nominee or comparing their own policy ideas favorably to his
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/gop-timid-in-condemning-trump-anti-muslim-plan-583308355883
rikyrah
how much do I love this FLOTUS?
can’t even be measured.
Karen Hunter
@karenhunter
Couldn’t imagine any other @FLOTUS doing this, can you?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1yAOK0nSb0 … http://fb.me/Z6Dkza8c
Patricia Kayden
Republicans should be ecstatic that they’ve finally found a candidate who reflects their real views on race, religious minorities, women, immigration, etc. Trump should win the primaries in a landslide and go on to face and lose against Secretary Clinton. That would be exactly what Republicans deserve for their constant fear mongering and race baiting.
We need to keep in mind that even before he started running, Trump was making ugly and racist birther claims against President Obama. It’s not as if he just became racist after he began his candidacy. Yet Republican leaders were fine with him running because their base is rife with bigotry.
rikyrah
because this is who they are:
Public Policy Polling published results yesterday on GOP voters’ attitudes in North Carolina. Among the findings:
* 48% of North Carolina Republicans endorse the idea of a national database of Muslims.
* 42% of North Carolina Republicans believed thousands of Middle Easterners cheered in New Jersey on 9/11.
* 35% of North Carolina Republicans support shutting down American mosques.
* 32% of North Carolina Republicans believe practicing Islam in the United States should be illegal.
Botsplainer
*shrug*
As it turns out, conservatives are the awful people they always denied they were.
For everyone who denies that they’re racist but hates “that PC crap”, Trump’s candidacy gives them the ability to whine when they get called out for using racial and sexual slurs when talking outside their groups.
Original Lee
I’ve been saying for a while that Trump is popular because he’s broadcasting the id of the closet racists in this country. Except they’re out of the closet and whining about how they can’t say whatever they want without consequences, so of course he’s their hero.
Mr. Longform
Don’t you sometimes feel like we are in that “Man in the High Castle” alternate history where, instead of Bobby Kennedy being elected president, he was assassinated and that led to Nixon – Reagan – Bush and the slow erosive downfall of the New Deal and the Great Society and the Civil Rights Movement. I hope someone is out there watching our movie and saying to herself, “Thank God that didn’t really happen…”
Jack the Second
Sow the Rump, Reap the Trump.
Botsplainer
By the way, my mom reads the obituaries, and feels really sad when she sees the death of an old person of color. She thinks about the tribulation and oppression that they faced during life and how nothing could be done to make it right, so she goes on to do….
Nothing.
She says there are no solutions, she wasn’t responsible, so everyone should move on.
Plus Jesus, so everything will be fine.
Bartholomew
Maybe the time has come to stop elevating political opponents through excessive attention and linking and discussion … and support political allies instead? Kidding, kidding. That time was long ago.
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/12/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-tonight-show
Frankensteinbeck
I think this is the opposite of true, and it’s why they’re increasingly freaking out about him. ‘The Republican Party isn’t racist, it’s…’* has been the mask since Reagan, and it’s been a good mask. The media defends it fanatically. The vast majority of whites have gone along, not wanting to accuse anybody of racism. Maybe most important, ‘moderate’ Republicans believed it themselves, and that illusion was precious to them. It’s getting really god damn hard for anybody, no matter how politically dense, to deny that Trump is campaigning on racism, which leads to uncomfortable thoughts about what motivates the whole Republican Party.
*’responsible’, or ‘fiscally conservative’, or ‘promoting shared American values’ or ‘anti-establishment’ or whatever’s today’s slogan
Wagon
I really wish the talking heads and the Democratic Presidential candidates would start saying that Trump IS the GOP. He’s not some breakaway faction. He is the GOP.
As said above “that movement is the Republican party”
Punchy
@rikyrah: 32% are claiming practicing a religion should be banned. Yet Im sure if asked the follow-up question, 100% would support “religious freedom”. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing.
Peale
@Punchy: freedom and liberty are terms for the excercise of power over people, not liberation.
rikyrah
This is what you call TWITTER TRUTH!
NoChillMood @ritaag
@lawalazu Its funny how they are all shocked today when they looked the other way when Trump was going full birther on PBO
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
LEST WE FORGET nothing Trump is saying is different from any of the other GOP candidates or Ryan and others in DC. They all feel the same.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
So, don’t let the media try to paint any of them better than Trump, not that I give a whit about Trump. You hear one GOP, you here all.
Trump’s sin was that he said aloud what they say in private, insinuate, encourage their base to spew. All he did was expose all of them.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
So, if you believe that suddenly Ryan or any of those publicly disagreeing with Trump is being anything but disingenuous, bite me.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
What I reject is the media trying to manipulate us to think that GOP is not in lockstep in their hate.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
You will recall that it is the same MSM & GOP that showed no outrage when Trump went on a campaign to sully PBO. MSM gave him a platform.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
So, color me unimpressed when Brokaw came out to condemn Trump recently. Where was he when Trump began testing the waters w/lies abt PBO?
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
My thought is that without MSM, Trump would not be spewing his bile. But because of GOP, he is able to. They all think the same way.
KSK(africa) @lawalazu
MSM has been a full partner in GOP ugliness, not to mention Trump’s rise. Watch how they cover domestic terrorism.
rikyrah
Scalia makes racially charged argument in affirmative-action case
12/09/15 03:45 PM—UPDATED 12/09/15 05:05 PM
By Steve Benen
About a month ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to first-year law students at Georgetown, where he drew a parallel between gay people, pedophiles, and child abusers. What would he do for an encore?
This morning, the high court heard oral arguments in a Texas case on affirmative action and the use of race in college admissions, and NBC News reported that Scalia “questioned whether some minority students are harmed by the policy because it helped them gain admittance to schools where they might not be able to academically compete.”
At first blush, that sounds pretty racist, so let’s check the official transcript:
“There are – there are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less – a slower-track school where they do well.
“One of – one of the briefs pointed out that – that most of the – most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re – that they’re being pushed ahead in – in classes that are too too fast for them.”
If we were to go out of our way to be charitable, I suppose we could emphasize the fact that Scalia prefaced these comments by saying “there are those who contend.” In other words, maybe the far-right justice himself isn’t making such an ugly argument, so much as the justice is referencing an offensive argument from unnamed others?
It is, to be sure, a stretch. At no point did Scalia say he disagrees with “those who contend” that African-American students who struggle at good universities and are better off at “a slower-track school.”
David Plouffe, a former aide to President Obama, highlighted Scalia’s quote this afternoon and asked a pertinent question: “Motivation lacking for 2016?”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/scalia-makes-racially-charged-argument-affirmative-action-case
BillinGlendaleCA
See tRump was right when he said “the Black’s like me”.
