This whole article is amazing, but especially this statistic.
When Obama was in office, only 30% of white evangelicals would forgive a president's immoral behavior. Now it's 72%. https://t.co/c6FlHbziMi pic.twitter.com/VTNov7TJRk
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) September 14, 2017
I liked this description of Republican voters:
malleable to the point of innocence, and self-reported expressions of ideological fealty are quickly abandoned for policies that — once endorsed by a well-known party leader — run contrary to that expressed ideology.
DanF
Impeach a man for lying about a blow job, but totally cool with Trump and his decades of baggage. When you’re an evangelical whatever you’re doing is the lord’s work. Ipso facto bitchius.
randy khan
It’s sort of an inverse Cleek’s law – but also IOKIYAR.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
With 45, any vestige of credibility these people had was destroyed, never to return. They should be hounded out of public life, shunned and shamed for their backwards beliefs and renderd to the dustbin of history.
Fucking American Taliban.
schrodingers_cat
This just confirms my long held opinion about people who make ostentatious displays of their religiosity, that they are hypocrites who lack a moral compass.
Major Major Major Major
Yep, just another day in the life of the authoritarian’s mind.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: ISTR jesus had something to say about that. As did Leonard Cohen, about “the killers in high places [who] say their prayers out loud”.
Lurking Canadian
Four legs good. Two legs better.
The Moar You Know
Same people who always used to bitch about moral standards being relative.
One nice thing about Trump in office; I’ll be able to laugh at any evangelicals who may cross my path for the rest of my life. Laugh and string the Trump anvil around their necks. They voted for and gave cover to Donnie Two Scoops. When you do that, you don’t ever get to get on a moral high horse again.
rikyrah
Situational ethics.
They understand how absolutely ridiculous they look, talking about religion while supporting that heathen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
reminds me of a phrase that was leaked, IIRC, from some Dem party internal report during the Gore campaign (?), describing those who would later become the Tea Baggers as “poor, poorly educated and easily led”, or words to that effect. They made t-shirts with the slogan on them. ETA kind of a forerunner of the whole “deplorable” thing, I guess.
can anyone check if “malleable” is being googled in heavily Republican areas if Limbaugh or Hannity use this as outrage chum?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Well, as they do smugly remind you, Christians aren’t perfect, they’re just forgiven.
I’m so tired of stickers on big passenger trucks featuring pious little children at prayer in front of the cross. (They’re quite common in the rural red NorCal county in which I live.)
Loch in kop
Here is good Soviet joke:
Man goes to get job. They give him job interview, ask question: “Are you loyal Communist? You ever deviate from official Sovet party line?” Man says: “No, I deviate WITH official party line.”
catclub
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. The Authoritarians. Also tribe before all.
rikyrah
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
tell it
sharl
Yep, Fred Clark (Slacktivist) has been blogging this beat for years.
There was an excellent article in the Financial Times on this topic back in April. It might be paywalled; I have a very limited service free subscription I signed up for years ago, so I cannot tell. Here’s the link, if you want to try it.
Major Major Major Major
@catclub:
Not a very good punchline.
rikyrah
Examining the Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Lost
by Nancy LeTourneau
September 13, 2017
With the release of Hillary Clinton’s book, What Happened, a lot of people are once again weighing in on why she lost the election last November. That is an important discussion for Democrats to have.
Because I haven’t read her book yet, I’m going to avoid weighing in on whether or not Clinton got it all right. But I totally reject the notion that she should simply shut up. Those who go there are either harboring some deep-seeded antipathy for her, or are engaging in a double standard for the first female presidential nominee—or perhaps a mixture of both. I’ve been around a long time and have never heard that one applied to a male candidate.
The writers at FiveThirtyEight have, however, engaged in a very interesting discussion that I think is fruitful. It is based on this tweet from a reporter at the Washington Examiner:
After noting things like, “How dare Clinton do a reasonable postmortem on the 2016 election instead of nailing herself to a cross!” they acknowledge that it’s a pretty good list and that a lot of those things were important. So they set out to rate each one on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of how much impact it had on the outcome of the election, with 5 being the most impactful.
The discussion is really interesting, so you might want to go read it. The end result is that no one scored any of these items below a two—so they think that Clinton is right to name them. Rating lowest was #6 about Fox News, not because it didn’t have an impact, but because it was not any more impactful in this election than it has been for the last 20 years. These folks rated #7, the one addressing sexism, as having the most impact, with Russia, Comey, press coverage of Clinton’s emails, and Trump’s media coverage all coming in a close second.
Another Scott
[blink] once endorsed by a well-known party leader [/blink]
These “churches” are political institutions. We should stop pretending otherwise.
