Diversity is not our strength. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, “Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.” https://t.co/ZlMXzcc87w
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) December 8, 2017
.
This will indeed be a tough year for competitors in the Worst Person in National Politics Award, but Steve “Pigmuck” King is a dependable, oft-tested professional!
People say Republicans don’t have a big tent, which isn’t fair. It’s large enough to encompass white supremacists around the world. https://t.co/qcZgRW4nGA
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) December 8, 2017
Just a member of Congress quoting a piece of blood-and-soil racism by Europe's leading neofascist. https://t.co/mEZKBKgjXG
— The Immortal Arthur Fist (@attackerman) December 8, 2017
Seems sort of inconsistent for an unreconstructed Confederate to be against building your society by importing people of other races.
— (((Dan Middleton))) (@DMiddletonCbus) December 8, 2017
This is what abject terror looks like when you're an old white Christian dude watching the societal order change. https://t.co/CAhdCUg3OH
— shauna (@goldengateblond) December 9, 2017
There’s an Archie Bunker kind of racism in America that’s troubling that we hope some effort and energy and education will overcome. And then there’s @SteveKingIA racism, dark and dangerous, heel clicking racism. https://t.co/386Pdy7bGK
— Tony Fratto (@TonyFratto) December 8, 2017
.
Despite that, he’s *not winning the wider argument…
Only 7 percent of Americans say that growing diversity makes their country a worse place to live.
That's less than a quarter of the number who say that in the UK and Germany. pic.twitter.com/1RXGzHjnOK
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) December 10, 2017
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
The only saving grace my Freedom Caucus Rep. Rod Blum has is that he’s not Steve King.
Last night we went to a Christmas party for my husband’s bridge club. One woman there is a retired CPA who does taxes for free for poor people as part of a local charity. The tax bill came up. This woman is a Republican and Mr DAW says he thinks she voted for Trump, so I wasn’t sure what she’d say. She said she’d looked at the details as closely as she could and concluded she and her retired engineer husband would be worse off. She wasn’t happy.
Not that the Rs in Congress care.
Lapassionara
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I don’t understand why opposition to the tax bill hasn’t gotten more traction. It is a horror show!
debbie
The most shocking thing I’ve ever heard from Glen Beck: “Tolerance and diversity are destroying the Constitution.”
Yutsano
Amazing what a difference a country founded on immigration has on social attitudes eh?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Say it with me “The Democrats have a neo-fascists problem.”
Brachiator
Steve King brings to mind a recent news story suggesting caution before giving friends and family DNA test kits for Christmas. Sometimes the results will unravel secrets previously kept hidden or surprise everyone by results which contradict prior “truths” about family history.
America has always been diverse. The Big Lie offered by people like King is to yearn for a past that never existed.
debbie
@Lapassionara:
I think many think the bad parts will be dropped for the final version of the bill. If they aren’t, there will definitely be a reaction.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
That last one is what gives me hope.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Blood-and-soil type racism like that of Orban’s has always disturbed me. It’s ultimately dehumanizing and an excuse to deprive those of the non-dominant culture/race/ethnicity/religion of citizenship. Borders ultimately don’t matter in regards to citizenship since they have changed numerous times in the past. Humans have also migrated all over the place. We’re all people anyway. I don’t care if someone has different religious or cultural beliefs. As long as they pay their taxes, don’t commit violent crimes, and support democratic values, who cares?
Brachiator
@Lapassionara:
Republicans simply ignore opposition, and lie about the tax bill.
Also, the average person will be happy with the idea of a refund, no matter how small, and despite the fact that the super-wealthy are making out like bandits from this bill.
Some conservatives in California have this weird sense of resignation. They see that the tax bill will hurt them, but refuse to complain or blame the GOP.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Trump. And his angry minions.
They care.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
I know that. But they shouldn’t. They’re scared, hateful scumbags using their whiteness as a crutch because that’s literally all they’ve got.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic and harmful.
SiubhanDuinne
I disagree with neither the analysis nor the epithet — in fact, I cheerfully embrace them — but am curious as to where “Pigmuck” originated as a Steve King descriptor.
Matt
Excellent point, Steve. We’ve got the time machine ready so you can stop mixing your imported Nazi shit with this country. It’s over there, cleverly disguised as an industrial shredder – dive right in!
Lapassionara
@debbie: I think there should be reactions before they get to the final bill.
$50 million taken from Medicare is a starting place. I don’t understand why there has not been more outrage about this. It is essentially a “death panel” for older people with cancer.
Ryan’s promise to come after SS and Medicare next should be another. All the retirees who vote reliably Republican should be given a wake up call by this bill.
J R in WV
But Trump and his angry minions are a minority in this nation. We may be surprised by Alabama. We lived there, well, I did briefly while in the USN. People seemed pleasant, polite, helpful, but I was in the Navy and white.
Wife went into a liquor store in Pascaguola, MS, just east of Mobile AL, where my ship was for some months. There was a sign, in 1972, “Proceeds from sales to Ni**rs will be donated to the Klan” and she turned around and walked out. Proprietor yelled, cursing at her back.