JPL
@Punchy: This.. I wish your comment would get more attention.
They’d answer that in the same poll.
Josie
@Wagon: I noticed in the news coverage yesterday that Hillary is tying all the Republican candidates to Trump’s rhetoric. She was fairly specific about it – comparing their stances to Trump’s. The MSM is just not giving her arguments wider play. Color me surprised.
peach flavored shampoo
@BillinGlendaleCA: Don Black dons the white to help the whites bully the Blacks. It’s all black and white with the Colored folk.
WereBear
Exactly! And they don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, which is the most cement-headed part of this garden dig.
JPL
According to Roberts, the fact that a black was elected President means there is no racism. BTW what unique perspectives do minorities bring to the conversation anyway.
Bartholomew
@Wagon: I really wish the talking heads and the Democratic Presidential candidates would start saying that Trump IS the GOP. He’s not some breakaway faction. He is the GOP.
I agree with Wagon! The idea Trump is an insurgent outsider is false. This nation defeated the corporatist Axis Right in WWII, so it’s strange to have them strutting around on US soil, but that aside, Trump IS the GOP. The GOP is itself unAmerican. They posit a new nation, not a revival.
Sometimes you have to say what everyone knows, loudly and clearly. And yes, even to our relatives and associates who are fueling the fire.
debbie
@rikyrah:
People are idiots about everything. Years ago, I did graphic design and editing for the local PP. An article I worked on pointed out the necessity of sex education by listing some of the myths of sex. One misconception (ha!) was that having sex standing up guaranteed you wouldn’t get pregnant.
Willful or not, we’re a stupid species.
bystander
When Cruz promises that if he is POTUS, he will carpetbomb an undetermined expanse of the ME and we will all find out if he can make sand glow, isn’t he signaling he would nuke the ME? Isn’t that what these rwns really want? All out nuclear holocaust?
The MSM should have been completely discredited after the irresponsible fearmongering they did over Ebola. This latest professional malfeasance is just icing on the cake.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Botsplainer: The species you’re looking for.is TPC, for True Principled Conservative. This amazing animal* can be found on NPR message boards insisting it abhors ex-friends who became racists, crying at the loss of dignity and liberty the ACA stripped from us all, and insisting the Tea Party started to make waves before anyone heard the name “Obama”.
*Do your best David Attenborough here.
Botsplainer
On the plus side, if the country doesn’t go all in for fascism, this could be the golden opportunity to permanently stain the noun “conservative”.
rikyrah
They peddle in it. Don’t you remember the color charts?
……………..
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Living in Fear
No one does a take-down better than Charles Pierce. Yesterday he took aim at a discussion on Morning Joe (he calls the hosts “Squint and the Meat Puppet”). Apparently while pontificating about President Obama’s “tepid” response to the events in Paris and San Bernardino, the group engaged in some pearl-clutching about how the President’s response had failed to calm their children’s fears about terrorism. Pierce’s point was that “it is the height of journalistic cowardice to attack the president behind your children.” By way of contrast, he offered this:
Every day, there are kids on the west side of Chicago who go to school with gunfire in the background. There are kids in the Mississippi Delta who go to school hungry, and who are sick with preventable diseases. There are kids in Appalachia who are sick because good dental care is unavailable to them. There are kids in Israel, and on the West Bank, in Somalia, and all over the world who get up every day with actual war being made all around them.The juxtaposition of the pundit’s “journalistic cowardice” with children who actually suffer from fear and deprivation every day reminded me of a Charles Barkley skit on SNL a few years ago about “White People Problems.” I don’t mean to make light of the pain and suffering felt by the loved ones of those killed and injured in Paris and San Bernardino. But perhaps the hosts and guests on Morning Joe could point out to their children that they are no more likely to be killed by a terrorist than they are to be crushed to death by collapsing furniture.
Seriously, this fear-mongering has gotten out of control.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/12/living-in-fear.html
Botsplainer
@ThresherK (GPad):
SFAW
But Zandar! Richard Byrd was in the KKK. So BOTH SIDES DO IT!
And YOU are the racist for calling out the racism of those fine, upstanding Republicans. (Although walling-out Muslims is not technically “racism.”)
gene108
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think the Republican Party was never this overtly racist. The Republican Party may not have been as inviting to minorities as the Democratic Party, but they did not got out of the way to alienate minorities, like they are doing now with Trump as the standard bearer.
The Republican Establishment campaigned against David Duke twenty-five years ago. They ran away from Pat Buchanan in 1992.
There were even people in power, who tried to make it appear more inclusive.
George Bush, Jr tried to move it away from race baiting, at some level and to be more inclusive.
He appointed the first Latino AG, the first African-American Secretary of State and first female African-American Secretary of State and probably other firsts for minorities in this country holding positions of power in the Executive branch.
He tried to make the Republican Party more appealing to Latinos by supporting immigration reform, only to be undercut by his own Party, when his Party realized he was covered in loser stink and would hurt them politically.
It’s really is a big shift how openly racist the Republican Party has become in 2015 and how there’s so much racism that was muted, before Obama got elected and the racists just couldn’t sit quietly by and had to “take their country back”.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Whether it’s Trump or Hitlary, BOTH SIDES ARE FASCISTS. (Only thing we’re missing is Nader, to explain it all to us.)
rikyrah
I will not link to Fox, but here’s their latest poll results.
And, I will continue to say this…
THIS IS WHO THEY ARE!
The problem is NOT Donald Trump. The problem for the GOP is that even if he is a Manchurian Candidate for Hillary…..
He is speaking the language of NOT a ‘sliver’ of the GOP..
But the GOP MAINSTREAM…
Because….say it with me..
THIS IS WHO THEY ARE.
……………………………………………………………………..
Fox News has released the results of a new survey of Republican primary voters in South Carolina, which shows Trump with 35% support, far ahead of Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, who are each about 20 points behind the frontrunner.
…………………………………………..
The poll, released Wednesday, was conducted Saturday through Tuesday evenings. Trump made provocative remarks Monday about barring Muslims from entering the United States.
It looks like his comments help him in South Carolina. Support for Trump increased eight points after his statement — from 30 percent the first two nights vs. 38 percent the last two nights.
Bobby Thomson
@Wagon: at least one candidate is.
rikyrah
@gene108:
Ronald Reagan, born and raised in the Midwest, who was the two-term Governor of California, began his Presidential Campaign in…
PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI.
Philadelphia, Mississippi has only one claim to fame…
the MURDERS OF SCHWERNER, CHANEY, GOODMAN.
That’s it.
THAT is a dogwhistle.
