"Majority leader McConnell cited Civil Rights legislation yesterday, as well he should because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them." -Ta-Nehisi Coates pic.twitter.com/oWiksjoNca
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) June 19, 2019
.
The Treason in Defense of Slavery Party, now d/b/a ‘the GOP’, has always been good to Mitch McConnell. McConnell intends for it to last out his time, and if striving for that goal should happen to tear apart the country — or even destroy his nominal party — that would be of small matter to Mitch McConnell. He has working ties with Russia’s oligarchs, and his spousal partner has even stronger ties to the People’s Republic; whatever the damage to America, Mitch McConnell believes himself invulnerable. Has he not spent his long, profitable career acting in bad faith to every oath but that to his revanchist clan?
moments ago, @SenateMajLdr McConnell on #Reparations: "I don't want reparations for something that happened 150 years ago…we've tried to deal with the original sin of slavery by passing civil rights legislation and electing an African American president…."
— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) June 18, 2019
.@SenateMajLdr McConnell's full remarks today on #Reparations: pic.twitter.com/oySof92F3X
— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) June 18, 2019
@TaNehisiCoats regarding “no one alive is responsible, let’s move on” rhetoric: “We don’t take that attitude toward history that we’re proud of. We take that attitude toward the part of history we’re ashamed of. #reparationshearing
— Zenobia Jeffries Warfield (@ZenJWar) June 19, 2019
On Juneteenth, we celebrate our capacity to make real the promise of our founding, that thing inside each of us that says America is not yet finished, that compels all of us to fight for justice and equality until this country we love more closely aligns with our highest ideals. pic.twitter.com/2XAKRuRrbG
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 19, 2019
rikyrah
This is my grandmother. Born in Goodwill, Texas 106 years ago. She is very much alive. Her grandfather was born enslaved and was freed on #Juneteenth. She can recall family accounts of slavery. This is recent history. American history. #Reparations pic.twitter.com/9fRnbafzQZ
— Sonya Childress (@SonyaChildress) June 19, 2019
rikyrah
Ta-Nehisi Coates on reparations: “A nation is both its credits and its debts. If Thomas Jefferson matters, so does (his slave) Sally Hemings. If D-Day matters, so does Black Wall Street” #Juneteenth pic.twitter.com/Pw8WBCu7Xq
— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) June 19, 2019
rikyrah
Ta-Nehisi Coates: We grant that @senatemajldr was not alive for Appomattox, but he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodward.”
Racism and the execution of 14-year-old George Stinney
Isaac Woodard- eyes gouged out pic.twitter.com/fdqfn11EMK
— 3ChicsPolitico (@3ChicsPolitico) June 20, 2019
rikyrah
“It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery.”
On this #Juneteeth, Ta-Nehisi Coates testified at the #reparationshearing to discuss the case for reparations. pic.twitter.com/b4WZlh0nH0
— The Root (@TheRoot) June 19, 2019
Mike in NC
There is so much Russian oligarch/mob money being funneled into McConnell’s state that they should just rename it “Kentuckystan”.
rikyrah
“Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could’ve extended its hallowed principles — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — to all, regardless of color,” writer Ta-Nehisi Coates told Congress. “But America had other principles in mind” pic.twitter.com/a1RYYhbSnq
— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) June 19, 2019
rikyrah
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee at the reparations hearing: “I’m a product of my history. I am clearly a child that has walked this path—No, I did not pick cotton, but I will say that those who picked cotton created the very basic wealth of this nation. For cotton was king.”
Via The Hill
pic.twitter.com/r30Uplbnsg
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 19, 2019
rikyrah
“Why should the federal government bear responsibility for economic and social damages to the descendants of the enslaved?”
“I think the most obvious reason is because the federal government is complicit in it,” Ta-Nehisi Coates says. https://t.co/mRdEFuytTO pic.twitter.com/OfzTRiCVim
— ABC News (@ABC) June 19, 2019
brantl
What did Mitch McSuckel have to do with any of that, except opposing it, tooth and nail?
