Exhibit A, from Trump’s “butler”*
Anthony Senecal told West Virginia newspaper The Martinsburg Journal on Friday—one day after a Secret Service agent called Senecal regarding online comments he made calling for Obama’s death—that he believes the President is a “traitor” who deserves to be killed.
…“I think they (Secret Service) wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to go there with a rifle,” Senecal told the newspaper. “I told them it was too far to drive…
The 84-year-old…told the newspaper that he stands by the comments he made in his Facebook posts.
And then, there’s this guy, who is actually (attempting) to stake a claim on Washington:
“Unfortunately, for seven and a half years this animal we call President, because he’s an animal, OK — seven and a half years, has surgically and with thought and very smart, intelligent manner, destroyed this country…
It’s hard to pick where to start. Should it be with the backwards-jacket level delusions concerning Obama-the-Destroyer? (Damn that doubling of the stock market; damn that cut in unemployment by half; how will we survive millions of our fellow Americans gaining access to health care; how wretched it is for our troops not to be on their fourth or fifth deployment and so on).
No: it is with the raw racism — enabled since 2009 (and really, since 1968) by the more “genteel” members of the Republican Party, who have made the fact of a black President such a horror to those who know in their bones that such a event cannot be permitted to happen in any well-behaved universe.
So yeah, while it’s easy to point and laugh at an aging crazy who perhaps sipped too much of whatever it was he brought The Donald, or to slap down Beruff’s vile manners, never forget the story behind the story: these folks feel empowered to speak of the best president of a generation (or more) as if he were disqualified from the human race by those who trained ’em up.
There are lots of reasons the Republican Party must not merely be defeated this fall, but wrecked, utterly.
This is one.
*I swear that has to be code for some other function. Pharmaceutical grade toad purveyor, perhaps?
Image: J. W. M. Turner, The Shipwreck, 1805
Patricia Kayden
It has become so expected for Republicans to make racist (crazy) comments that I would be more shocked if a Republican was quoted saying something positive about minorities and/or President Obama.
dmsilev
While it’s admittedly outside your normal artwork selection, perhaps this might be a better graphic for this post?
Mathguy
“Carlos Beruff, a Republican running to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate, was unapologetic after video surfaced Sunday of him calling President Obama an “animal.””
This causes me to seriously question that asshole’s membership in the human race. Where do they find these douchebags? Oh, yeah, under rocks.
Dadadadadadada
Does anyone here have any connections to any actual political campaigns? I’ve got an ad idea that’s been bugging me forever, and I welcome the opportunity for a professional in the field to tell me it’s nonsense.
It goes something like this;
Show some clips of someone whose life was saved by Obamacare.
Then show a list of all the times Repubs have tried to repeal Obamacare, up to that one woman screaming for joy when it was (incorrectly) announced that the Supremes had ruled the whole thing unconstitutional.
Cut back to the life-savee, weepily saying how screwed he/she would have been without Obamacare.
Close with “Republicans Want You Dead” on a black screen.
Expand to suit: Obamacare is obviously not the only issue around which the GOP has recklessly endangered our lives. Versions could be made with the Iran nuclear deal, Zika emergency funding, climate change, etc. etc. etc.
Any takers?
rikyrah
They wanna party like it’s 1946.
Phuck.outta.here.
Trollhattan
@Mathguy:
It’s the usual Republican bug/feature conundrum.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Impressive for an animal. My animals just happily shred random stuff and walk away. Really, it’s just amazing how even their insults lack logical consistency. (Right-wingers, not my pets. My pets under sedation could outthink these people.)
Also too: Do any of them have any thought processes, on any subject at all, that don’t end up at “sputter sputter derp WHY CAN’T I CALL OBUMMER A NI-CLANG IN PUBLIC WHY WHY WHY?!” How do they function at all?
Hungry Joe
This is reminiscent of the near-apoplectic lady at a town-hall meeting just a couple of months after Obama took office. Struggling to articulate her rage, she finally just blurted out, “I want my country back!”
I always want to ask these people — the ones who say the country has been destroyed and that there’s a run on handbaskets in which to carry it to hell — just what, exactly, was taken away from them when Obama moved into the White House. Are they still allowed to go to church? Are their guns still on the nightstand/over the fireplace/tucked into their belts? Is the pickup still in the driveway? How many family members are in internment camps for celebrating Christmas?