Maybe you didn’t see it.
But, my mother, born and raised in the Police State known as Jim Crow Mississippi,
understood quite clearly.
It’s the SOUTHERN STRATEGY.
I have said all along, that their problem with Trump is NOT his racism.
It’s because he has deviated from Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles.
THAT is their problem.
But, for my Black self: I don’t give a shyt if you talk in dogwhistles, or the pure rawness of what Trump is peddling in right now.
There IS no difference to me. Never has been.
When Trump was BIRTHER-IN-CHIEF…
what was that, if not rooted in nothing but Pure-D-Racism?
THIS is who the GOP is.
And, has been 1964.
JPL
If Trump drops out, his support goes to Cruz, imo. Then you are close to 50 percent. We are in a strange position, because Cruz is far worse.
JPL
@rikyrah: Reagan captured the rest of the south.
ruemara
I have to admit, after Scalia & Roberts’ comments yesterday; Ted Cruz’ support for the plan to save us childish black people from ourselves, I’m so repulsed by America. It’s not just the candidates, it’s their supporters. Its stupid white people who can’t deal with the idea of structural racism and white privilege. This election is heartbreaking.
Germy
@Mr. Longform:
Yes, I’ve often had that weird feeling. So I’m not the only one!
JPL
@ruemara: I’m white and I’m disgusted and scared.
amk
apartheid amurka.
mission accomplished?
GregB
Conservatives desperately need to win this next election so that they can replace soon to retire Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with a like minded jurist. Perhaps Cliven Bundy, David Duke or the reanimated cadaver of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Germy
a poem by Langston Hughes:
bemused
@Botsplainer:
Now when you mention your mother, I have an instant flashback to the photos of the bedroom in your parents home. I can’t unremember them.
Gimlet
Now that the issues are out there, they aren’t going away after the election even if the Republican loses. Conservatives control the media and the message. For that matter, they run the government even when they are not the majority in Congress or the President.
Botsplainer
He’s pushing boundaries and shoving the rest rightward to match the primary base.
He could give a speech with diatribes expressly stating “n***ers, sp*cs and sl**ts” and get a poll bump.
father pussbucket
Apparently, Trump is too much for Netanyahu.
Platypus
I’m almost hoping tRump will win the GOP nomination, just so we can crush him and all of his coat-tail-riders in the general election. Yeah, I know, there might actually be enough racist assholes to elect him. That’s why I said almost.
Republicans: making America great again, just like Daesh is making the caliphate great again. Two sides of the same coin.
Zandar
@ruemara:
Can’t deal, won’t deal, avoid, scream, yell, accuse, blame, deflect, absolve, justify and cajole.
And oh yeah, on occasion kill.
El Caganer
Not everybody seems to be feeling the Trumpaliciousness: http://samirchopra.com/2015/12/10/donald-trumps-allies-our-craven-media-and-our-apathy/
HRA
This is the most impossible election campaign for president that I have ever seen. People are so determined in their beliefs when in fact some of them are not true. They pin one party as being racist and ignore the truth of both parties having racists.
Donald Trump was a Democrat and may still be a closet one for this period of electioneering. How hard was it for him to study the makeup of the Republican party and see a path to come out ahead above all of the rest of the candidates? As to the makeup of his followers, it’s more than likely there are Ds in the crowds, too.
Where is the DNC? Except for Bernie Sanders, where are the other candidates?
Chances are greater rather than lesser of any Democrat president having an R majority Congress. Do you really believe that president will be able to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court?
ThresherK
@Botsplainer: Yep.
“Obama will do anything to win!” is said in one tone, reserved for Dems. Quite the different intonation than “George W. Bush will do anything to win!”.
Plus (and I’m stealing from my wife, who has counseled abuse victims) isn’t “he doesn’t really mean it” a favored excuse of those in denial?
debbie
@JPL:
Me too, and not just about racism. I’m listening to Glenn Beck’s minions demeaning climate change. They say that while climate change may be “widely accepted,” that doesn’t make it true. I’d love to ask them, “The existence of God is widely accepted, but does that make it true?” Their heads would explode.
debbie
@ThresherK:
Or “you have to understand….”
oldgold
The GOP bosses and their pumpers are not outraged at T-Rump’s positions. Rather, they are outraged that he has exposed what their party is truly about.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: I was trying to figure out how to word my reply, but then I saw the comment from jJPL and she said just what I feel.
Platypus
@HRA How many openly racist/white-supremacist groups are promoting any Democrat candidate, or using any in their own recruiting? Yes, I’m sure there are a few racists on that side of the aisle too, but that doesn’t make them equivalent to the GOP by a long shot. That’s a feeble attempt at tu quoque. The Republicans practically own the KKK demographic, so it’s their leaders who bear the most blame for shifting the Overton window to the point where otherwise sane people feel encouraged to go all Brownshirt.
Mike in NC
Trump’s new slogan: “If you’re not white, you’re not right”.
Hoodie
@gene108: Maybe, but a lot of those earlier outreach efforts were somewhat predicated on minorities behaving subserviently or otherwise within prescribed bounds so they’re either kind of like white people (i.e., the Sammy Davis acceptable black friend or Bill Cosby scolding blacks about personal responsibility) or meet some other acceptable role, such as pastor or soldier. In either case, never in charge. The possible exception was Colin Powell, but even he got blowback when he stepped out of bounds and endorsed Obama. The racism was always there, it just became open and hostile when Obama became president and they were finally faced with a nCLANG! in charge. The reaction to Obama is particularly interesting, because he strongly exhibits the type of behavior they ostensibly view as ideal, such as a stable nuclear family, well-dressed, Harvard educated, etc.. Nevertheless, they had no problem caricaturing him as an African witch doctor, Black Panther, or velvet-wearing pimp or some other stereotype of “unacceptable” black behavior. The ability to so easily devolve to such views of someone who is so clearly not any of those things tells me that those racist beliefs have been internalized for a long time and just papered over.
bemused
@ThresherK:
That’s a perfect denial analogy.
Breezeblock
Shouldn’t Don Black change his name to Don “REALLY!” White?
JPL
@Hoodie: Before George W. Bush announced for President there was a rumor that Powell was considering a run. Instantly an article came out, that his wife suffered from depression and took medication. I don’t know if that’s true but it was a warning.
schrodinger's cat
I have had it with the both siderists. They annoy much more than even Trump supporters. If you think both sides are equally at fault, and your principled stand is not voting, you are too stupid to live.
/rant over
ETA: Pissed because of my friend who wrote me an email about how both Trump and Hillary are the two sides of the same coin.
Lord Baldrick
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Trump:
“Electing him would be like asking the clown at a child’s birthday party to start juggling chainsaws.”