Gin & Tonic
Joe Biden might even say that this Coates guy is clean and articulate.
Felanius Kootea
@brantl: Exactly. He represents people that opposed everything he’s citing as achievements. The hypocrisy is unbelievable.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is fire!
kindness
I think the US does owe people for what they did. I just think making it race based will make Democrats a minority party in our representative bodies for a generation if they push for reparations based on the color of one’s skin. I’m not speaking out of both sides of my mouth here. I want to help all people who have struggled and are struggling. And I’m not exaggerating. I’m speaking of reality. There is a difference between Japanese Americans who were actually put in concentration camps during WWII and decendants of slaves from 150 years ago. Reparations will kill Democrats at the polls and quite honestly we can’t help anyone if Republicans own the whole show.
Making this issue a liberal purity test is really dumb.
Kay
@brantl:
It’s so gross how conservatives frame electing Obama as some incredibly generous gift “we” (meaning white people) gave to black people. There’s so much wrong with it makes me think we have nothing in common, ever, even possibly.
Every part of that is wrong. No meeting of the minds at all. And that is what Mitch thinks since obviously Mitch didn’t elect Obama. He’s speaking on behalf of “white people” here.
Kay
@brantl:
By “we” he means “white people”. Obama is proof of how generous we are and evidence for why demands beyond this incredibly generous “gift of Obama” that white people made to black people are unreasonable.
Justice Roberts believes this too. It’s what he used to gut the voting rights act. We have given you people enough
The “we” is important. There’s “the we” and then “the other”. Also, the gift-giver (white) and the gift-receiver (black)
rikyrah
“The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells,” https://t.co/1FzkU29qTw
— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) June 20, 2019
PaulWartenberg
Considering how much racism and poverty are tied together – that much of the suffering of minorities especially Black families put them into poverty – then reparations on several fronts – reparations for the loss of property value through redlining, loss of wages through workplace discrimination, loss of life from police brutality – would go a long way towards reducing the pain and horror that our current poverty is inflicting on most Americans (Whites included).
Ohio Mom
Just a reminder that Germany is still paying reparations to Jews (and IIRC, some others) for what they destroyed and abscounded with during Hitler’s reign. And we paid the families of the Japanese-Americans we put in concentration camps reparations (though they were skimpy and mostly symbolic).
So I think the idea of reparations for Black Americans is perfectly reasonable, though I never expect to see it for obvious reasons.
I’m pretty gobsmacked the discussion has gone as far as it has. It’s been a pleasant surprise to see Coates being given the opportunity to speak on reparations and spar with McConnell.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I propose December 6th as a national Holiday. Call it “Liberation from Wage Theft” day.
opiejeanne
We are heading to Missouri on Sunday in order to stomp around in the Ozarks with the mud and the copperheads and cottonmouths and mosquitoes and chiggers and I was considering a trip to either Pea Ridge National Battleground in Arkansas or Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield. In checking out their websites I ran into something I’ve never seen before: almost every reference to Confederate troops at Wilson’s Creek refers to them as Southerners. The term Confederate only appears once in the pages of photos.
Are we now being PC about the fucking Confederates and their sympathizers? It is Missouri (sometimes pronounced like misery, depending on the weather) I realize, but dammit, that was a hideous loss to the CSA by the Union. Pea Ridge fixed it but why are we calling them Southerners on our government pages?
Kay
@PaulWartenberg:
I think there’s a real difference because the deficit to black people was generational, and so they were unable to accrue assets over years and years. The interest on the debt compounded in a way it didn’t for white people. To me it was the best part of Coates reparations article because no one talks about it in stark economic terms like that, and he did. If you were denied property in a “good” neighborhood based on race that asset hit you took rippled. It harmed the generation after you. That isn’t a straight line loss. It multiplies. He used Chicago so I will too. There was a migration from the south of poor whites too. They went to Chicago and Detroit and Toledo. They could buy property in middle class neighborhoods, and they benefited from that in each successive generation. They just had to succeed once, not over and over in each successive generation.