Maybe they’re afraid because they know that the murder rate is up (it’s down), the stock market has tanked (it has doubled), that the U.S. is no longer respected around the world (Obama is popular), that African-Americans are getting all the good jobs (oh, right) … and on and on. Their perception of reality simply does not correspond to the way they’re actually living their lives. See enough body outlines on the six o’clock news, I guess, and you’ll believe that you’re living in the O.K Corral. But sooner or later wouldn’t you figure out that No, actually, you’re not?
Patricia Kayden
@Dadadadadadada: Try contacting the DNC. Sounds like a great ad.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
So what’s the over/under on our local #BernieOrBust crowd showing up to denounce this shit?
NotMax
@dmsilev
Or H. Bosch’s Ship of Fools.
jl
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
” My animals just happily shred random stuff and walk away. ”
Maybe the extreme wingers in the GOP mistake that with doing things ‘surgically and with thought and very smart, intelligent manner’ Shredding things randomly has been about all they have done since the Bill Clinton years.
Patricia Kayden
@Hungry Joe: They wouldn’t have any coherent answers for any of your queries because they hate Black people because we’re Black. There is no logic to racism. Their ancestors hated Black people way back when and it’s now part of their DNA.
My only concern with such people is that their words suggest that they are actively discriminating against Black people whenever they think they can get away with it, which depending on where they live may be too easy.
gene108
You left out:
1. Record low crime rates
2. Record low teen pregnancy rates
3. Highest levels of high school graduation evah…
But yeah, we’re headed in the wrong direction…
JPL
Earlier someone mentioned Drumpf, maybe not being that bad, and I called Drumpf, a ra..ci..st pig. Just wanted to add that to say both sides and all.
His republican primary opponent called the candidate on his bullshit, so that was good.
TaMara (HFG)
I swear to you, this motivates me more than anything else to GOTV and step out of my comfort zone to do so.
jl
@Hungry Joe:
‘ This is reminiscent of the near-apoplectic lady at a town-hall meeting just a couple of months after Obama took office. Struggling to articulate her rage, she finally just blurted out, “I want my country back!” ‘
People like that are (at the very least) knowing or deluded racial bigots. No point in wondering about what it is, just the precise nature of the bigotry.
It may have gone that way if HRC had won, since she is a woman, not a white man.
Some teabaggers in my family have repeatedly complained about some policy that they don’t like and blame it on the Democrats: “It just seems like… those Democrats WANT to destroy this country.” Most of the time it has been some policy that both Dems and GOP administrations have followed, or something started under W. I explain that. They huff away, and the same thing happens again in a few months. The wingers are ignorant deluded fools who spend their lives watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh or someone similar. Completely nuts.
Tom Levenson
@dmsilev: ;-)
donnah
Ever read a Right Wing blog with comments about Michele Obama?
Talk about sub-humans. It’s disgusting.
Cacti
Logical consistency has never been a requirement in the ODS-afflicted.
The POTUS is simultaneously shrewd, cunning, precise, calculating, intelligent…and a dumb, brutish beast.
JPL
@donnah: Life is to short to torture oneself. Don’t do it.
NorthLeft12
As a fifty-eight year old Canadian it is my opinion that Obama is the best, by far, President you have had in my lifetime of watching the going ons down south of the rivers [Detroit, St. Lawrence, and St. Clair] I have lived near. With a sane Congress you guys might have provided a great example to the rest of the world.
Thank Dog he was here and you guys elected him when you did. I shudder to think…….
OzarkHillbilly
@Dadadadadadada: Sounds good to me.
ETA: tho, may I suggest a pretty young white girl?
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
They wanna party like it’s 1859.
starscream
I keep trying to tell myself that they’ll all be dead soon, but then I remember stories like the one about the high school kids chanting “BUILD THE WALL” at an opposing soccer team.
Elie
There is no going back, despite their need to have white supremacy again. We are a diverse country and will remain that way — also connected to the world without fences and walls — and excess fear.. The Republican Party is not yet chastened and so will have to get what it and its followers are gonna get. They have been pointed in this direction for a while now… time to get it on…(electorally)
OzarkHillbilly
@Hungry Joe: They can’t have it back. The Koch brothers aren’t selling.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
msnbc just interviewed Mark Cuban about someone (Kristol? probably?) trying to recruit him to run on a third party ticket. i’ve seen Cuban on the Maher show and he doesn’t seem like an angry ideologue Radian like the Kochs or Langone, and I don’t know much else about him, but what the hell are his qualifications to run for President?
singfoom
@Hungry Joe: The list of what’s wrong with the country is shot out into the ether via Fox News and Mark Levin and all right wing radio 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It starts and ends with black/brown/not white people and liberal people and GASP black/brown/not white liberal people still exist AND they keep insisting that they have the right to exist IN YOUR WORLD. I’m paraphrasing and squishing the message down to it’s smallest components, but yes, it’s pretty much that.