Botsplainer
This was at LGM, and indicative of how bad things have gotten. Kaufman was at a gas station, listening to something from Hamilton loudly, and this exchange happened:
Bill Arnold
@rikyrah:
Here’s a link to the PPP poll with the Islam should be legal or illegal question:
PPP_Release_NC_120815
1,214 voters from December 5th to 7th
The Golux
I feel sorry for Trump supporters; it must be difficult to decide each morning what to wear: brown shirt, black shirt or white sheet.
HRA
@Platypus:
It is not a few who are also racist in the D party. I finished growing up in the area called over the bridge in the northern small city where the Blacks were “allowed” to live. Where they were not allowed or safe to step over the other side of the bridge. Where if they were going to finish their education, they had to go to the high school in that area. Most of them quit school. I could go on forever on this subject of how a predominantly Democrat city still keeps Blacks out of the other side of the bridge.
Botsplainer
@HRA:
BOTH SIDES!!!
Botsplainer
@HRA:
Fuck off and go die over the equivalencism you’re spouting.
No offense.
schrodinger's cat
@HRA: You lost me at Democrat city.
PghMike4
I don’t believe Trump would get 45% of the popular vote. Remember, the type of racists who’d support him have already self-selected into the Republican party, and I’m not sure he gets more than 50-60% of the Republicans. I suspect you’d see a fairly large number of moderate Republicans just not voting.
I hope I’m not wrong :-)
Hoodie
@JPL: A Powell run might not have revealed these fissures. My guess is that the establishment would not have had any problems with Powell as a GOP candidate, seeing him as beholden to them, but the rank and file may have been another matter. However, I think he might have passed in that role because he wouldn’t have been a Democrat, which is different from what he did in endorsing Obama (an unforgiveable betrayal). What really pisses them off are people who don’t pay proper obeisance to the overwhelmingly white power structure of the GOP, and that goes doubly for minorities, who have to be more catholic than the pope. They can easily make exceptions and be chummy with a lot of white Dems, even liberals. Those are just misguided family members, after all.
Paul in KY
@Mr. Longform: I sure felt that way back in 2000. Understand how you feel.
boatboy_srq
@Bartholomew: as rikyrah (and some of the rest of us) have pointed out fairly regularly, the key distinction between tRump and the rest of the GOTea is that tRump isn’t buying into the Atwateresque dogwhistle. What is making the GOTea soil their underwear over tRump is that all the decades of doublespeak – deliberate doublespeak so that they can sound “measured,” “reasonable,” “decent” or whatever else – has bought them precisely nothing. tRump is running roughshod over the GOTea establishment, and the last tissue of pretense that wingnuts like King, Bachmann and Gohmert are exceptions to the GOTea rule has been torn completely through.
More popcorn, please.
ThresherK
@debbie:
@bemused: To be honest, it also borrows from Driftglass. “Who wants pancakes?” is a shortcut he uses; it’s the words of a battered spouse talking to the kids after denying and covering up the abuse she’s suffered.
There’s plenty of denialism going on in the MSM, of course. They can’t admit to this or address it.
shell
@Wagon: Hillary said something similar yesterday , at least about the roster of the other GOP candidates.
**********
Oh CNN, honestly? They actually have a five day countdown on their screen to the next Rep. debate. And commercials for said debacle that look like promos for a WWW match. Trump has been an early Christmas present for them!
ThresherK
@schrodinger’s cat: Yep. Someone’s gonna FalseEquivalent on that tangent, they gotta blend in better than the word “Democrat” as adjective dogwhistle.
Bubblegum Tate
This was my morning guffaw: Some wingnuts were attempting to make sense of Trump without having to recognize the obvious (i.e. what Zandar’s pointed out in this post). They, of course, spun it as all Obamas fault–“Obama hasn’t been leading with leadership because he’s too weak to be a leader even though he’s somehow also been a ruthless, fascist tyrant!”–but one commenter said this without any apparent understanding that he’s speaking about, well, himself and his fellow conservatives:
Indeed it is a look at the psyche of a substantial portion of the population. Indeed it is.
Germy
This animated gif of Trump is disturbing.
Botsplainer
Best case scenario, minorities, women and moderates turn out in force for Shrillary, flip all of Congress and she turns out to be the tyrant they’ve long said she is.
FEMA camps for old whites!
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: We understood it back when it happened. That was a LOUD dog whistle.
shell
@JPL: The difference is, Im not sure Trump believes all the shit he’s shoveling, but Cruz is just as big an opportunist but more a true believer.
Paul in KY
@ruemara: There’s a lot of white people who I think are complete shits.
boatboy_srq
What kinder, gentler angle can you possibly be discussing? The only distinction between tRump and Cruz is that Cruz uses longer words to describe far more wingnutty thoughts; Carson differs in showing signs he huffed his anaesthetists’ product a few too many times; and Rubio is stepping on his well-watered tongue too often to be taken seriously. If anything, tRump is
more moderateless extreme than most of the field: at least some of his policies aren’t completely b#tsh!t crazy, and his ire is aimed at the 1% as much as anyone else – and he’s the only Teahadi aiming that high in a field compelled to revere Job Creators™ as something slightly less divine than Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus.bemused
@ThresherK:
MSM format is basically “reality” tv now.
JPL
@Hoodie: Someone did write an article about his wife. That part is true. He received a clear warning that his family would be part of the campaign.
I simply don’t know if she takes any medication. The article came out, the same day as a NYTimes article saying he was considering a run. This was 1999 or 2000…
boatboy_srq
@father pussbucket: It says something when the Teahadi is too much for Likud, no?
boatboy_srq
@ThresherK:
That certainly worked in FL for the Voldemort vote. At least until that segment discovered that he really did mean it.
Chyron HR
@HRA:
Did that make sense when the voices in your head told you to say it?
JPL
Wish me luck.. I’m on my way to lunch with a person who listens to Fox news.
ThresherK
@Germy: As disturbing as this idea?
boatboy_srq
@JPL: Be sure to order the Prozac with the nitroglycerine chaser… although I understand the earplugs are good in a pinch.
Peale
@HRA:
Ummm. Yes. I think we have to take a chance that the Republicans are not going to go full on ballistic and allow a supreme court vacancy. They may. They may also demand that Hillary or Bernie appoint the President of the Federalist Society to the bench. They may also just refuse to approve anyone she nominates for any reason at all. But I’m willing to take the risk that they won’t do that so it will matter that she wins.
maya
@Botsplainer:
Relax. They’ll have continuous Bingo.