I have driven through AL since then, but you can’t really tell what a place is like driving through in the Interstate. it was still bad, in a freedom sense, in 1972.
We shall see next Tuesday. Won’t we… hoping for an American surprise!!
Roger Moore
Though this is hardly limited to Confederates. Imperialists throughout history have complained about bringing a bunch of unwashed barbarians into the empire. Most of the seem to expect that the outsiders they conquer will remain an underclass in perpetuity.
Ohio Mom
Ohio Son and I are in Ohio Dad’s hospital room this afternoon. There have been a couple of snags in his recovery from his aortic valve replacement surgery but nothing that is unusual or very concerning.
I am told that about 30% of patients have temporary issues with their heartbeats, and Ohio Dad is one of them. His heart beats per minute shot up until they adjusted his meds, and then it started fluttering. That meant adding still another med.
At the moment Ohio Dad is proofreading and editing Ohio Son’s final English Comp 101 assignment, due Wednesday. So some of life continues as usual, which is very nice.
J R in WV
@Lapassionara:
“
$50 milliontaken from Medicare is a starting place.”You’ve got the wrong number there – $50 Billion taken from Medicare!!
Felanius Kootea
@Brachiator: Like the neo-nazi who found out he is 8% West African from one company’s test kit and went shopping for a different testing company until he found results that reduced his percentage of non-European heritage. He remains a neo-nazi.
I’m reading this interesting book, “White like her,” about an Ohio woman who discovers when she’s middle aged that her mother “passed for white.” Her mother abandoned New Orleans and her mixed-race creole heritage for Ohio because even though she appeared white, the one-drop rule of Louisiana meant she couldn’t hold a civil service or similar job (her birth certificate marked her as “colored”), etc. I saw the author on PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow some years ago and found the story sad and fascinating.
The book estimates that a couple of thousand people from the south crossed the color line every year when racial segregation laws were in effect. That translates to a lot of Americans walking around who don’t know their full heritage.
Kay
Steve King’s never seen a falling-apart trailer park in rural America? What about yards full of rusted-out cars? We once had an entire (white) family living in a plywood garden shed. They had an extension cord running from the “big house” for the space heater.
Which refugees caused that?
Gravenstone
@Yutsano: As my buddy from college used to joke, our ancestors got thrown out of all the “decent” countries. You might hope this current crop of bigots might understand that bit of history, but selective blindness comes for us all.
jharp
I get the racism. I find it appalling but I get it.
What I don’t get is a member of Congress could be so fucking stupid.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
Fine tuning meds can take awhile. Stay strong.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV:
Maybe we need to make that “happy surprise”. We all got an American surprise last November, and it’s downright depressing.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
There’s a sharp limit on how many of the bad parts they can drop. Some of them they desperately want to avoid dropping because they’re the major point of the bill, and others they can’t drop in practice because they’re how they pay for the other stuff. If they cut much in the first category (e.g. estate tax repeal, lowering business tax rates) they’ll lose support of the hard-line anti-tax idiots. If they cut much in the second category, they lose the people who want to pretend to care about the deficit. I’m also curious about whether the Senate parliamentarian is finally going to get a chance to rule on Byrd Rule limits on the crap they included.
Roger Moore
@jharp:
They’re elected to represent their constituents. You do the math.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ohio Mom:
All in all, this sounds quite normal — which is to say, positive and encouraging and optimistic. Are they making any noises about when he may be released from hospital?
amygdala
@Ohio Mom:
Memo to Ohio Dad’s heart: lub dub, lub dub, lub dub… none of that flutter-fib stuff, you hear?
Good, regular beats to all.
stinger
@Ohio Mom: That last paragraph is quite heartening! May his continued recovery follow a steadier path!
Yutsano
@Roger Moore:
In order to fit in the reconciliation instructions, they have to keep the increase in the deficit under $1.5 trillion. Any more than that and it won’t fit.
I wondered how they got A LOT of this past the Parliamentarian without firing her and getting a more amenable person in that role. Something tells me that’s coming on the final vote.
jharp
@Roger Moore:
I’ve called Steve King’s office before and told the person exactly what I thought of the Congressman.
His reply was Steve King is smart because he keeps getting elected.
MattF
Not a lot of good happening lately, but the broader realization that Steve King is a no-kidding racist and fascist has to be welcomed. He’s the real thing.
Lapassionara
@J R in WV: oh, yeah. Billion. Thanks for catching.
They want to take us back to the Hoover administration.
trnc
@debbie: If they take out the worst parts, they can’t pass it through reconciliation.
MattF
@Yutsano: I think the only remaining question is whether McConnell can resist the temptation to completely get rid of the filibuster. We shall see.
Beautifulplummage
Currently listening to Miss Nicolette’s Bluegrass Rambles on KSER out of Everett WA doing a tribute show for her lifelong mate who passed away last week from cancer. She’s a dear friend & he was one of the good ones.
schrodingers_cat
On the topic of diversity, I have been watching a miniseries on the making of the Indian constitution, Samvidhan made by Shyam Benegal. Its a 10 part series and I just finished watching part seven which dealt with language. The last speech was by Maulana Azad, who was Muslim scholar, and the first education minister of India. Tom Alter*, plays Maulana in this series, if that’s not a testament to diversity I don’t know what is.