Take any given issue and it gets down to that:
School prayer: An atheist exists in my child’s elementary school and they INSIST that their school experience be free of Jesus Christ. == There is a WAR ON CHRISTIANITY in school. Why can’t my child love Christ IN SCHOOL????
Anything other than complete capitulation to their worldview is a challenge to that worldview and therefore must be political correctness gone amok.
There’s an old phrase that I can’t remember who originated: “The map is not the territory.” In this case, I think that’s the whole problem. The map has become the territory for these people but the people writing the maps are deliberately writing not just the wrong things, but the most extremely wrong things.
Cheers
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Yep. Simultaneously a perfect Machiavellian and a hopeless incompetent. Also simultaneously an atheist, a secret Muslim, and a follower of a radical black preacher. The only consistency in the stuff they say about the president is that it’s bad.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: 1. White. 2. Rich
And of course it was Kristol, the “renegade Jew”, according to vile shitstain David Horowitz.
Iowa Old Lady
@Elie: Thank god we’re diverse. It’s the only thing that may save the country.
I think Cole once said that over the years, he’s found it’s best to listen to women and minorities because they’re mostly right.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He owns the Dallas Mavericks. Tells you all you need to know.
Baud
I wonder how the media would react if Hillary had a racist butler.
Then I wonder how the media would react if Hillary had a butler.
Then I plan my move to Canada.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He has money, therefore he is great at all he attempts.
The Moar You Know
@Hungry Joe: As I recall, you and I are both SoCal residents. There’s an incredible number of those people here, people who largely have all moved here within the last two decades, not a one born here (that’s the part that grinds me worst, to be honest – ain’t your town, asshole) These are the same people who take “push 1 for English” as a personal affront directed squarely at them and blow a gasket when they hear people speaking Spanish in public, even though the Mexican folks have been here for almost five hundred fucking years.
Trollhattan
@NorthLeft12:
President McCain would probably not have bombed you guys, but after shoving him out of the helicopter President Palin would have right on that. “Baja Alaska will be ours!“
Thoughtful David
@Mathguy:
In the Republican party. Go to a Republican convention and you can’t swing a cat without hitting a dozen.
Patricia Kayden
@donnah: Leftwing blogs such as this one do a good job of keeping me in tune with the racist scum who populate the Conservative/Rightwing blogiverse. Little Green Footballs, in particular, often posts comments from Breitbart and Redstate, which are just awful in their racism. Even for perfectly innocent stories like Malia Obama going off to college, you have racist scum coming out of the woodwork to denigrate her because she’s Black. Amazing.
A Ghost To Most
@Roger Moore:
Don’t forget Obama is a time traveler as well.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: They certainly knock this older white man out of his comfortably complacent bed.
Davebo
He actually responds to comments on his Facebook page which tells you all you need to know about what a great staff he’s assembled.
The Moar You Know
@starscream: I’ve come to the horrendous conclusion that there may not be a solution to racism at all. I’m a native San Diegan. I never saw black people growing up here and there really aren’t very many. My classmates were not prejudiced against blacks, but their parents sure were. My classmates grew up with Mexicans, most of them from the time they were little kids.
They hate Mexicans with a white-hot fury. Their parents don’t, but they do. These are the people screaming “BUILD THE WALL”, and as it turns out, so are their kids.
liberal
This is a constant complaint from the Right. I’m not a big fan of Obama, but…well, it’s not surprising given their zealotry.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know:
Did they miss all of the Zorro movies?
mdblanche
@NorthLeft12: Wait, aren’t you the guys south of the Detroit River?
Run, Lillian!
@donnah:
This.
I avoid mainstream news site comments like the plague because they are cesspools, but I have occasionally run into a few about our lovely and amazing FLOTUS and they are so vile that reading them feels like a punch in the chest. I am a big tennis fan, and often run into similar shockingly loathsome comments about Serena Williams. Saying they both look like men and comparing them to farm animals are common themes. One was so bad (about Serena) it actually made me burst into tears. Now I avoid almost all comment sections outside of the liberal blogosphere.
These are strong and amazing black women who made it to the very top and that brings out the very worst in some people. For me, it makes them both my heroes, for everything they have achieved and everything they have had to endure to get there.