Immanentize
@Kay: as a follow up to our small discussion of “religious” people in the US:
In the Christian faith tradition I grew up in, everyone is always urged to think how they are personally responsible for Christ’s crusifixion. Every day. But they cannot give a moment’s thought to how they are complicit/responsible for slavery.
Johnny Cash and the Carters — Were You There When They Crucified my Lord
This song causes me tremble….
Nelle
So long ago? I’m repeating myself here, and I know I’m an outlier, but my grandfather, not great-grandfather, but grandfather was born in 1863 (not in the States, though). The stories of his s life ate very much alive to me.
Take down the Confederate statues, then. So long ago and nothing to do with the present .
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC: Comrade Mitch wouldn’t like you saying this out loud.
Kay
@PaulWartenberg:
I say this a lot because I see it in such stark, real terms in my practice but you cannot overestimate how much the successive generation benefits from the accrued “asset” of the generation prior. The asset can be anything- education, real property, a 10,000 loan to the next generation when they want to buy a house. Being in the middle class pays and pays and pays. That’s the stake white people got and black people did not. That’s the edge. It makes all the difference in the world.
A Ghost To Most
Do all these calls for reparations include the Native Americans whose land we stole?
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Here’s Ms Childress’s grandmother‘s tweet as a one click link. I hope. Some folks have trouble accessing data more than a click away, so this is for them.
And there’s way more history in that twitter thread, she graduated from college when she was 36, and there’s a video, and an interview from her previous birthday. Great info!
Thanks, rikyrah, for providing this very real connection to 150 years of history ! Mrs. Gerta Murphy looks to be a real jewel in Sonya’s family.
ETA: Yay, the link works OK… one never knows, does one!
germy
Over at LawyersGunsMoneyBlog, whenever they do a thread about McConnell, they always feature the photo of him standing and grinning in front of the confederate flag. He is what he is.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/06/todays-thoughts-from-the-gravedigger-of-american-democracy
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Ta-Nehisi Coates: “We grant that @senatemajldr was not alive for Appomattox” … but he was alive for the Birmingham Baptist Church bombing that killed 4 little innocent girls. I’m sure he doesn’t remember that, but I do. Many Horrific headlines from when I was a little kid, trying to understand the world. If I forget that I’m already gone from here.
germy
@J R in WV:
William Buckley claimed it was probably the work of some “crazed negro.” (Buckley’s books have been read and enjoyed by some of our current Supreme Court justices.)
redoubt
We are, by the way, about a month and a half or so from the four-hundredth anniversary for when slavery began in this country. Slavery in America is older than the United States of America. Pretending that “that was 150 years ago, and we ‘fixed’ it, let’s move on” is, I don’t have the words to say without cursing.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I sometimes think the defensiveness about it is almost a recognition of the debt. In, ya know, a cowardly way :)
When you were voting for Obama did you ever in your wildest dreams consider that conservatives would conclude it was payment for slavery? WTF with these people? Where did that come from?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Most of the wealth for Whites in this country was built upon the benefits of the GI Bill after WWII.
And, Black GI’s, as a group, were denied those benefits, even though, theoretically, they were ‘ colorblind’.
JaneE
You will never make things right. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. If the legacy of slavery ever ends, then you can total up the damage. Until then, you can only look at what has already been done, and try to stop any more of it from happening. All of us aren’t even trying to stop doing damage yet, and a good portion of the US (aka the GOP) are doing everything they can to do more damage, not less. Reparations are needed, but they won’t happen anytime soon. If someone has totaled up the value of the work of slaves then we could at least pay that amount, with interest, to their descendants. Adjusted for inflation, of course, and take the money out of Trump’s wall fund.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Not only that, but the very buildings our government is based within, the Capitol and the Whitehouse, were built with enslaved labor. Free labor of slaves built the USA.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You’re right and wrong, Kay. I’ve been hearing about reparations for at least 20 years.