Speaking of which, I wonder what is going on with effort to repeal the Johnson Amendment. As bad as Citizens United made things, just wait until these “churches” can do any sort of politicking they want without any fear of losing their tax exempt status. Effectively all political donations would then become tax exempt as they’d be routed through some “church”. You know they are going to keep pushing crap like that.
We probably need to move the other way. “Let’s tax religion!” – Dead Kennedys / ‘Stars and Stripes of Corruption’
We have to fight them every single day.
Cheers,
Scott.
Wjs
That’s a fancy way of saying that Republicans are hypocritical jackasses.
rikyrah
Republicans Want To Cripple Reagan’s Favorite Anti-Poverty Program
by Nancy LeTourneau
September 14, 2017
The one piece of this country’s social safety net that Ronald Reagan embraced was the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). As part of his 1986 Tax Reform Act, he proposed and signed a major expansion of this anti-poverty initiative. To demonstrate how extremist the current GOP has become, they are trying to cripple it.
I have to admit that it is hard for me to comprehend a rationale for doing something like this. But the cynic in me thinks that last part might play a big role—diverting IRS resources away from the wealthy and big corporations. It also adds to the Republican narrative about “those people” abusing government programs.
In actuality, the EITC has been proven to be one of the most effective anti-poverty programs this country has ever instituted. Last year Anne Kim provided this chart from the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure.
rikyrah
* As we’ve recently learned, Steve Bannon, with the backing of billionaire Robert Mercer, is planning to mount primary challenges against some “establishment” Republicans. Adele Stan reports that this is actually a battle of the oligarchs.
Amir Khalid
@Loch in kop:
Shouldn’t your nym be Loch im Kopf? (Asked the Malaysian German-grammar Nazi.)
Kay
@rikyrah:
I think she was also afraid that if she stayed silent a narrative would form that would be different than her lived experience.
Because all these people telling her to shut up are weighing in on the election. They have all kinds of theories. It’s not that they don’t want it discussed- they just don’t want to hear her side.
If there is anyone who knows that entirely made-up shit can become “truth” with repetition it is Hillary Clinton. She’s right- if she had stayed silent people with various agendas would have written the history. Obviously, she has an agenda too, but hers is just as valid and “true” as theirs is.
Ian G.
Do you ever get the feeling that brutal dictators around the world shake their fists at the sky, wondering why they can’t have the American right as a populace? I can’t imagine any other group of people so blindly obedient and so eager to swallow bullshit.
In particular, I imagine Bashir al-Assad being particularly angry about this.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Clinton faced a choice. She could shut up and allow Politico and The New York Times and Donald Trump to write her history or she could weigh in and face their contempt for doing so. It’s a no-brainer to me- write your own story and fuck the haters, because she won’t get another chance to correct the record. She had about a 6 month window before the preferred narrative was set in stone. It was now or never.
charluckles
Well of course Obama was immoral when he called that police officer stupid which is far more of a moral and ethical offense than sexual assault so it all makes sense, or something.
Elizabelle
Relieved to see that Thomas Edsall (Doug’s link) is taking up a “Republicans in Disarray” topic. He usually aims his fire at Democrats, concern troll style.
NY Times, Edsall: Trump Says Jump. His Supporters Ask, How High?
Edsall was a longtime WaPost reporter, and I always liked him when he was there. It was a long time ago, and I missed the High Broderism that emanates from Edsall. I is woke now.
Lurking Canadian
@rikyrah
:
Kicking poor people in the face doesn’t need a rationale.
Kicking poor people in the face IS the rationale.
JCJ
@Amir Khalid:
That nym reminds me of the name of the person in charge of the dorm I lived in during my year at Universität Hamburg – Frau Loch
Another name I remember was someone in the US of apparent German ancestry – Kernarsch – nucleus ass?
JCJ
Amazing what a difference a little melanin can make
Elizabelle
@Kay: That’s true. And we have to have Hillary’s back.
Because the Narrative will not be denied, and its fakeness and hollowness is what made it possible to have a Trump in office. Fucking appalling. The press bears a LOT of responsibility; negligence for ratings.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: They really depantsed themselves with this. I hope it was worth it.
Frankensteinbeck
True, but since their real ideology is white supremacy, there’s no actual change in beliefs. All the moralizing was never anything but a way of proclaiming themselves to be righteous and brown people immoral. Even the abortion is a stance they only took when they were forced to send their children to school with blacks, and there is a heavy racist component to it even now. Just ask them what they think young black women are like.
@Lurking Canadian:
Eeyup.
bemused
@rikyrah: @rikyrah:
Do they though? They know other Americans (not them) think they are ridiculous hypocrites but they aren’t a bit ashamed or conflicted. They think they are righteous. Their real religion is authoritarianism.
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
Their real religion is racism. Authoritarianism merely goes hand in hand, as does cruelty in general.
Amir Khalid
@JCJ:
Another German-American’s name I’ll never forget is Ficker — literally, “fucker”.