* Tom Alter, a veteran actor recently passed away. His family was originally from Ohio IIRC.
ETA: Fuck Steve King and his proud and ignorant bigotry.
trnc
@jharp: Look no further than the voters.
Mike J
@Ohio Mom: My mom had aortic valve replacement last November, went through the same stuff (plus a pericardial effusion which is treated by recreating the OD scene from Pulp Fiction). Even when she got home it took a while to dial in the drugs. There was one she couldn’t take unless her systolic was over 100 and it was weeks before she had it on a regular basis, even with other drugs meant to raise her pressure.
The good news is a year on she’s doing well (and providing me with her leftover charcuterie from her xmas party. Mmmm. Mole salami. )
Hang tough, don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
Very appropriate.
People who voted for the assclown in chief are covering their eyes and hoping the bad guy gets it before they do. Of course they think the real bad guy isn’t all that bad so they aren’t going to lift a finger to stop him.
trollhattan
Could Steve King find Hungary on a map? Is Gorka ghost-writing for him? I’m smelling a connection.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
The thing that gets me is that the Republicans’ behavior is very inconsistent. They’re either going to blow up the Byrd Rule or they aren’t, but this halfway stuff makes no sense. If they’re going to blow up the Byrd Rule to pass a bunch of stuff that’s not germane to the budget, there’s no point in obeying it when setting the long-term budget implications. Their behavior only makes sense if there’s one faction that’s trying to stick by the Byrd Rule and another that’s planning on ignoring it, or (possibly more likely) one faction made promises to another that they knew in advance they couldn’t keep because of the Byrd Rule. Or, I suppose, a mix of each.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: You act as if getting help from Fake Doctor Seb is bad or something.
hellslittlestangel
Does anyone else remember when Steve King’s worst known quality was merely his abject stupidity? Those were the days.
B.B.A.
@Lapassionara: It’s too hard to explain. Even the people writing the tax bill don’t understand what it does – look at the accidental corporate tax hike in the Senate version.
MattF
@trollhattan: King found a kindred spirit in Viktor Orban on Twitter– and that’s way more significant.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: If they keep blowing up rules, it will come back to haunt them, and at least Yertle knows that. Despite all their machinations, the Republicans are not going to hold the Senate forever. If every rule that gives the minority power goes away, they’ll get steamrolled into irrelevance. At least a few of the older Senators are aware of this.
MattF
@Roger Moore: I think McConnell wants to leave himself the option of claiming that he’s not killing the filibuster.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
My cardio god told me that as we age our heart rate will have runs of high bpm and runs of slow bpm. And then adjusted my meds. As a fellow traveler on the heart health express it sounds like Ohio Dad is doing normally, which is a great thing. Tell him to keep on keeping on.
J R in WV
And right after I post optimistic thoughts about Alabama, I think about the two times the “judge” got elected to their supreme court… now, to be honest, they did throw him off that court, twice.
He seems to be desperate for validation from the voters, and for a government job… I assume because he can’t actually do anything anyone would be willing to pay him for. Kind of sad if he wasn’t such a despicable piece of excrement.
trollhattan
@MattF:
Finding it distressing that swaths of former Iron Curtain countries (and the old Soviet Union itself) are now Nazi-curious. What could possibly go wrong?
MattF
@hellslittlestangel: It was, until recently, fair to ask whether King really understood the implications of what he was saying. We now know the answer to that quesiton. ‘Yes’.
Steeplejack (phone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Pretty sure “Pigmuck” originated with Anne Laurie.
MattF
@trollhattan: And they’re mostly anti-semites as well. But there are no Jews around! How did that happen?
Ruckus
@Felanius Kootea:
People being people, it’s a wonder than anyone really knows their heritage. It’s far stranger to me that anyone actually gives a shit. I pass for human. Most days. That’s all that counts.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I assume that’s part of it, but that is exacerbating tensions within the caucus. Some of them are thinking short term and some are thinking longer term, and that affects how willing they are to blow up the rules.
sharl
@debbie: Remember that exchange we had a few days ago, about alt-right date rape advocate Mike Cernovich hanging up on a public radio reporter? That was Bob Garfield, and that abruptly-ended interview showed up on the latest episode of On The Media. I’ve put in some time stamps below, for anyone interested in listening, but perhaps doesn’t have the interest, time, or adequate connectivity to listen to the whole thing. I thought the entire show (all four segments, total run time of 50 minutes) was worth listening to, but YMMV.
…..Bob Garfield ended his segment with something to the effect that ‘now I can look forward to my entire twitter history being searched in detail. I hope I never tweeted anything weird about pizza.’ That last bit is in reference to cerno’s role in hyping the fabricated/stupid/dangerous “pizzagate” story.
The cerno stuff is in the third segment, “Anatomy of a Trolling,” which runs for a total of 17 minutes. The first part is an interview with Sam Seder, the guy who was fired by MSNBC as a result of cerno’s trolling, then later rehired. The bit on cerno takes place at 31:45-42:40 (just over 11 minutes). There is a three minute lead-in by Garfield providing background on the guy, then the interview itself takes place at 34:20 and lasts until cerno hangs up at 39:00.