One of the Alderman here in Chicago was very big into it. She was very big into explaining the financial underpinnings that slavery was in every part of American society. Folks like her spent a long time establishing how basically every corner of American capitalism had, at its roots, slavery. Proving that in economic terms.
Richard Guhl
Richard Rothstein has laid out the argument in his book, The Color of Law, that since the 13th Amendment was intended to not only abolish slavery but also remove all the ‘badges’ (stigma) of it, all the government sanctioned policies of discrimination in housing were unconstitutional, and therefore demand redress.
Another Scott
@opiejeanne: I poked around a little. One page at the Pea Ridge park that doesn’t mention “confederate” but does mention “south” was supposedly last updated in 2015.
There are 3096 hits for ‘confederate’ on the NPS.gov site.
Dunno.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Kay: I grew up in upstate New York on the PA border. It is a white yes working class yes Christian yes area. But also heavily immigrant-based: Irish, Italian and all the Eastern European people’s. I knew Obama had a good chance of winning when people there at the summer Balloon Festival were wearing Obama T-shirts.
They felt like they were part of something big, and I think they felt themselves ennobled; but it certainly wasn’t a debt being paid.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Next they’re going to argue that they’re not required to provide food because the kids are overweight.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay: Comment I heard on radio after jury set OJ free–‘We’ve just given them everything. But after this, no more. I’m done!’
IIRC this was a report from a group (of white people, I think). This was after the verdict and the cheers/celebration of blacks. Those cheers really freaked out !most whites where I lived and worked.
A black woman colleague said words to the effect–‘You whites saw and heard something different during the trial. Most blacks watched through the lens of having cops planting evidence on family and friends, beating them, totally ignoring what they said. We did NOT see the same trial!’
Immanentize
@rikyrah:
Here is Professor Charles Ogletree, a colleague and mentor (I was his intern in Washington DC back when) writing in 2002 about the institutional economic debt related to reparations. (NYTimes op Ed)
PS Charles was also Anita Hill’s attorney and a close advisor to Obama. He is sadly today suffering from the ravages of Alzheimer’s
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: Pea Ridge wasn’t the one I was disturbed by, it was the Wilson’s Creek pages.
Immanentize
@Richard Guhl:
I wrote an article that the treatment of black rape victims was a “badge of slavery.”. So many ways slavery still haunts us.
JaneE
@A Ghost To Most: Some have actually been paid. The Cherokee won their suit (I think it was for the Georgia lands) sometime in the ’50’s. Congress appropriated the money quite a few years after that – It may have been paid out in the early ’60’s. Lawyers got the vast majority of the settlement for expenses. They had been fighting in court for years, or maybe decades without any payment, so that probably wasn’t as bad as it sounds. At least one of the lawyers was a Cherokee himself. My grandfather was entitled to a check, but he was dead by then. My grandmother got half of his share, and my mother and her sister got a quarter share each. The number I remember is around $500, but I don’t remember if that was grandmother’s check or the total amount. It may have been prorated by blood quantum, my grandfather was listed as 1/32. That wasn’t accurate. If the Ancestry family tree is correct he would have been 1/8, and my DNA tests out about 1/32, so Ancestry probably gets it right.
The Cherokee had a SCOTUS decision in their favor BEFORE the Trail of Tears. It still took over 100 years to get compensation.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: I remember the fuss it caused when Michele Obama described how it made her feel to live in the White House built by slaves, as a descendant of slaves,
Oh, the Republicans were outraged and offended. How could they not be? How dare she?
trollhattan
World’s nicest soccer player ™ nets goal for Canada to equalize with Netherlands. Way to go, Sinc!