Commenter Loch in Kop’s nym seems to be halfway between the German for “hole in the head” and the Yiddish loch in di kop.
JGabriel
Keith Boykin via DougJ @ Top:
I’m sure that number will drop straight back to 30% once Democrats are in charge of the government again.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
They always act as if there’s endless opportunities and that’s simply not true. She either says it now or it doesn’t matter- gone.
I hate to say this but this started well before Donald Trump. The entire media story of the contested Bush v Gore race is fiction- the vote counting and machinations on election day and afterwards. That record will NEVER be corrected, because there was a window and the window closed. It doesn’t just “close” it slams shut. Speak now or forever hold your peace is a real thing.
Al Gore doesn’t even bother and he’s right not to bother. By the time they held the count in the House the fictional narrative was set. There was a time to move and he missed it and you only get one.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
To my amusement, the Germanic words ‘fuck’ is mostly likely derived from mean ‘to strike.’ However, they also had the same usage as a metaphor for sex. People have been saying ‘I’d tap that ass’ for a long time.
JCJ
@Amir Khalid:
I did not know the Yiddish.
Perhaps the commenter is, like you, a Liverpool supporter who frequents the Kop.
ruemara
How does this jell with what that Christ guy said to do? Because it really doesn’t. I can’t stand these people.
Major Major Major Major
@JGabriel: maybe a little higher if the democrat is a white male.
Chyron HR
@rikyrah:
Things the junior senator from Vermont blames for his loss last year:
– The debates were on the wrong days so he never got to tell people how great he is
– Democrats sent each other private e-mails criticizing him
– Black votes were allowed to count for as much as progressive white people’s votes (seriously)
– Hillary pandered to Democrats by embracing Obama instead of running against him (seriously^2)
– Every state was allowed to have delegates, not just the ones that “count”
– Not enough Republicans were allowed to vote in the Democratic primary
– Too many states let Democrats vote for their preferred candidate instead of holding caucuses
Things that he has never and will never blame:
– Himself
Kay
@Elizabelle:
If you look at it like a historical record (which it is) then it doesn’t make any sense to exclude her from adding to it. The people who are telling her to shut up are more than happy to provide their analysis. She has a perfect right to add to it, and they have a perfect right to reject her account. But they shouldn’t object to someone else getting that side of the story. The more witnesses the better, right? She had a really good seat! Saw a lot! If one is interested in “what happened” one would want to add that testimony to the pile.
bemused
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc are all present in authoritarians/authoritarian followers.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chyron HR:
You forgot ‘the revolution.’ He and his supporters are desperate to cling to this idea that it’s all about class war. It’s not. It’s about race war. He called for tearing down the rich, and the proletariat failed to rise up.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well, that’s Marxism for you.
Jeffro
Oh hey it’s that article I linked to earlier this morning…
Hey I wonder what the Kochs think about all this? I bet I can guess: they’re going to redouble their efforts to find a charismatic Hard Randian, to tell the plebes what to think (since they’re so malleable). Meanwhile, the Mercers will be doing the same (again)
Pass the popcorn!
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. And since Marxism cannot fail, it must have been failed.
Amir Khalid
@JCJ:
I did not know the Yiddish either, so I asked Google Translate. It’s very close to the German, of course.
Jeffro
@Chyron HR: wait…Democrats privately criticized St. Wilmer?!? How was this allowed to happen?
gbbalto
@Amir Khalid: It appears to be one way to spell the Yiddish phrase “hole in the head”
ETA — Looks like you got there already!
Kay
@Elizabelle:
To me it feels like being told to “move on” again. I used to be fine with “moving on”- I’m good at it. I no longer feel that it’s the best thing to do, however. In the last 20 years we don’t seem to be so much “moving on” as pretending there has been some kind of reconciliation when actually nothing was really examined. How about we not “move on” and instead just let what happened sit there for a while and see what shakes out? What’s the difference? We all have somewhere to be? We’re in a huge rush? I can wait for further developments before I tell myself some story and wrap it up with a bow. I’m not literally “waiting”- I can ignore the command to “move on” and still be going about my business.
rikyrah
@Ian G.:
they fall for any sort of bullshyt, don’t they?
any shiny object…just wrap it in White Supremacy, and they’ll be fine with it.
Have long thought that’s the true anger towards Black voters- we don’t fall for shiny objects.
Amir Khalid
@JCJ:
There are people who will tell you that the hole (Loch) in the Kop is the Liverpool defence.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Right around 1980 the facts told them they weren’t special snowflakes anymore. They responded by telling facts in general to fuck off.
I want to consider all races equally stupid, but voting patterns say you’re right.