Vic Berger, one of cerno’s biggest critics (and who has suffered for that), is very optimistic that – between the OTM piece and an article in Newsweek (which I haven’t seen) – this is the beginning of the end for this creep. I hope he’s right, though I assume his optimism pertains only to major media orgs giving cerno all of this free attention. The creep will always have his camp followers who will willingly follow him straight into Hell’s Lake of Fire.
MattF
@MattF: I meant to add ‘no Jews around in those countries’, but FYWP wouldn’t let me edit the comment.
trollhattan
@sharl:
Thanks for the heads-up, it airs here in a few hours.
Constantly find “On the Media” required listening–relevant and relentless.
B.B.A.
@MattF: He can temporarily suspend the filibuster, and renew the suspension every two years, letting it expire as soon as the Democrats take the majority. And out of courtesy to the traditions of the world’s most deliberative body, the Democrats would be bound to let it be reinstated.
Sounds ridiculous, but slather it in McConnell’s cure-for-insomnia drawl, and people will buy anything.
Ruckus
@Kay:
The ones who came over, worked hard, accomplished something and stole that opportunity from them. If it hadn’t been for that one guy from somewhere else that moron would have been able to go to Harvard Med and cure cancer. But that one refugee came over and stole that opportunity.
Zero Sum baby, Zero Sum.
They are hateful, they are stupid, they blame everyone but them selves for being pig fuckers and morons.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
LOL.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV:
You’re in luck, that dude’s running for US Senate.
Ruckus
@hellslittlestangel:
No
He’s always been a racist. Always. He may be the only person born racist. The jury is out on that. The stupidity was just a cover for the racism.
Yutsano
@Ruckus: As I recall King was rallying up old white Iowans against the brown menace stealin’ our welfare and takin’ our jerbs long before Dolt45 popped onto the scene.
How people never noticed how both those positions are ludicrous is beyond me.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Is anyone watching the Buffalo game? It’s insane.
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Well, after a day of consideration and reading endless trip advisor posts I got two bleacher seats near the end of the parade and a parade/game parking pass in One Colorado.
Ruckus
@raven:
If we get a chance we should meet. I live about 4 blocks from the start of the parade, in what is known as the staging area. I need a pass to get in and out the day before and during the early morning hrs on the first can not get in and out other than by foot. Got my car pass yesterday.
Yutsano
@raven: It’s a once in a lifetime trip and you both will have the time of your lives.
Also: GO DAWGS!!!
GregB
For a pack of assholes that purportedly hate globalism, they love European fascist ideology and the ceding of American authority to Russia.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Totally OT, but I sure wish that the click-bait health/disease story featuring a fat, lumpy foot would go away.
raven
@Ruckus: Oh cool, we’ll drive in from Hawthorne pre-dawn and I’m hoping this One Colorado was a good choice. I kept telling her it was a bad idea to do both but I read a post that said “it was mean to be both, people have been doing it for a hundred years”!
debbie
@sharl:
Thanks! I am a fan of Garfield. If anyone can stick it to Cernovich, he will. I’ll have to start following him on Twitter.
Ruckus
@GregB:
In their minds that European fascist ideology had the right idea. Ovens for all. That’s why they like it. They just don’t know that they are very likely also on the list.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
As a gesture of ignorant solidarity, I say GO DAWGS!
raven
@Ruckus: I gotta go to the Garden Club xmas party, lets talk later.
Felanius Kootea
@Ruckus: I meant people like Steve King and the neo-Nazis who view race as something other than a social construct and would be happy to bring “one-drop” laws back in America (until they find that their heritage is richer than they imagined).
sharl
Whatever happens in Alabama, I hope the digital media consultant (Mothership Strategies) the Doug Jones campaign is paying to bring in contributions never gets another gig, at least not until they clean up their act. This – from a prominent leftist academic economist – seems to be a common complaint:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Considering your other plans, that’ll probably work best for you. I do think that the after parade float viewing is better than the parade, but it doesn’t sound like that will fit into your plans.
schrodingers_cat
@sharl: Why are Berners complaining against Doug Jones?
Chyron HR
@sharl:
That’s every Democratic campaign”s fundraising e-mails–unless Mothership Connection is responsible for ALL of them, in which case, yeah, heads must roll.
Lapassionara
@sharl: They just gave O’Keefe an award. Mike Cernovich is not going anywhere.
mike in dc
The biggest threat to America isn’t Trump or the GOP. It’s the particular people who vote for them no matter what.
Redshift
All American “patriots” who would rather be Hungary than America, go stand with Steve King! Anyone?…
danielx
@J R in WV:
Was driving through Georgia with spouse in 1985 on the way to the Keys. It was Sunday at the end of May and we were scrolling through AM radio stations trying to find the Indianapolis 500 broadcast…all of a sudden we get this horrible southern shitkicker white trash voice saying, in so many words: “that woolly head make them different from you and me and if you deny that, you denyin’ the law of GOD!”. Then we lost the signal, but we both were in shock – what the fuck did we just hear, and is this 1985 or 1955? Couldn’t be 1855, they didn’t have radio.