Germy
@ThresherK: no
Platypus
A Democrat president might have trouble getting a decent Supreme Court nominee confirmed, but that’s still better than having a Republican president do the nominating. Better an empty seat than Son of Scalia.
catclub
@Punchy:
That may be what is asked, but they hear is ‘religious freedom for Christians like me’.
gvg
I am on edge for this election. I don’t think there is any chance any of these rabid republicans can win the general but things could go wrong and one of them will get the GOP nomination. All of them are so bad I can’t even rank them.
Hillary should crush them, but she could die while campaigning or have health issues or Bill could which would impact her. There will be some exagerated hysterical crisis just before the election like Ebola and maybe it will fool enough people. I am not as sure Sanders or O’Malley would crush these fools so I am worried.
We also really need a lot of seats in Congress so Hillary can get something done. Granted her veto pen will prevent most disasters, but we have spent the last 6 years relying on Obama’s veto’s and a lot more that should be done has piled up. It was better when Obama had a majority (barely) and it would be best if Hillary did too.
Even if Congress won’t allow her picks for supreme court, if she holds out and doesn’t fill them, its better than what the GOP would nominate. The next census is coming closer and that will be pretty important too.
catclub
@boatboy_srq:
If ‘precisely nothing’ means, Control of the House of Reps, the Senate, and most state houses.
cmorenc
@Josie:
There’s actually a strong upside to attention on Hillary, Bernie and the democrats being displaced momentarily out of the media spotlight by the bigotry in the GOP that Trump has put so prominently on display. When Clinton last had media focus, she had freshly handed Trey Gowdy and the House GOP Benghazi/email inquisitors their ass in the eyes of everyone but the rabid right. Trump has now drained not only much of the oxygen from other GOP presidential candidates, but all the oxygen that might otherwise be available to sustain their smear campaigns against Clinton, or to attempt to start new ones.
When your opponents busy are shooting themselves in the foot, get out of their way.
catclub
@gene108:
I think that research showing life expectancy for middle class whites not increasing, combined with 45 years of stagnant real wage growth, is taking it subconscious toll.
Jeremy Grantham has words on that.
catclub
@ThresherK (GPad):
They were loudly opposed to all the money Bush was spending on wars, too.
boatboy_srq
@catclub: Until this cycle you would be correct. Although Birtherism and and the Teahad make 2010/12/14 questionable.
This time around, though, the establishment was prepared for a HEB!/Cruz/Rubio/Christie race, with HEB! being the favored candidate. That has not happened. The people who should be leading the GOTea pack are, instead, trailing. And no amount of dogwhistled equivalents to tRump’s and Carson’s blatant wingnutsery seems to move the dial in the direction the party leadership prefers.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
This is crucial to my point. For all that time, GOP policies and especially GOP messaging were rooted in racism. Only bigotry made their positions consistent. But they worked hard to convince everyone, including themselves, that they weren’t bigots. Trump is taking an axe to decades of denial, and it makes the mask-wearers angry.
cmorenc
@Botsplainer: OLD WHITE MAN was racist, but there’s lots of definitely not-racist whites who cannot stand hip-hop, such as me. Nails on a chalkboard. OTOH I can happily listen to hard-core blues music by black artists all day. I might ask someone blaring hip-hop music at high-decibel levels to turn it down, but without using any racially pejorative words – cause it’s about someone playing inconsiderately loud noise, not someone being black to me. Play any genre at annoyingly loud volumes and I would ask you to turn it down please.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
50% of North Carolina Republicans don’t believe in the foundational philosophy of America AT ALL. Or more, it’s hard to tell from the numbers you provide… could be close to 90% of Republicans.
I really hate Red states, esp TX. There are some astonishingly right wing people out west.
People are just not very friendly if you have a ponytail and beard, or especially some Obama bumper stickers. We don’t have those any more, the vehicles we had in 2008 and 2012 are gone. One wrecked and one traded in. We really only got one thumbs down in AZ from a biker, which was negative but polite, and one middle finger in Ohio from a businessman looking fellow in the back of a Chrysler. Not as polite as an AZ biker, what can you say?
Where would they have gotten spare parts if Obama had not saved the American auto industry? Rhetorical question, of course.
VFX Lurker
@ruemara:
I am a white person. I tell you now that the Democratic Party can run a slice of toast in the general election next year, and I will vote for that slice of toast against its Republican opponent.
scav
@catclub: Expand a little. Its not merely Religious Freedom for Christians like me, it’s also the Religious Freedom that trumps obeying the law if you feel like it, and moreover licenses the freedom and right to impose your religious prescriptions on others, no matter their personal beliefs. All the Freedoms, All of the time, is theirs, just like it’s their country. Theirs Theirs Theirs!
burnspbesq
In a post at Balkinization this morning, Gerry Magliocca referred to Cruz as Trump’s Renfield. I am so stealing that.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
I think the vast majority of birtherism and strange untrue myths about the Obama presidency are based in outright hatred of all who aren’t pure white all the way back to the founding of the Confederacy.
Sad, but true, when we were children (in the 1950s and 1960s) many Republicans were socially liberal, against Jim Crow and segregation, for example. Not all, but many.
I think now we see that the vast majority of current Republicans are either outright racists, or don’t mind bitter racist hatred very much at all.
It is a plain and obvious fact, and the only people upset by it are Democrats, so ir doesn’t matter much at all. Especially to the right-wing media, which is most of it. After all, Democrats are anti-American, just ask a Republican racist!
gene108
@Hoodie:
I disagree.
There were racists, who voted Republican. There were also racists, who voted for Democrats.
Democrats did not start to lose control of the South, at the state and local level, until Gingrich Revolution of the 1990’s and even then the take over of the South did not happen until the early years of the Bush, Jr. Administration.
Maybe old habits die hard and people, who voted Democrat for generations had a hard time changing or the fact is a lot of Democrats down played and skirted around Civil Rights issues to appeal to the white voter.
But by the 21st Century, both Democrats and Republicans had some level of commitment to promoting minorities and women to positions of power. Bill Clinton had a lot of firsts in this regards, with the first women at ‘x’ position or minority at ‘y’ position and Bush, Jr. also tried to be inclusive.
A Secretary of State or Attorney General are not subservient positions, in my opinion and neither is a Federal court judge, in the case of Janet Rogers Brown.
I did not realize there was so much racism waiting to rush to the surface, but the difference is and I guess most folks here disagree with me, is that the Republican Party did not so openly push discriminatory policies, especially at the Presidential level.
And by the time of Bush, Jr. there was an actual attempt by a sitting Republican President to increase the diversity within the Republican Party.