Major Major Major Major
I don’t know, I heard somewhere that it’s lazy and condescending to conclude that stupid criticisms of Obama in particular and Democrats in general are racist.
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know: See? SEE? I HAVE TO PUSH 1 FOR ENGLISH! It’s an outrage!
I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK! I want to go back to a time when … when … when we didn’t have to push 1 for English. Those were the days. Life was really sweet when we didn’t have to push 1 for English.
(I’ve only lived in San Diego [county, then city] since I was 10. But it’s been more than half a century, so I call myself a native — even though I pronounce “pin” and “pen” differently, which gives me away as an outsider.)
Elie
@Run, Lillian!:
Yeah, I NEVER read some comments — Evah! Its beyond sick that people even think like that…
Gotta stay above it. We are living in some really strange times with some very sick, alienated people…
Eric S.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cuban is a white, male, (actual) billionaire.
The Moar You Know
@Hungry Joe: Close enough. I’m from a North County beach town in the same county. Born here, left for NorCal for almost 20 years, came back. It’s become Irvine South. I never thought I’d say this: I hate this town now. Absolutely despise it.
My wife (also native) and I have finally realized we’re outnumbered and it’s just going to get worse, and it’s time to start working on a plan to get out within the next 15 years. Won’t be sooner, unfortunately. But damn, this was some kind of paradise back in the late sixties and seventies, wasn’t it?
On point: whites here have always been racist towards Hispanics, often violently so, but what just kills me about it, a definite change, is how casual that racism is now here. People don’t even think about it anymore.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s rich, a businessman, and he ‘seems nice’ on television when he tells lesser businesspersons to pound sand, while still being (one presumes) perfectly happy to sell the country down the river for a little scratch. I also have it on good authority that he’s a total asshole.
Patricia Kayden
@Run, Lillian!: I wonder if this racist “Black women look like men” trope is going to play out in N.C. with their anti-transgender law. I’m guessing that there are some bigots itching to harass Black women by claiming that they look like men and shouldn’t be in women’s bathrooms now that the Governor has given them the green light to humiliate their fellow citizens.
Mai.naem.mobile
The nasty stuff I see on Twitter about the Obama family is really ugly. I don’t do Facebook and rarely go to RW sites so I didn’t see all this crap till I saw it on Twitter. Really ugly stuff I rarely saw in the left wing sites about GWBush and not about Barbara or Laura Bush. They call Michelle’s mom a moocher because shes lived in the WH to help with the kids which she was helping with in Chicago. I guarantee you if Laura Bush’s mother had moved in to the WH to help with the kids,the RW would be talking about how close the family was setting an example for the nation etc etc. These people are ugly pigs and that’s an insult to pigs.
ruemara
@Patricia Kayden: you can shoot that yourself. Shoot, crowdfund it and I’ll shoot it. It’s not that hard to do and you can run it with small ad buys. Never a need to wait for the DNC.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: No need for ad buys. Put it on YouTube and link it on Twitter. If the right people see it and like it, it could go viral. And there’s the ticket for the Majors for you and Ms. Kayden. For my advice here, I want an associate producer credit. Thank you.
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus: that is true, but some market buys would reach people who don’t live online. I know, who are those folks?
shortribs
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
None. Last time I saw him he was on the Larry Wilmore Show propping up Trump as someone he knew personally and was a nice guy and that Trump’s schtick was just that, that he was “acting this way to get elected”. Not sure how that makes Trump a nice guy or acceptable for the Presidency, but it certainly made me think less of Mark Cuban (who admittedly I don’t know much else about).
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: My other thought in favor of the YouTube/Twitter approach is that, if the ad is successful in that format, someone will be willing to pony up the cash to put it on the TV box.
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus: media coverage would push that, but the tone means the DNC wouldn’t use it. Maybe one of those liberal groups who hit me up for cash all the time.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: You forgot that he is also a anti-colonial Communist.
ArchTeryx
@Mathguy: Rural America.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx: Rural Florida, specifically.
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know: !!!!!!!!!! You’re from a north county beach town???? Me, too: Carlsbad. You?
debbie
@donnah:
This and this and this is what’s gotten to me. Elected officials. And these are just a few of them. I couldn’t even find the one I was originally looking for.
Run, Lillian!