Miss Bianca
Yes, Mitch McConnell, we elected an “African-American president”, to use your words, and if you hadn’t spent your entire time during his tenure in office trying to thwart his every move, that *might* have meant something a little more meaningful in this context. As it is, it takes a special kind of gall to point at that and call it somehow enough. But, a special kind of gall is what you’re full of, isn’t it?
Another Scott
NPS.gov
(Emphasis added.)
Sounds like the Confederates had quite a bit of Trumpian thinking rattling around in their noggins. :-/
As Coates (and others above) says, a vast amount of wealth was stolen from African Americans. I don’t know how to best make it right, but much more needs to be done to attempt to make up for those crimes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheers,
Scott.
Wapiti
@Kay: Agreed. And the 1 million African Americans who served in the US Armed Forces in WWII returned to a country where they could not use their GI Bill benefits the way a white soldier could. Banks would not lend to them, neighborhoods were red-lined, they could not attend decent universities in many places. And the Federal Government was complicit.
This is not 150 years ago; this was my father’s generation. The “Greatest Generation”. Bah. The “Racist Generation”.
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: I meant to say thank you for that. It seems to be only an idiotic issue at Wilson’s Creek, where General Nathaniel Lyons was killed. He was the first Union general to be killed and it was a devastating loss.
Fair Economist
The problem is racism, not inherited wealth. Blacks get graded one letter grade lower for the same work. They are six times as likely to get shot by police if armed. They have to pay higher interest rates for an identical mortgage application. Monetary reparations won’t fix that; based on the racists I know they would make it worse.
Inherited wealth is a symptom, not a cause. If we could magically erase racism blacks would equilibrate with the general population in 2 or 3 generations, like immigrants do. As long as racism is going, any reparations would be taken away in a similar length of time.
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Purity pony politics is why liberals lose all the time.
rikyrah
@Ladyraxterinok:
I don’t want to re-debate OJ.
My opinion today is as it was all those years ago:
the LAPD tried to frame a guilty man.
Thus, of course, he had to go free.
They tried on OJ what they had done to countless Black men before him. Make up the evidence to fit their conclusion. The difference was, OJ had a rich man’s defense and Johnnie Cochran. If he’d had the average Black man’s defense counsel, he would be on Death Row, having just had his sentence changed from Death Row to life in prison by Gavin Newsom.
dnfree
@Nelle: My father (who was born in 1920) had a still-living uncle who had fought in the Civil War (Iowa). Apparently the uncle enjoyed talking to kids, and he didn’t die until 1932. My dad had very concrete memories of his uncle’s stories. So I feel I am linked to a Civil War veteran by only one intermediary. Not only that, my grandchildren are linked to a Civil War veteran by my father, whom they knew.
“Joseph J. Earle served throughout the war with his regiment, the 3rd Iowa infantry, participating in some of the major engagements of the war, and was wounded in the battle of Shiloh. Prominent in G.A.R. work, he was a past commander of the county organization. One of Mr. Earle’s proudest recollections was the fact that he had heard the most famous of the Lincoln-Douglas debates at Freeport.”
I’d be surprised if Mitch McConnell doesn’t have links to the Civil War that are as close as mine. 150 years isn’t that long ago, and as Ta-Nehisi says, the practices that kept the freed slaves from participating in wealth and freedom were still going on in the 1960s and continue now.
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
I know..broke my heart when he made the announcement.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
Why is this purity pony politics and just not regular vetting?
J R in WV
@germy:
William F. Buckley was a simple-minded highly educated fool. I was still a very young man when he was being interviewed along with Gore Vidal, who goaded Buckley until Buckley broke down and verbally and physically attacked Vidal on Live TV. It was a moment that defined the white bread fascist for all time. Not able to think outside his rigid right-wing framework.
I hadn’t known he thought “a crazed negro” had bombed a black church during the civil rights movement, but of course more recently the surviving actual white supremacist KKK members who did that murderous deed were convicted by an Alabama jury. So, obviously, and for the millionth time, Wm Francis Buckley was dead wrong.