Bush, Jr. in 2000 and 2004 did not run on racial dog whistles (yes, his campaign ratfucked McCain in South Carolina, but that was a one-off incident, in what was an otherwise actual attempt to avoid the Southern Strategy as much as possible). He replaced racial dog whistles with “restoring integrity to the White House” and “restoring military readiness”, in 2000 and in 2004 with fear caused by 9/11/01.
I disagree that Obama represents their ideal.
The Republican Party has long run against the idea of “pointed headed academic elites” telling “real Americans” what’s good for them, such as “eat your vegetables”. Being a college professor and lawyer is sort of against what Republicans want to appear to stand for as they represent “real Americans”.
There’s a reason Harvard and Yale educated Presidential candidate, George W. Bush, in 2000 portrayed himself as a good old boy rancher driving around his ranch in his pick up truck and clearing brush.
Elie
While it is important to talk about the “power of Trump” and how he is just reflecting the entirety of the Republican Party and also, the hollow core of hate at the heart of America — we must be careful not to give away all our power — the power of still the majority of Americans in the process. This ends up inflaming us to also be at war with “them” and further exacerbates the schism already well along. Trump is the Isis of our country and if we are not thoughtful about our actions and messaging to each other, we will achieve the desired goal of fracturing the American people. We should not further break what is already clearly damaged. We have to find a positive path forward for ourselves and this country or alls we will be heading for is a bench clearing brawl.
Trump’s hatred has vacated a space that should eventually be used by a wise candidate to build people and their hope back up. Trump offers nothing but hatred and fear and at the end of the day, you don’t build from that. Yes, the fear and hatred resonate for a time, but soon enough the need is and will be to build and move forward. Naturally, I am hoping that the Democrats are able to articulate a strength and preparadness to help Americans deal with their fear, but also to occupy this now vacated space of the positive and of hope. Is it risky, perhaps a difficult rope to walk? Somewhat– but it is the path through which we can find the energy to counter what is happening right now… At least that is what I truly believe.
Omnes Omnibus
@HRA: The three Dem candidates have roundly condemned the racist statements by Trump and the other GOPers. If youvhaven’t seen it, blame the MSM. HRC has even put out a little game where you can guess if an outrageous statement was made by Trump or one of the other creeps.
Gimlet
Did Scalia have any thoughts on white legacy admissions like Dubya being better off at “a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.”
Calouste
@J R in WV:
FTFY
hoodie
@gene108: Agree that there was no shortage of the anti-intellectual stuff, but that’s not the form a lot of the opposition to Obama took. No, it was more who is he? where is the birth certificate? kind of stuff that you need to really pump up the base. In addition, the pointy-headed liberal stuff also has a racial dimension, as it’s associated with things like multicultural studies and schools of social work that devise programs that are seen as special treatment for minorities. I won’t dispute that some Republicans legitimately wanted outreach, e.g., Bush seemed to have a genuine desire to outreach to the hispanic community, but a lot of stuff the Bush admin did was more directed to non-Republicans or to moderate Republicans to let them people feel good about themselves without any serious threat to their status. And, as can be seen in the failure of his brother to break 5%, the rank and file didn’t much care for that outreach stuff.
gene108
@Frankensteinbeck:
I don’t think bigotry made their positions consistent. I think a lot of Republicans were indifferent, with regards to race. They wanted to grab more money and were not particularly bothered, who got hurt by it.
The trick of the post-Reagan Republican Party was to meld the Fundie racists to support the indifferent business types.
A lot of the demise of manufacturing jobs, for example, started under Reagan, because the Reagan Administration green-lighted a bunch of M&A activity that no one on Wall Street ever expected to be approved. And once those flood gates opened corporate culture changed, as investors could target companies for hostile take overs and beginning of down sizing and out sourcing started in earnest.
I don’t think Michael Milken was thinking how he could hurt the blacks more than the whites, when he was pushing junk bonds to finance hostile take overs.
Also to attribute everything to a black-and-white view of racism undermines how complex the racial issues in this country have been and continue to be. For example, Mitch McConnell is married to a Elaine Chao, and if racial resentment was all that mattered a Republican running against him would point out how he’s a “race traitor”, but that doesn’t seem to matter to voters in Kentucky much at all.
I think saying everything Republicans have done over the last 35 years boils down to racism and bigotry is trying to answer a nuanced issue about American politics with a one-size fits all answer that doesn’t always work.
Racism has been an issue, but I don’t think it was the driving force of the business friendly decisions Republicans have been making. There are other things driving the agenda besides race, such as greed.
randy khan
@debbie: I remember when I took Biology 101 in college and the professor spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time on human reproduction. Then I realized that she was trying to cram all the sex education that hadn’t been given to the freshman class in middle school and high school into the middle of a survey course. I liked her already, but I liked her even more after that.
And, BTW, one of the things she took on was the myth about not getting pregnant when you have sex standing up, although apparently statistically it actually is somewhat less likely to result in a pregnancy than other positions.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Awesome.
Tom The First
This is a great read. A guy from the New Yorker happened to be working on a story on white supremacists when Trump broke out in the Republican race this summer.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated
Archon
@gene108:
I think the more salient question regarding the Republican Party is how were they able to constantly put together coalitions that got close to or exceeded an electoral majority?
In that question I think it’s impossible to avoid the idea that racism is the primer holding the Republican coalition together.
DCrefugee
@gene108:
I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree, at least somewhat. I think the racism and bigotry manifests itself in a “how dare they think they’re better than me. I’ll show them” way. My favorite wingnut friend is this way — can’t abide by the idea that someone of color, or of the wrong religion, is somehow better than he is. He completely ignores that the whole idea of someone being “better” or “worse” than he is makes him a bigot. He also ignores the idea it’s irrelevant to anything.
He has a deep inferiority complex manifesting itself primarily as racism and bigotry. Greed and the other manifestations are but figleaves.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
apologies if somebody already flagged this, but Dave Weigel attended Lutz focus group of Trump supporters. All voted for Romney, and a majority were either birthers or Obama’s-a-secret-Moose-lim troothers. And this guy, who if anybody saw fit to argue with him, Weigel didn’t mention it:
the group also included a former mayor of Waukasha Wisconsin, a city of (google tells me) more than 70,000 people
Elie
@Archon:
I would broaden it to bigotry — different types of sensitivity and aversion to “the other”. Some of it is racism but other identity issues such as ethnicity, sometimes even class, play a role. Its pretty easy to trigger in people when they are going through hard times, but it has limited effectiveness for stable governance and herein lies the rub that even the most bigoted of the Republican leadership understands. Once you have “your people” energized for war with others, whether here or anywhere, that is all they are ready to do and you won’t be doing much else. While they may be racists and ideologues, not thinking most of them want the level of disruption that could result from uncontrolled conflict. And “uncontrolled conflict” is the potential that Trump is inflaming and would loose into our country.