Sloane Ranger
@Amir Khalid: Sort of vaguely connected to this discussion, I remember reading somewhere that when the German states began to demand that Jews adopt European style surnames some of the officials in charge of the process “amused” themselves by foisting ridiculous or insulting last names on people.
Also, if an Ellis Island Immigration officer found a name difficult to pronounce or spell they would sometimes do something similar.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I’ve said this from the beginning..
This isn’t 2000.
This isn’t even 2004 AFTER Shrub lied us into 2 WARS
this is a whole other level, and many, in the MSM, as well as Democratic Politicians…have yet to adjust to the new normal.
There IS no ‘ moving on’ this time.
Uh uh
Not possible.
Those who voted for that piece of garbage will forever have that hung around their neck.- as it should be.
Something snapped – on our side – and we have no interest in making nice with these muthaphuckas.
OF COURSE, the MSM wants to ‘ move on’, because they don’t want to be held responsible for their COMPLETE PROFESSIONAL INCOMPETENCE.
But, that’s not going to happen either, muthaphuckas. YOU didn’t do your goddamn job during the 2016 election, and you will NOT be allowed to slink away from it.
Uh uh
Nope.
Speak out, Hillary.
Be a holder of NO PHUCKS.
That’s just fine – you earned it.
Peale
You kind of knew it was a sham all along. They’ve never forgiven Hillary for Not Getting a Divorce and just assumed that she didn’t out of shameless self-interest. Who knew that divorce was such a non-issue that she would have been more popular the more divorces she had.
Villago Delenda Est
This is not amazing at all when you realize that these maggots do not follow Jesus of Nazareth, but Jeebus of the Money-Changers in the Temple.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sloane Ranger: Classic example: In The Godfather: Part II, young Vito Andolini gets a new last name: Corelone.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
Amen
Lyrebird
@Peale: Yep. Thank you.
Somehow I landed on the NYT a few minutes ago (usually I get the paywall warning), and they had this headline that Shkreli is going to jail for seeking one of HRC’s hairs. I would like to throttle whoever composed that headline. ( ETA but I would NEVER ASK my putative social media followers to do harm to him. Just to congratulate the judge and donate to the SPLC.)
Aiding and abetting a total creep. Who fits in with these hypocrites (in the OP) very well.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
I noticed in the article in the OP that the study does not make any comparisons with positions on racism. They left that out of their questionnaire.
ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Just waiting for someone to come along and show them the error of their ways. Of course it has to be someone with a bible in their hands. No one else is believable.
ruemara
@Frankensteinbeck: Probably deliberately.
geg6
Maybe when they call themselves “values voters,” they mean “need to cultivate some values voters.”
They disgust me.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Great point. We were supposed to “move on” after the 2000 election debacle. Move on after the Iraq War catastrophe. Move on after the financial crash. Move on after the latest in an endless series of deranged individuals slaughter innocent people with a military-style weapons. Move on after incompetence and domestic and foreign malfeasance put our government in the hands of a malignant clown. Fuck all this moving on shit! Maybe if we stop and examine these disasters a little more closely, we can avoid lurching from one catastrophe to another. Maybe not. But “move on” has been tried and found wanting. Enough.
TenguPhule
Those were their principles. And if you don’t like them, they have others.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: 6 months from what?
ruckus
@Another Scott:
I’m all for taxing religion. The concept of not taxing religion has long been past it’s sell by date.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Not disasters. Crimes. The GOP broke the law and were never ever fucking punished for it.
And so here we are now.
A Ghost To Most
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: We don’t call them talibangelicals for nothing.
TenguPhule
@Another Scott:
And a good chunk of America stops paying federal income taxes.
I can’t begin to describe the damage that kind of bullshit would do.
bemused
@Peale:
Nah. If wouldn’t have made any difference to Hillary haters if she had divorced Bill. They’d hate her even if she was Jesus raised from the dead.
NotMax
Boxcar Bible thumpers hopping a ride on the gravy train.
bemused
@ruckus:
Amen. Tax the churches and untax social security retirement.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
EITC audits aren’t like forensic audits of corporations and the wealthy. But they are a drain on limited resources and tend to be a net loss for the IRS on the resources to collections ratio. So it hurts both the IRS and those claiming EITC benefits. Also increases the likelyhood of an audit due to the increased paperwork requirements since a lot of the requests will trigger due to computer matching and reconciliation.
Bobby Thomson
@bemused: either divorce or not divorce would have proved how grasping she was in her lust for power.
Tazj
@Kay: You’re right. no one ever said you had to accept her opinions as to why the 2016 election turned out the way it did, but she had the right to express those opinions and write her book.