There are people for whom the lack of melanin in their skin is a point of pride, and maybe the only one they have got. I could almost feel sorry for them if they weren’t vicious, violent, white trash motherfuckers.
gene108
@Lapassionara:
Information overload and outrage fatigue. On the latter, we aren’t right-wingers. Anger drains us, it doesn’t charge our batteries. And having to be angry about every god damn thing this government does is exhausting.
The flip side of this is we are angry and burned out because there’s so much fucking shit coming out of this government, from destorying U.S. standing in the world by declaring Jerusalem the capitol of Israel, failing to make any bi-lateral trade deals and withdrawing from multi-country trade deals and environmental compacts, to rolling back net neutrality, to environmental regulations, etc.
It would be nice to go one week withouth an new crisis to have to call Congress about
Felanius Kootea
@mike in dc: It’s also the people who refuse to vote for anything but the purest of the pure on the left. If they’d lived in France, Marine Le Pen would be president right now and they would be perfectly fine with not having sullied themselves voting for Macron (even as they watched their Muslim neighbors and friends get deported).
zhena gogolia
@raven:
You’re going to have fun!
Ruckus
@Felanius Kootea:
I understood. We seem to be in agreement. I was just saying, “They are full of shit, first of all there is only one “race” and it’s the human race. And that is just one piece of a much larger pie, all living things. I don’t care what color your skin is, or what language you speak, (actually I find it extremely interesting, these differences in people) I find it extremely interesting that people move all around the globe or seem to stay within say a hundred miles of where they were born. A friend told me once that she knew a man who was about 70 and the farthest he’d ever traveled in his life was 16 miles. I used to travel twice that far every day to go to work. Each way. And yes I live 4-5 miles from where I grew up but in the intervening years I’ve lived in 3 different states, 2 of them over 2400 miles away and even lived over 450 miles away in this state and have traveled to a few corners of a globe that has none.
Life is too short to limit one’s self to only the view out the kitchen window, with the shades drawn, as beautiful as that may be. I know a guy who rode his motorcycle from OK to south America, by himself. About 35 yrs ago. I am still in awe of that. I tried to pick up a girl in Majorca, Spain in 1972 but my Spanish and Latin got all mixed up. It was hilarious and fun. We still danced and drank and had a good time, without speaking more than 2 words that either of us understood. If I was a racist that never would have happened and that’s a life not well lived. Screw that, we aren’t on this rock for all that long, why make hate the center point of one’s life? It gains you nothing and it ruins so much.
Patricia Kayden
@Matt: That’s the first thing I thought of. Steve King is as much as an immigrant as I am and I’m a first generation Jamaican Canadian. The last time I checked, he’s not Native American.
Redshift
I was at an event at my in-laws’ retirement home, and a family member of one of the other residents is this nice lady originally from Mississippi. She was talking about going back home to visit (she lives in the DC area), and that she never remember how bad it is until she’s there. She talked about the racism, how of she hadn’t left she would have forever been “that little Lebanese girl” because one of her parents is Lebanese. I never would have guessed; she looks like the picture of a nice white Mississippi lady.
frosty
@sharl: I get emails from Bob Casey at least 3 or 4 times a week and they’re always “OMG TRUMP HAS TARGETED PA WITH HIS PET REPUBLICAN!!!!! SEND $$$!!!!!
Last I saw his fundraising was orders of magnitude better than the opponent.
MomSense
@Ohio Mom:
It is very common – things we wish we didn’t have to learn about. I swear those ICU nurses are the most amazing alchemists – adjusting the meds constantly.
sharl
Can you name some Berners you are referring to? Two or three individual Berners I’ve seen have said they’d vote for Jones if they lived in Alabama, despite complaints/concerns having to do with not starting outreach early enough to the AfAm community. Some of those same complaints are coming from black folks both within and outside of Alabama.*
Do you really think that frequent despairing, hectoring e-mails is an effective means for winning further support/contributions? I’m just a dumb STEM guy, ignorant in the ways of human nature, but this approach seems problematic to me.
*Personally I would agree, to the extent that Jones may have taken the AfAm vote for granted up until now, running on his résumé – and it’s a very goodrésumé! – rather than talking about current day needs. But I think the AfAm vote isn’t likely to be Jones’ problem, but rather the 70-75% voting-eligible white population there.
Lapassionara
@gene108: I hear you. I shake my head with disbelief a lot. So many travesties, it is exhausting.
But Trump’s promise to protect SS and Medicare was one reason some voted for him, at least in the primary, when he distinguished himself from other Republicans by taking this position. Of course, anyone who knew the slightest bit about him knew it was a con, but if he follows Ryan on this issue, I think (hope) he will see his poll numbers drop even lower than they are now.
frosty
@gene108:
Seconded. Hell, it would be nice to have only one or two things about the tax bill to call about.
sharl
Yep, as long as there are billionaires willing to secretly fund the likes of Cerno & O’Keefe, they’ll still be around, or there will be someone to take their place in the event they no longer serve their paymasters’ purposes. I think that Berger’s optimism is focused on classic mainstream media getting wise to these guys. Whether that optimism is justified remains to be seen.