Trump is not in control of his people. That is the real danger here. He is inflaming them, bringing out the beast and creating possible mob mentality — extremely dangerous and the Republican leadership and the stupid media are finally “getting” it. Of course, what to do about it is something else and complicating it may be that Trump himself has such a huge ego he may not realize that its not him that is control. THEY are in control — they made HIM — not the other way around. He is the marionette to their wishes and if he stops, they may not, but may advance other leaders. We see a little of that in the increased boldness and identity of the White Supremacists and KKK. They are lining themselves up to draft off of his momentum but also to step in if he falters, to some extent. Again, Trump opened up a Pandora’s box of dark energy and I am not at all clear that he has mastery of what he has started. At this point, it is also unclear whether anyone in the Republican Party can do much to steer this thing at all — my guess is not, since Trump disrupted the relationship between his followers and the rest of the Party.
As I said upstring, our side has power, and we must use our energy and ability to see wisely for not only our good — oddly, we must protect even those who are raging right now — We are the keys to the ongoing success and stability of our system. We must believe, be positive, bring our energy and focus to do what will be necessary.
Botsplainer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fucking flag pins and chain emails. Christ on a stick, I hate my fellow white people.
Botsplainer
Your daily display of white Southerners being totally not racist.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/citadel-military-college-cadets-caught-wearing-kkk-hoods-while-singing-christmas-carols/
Because Jesus. Now wish me a Merry Christmas, goddammit!!!!!!
Botsplainer
Your daily display of white Southerners being totally not racist.
Because Jesus. Now wish me a Merry Christmas, goddammit!!!!!!
bemused
@Botsplainer:
It’s all symbolism over substance with these people.
Botsplainer
@bemused:
Garry Trudeau really had that flag pin stuff nailed 10-15 years ago in Doonesbury, didn’t he?
WereBear
I remind myself that they are this stupid because they can be. Works like that when your way is smoothed.
Like Dubya. Jiminy Christmas, on brain power alone he’d be, at best, a successful insurance salesman.
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: A lot of those you mention were Democrats back pre-civil rights.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bemused: and 90% of that symbolism is fantasy.
WereBear
‘Cuz they’d get shot?
a different chris
@The Golux: The best thing about a meshback cap is that it goes with anything.
Howlin Wolfe
@Zandar: Don’t forget “project” in that list of verbs.
Howlin Wolfe
@HRA: This supports your claim how?
bemused
@Botsplainer:
Rats, I can’t remember that.
The print is pond green or my eyes are worse than I thought.
raven
Van Morrison – Bein’ Green
bemused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fantasy over facts any day. Should make up bumper stickers and surreptitiously slap them over the most ridiculous rightwingers’ stickers.
Paul in KY
@gene108: The knowledgeable voters in KY know that she was a big water-carrier for Reagan. Also, that kind of racist stuff can/will only happen in a Repub primary. Democratic nominee can’t really denounce the Turtle being married to a furriner.
Capri
@Wagon: I think they are starting to say that. Last night, one of the talking heads on The Last Word compared Trump’s goal to ban muslims to the 38 GOP gov.s who are trying to prevent Syrian refugees from coming into their states. Those actions are pretty close together.
Paul in KY
@DCrefugee: He will actually admit that they are ;’better’ than him & still seeks to screw them or are you making an objective judgment that various minority people discussed are better?
jl
“darker than a paper bag”?
Not sure that is right. Plenty of more or less paper bag toned groups (on average) that might have ‘problems’.
Sure, Trump has great friends, fantastic people, good smart wonderful individuals in all groups from paler than paper bag to ebony.
But, you know, if a group has ‘problems’, you gotta get serious about some whoop ass.
Not xenophobic bigoted or racist at all, Trump will assure us. Or wrong or immoral or counterproductive or road to disaster at all, because Trump is a genius and he knows what to do. Don’t worry exactly how it can be done in any conceivable world related to our reality, or what the blowback will be, Trump will put his great mind and many of the greatest most terrific people on it. And do deals. Many deals. Great deals.
burnspbesq
@Gimlet:
Mark Graber beat you to it.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2015/12/lesser-schools.html
Gimlet
LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-scalia-affirmativeaction-supremecourt-20151209-story.html
Far from being racist, that proposition is an acknowledgment of racial inequality — and it’s central to the argument for racial preferences. Those preferences wouldn’t be necessary if applicants from all racial and ethnic groups possessed exactly the same paper credentials.
It’s silly for advocates of affirmative action to dissemble about this. And it’s equally silly to suggest that Scalia was being racist when he clumsily invoked the mismatch theory.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
As I pointed out yesterday, one of those black scientists who couldn’t hack it at University of Texas was none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson, who transferred to Columbia when his UT dissertation committee was dissolved.
Really, Justice Scalia, you’re going to claim that Dr. Tyson couldn’t deal with the tough academics of UT, so he attended lesser schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia instead?
DCrefugee
@Paul in KY: Presuming you’re asking about the wingnut friend, he won’t acknowledge anyone except perhaps a white person is better than him. I’m not making any “objective judgment that various minority people discussed are better.” I think the premise of one person or one group somehow being better than another is faulty on its face:
Who gets to decide? Trump? Me? My wingnut friend? You? What criteria?
The whole concept is broken. But it’s a fundamental premise of racism/bigotry…which logically means racism/bigotry are broken.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In reality, American Muslims have raised almost $100,000 to help the families of the murder victims in San Bernardino. But, of course, verifiable facts will never win a conservative the way a comforting fiction will.
Bill Arnold
I can’t shake the thought that D Trump is a highbrow version of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in Idiocracy.
Does anyone else have this problem?
(No, really; I don’t want to think of him in this way.)
catclub
@Tom The First:
From the New Yorker article.
Of course, that ‘partisan terms’ is carrying a lot of weight. There is no contradiction in calling for mass deportation and opposing cuts to Medicare.
jl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree with the columnist that bringing up the mismatch issue is not in itself racist, but IMHO, I think Scalia, Roberts and Alito are using a host of arguments that may not be racist per se in racist way to rationalize predetermined votes.
The core issue is if rather arbitrary paper credentials that supposedly measure qualification (that may have inherent racial biases) for getting into a school are any more or less biased than rather arbitrary wider set of credentials (that may have inherent racial biases).
What I think is racist and intellectually corrupt (or maybe clueless) is the idea that there can exist an objective race neutral set of criteria. The conservative justices seem to assume that there always is one and that is always one that favors non-Hispanic Whites, and I think that is racist, or corrupt, or ignorant or stupid. Or something else, whatever it is, it isn’t good. The columnist doesn’t explicitly address the issue, but I think he makes the same mistake.