All the wailing and gnashing of teeth before her book came out was ridiculous, like the country would explode or people would be at each other’s throats, anymore than they already are in politics. She takes responsibility for the loss and feels she let everyone down, and she praises BS as well as criticizes him. Her thoughts just couldn’t be tolerated by people and some acted as if it would tear liberal politics and the country even more apart. As if those who can’t stand her just can’t turn the television or radio off and not buy the book.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@geg6:
Damn, but that term — values voters — was so pompous and condescending. I don’t know how it wasn’t challenged a thousand times a day. Moral Majority, too… xtians do go for self-aggrandizement.
SatanicPanic
@rikyrah: I think racism ties into wanting to control sex too. I don’t think there’s one exact thing, more like a list of gross things.
hueyplong
Hey, Brietbart, King, Coulter, et al.: Cuck you. The Trump Anti-Midas Touch has done its inevitable work.
Thanks, Chuck & Nancy, for this Schadenfreudelicious treat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Some on the right do not want to dance along
many years ago, in a world that seems far far away, Mickey Kaus was considered a VSP. I think.
Mike in DC
The one unforgivable offense for Trump’s base is for him to stop being racist and stop trying to enact his/their racism into law. If you look at what issues they’re most passionate about, it’s building the wall, banning muslims, “supporting the police” and voter ID laws. Plus fighting political correctness. That’s pretty much the wet dream of David Duke right there.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Situational ethics is a bit like military intelligence.
If your ethics are situational, they aren’t ethics.
bemused
@Bobby Thomson:
Would divorcing Bill have been an asset or liability to Hillary’s political ambitions?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I hope you are right, rikyrah. Please let it be so.
SFBayAreaGal
Love the song Doug! Love the group.
Something happened along the way
Yesterday was all we had
Something happened along the way
What used to be happy is sad
Something happened along the way
Oh, and yesterday was all we had
rikyrah
Voter Registration Is the Real Resistance
PAGE GARDNER & CELINDA LAKE SEPTEMBER 13, 2017
The 2018 midterms will hinge on whether Democrats can register and turn out single women, millennials, and minorities.
The 2018 midterm elections will test whether resistance to President Trump and anger over his policies can turn out enough progressive voters to buck both the orchestrated assault on voting rights and historic midterm election voting trends.
From partisan and illegal gerrymandering to onerous voter-ID laws to the absurd Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, the Trump administration and red-state lawmakers are working on many fronts to prevent and dissuade large numbers of eligible voters from exercising their most fundamental constitutional right. The target of these efforts—single women, millennials, and minorities—are the three groups of Americans most at risk of disenfranchisement and the most likely to support progressive causes and candidates—but only if robust registration efforts reach them.
Single women, millennials, and minorities—the Rising American Electorate (RAE)—make up nearly 59.2 percent of eligible voters. But these citizens don’t register to vote or turn out in proportion to their share of the population. In 2016, even though they accounted for nearly six in ten members of the vote-eligible population, the RAE made up a little more than half (52.6 percent) of the total electorate.
rikyrah
The Fallacy of 1619: Rethinking the History of Africans in Early America
In 1619, “20. and odd Negroes” arrived off the coast of Virginia, where they were “bought for victualle” by labor-hungry English colonists. The story of these captive Africans has set the stage for countless scholars interested in telling the story of slavery in English North America. Unfortunately, 1619 is not the best place to begin a meaningful inquiry into the history of African peoples in America. Certainly, there is a story to be told that begins in 1619, but it is neither well-suited to help us understand slavery as an institution nor to help us better grasp the complicated place of African peoples in the early modern Atlantic world. For too long, the focus on 1619 has led the general public and scholars alike to ignore more important issues and, worse, to silently accept unquestioned assumptions that continue to impact us in remarkably consequential ways. As a historical signifier, 1619 may be more insidious than instructive.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike in DC: yep. This is what they really care about. It’s not that his support base is immune to all his fuck-ups so far, it’s that they don’t care about his fuck-ups so far because he isn’t fucking up the thing they care about.
TenguPhule
@bemused:
Any action taken by Hillary is considered a liability by our very stupid media.
Villago Delenda Est
@TenguPhule: Which are reasons why Rethugs want such things to happen.
rikyrah
Why Democrats are more than happy to negotiate with Trump
09/14/17 01:00 PM—UPDATED 09/14/17 01:34 PM
By Steve Benen
For much of 2017, Donald Trump’s principal complaint about Democrats was simple: they were “obstructionists” who refused to even consider working with him. “The Democrats have become nothing but obstructionists, they have no policies or ideas,” the president tweeted in June. “All they do is delay and complain.”
In Trump’s mind, congressional Dems were, for all intents and purposes, acting like congressional Republicans did in the Obama era, slapping away an outstretched hand. No matter what the White House tried, Trump assumed, Democratic leaders would simply refuse to work with him – just as GOP leaders refused to work with Obama, even when the Democratic president was prepared to give Republicans some of what they wanted.