@Patricia Kayden:
I agree. It is absolutely an excuse to harass any woman who doesn’t conform to retrograde gender stereotypes, including ones that are racially biased.
eclare
@Run, Lillian!: Yes, saw where in Dallas a young woman was followed into a restroom by a man who didn’t think she looked feminine enough. Looked like she had on a baseball cap and maybe workout clothes. I thought geez, am I going to have to put on makeup and get my hair done before I use a public restroom again? Luckily, I’m an older white woman, so chances of that happening are probably low. BTW, I don’t care who is in the next stall as long as they leave me alone.
lollipopguild
@rikyrah: No-1858. Rodger beat me to it.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus:
Come up with $1,000. Run it a few times on local TV in DC. Issue press release that a PAC is going up on the air with controversial new ad against Trump. You can see that ad on youtube.
If you spend actual money you’ll need an already existing PAC or spend a few hundred filing incorporation/fec org papers. Take it out of the 1k you raised, you can still get a few airings in on a local station.
ksmiami
@TaMara (HFG): I want the GOP smashed into a million pieces Buffy-Master style. The party and it’s enabled loonies are a menace to the world.
Trollhattan
Wow, the Kochs and Waltons dominate this wealth map more than I’d have guessed.
Trollhattan
This video can serve as a tall, cool glass of calm-the-fvck-down re. Trump’s odds.
Run, Lillian!
@eclare:
It’s infuriating! Men are following women into the women’s restroom to protect women from the possibility of men in the women’s restroom??????? It doesn’t make any sense because it is only the flimsy pretext to punish all women for defying our prescribed roles. For not being the June Cleaver or Donna Reed types, you know who wore dresses, pumps and pearls while vacuuming, cooking up a meal for seven, and I assume, while using the ladies restroom. It is as much about making life miserable for trans people as it is about punishing independent women.
NotMax
@Run, Lillian
The necklace on Mrs. Cleaver was not meant to be representative, nor even a fashion dictate. It was added to the character as a convenience for technical reasons, to alleviate a problem the crew had in lighting her properly. The actress had a deep depression (cleft) at the throat, which showed as shadow in typical camera shots. The necklace covered most of that and reflected enough light to soften any remaining shadow.
Felanius Kootea
Weird how the New York Times had a fluff piece on this same butler a few weeks ago (including the fact that he’d been a mayor in West Virginia), with no mention of his racist rants.
StellaB
@The Moar You Know: “Push 1 for English”. I got a terrible review on the annual patient survey because we had health information in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese in the waiting room. Each page of the review said “English Health Books Only” in inch high caps. My employer still counted it against me. I retaliated by going across the street to the drugstore and stocking up on Spanish magazines and English magazines with FLOTUS on their covers to display in the waiting room.
Capri
@shortribs: Cuban went to Indiana U, which is a black mark right there if you’re a Boilermaker. I once heard him give an interview on local radio about his college years. He took his student loan money and bought a local bar. He got a liquor license when he was 18 because it never occurred to anyone to ask someone’s age when they were trying get one. He made money hand over fist. The thing was busted when the picture of the winner of a wet T-shirt contest was put in the paper and the girl’s parole officer knew that she was underage. Don’t know how much of the story was true, but it was very entertaining.
NorthLeft12
@mdblanche: Yes, that’s right. Not many know that. And the US is west of the St. Clair River from us. I was going to say that most of the crazies in your country are south of me, but holy mackeral, Michigan has turned into some kind of nuthouse over the last ten years or so.
J R in WV
I’m old enough to have seen old fashioned racism at work, “Colored Only” and “Whites only” signs on restrooms and water fountains down south when I was kid. I’m still astounded by the amazing visceral hatred expressed by racists about the Obama family. Crude, despicable, enraging even for an old white guy like me.
I had a friend who worked for the same outfit I did, on different projects. We went our different ways when the contracts ended, and as things work out, he was able to offer me an interesting job when I was under pressure to take work on an accounting project – not my cuppa tea atall. He was solo, and that’s hard in the software world.
So I was able to help out with some technical issues, and over time we accumulated an actual IT staff. He got appointed manager which was OK by most of us, he had an MBA and was next to senior in time on the job. Plus most of us preferred to be technical, software developers.
Anyway, after a couple of years, he requested reassignment, as in the state administrative system, his paperwork for purchases, new hires, pay raises, you name it, always disappeared. He told me he was convinced that as soon as he was out of sight, they tossed it all in the trash. Because he was black. I suspect he was exactly correct.
Eventually I wound up in that management position, maybe 10 or 12 years later. I confess I did it for the money in the promotion.
I can’t imagine how furious I would have gotten if that was worked on me… but, of course, I’m an old white guy. So never a problem. Maybe it was that much more professional come 15 or 20 years later?