What a polished turd that man was. Pseudo intellectual pinhead. Before Bill Kristol, he was the man who, if you wanted to know the truth about something, you found out what Buckley thought, and knew the opposite was correct.
raven
@dnfree: Organized in Keokuk! They were at Kennesaw and Leggets Hill (The Battle of Atlanta).
Immanentize
@rikyrah: I cannot express how much this is exactly my view of that case. The police and prosecutors cheated in the ways they often cheat, but they were caught at it. They thought the case was white woman victim/black man murderer, but it was actually a celebrity trial where the narrative was beloved black sports hero obviously framed up by white cops.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Plus, I would like to see a serious analysis of what the payment of reparations would do for the economy. I think it would be an economic boon to *all* Americans, but I’d like to see numbers. That might serve to quiet some of the meeping I am hearing from white people about wanting “economic, not race-based” solutions. A “race-based solution” to a race-based problem might actually help YOU economically, mofos – consider it an unexpected side benefit to economic justice for African-Americans.
Ladyraxterinok
@Ohio Mom: After a story in the Smithsonian magazine on the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, the OK legislature started talking about some sort of reparations.
A white colleague drew me aside after I said something about how we whites never heard one word about this in the Tulsa public schools. She said more or less ‘We’re upset about this, of course. But talking about reparations just makes every body angry. Most of us didn’t have families in OK or Tulsa then. We had nothing to do with the 1921 Riot, so why should our taxes go to reparations?’
The father of John Hope Franklin, the famous historian, moved his family out of Tulsa right after the Riot.
Legislature didn’t vote for reparations.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
The man that the statement was made about didn’t consider it disqualifying when choosing his VP nominee, and going on to win the two largest popular vote totals in US history.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: It’s good that this issue is getting more attention now. Where would the African American community be had their forbears been given that 40 acres and a mule when slavery ended instead of being met with lynch mobs and Jim Crow?
dnfree
@raven: I enjoy our (well, not mine, my family’s) military connections! You’ve replied to me before about my dad’s Navy service in World War II.
dnfree
@Miss Bianca: Excellent comment about reparations having an economic benefit for all of us.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
I’ve picked cotton.
I’m now an old white man. I’ve picked cotton. It was my dad stopping the car while we were on vacation, I was about six, I learned a massive life lesson that day, that 20 minutes or so and I knew it was important without anyone saying a word. I didn’t get paid for my puny output but that day has stuck with me for decades. People got beaten and killed for not making the boss enough money and for being black. They got kidnapped, exploited, raped, beaten, killed.
We’ve fought a war with each other for the right to continue to do that, and the shit side lost. But in the name of bringing us back together, we’ve spent the last 150 years accepting the bullshit that the loosing side really was OK. They weren’t.
Some days I think it may be too late to fix. Then I see that the haters of “others” are the minority throughout the world, and we still have the opportunity to be better.
Immanentize
@dnfree:
The GAR Is all over the Boston area — the museum is in Lynn, the library in Newbury (I think).
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
Also too, massive government spending on construction projects, notably the interstate highway system. African Americans were excluded from the gravy train. Craft & construction unions legendary for their racist practices.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: My remark was humor in the vein of much of Uncle Joe’s “humor,” like his frequent remarks about hugging, or his recommendation that a teenage boy somehow prevent sexual predators from approaching his sister. He is a dinosaur, who will do us more harm than good.
Immanentize
@Ruckus:
Field trip report from a black kid made to pick cotton on a field trip.
different-church-lady
Better than reparations would be to actually dismantle systemic racism.
(Yeah, I know, who am I kidding. They’re too busy fortifying it.)
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
I have thought about it too..what would have happened to this country if Reconstruction had been for real and sustained?
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, he’s the new world’s worst person.