In the meantime I’m coming around to the viewpoint of the young leftie hot-heads I follow: taking away the billionaires’ money is the only way to shut down these twerps. A fantasy at the moment, to be sure, but an (old) boy can dream.
schrodingers_cat
@sharl: Both the people whose tweets you linked to worked for BS campaign in 2016, says so in their Twitter bio.
lamh36
UGH!!!!! RAGING SCREAM!!!
Once more for the cheap seats…
It’s Alabama…if White Republicans are willing to vote for Moore even if he’s a pedo for partisan reasons…linking Doug Jones to Barack Obama does NOTHING. Yes Blacks are large numbers, but they are STILL the minority. White folks STILL have to come out & vote FOR Jones.
I am so FUQ’N tired of this hot take…
Anne Laurie
@SiubhanDuinne: Steve’s the King of Pigmuck Mountain! I started using the epithet to distinguish Rep. Pete “(the Irish) Mucker” King from Steve King, back when us non-Iowans knew him as the only Congressperson to vote against putting a plaque in the Capital Visitors Center commemorating the slaves who built the Capital. But the rise of the TeaParty/Trump professional GOP bigots has really allowed Steve a wider canvas for his mingy meanness. Given Iowa’s status as a major CAFO (factory farming) pig producing state, Steve’s made a name for himself as King Turd of Shit Mountain!
Ruviana
@Schrodingers Cat: Insufficient purity.
Patricia Kayden
@mike in dc: Yep. The folks who put party over decency and patriotism. The folks in Alabama who will be voting for a child molester because he has an R besides his name on Tuesday.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lamh36: Agreed, if the Jones campaign thought that President Obama could have helped, they’d asked and he’d be there.
schrodingers_cat
@lamh36: Its always the fault of minorities or women, when Rs when, never the fault of the biggest R voting block, white men.
lamh36
sharl
@schrodingers_cat: Both of them were complaining about the Jones campaign digital media operation. They’ve been leftie/soc’list types for as long as I’ve followed them; I haven’t seen their opinions on Doug Jones himself, and for all I know they haven’t publicly offered any, but my guess is they would prefer someone further to the left. I’m sure they would also like to own magic unicorns, but the fact that at least one of them (Kelton) gave money to Jones anyway, despite whatever doubts she might have about Jones, suggests she is realistic about what is possible in Alabama.
second try to evade FYWP; first time fixed the soc’list thing, but nicked a second time. Let’s see…
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s who they are. It’s what they do.
Chyron HR
@sharl:
Guess Jones should’ve told a group of BLM protesters that the economic anxiety of the white working class is what REALLY matters. #MinorityOutreach
sharl
@Ruviana: Hoo boy, that Medium post…
Dave Weigel called that out, and felt worse for the resulting bad feeling from some of the DSA crowd than he did about Twitler quote-tweeting him and demanding his firing.
A lot of the lefties agree with Weigel, though they are also sympathetic with the Medium post author, a member of DSA North Alabama who considers Bernie insufficiently leftist:
A lot of these youngsters are in the stage where their ideals and enthusiasm are meeting the real world and all the horrors it offers. They’ll get knocked on their asses a lot, they’ll get older along with the world, and they’ll reconsider and re-evaluate matters in accordance with their own priorities and perceptions, whether good or flawed. So it goes.
catclub
@J R in WV: And even that correction is pointless unless you know what fraction that $50B
is of Medicare spending.
Which is part of why the mistake was made in the first place. $50M is a lot of money! Until you are discussing something like Medicare.
Ruviana
@sharl: I don’t think too many Alabama voters will be reading Medium so at least the writer is aware of her limited audience. But yeah, the article was a classic in the leftist-purity genre.
catclub
@sharl:
I just saw somewhere that donations of the billionaires estates to 504C ‘public interest’ organizations was touched on by the horrible tax bill. The idea was making those bequests tax deductible. – or not touched by the estate tax.
I cannot remember now if that little nugget actually failed.
sharl
@lamh36: I’ve linked to it a couple times in comments over here already – Joy-Ann Reid wrote a pretty good thing in an effort to preemptively head off the standard knee-jerk tendency by some (white) pundits to blame black folks in the event of a Jones loss:
Don’t Blame Black Voters If Doug Jones Loses to Roy Moore: The Alabama Senate race is a referendum on Alabama, not on black Alabamans.
Brachiator
@lamh36:
For me, the only question is whether Jones stands a chance with a strong “get out the vote effort.”
If he does, and any group of voters don’t show up, I would look to the Jones campaign.
JPL
@lamh36: The way to get out the white vote in Alabama is for President Obama to show up
Sad but true.
MomSense
@lamh36:
Why can’t you magically solve every problem for us, Barack Obama?
JPL
OT I went away for a few days, so missed the great snow storm. I still have 8 inches of the white stuff on my table and 9 inches where my son walked on the grass. Limbs are all over the back yard, and will probably stay there until the spring.
ugh.
Kathleen
Can’t remember if anyone else brought this up but Obama warned US about not following path of Nazi Germany, which freaked out the guy who retweeted this:
https://twitter.com/BeSeriousUSA/status/939606183396089857
He makes the point that Obama is careful about what he says and sees this as a stark warning.