If Barack Obama was for it, the GOP was reflexively against it, even when he agreed with his adversaries. Many Republicans, including the president, expected a continuation of this style of politics.
Trump’s assumptions, however, were completely wrong. Dems such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have never been really considered maximalist partisanship; like a batter waiting for a pitch to swing at, they were simply waiting for an offer they could accept.
…………………..
If given a choice between protections for Dreamers or an opportunity to use Dreamers’ plight for political gain, Democratic leaders en masse prefer the former to the latter. This might give Trump a “win” – if the deal comes to fruition, he’ll take credit for doing something popular and bipartisan – but most Dems don’t care, so long as the young immigrants get the protections they need and deserve.
For Republicans, this dynamic is flipped. The party’s policy goals have largely been replaced with slogans and soundbites, and few in the party care about working on substantive outcomes. For much of today’s GOP, an ideological crusade and a constant search electoral advantage is the driving motivation behind every decision.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Then he was caught fucking goats, and it’s been all downhill.
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
And it drives me crazy. The IRS is the FUCKING REVENUE GENERATOR for the Federal Government.
Those fucking Republican Political Hacks, where the fuck do they think the money is coming from for their pay and benefits? What do they think is going to happen when they cut taxes and increase spending?
Gelfling 545
@sharl: Driving out to my sister’s yesterday I passed a pair of right wing intellectuals who had erected a few signs inviting people to save Trump from the “coup”. A few of their signs thanked Jesus for Trump. You’d think all Christians would rise up to protest this slander on Jesus but, not so far. Still, even in her Republican town, they didn’t look rushed for business.
Peale
@rikyrah: Yeah. That’s kind of where I am at the moment. We need to focus on those who would be most harmed by the turn towards xenophobia, even if there isn’t going to be credit at the voting booth for doing so. 800K is a lot of people who live in this country. If it ends up that they get some kind of permanent relief, even it if isn’t the vaunted “path to citizenship” or immediate amnesty, then deal we must. My guess is that there will be an agreement that there will be a special class of visa for DACA kids so that they won’t be deported but will never be able to apply for citizenship created. Kind of a green-card(*). Not the best, but the alternative is so bleak, we might as well reach for that for now.
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
Stewardess, I speak Conservative. The assumption is that if she had divorced Bill, she would disappear, that she has no political existence without him. This is a big one. I’m not sure there are even many Democrats who know she didn’t get her start from Bill’s presidency. If she did continue, which she probably would because she always had her own career, she would have been a divorced woman, who they have even more contempt for than a woman who did not divorce a cheating husband. This is a major Catch-22 no-win situation, and it goes well beyond just Republican voters.
bemused
@TenguPhule:
Exactly as with majority of Republicans since at least early 90’s.
AMM
I am no biblical/religious history scholar, and of course no one (even have he a 12,000 member congregation) reliably speaks for The Man Himself, but I am still trying to coalesce into meaning this string of phonemes from Trump supporter/pastor Robert Jeffress:
Peale
@rikyrah: It’s like the opposite of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. There the GOP held all these hearings about how the evil IRS was targeting poor people. Invited people to testify that “out of touch” IRS agents were showing up to harass taxpayers because they couldn’t believe a family could live on modest incomes. They used that to pass a bill full of corporate tax shelters in the name of protecting poor people. Now they want to audit the poor people again, probably so that the next time a Democrat is in office, they can hold those kinds of hearings again and get even more goodies for themselves.
AMM
Sorry, quote above from:
NorthLeft12
Frankly, I think Deadbeat Donald’s behavior and actions AND the religious right’s acceptance of his immorality, bigotry, racism, misogyny, greed, and selfishness will accelerate the decline of religion in US society [particularly Christian religions].
The hypocrisy and self interest has been overly blatant and a lot of young kids are paying attention.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Yup.
There never is any pleasing her GOP critics. Because that’s the point, after all – to attack her and minimize the chance of her succeeding.
Cheers,
Scott.
bemused
@Frankensteinbeck:
Nicolle Wallace had a good discussion with Jennifer Palmieri and two other women about Hillary and our American problem with treatment of women. I didn’t realize Wallace’s show segment was called Deadline: White House and thought it should be named Dead: White House or Deadbeat: White House as NorthLeft 12 just commented on the Donald.
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
Alas, I’m not specifically even talking about her GOP critics, and it’s not Hillary-specific. I mean, you’re right, the GOP and the media will always hate Hillary and cast everything she does in a negative light, but her being punished for Bill’s cheating is far wider ranged than that. I have heard it among liberals who are even a little socially conservative. Most of them won’t say that it’s her fault, but they’ll punish Hillary instead of Bill. No action of hers will mitigate it. And I would not be surprised if that double standard is more prevalent among women than men. It’s women I’ve heard it from, certainly.
bemused
@Another Scott:
Just think how disappointed they would have been if Hillary had just disappeared and they didn’t have her to kick around anymore and invigorate Republican voters.