I wonder why this case and the representation case were even accepted. The plaintiff for the affirmative action case actually was admitted, I understand, and wants a $100 fee back for some obscure lack of due process reason.
The representation case is even more bizarre, as emphasized when (I think) Ginsburg asked how the case could have any merit when women were counted before they were allowed to vote.
I think the reactionary corrupt partisans on the Supreme Court are taking very dubious cases to achieve predetermined ends. I know it won’t happen but I think Scalia, Alito, and Roberts and Thomas should be impeached convicted and removed from the court for malfeasance and corruption. But the way things are, they could sit up there and assert that one plus one equals three and they could keep their seats.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@randy khan: I
The mind boggles what that course is like in todays raised on the intertubes youth culture
Professor “No, contrary to what you all think, the typical woman isn’t hung like a race horse, have a cat ears and prefers other women as partners”
Brachiator
@DCrefugee:
I agree with you on this. This gets to the heart of bigotry for many racists.
I was watching an Los Angeles history program about black firefighters during the 1940s and 1950s. One black fireman had been an aviator during WW II. Had he been white, his white colleagues would have applauded him, asked about his exploits and travels. Instead, because he not only was a good fireman, but also a distinguished veteran, a group of white bigots were determined to humiliate him, to cut him down to size, to punish him for the affront of being and doing what would be considered standard patriotic duty for a white man.
jl
@jl: Oops. The plaintiff in the case was not admitted to UT, and wants her admission application fee back. But she was no more, and probably less qualified than the blacks who were admitted. In any case, it looks like she did not meet standard paper criteria for admission.
So, my opinion is not changed. This cases is very dubious and the racist reactionaries on the court accepted it to achieve narrow racist or partisan goals. It’s BS.
rikyrah
@Hoodie:
Bravo.
Mike J
Two thirds of Democrats want universal health care. Two thirds of Republicans want genocide.
Both sides do it. Not a dime’s worth of difference.
gvg
Well when they said the site might look a little off for awhile I did not imagine pond algae green font.
jl
@gvg: No, the site is ‘ginger’ today. Why do you hate the gingers?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@jl:
There was an article I linked to yesterday from the Atlantic that said that a lot of smart kids who are the first in their family to attend college are encouraged to attend lower-tier schools or community college, but it turns out that’s exactly the *wrong* advice. It turns out that not only could many of them get a free ride at an elite school based on their grades and test scores, those schools have a lot more resources dedicated to helping those underprivileged kids graduate.
So Scalia’s notion is actually a known recipe for failure, but people keep pushing it anyway because it *sounds* logical if you don’t know the facts.
gene108
@Bill Arnold:
President Camacho was earnest and sincere in wanting to make America better for all Americans. He was just limited in his effectiveness by circumstance.
I cannot say the same about Trump.
J R in WV
@HRA:
You say that people “ignore the truth of both parties having racists” and this is no doubt true. It is completely not the same as both parties being racist. The Democratic party has been institutionally working for integration and equal rights for all kinds of different groups (race, national origin, LBGT, religion, etc, etc) for decades.
At the same time, the Republican party has been completely racist and white supremacist since about 1968. And they get a little more racist every election cycle. Now Trump has gone full metal jacket crazy racist, hating on Muslims and African-Americans, hating on Latinos – fully crazed. When will they come with torches for Atheists and Agnostics and Jews?
Also, the next president will certainly be able to appoint members of her cabinet, federal executives, and judges and justices. Whether the Senate will confirm those appointments is a completely different question partly depending upon election results and partly depending upon the patriotism of the Senate Republicans. We already know there is no patriotism among Republicans, they are me first, party second, nation, FU nation. They have proven this over the past 7 years.
Destroying the nation because they are unhappy with election results was their last tactic, and they were quite public with those plans, which have not turned out quite like Senator McConnell hoped they would. After all, President Obama was handily reelected in 2012, wasn’t he? Much to McConnell’s dismay, their treasonous plot failed completely.
Cacti
Trump is a fascist.
Not in the pejorative sense, but in the honest to FSM, Benito Mussolini sense.
There’s no need to call the Tea Party a proto-fascist movement anymore. They’re the American Fascist Party, and I see no reason to refer to Trump and his supporters as other than what they are.
Betty Cracker
@J R in WV: Has the US Congress ever flatly denied a president the right to appoint a US Supreme Court justice? I know they’ve stymied attempts to appoint particular jurists, but have they ever let a vacancy go unfilled for a really long time? I can’t recall it if so.
If a Democrat wins in 2016 (FSM please!), we may get to find out just how far they’d go. My theory is the current crop of GOP assholes get away with malpractice like causing the credit downgrade, leaving key administrative and judicial vacancies unfilled, etc., because the public doesn’t pay that much attention.
But an unfilled vacancy on the SCOTUS, with Congress rejecting multiple candidates and making it clear they’re trying to run out the clock, might take on the aura of a hostage situation. I’d love to see those fuckers get the blowback they deserve. I’m not confident they would. But they might if they openly fucked with the SCOTUS.
D58826
The ‘moderate’ Rubio ;
Trump just says on national TV what the rest of these bigots whisper on conservative media outlets. The GOP rants about Sharia but by the time they enact all of the fundamentalist Christian exemptions we will be a long way toward rightwing Christian religious law.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Well, Congress did vote down FDR’s “court packing” plan. But by then a couple of justices had moved to the liberal side.
Of course, it ain’t just the Supreme Court. From a recent Mother Jones article:
You can add to this executive appointments blocked, also. In effect, the Republicans have done everything to prevent Obama from actually functioning as president.
But when you get Dubya or some other Republican, it’s always, “come on! Up or down vote. Vote my person in…. Compromise.”
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator: I’m too lazy to look up exactly how long they were vacant, but Richard Nixon went through two nominees rejected by the Senate to fill the Abe Fortas vacancy before Harry Blackmun was nominated and confirmed, and Ronald Reagan went through two nominees before getting Anthony Kennedy into the seat vacated by Lewis Powell (the first of those two failed nominees was the infamous Robert Bork.)
a different chris
@Mike J: But to the Republicans, universal health care is genocide – and not the good kind of genocide, like they would support, where the so-called ‘victims’ deserved it.
Paul in KY
@DCrefugee: If you knew a minority or non-minority that was a nicer, smarter, kinder person than your friend, I think you could make an objective judgment that that person was ‘better’.
You did answer my question, though. He doesn’t think any of them are ‘better’.