JPL
@MomSense: I haven’t ordered Pete Souza’s book yet, because it still hurts to look at the pictures. Remember when there was a grown up in the White House..
germy
@MomSense:
A new documentary is coming out about the last year of his administration.
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/the-final-year/
Meanwhile…
lamh36
@Brachiator: get out the vote efforts are good, but still…the Black population is large, but for it to over ride the majority white population vote (which for Al is largely GOP) then some of those white voters would have to cross the party line and vote for Jones or abstain from voting for Moore…
I guess my thing is…is EVERY eligible Black voter in Alabama who was able to get over the voter suppressions tactics voted for Jones, Jones still doesn’t win…
All to say, GOTV or no GOTV…this narrative/hot take that has been forming that all Jones needs is for someone, namely Obama, to energize the Black vote and I just don’t think that matters in the case of state-wide voters in Alabama…heck…even with the energized voting when Obama was on the ballot, he STILL didn’t win statewide in Alabama…or any of the “Southern states” even with the largest Black votes…
the onus is STILL on white voters in Alabama, the question is…even with GOTV efforts, are there enough white voters willing to vote against Moore or for Jones instead?
Mike in NC
@germy: I read that NYT article yesterday and it was deeply disturbing on so many levels. Trump wanted to know if “Pocahontas” will run against him in 2020. Hopefully he’ll be a bad memory by then.
Patricia Kayden
Steve King should be glad that White privilege is so strong in the U.S. (despite its diversity and multiculturalism) that someone as unqualified and uncouth as Trump could ascend to the most powerful political position in the country (and arguably the world). President Obama had to be flawless and perfect to get as far and yet was subjected to obstructionism from the GOP.
B.B.A.
@Kathleen: The Weimar Republic was one of the freest places in Europe, up until it wasn’t.
I’d been getting a real vibe of “this is all going to come crashing down” in the late Obama era. I thought it’d be 2020 when President Cruz imposed theocracy and cracked down on us decadent elites in our enclaves on the coasts. For once, I’m not glad I was wrong.
sharl
@germy: LOL, Twitler is clearly sensitive about his TV-viewing addiction – from that same piece:
Of course. He’s known for his voracious reading habit.
Van Buren
@MattF: And if he does, Democrats would reinstate it as soon as they regained the majority, because the media would be demanding it.
Frank Wilhoit
Orban’s target is not non-Magyars. His target is liberal Magyars.
Steve King’s (…Steve Bannon’s, etc.) target is not Mexicans or Muslims. His target is liberal whites.
Put yourself in the position of the proverbial Martian watching a cabinetmaker. Would you be able to distinguish between the workpiece and the tools? (Ha, words and their connotations! Except here it doesn’t really work. Never mind.)
Chris T.
Yes, as everyone knows, purebred dogs are much healthier than their mutt counterparts:
So healthy!
[source]
hellslittlestangel
@Ruckus: Sigh …
Brachiator
@lamh36:
I’m a numbers guy. I don’t care about narratives. The Jones campaign and the Democratic Party should understand this as well. If their only hope is for enough white people to be repelled by Moore, then that is the political reality. If some combination of black and white vote would push him over the top, then that should be factored in as well.
That aside, the Democrats need to cultivate relationships with people they expect to vote for them, and get off this nonsense of wanting Obama or some other key figure to swoop down in the last days and “energize” voters.
No One You Know
@germy: Dear God. Mary Trump was right. He’s permanently stuck at two years old. Not that we didn’t suspect this already.
Kathleen
@B.B.A.: I got a weird vibe on election night when I saw the video from Obama. I’d never seen anything like that before during a presidential election. It was like, what does he know. While I do not look to him to be our savior (he always said it was up to us to be the change we wanted) I do feel like he is working in the background. On what I don’t know, other than the voting rights and community organizing forums.
Side note, that idiot Matt Stoller tweeted “The other scandal is Obama’s post presidential speeches. To Wall Street. In China. In France Etc. It’s just legal bribery and it’s unethical”.
I responded: Who is he bribing and for what reason? He’s a private citizen. (In the spirit of wtf are you talking about.)
He took it as serious question from me and replied: That’s what I’m wondering myself. Who is he bribing?
I did not bother to engage him. I felt like saying you’re the “reporter” – investigate and report, but I didn’t want his mojo messing with my timeline.
All the shit going down and Entitled White Boy is dogging Obama.
debbie
@sharl:
Oh, please. He doesn’t even read his teleprompter.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@lamh36:
Yes. But I hope Alabama black voters turn out. Will Repubs likely try their usual dishonorable crap? Of course. Nonetheless, we must all persist.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@West of the Rockies (been a while): You need to breathe. Just to recap:
Blacks make up around 25% of the state’s population.
That includes men, women, and chlldren.
Even if they all could vote, and they all did vote, THEY STILL NEED A PLURALITY OF WHITE VOTES FOR THE PREFERRED CANDIDATE TO WIN.
WTF is so hard about this?
sharl
@Kathleen: Yep, that’s the flame-throwing Matt Stoller of the MyDD and Open Left blogging days. I assume he makes Stoller family get-togethers more interesting during discussions with his bank executive father and more famous filmmaker brother Nick.