And if we all do our part, maybe we can snatch another defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s the liberal way.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: FWIW and not trying to highjack the thread, I think both OJ juries got it right. The prosecution did not prove that he did it beyond a reasonable doubt (with an assist by the LAPD in clumsily trying to frame him). At the same time. the plaintiffs met their much lower standard of proof with no problems.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m not a Biden-hater, and have had moments when I think we just have to play it safe with the old white guy, but even more than his (at best) dumb comments about Eastland (why even bring him up? why drag that name out of the mothballs of his mind?) his double-down reaction makes me think that this kind of arrogance and stubbornness that we didn’t see in the Obama years is the reason Obama and those close to him are so apparently ambivalent about him.
Ladyraxterinok
@J R in WV: And many big German corporations, dept store chains, etc, were stolen from Jewish families.
I’ve heard there was a big push (in the 60s?) in Germany to teach about what was done under the Nazis. School students were sent on projects to study neighborhood, family history. Supposedly they had to stop these projects because so much ‘hidden history’ in the towns and fami,ies started to come to light. Parents, grandparents got extremely upset when the family children started asking questions.
I believe there’s at least one movie about this.
SC54HI
This book opened my eyes to the huge role slavery had in building the economy of the entire US — north, south, east & west. It’s a dense, well-written discussion.
Also, speaking of living memory, Baptist relies extensively on the interviews of formerly enslaved individuals, done by WPA Writers Project in the 1930s.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Because it’s Cacti, who is the purest of all the pure ponies.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
No wonder right wing fools want to argue about whether people are being put into concentration camps.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: Not the world’s worst person, nor the Democratic Party’s best candidate for 2020.
Cacti
@J R in WV:
But I thought you were never speaking to me again, great great grandpappy.
Josie
Jennifer Rubin has an opinion piece in the WaPo on Biden that makes a lot of sense. One sentence stood out for me as something to look for in the primary candidates.
The Moar You Know
Reparations. I knew Dems could think of a way to lose an election to Donald Trump, twice.
raven
@dnfree: Yea except in this case my ancestor, Jason J Figg, was in the 11th Tennessee and fought against the Iowa and Illinois regiments. He was killed at Legget’s Hill.
Juice Box
What about reparations for red lining, separate-but-(not)equal schools, predatory lending, inequitable justice, and institutional racism?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Nasty Girl?
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Cool. Who’s the best?
Kay
No it isn’t. The implication, and fact, is that Vice Presidents are not Presidents and it didn’t matter that much. No one bases a vote on the Vice President. Their role is basically to get along with the President. No one voted for Trump based on Mike Pence. Mike Pence would have lost his re-elect in Indiana if Trump hadn’t rescued him. Obama got elected and he would have won with Any Random Mediocre Democrat in the VP slot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I don’t typically think of Barro as stupid, but that’s some painful contortion to slag on Obama. Again, why did the guy who owes what chance he has at the White House to the last decade reach back more than forty years to talk about what he was gonna do two years from now?
rikyrah
He’ll find the ones that think they’re ‘special’.
Hmmmph.
Trump’s Reelection Campaign Is Trying to Woo Latino Voters While Threatening to Purge America of Latinos
Stephen A. Crockett Jr.
Today 11:00am
President Trump is nothing if not tone deaf. Somehow, Trump pulled favorable numbers with Hispanic voters in 2016, and now the president’s campaign to steal the White House in 2020 has its eyes set on pulling the Hispanic vote while simultaneously threatening to rid America of undocumented immigrants and locking children of those who cross the Southern border illegally in cages.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The ‘Latinos for Trump’ rollout will take place in Miami on Tuesday—a day before the city hosts the first Democratic presidential primary debate—with Vice President Mike Pence appearing with party members, including Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez.”
The campaign is banking on low unemployment numbers, Trump’s tough stance on China and demands to curb illegal immigration to play well with Cuban Americans in Florida, many of whom vote Republican. Trump’s campaign will continue to paint the Democratic Party as the socialist party in hopes of swaying Venezuelan voters “with ties to countries that have leftist governments.”
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree with this too.