Elizabelle
@NorthLeft12: Yeah. Good point. Barcelona seemed very secular, and I think the Catholic Church’s collaborating with Franco had a lot to do with that. (I do hear that Seville and many regions are more pious, at least by outward show.)
The rightwingers and their religion: This isn’t “religion” or spirituality or faith. It’s social control grasping for economic control. It’s very much of the temporal world.
TenguPhule
@AMM:
The world will be a better place when he leaves it.
Corner Stone
@bemused:
That’s exactly right. They are excited and energized HRC is still viable and active. They want her to continue just for the sole fact that it drives their giddy-up to be able to tell her to shut up and go away. If she actually did that would be the worst thing possible. They don’t have twenty years to put the venom treatment on Kamala or Gillibrand like they did to HRC and Pelosi.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Great post rikyrah. With you on all of it.
Something has snapped, and the powers that be will be — again — the last to know.
Corner Stone
@bemused:
That was a pretty good segment. I like Nicolle’s show, for the most part. She is pretty sharp at criticizing people when they need to be and she doesn’t pull punches on people she has worked with. She also doesn’t seem to be as anodyne as Katy Tur or Rachel when asking people questions.
I wish J Palmeiri would turn into NFLTG JP. You can see she wants to say somethings like she did to KAC at that Harvard review forum after the election. But I guess she has to work again somewhere so she’s still trying to be even about a lot of things.
Frankensteinbeck
@AMM:
“I want the government to hurt brown people as much as possible.”
scav
@Gelfling 545: I rather like one of the local biblical ranters usually posting merely the chapter and verse numbers of whatever is supposed to convince / terrify everyone passing his driveway sign. Recently they just went with GOP WTF.
Elizabelle
FYI, Hillary Clinton’s book tour dates. Some are sold out already (DC, Seattle).
October 23 in Montreal. Hmmm. That could be way cool. Maybe some better questions from audience and better coverage by press, too.
Can really notice the Google algorithm when looking for this site. All the negative shit about Hillary — Washington Examiner, Nypost — was at the top of the list. Fuck them.
Kay
I’m helping with an event tonight for the county Democrats. I’m sort of dreading it – it’s a public venue and this county went 70% Trump.
I can be a shoulder to cry on for the betrayed Trumpsters, but only if they’re patted down first and I get some assurance of personal safety :)
bemused
@Corner Stone:
Hmm, missed that, will have to look up the review forum if available.
Yeah, I’m pretty tired of people “holding back”, fed up to the gills actually.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Good luck, Kay. Details tomorrow. Stay safe, and tough.
ETA: PS: I agree totally with your observations about “moving on.” We need to make sure we don’t move along. There is plenty to see. Just can’t depend on the press and others fairly providing information.
Corner Stone
@bemused: Here is a little something about it.
AMM
@Frankensteinbeck:
Of course (and alas) I get that. I had just never heard anyone go so far with that goal as to include Jesus with the (brown) baby and the bathwater.
Frankensteinbeck
@AMM:
Whatever reasoning they can come up with to make themselves sound righteous. It’s literally all sophistry.
MCA1
Would be interesting to know how much of this is straight bigotry, how much is Cleek’s Law and how much is IOKIYAR. We all know there would still an upward angling chart here if the last president had been named Biden, but at a slighter angle. And while it’s acute and the hypocrisy stands out in the Evangeical curve, the same trend shows for every polled demo here, so it’s not just moral hypocrisy of Evangelicals at play.
Tokyokie
@TenguPhule: To put it in terms his followers might comprehend, he is an agent of Satan harvesting souls for the Kingdom of the Damned. Follow his guidance at the peril of your immortal soul.
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: I loved it when Palmieri dropped the truth bomb on that lying cretin Conway, and she did it again on Twitter after the Charlottesville incident. Good for her.
bemused
@Corner Stone:
I did easily find WAPO article and the youtube which I will watch when I find the time.
Stan
@JCJ:
Bingo!
It’s all racism, all the way down. And there’s nothing else there.
But her emails!!!
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Are any of them wearing the shirts and hats when they set fire to them?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
you crack me up.
Be safe.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
The immediate battles have been lost with Trump’s election, although obviously the war should go on. The Justice Department no longer recognizing a separation between (Christian) church and state. And political activity, including tax exempt activity, will be allowed under the dubious rubric of “personal liberty.” We will see whether the Supreme Court falls for this nonsense, or will try to uphold standards and precedents.
Fair Economist
At this point the right wing is desperate for Hillary to shut up, because they only have so much bandwidth for smearing. They aren’t telling her to go away because they want her to stay. As long as she is around they won’t be able to switch targets to Gillebrand or Harris and they will be in big trouble in 2020 against an inadequately smeared opponent.