He runs hot-and-cold on the firebrand thing, depending on the topic and (I assume) his mood. He has done a couple stints as a staff guy for Congress (both House and Senate, if memory serves), so he is not totally lacking in relevant “real world” experience. I suspect he chafed a bit in those roles, preferring his independent mid-aughts political activism and the economic policy wonkism he’s engaged in now. But he clearly sometimes gets an itch to pull the trigger on that flame thrower.
You may already know it, but he and other “veteran” leftie political/economics types – Atrios (Duncan Black) being another – have been riled up by the recent release of a report (.pdf, 30pp) on the large-scale destruction of the Black middle class following the 2008 economic collapse and related shenanigans that went on with home financing.
…….To the credit of those guys and others active back then, they were screaming from Day One about the failure of various programs advertised as correctives to the housing financing disaster. My problem with those guys isn’t all that big, especially in the case of atrios, who has maintained the habits that got him through his years as an academic – forming opinions only after careful research and consideration, with almost no exaggeration or bombast. On the other hand, Stoller just likes to cut loose on occasion, though on twitter respondents will sometimes call him out on it (he may or may not acknowledge the criticisms).
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Did I sound like I was hyperventilating, Ben? So are you saying black people shouldn’t even bother? Their votes are entirely unnecessary? I’m saying their votes will be part of the equation, that’s all.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@West of the Rockies (been a while): “Gee, I hope the black folks turn out.” Hyperventilating not required (and to your credit, you weren’t). The problem is that this is a hot take pre-planted by the media so that if Jones loses and black turnout isn’t 110 percent, they’ll take that bullshit, run with it, and it’ll be carved in stone by Friday that we’re the reason Jones lost. Rickyrah has been hammering on this all week, and she’s right. Media sticks that fucking banana in the tailpipe every time, and every time people that should know better fail for it. It’s a line of hot garbage, and it needs killing whenever it rears its head. In other words, it ain’t you specifically, it’s just a bad take period.
WaterGirl
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Serious question. Does that end up sounding condescending? Sounding like white people think you are too stupid to vote or to know what’s good for you?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@WaterGirl: Yes. Good God,yes!
WaterGirl
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Well-intentioned but condescending and insulting.
I think if I were black I might spontaneously combust with rage pretty much every single day. As it is, I’m close to that anyway.
edit: I suppose suffering fools is part of your survival training, but damn, it seems like it never lets up. White people idiocy at every turn. And I say that as a white person.
edit 2: wondering if I am sounding like a fool here. oh well.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@WaterGirl: Well, I thank you for confirming that I haven’t actually lost my mind.
If we were what they thought we were, we’d have burned the country to the ground already. They’re too stupid to realize that.
WaterGIrl
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): You are so right. They would have surely burned the country to the ground if they were in your place. White people think they are entitled to privilege, black people are not. Disgusting.
catclub
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Not quite. If the black registered voters are 25% of the total, and all of them turn out, but only 50% of the remaining 75% of voters turn out, you would only need a bit more than 16% of the white voters to go with Jones to get a majority of the votes cast.
and whatever happened to that GOP write-in candidate? that would be useful to Democrats. Tragic accident?
catclub
@Roger Moore:
Adlai Stevenson did.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@catclub: Works if black children could vote. Spoiler alert:they can’t.
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: counterpoint: it means that what people can’t be trusted to vote for decency
jonas
Re: Victor Orhan — one thing the framers of the EU never really gamed out is the scenario where one of their member states basically reverts to fascist dictatorship. Hungary is pretty much there and Poland is teetering on the cusp.
Zinsky
We can all only hope that Joni Ernst castrates Rep. King in a case of mistaken hog identity or that there is a horrible runaway corn-picker accident in Iowa, taking Mr. King and all his genetic offspring.
Brachiator
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
I don’t know. As usual, there are a lot of different takes on this election. A recent story in The Atlantic is pretty clear on what Democrats are up against.
But there are also polls indicating that this election may see very low voter turnout, which is telling. In a rational world, people would be moving heaven and Earth to keep Moore out of the Senate, but a good chunk of Alabama voters of all races don’t seem to give a shit.
There is also the weird Southern vibe in which the Democrats don’t know how to get beyond racial dynamics to help the goddam party.
If this is a significant problem and the Democratic Party leadership can’t figure it out, to hell with them.
The Atlantic article goes on to discuss the voter suppression efforts going on, such as passing voter ID laws and then closing DMV offices in black neighborhoods to keep blacks from getting necessary ID.
It’s a mess. And this goes beyond blaming black voters for not riding to the rescue.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Brachiator: Among the other things we’re fighting against, this:
Brachiator
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Seems to me that some of the apparent problem that the Democratic Party leadership has in understanding and helping and energizing black voters is similar to the idiotic blindness of Bernie Sanders.
Also, Trump and Moore and the Republicans intend to choke the life out of black people and all other non-white people in America. Bernie Sanders is a tiresome old fool, not an existential threat.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator:
You can tell me that when he is successful in destroying the Democratic party from within.