On top of that she’s very bright and perceptive and has good things to say. The right wing wants to shut her up for that too, but being able to retarget the smear machine is more important.
Major Major Major Major
@Elizabelle: google puts news publications at the top when you search for something that’s been in the news, it’s hardly their fault that the news about Hillary is garbage.
Laura
@Another Scott: it’s always a good day for some DK -now, more than ever:
https://youtu.be/6d3QFkZ5-hM
rikyrah
@Fair Economist:
Excellent point.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
And once again only Kennedy’s vote will matter as the tie-breaker.
lollipopguild
@Elizabelle: Under Franco Church attendence was mandatory. After Franco left us( “Our top story for tonite-Francisco Franco is still dead.”) Church attendence dropped like a rock.
Boatboy_srq
@JGabriel: Havent you heard? “Democrat” is the new Blah.
Corner Stone
@Fair Economist: I disagree. You don’t give up a demon you know for one you don’t know. Why do you think Pelosi was featured so prominently in the GA House special election? All the mouth breathers had 20+ years of Pelosi being the Ballbusting Bitch Goddess Incarnate ™ . You can’t do that to someone in a few short years, the rubes just aren’t paying enough attention. We have already seen Lindsey Graham come out and say he wants Comey to testify again before Congress – about HRC’s emails. If she had not written that book and was still playing mini-sasquatch in Chappaqua the GOP would *still* be using the Ghost of HRC as the boogeyman.
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
Uh, no. Their capacity for mindless and pointless invective is inexhaustible. And even magnified because of the Internets. Thanks, Al Gore.
Yep. And that’s the point. The right cannot shut her up. They can only try to shriek with a distracting wail.
Also, all this shit is tiresome. Newt Gingrich, Pat Robertson, Papa John McCain and innumerable others have been gassing on for decades long after they ceased being credible public figures. Actually, of course, they were never credible public figures.
Retired political men are elder statesmen. Yeah, America doesn’t know what to do with Hillary or most other women. Yeah, I can blast the sexism. Also, I respect Clinton as a wise woman with a perspective on politics and life. Period. I also am less interested in listening to her retread issues of the 2016 campaign than I am to hear her ideas about what we should do going forward.
catclub
@Brachiator:
The satanists are doing good work in pointing out the hypocrisy of this approach. I could call it doing the Lord’s work.
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: The Satanic Temple is really good at this kind of trolling, yeah.
geg6
@Corner Stone:
I think this could actually be something she may have figured out herself. She may be deliberately making herself a target, as a secondary motivation for her book and book tour. If she is, good on her. Just another selfless thing she’s taken on for the rest of us.
P.S., very glad to see back and in fine fighting form.
MoxieM
@Sloane Ranger: Elli Island story is a myth…so sorry! They had officers speaking a vasty multitude of languages, and very carefully recorded newcomers’ names. If people wanted to change/anglicize/whatever, that was on them, not on the Ellis Island people. (Surprising, I know, but true.)
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Not trolling, a public service for the greater good.
Fair Economist
@Corner Stone: The problem the Republicans will have with “demon Hillary” is that she won’t be running. Demonizing Hillary will not stop people from voting for Harris or Gillibrand. They’ll say “good thing she’s not Hillary” and pull that lever.
Corner Stone
@Fair Economist: If you think a woman running in 2020 for POTUS will not be tarred and feathered with Hillary’s cooties, no matter if tomorrow she skydives into the Grand Canyon never to be seen/heard from again, I have many things to sell you. Ever heard the non-ironic usage of Black Jimmy Carter?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TenguPhule: there was a rumor floating around a while back that Kennedy has changed his mind on a planned retirement because he despises trump. I wonder if that isn’t wishful admiration for the moderate some want him to morph into (I want it, I hope for it, I don’t expect it). To the extent that K has changed his mind, I suspect it has more to do with ego than anything else.
Kinda surprised Thomas hasn’t made noise about retirement. Getting his successor appointed by trump would fit perfectly with the spite that has kept him on the bench this long.
ruckus
@Ian G.:
Most of the people who protest normal dictators have nothing to lose. drumpf’s supporters aren’t those with nothing to lose, even though most of them will lose. They are the people think that they will gain. Like they are about everything else, they are wrong.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thomas knows once his usefulness to the cause ends, he’s just another house n*****.
Captain C
@Sloane Ranger:
When the Dutch were forced by Napoleon to adopt surnames, many did this to themselves. Which is why now, you can meet Dutch people with names that translate to “Born Naked” and “Poopies.”
Aimai
@Major Major Major Major: yes: this is all foretold in the book of altemeyer.
Captain C
@Villago Delenda Est: I thought he was blowing goats.
mardam422
Correct me if I’m wrong. But I think this data describes a cult of personality.