Immanentize
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Biden is taking a page from Trump’s book thinking it is a really important quality — never apologize for anything.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
OJ got away with murder. Years later, Robert Blake got away with murder. Juries seem to give beloved celebrities some extra benefit of the doubt.
Quiltingfool
@rikyrah: This. Your explanation of the OJ debacle is outstanding. I rarely comment here, but I must tell you how very much I appreciate you. You are a treasure and I always look forward to your comments.
Ladyraxterinok
@dnfree: My great grandfather served in the 11th IA infantry. He also was at the battle of Shiloh
After the war, he and his wife and daughter (my grandmother) took up a land grant in Western NE.
I think it’s interesting that the only 2 young men in the family who fought in the war left IA when the war was over.
My dad was born in 1908, his grandfather died in 1919.
Cacti
@Kay:
And yet, the fact remains Biden was the choice of the most talented Democratic politician in the last 50 years, when he essentially had his pick of the entire party for a running mate.
This really seems to hurt the feelings of certain of my progressive betters here.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know. I’m not sure what Joe Biden is running for. WHO. He represents…some small subset of independents? Senators. He’s the candidate of 30 or so US Senators. Not their constituents. Just the senators as individuals.
Ladyraxterinok
@J R in WV: Was the AL dem senator Doug Jones the one who finally brought the culprits to trial?
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: You know what? Screw that shit. Just fucking stop it. Honest to God, watching white people, liberals and conservatives alike, lose their shit over the subject of reparations – not even the prospect of *paying* reparations, but even just *talking* about it – is just fucking nauseating.
Chyron HR
@Cacti:
Chin up, kid, at least Bernie’s still polling in the double digits! Barely.
A Ghost To Most
I think an annual 1% wealth tax on the top 1% would be a fine way to finance this, and probably many other things.
Chief Oshkosh
Isn’t it true that FHA government-insured home loans were not available to African Americans as late as the 60s/70s? I worked with someone who told me on the day she got her home loan approved: “I’m the first in my family!”
That certainly wasn’t very long ago, Mitch. You asshole. That’s an immediate-past driver of CURRENT conditions that even you, with your rotted brain, can remember. Sadly, it’s probably a fond remembrance for you.
zhena gogolia
@Josie:
At the risk of calling down everyone on my head, the person who fits that bill best is Buttigieg.
The Moar You Know
@Cacti: You’re wasting your time. A contingent of people – a large contingent on this site – would rather be righteous than win.
Biden is the guy who can beat Trump. All the polls keep showing this over and over and over. And nobody wants to acknowledge that.
Win with Biden, lose with the others save possibly Sanders. I’d prefer Biden over Sanders. That’s the reality of the situation. And speaking of reality, the wish list of the self-styled progressives on this site will go from “wish list” to “never ever happen” if Trump gets a second term.
Brachiator
@Kay:
This is true. But Biden was also a good cheerleader, and people liked seeing how Obama and Biden got along. Biden also had a heartwarming family story. Yeah, this adds up to a bit of a halo effect. It is currently giving Biden an advantage. But it doesn’t make him invulnerable. Even so, the other candidates are going to have to be careful at how they try to chip away at this.
Kay
Because we don’t believe what he says. That applies across the board. It has to. His words have no meaning. He could respond with a song lyric to these questions. It just doesn’t matter. We have to use other sources.
Ladyraxterinok
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, that’s the one I heard about.
MJS
@Cacti: And yet the most talented Democratic politician of the last 50 years somehow hasn’t endorsed the person he worked with for 8 years and therefore knows significantly better than you do, in both a political and personal sense. Seems the most talented Democratic politician of the last 50 years has some reservations. But you know better, I’m sure.
Kay
@Brachiator:
He was a good cheerleader and he benefited from the narrative that he was the “bridge” to the white working class for Obama, which I don’t buy. But if you did buy that he was valuable. Could have been. Along with 50 other white male Democrats.
They had a good working relationship which is enough for that job. It is the job. If he’d be a good President is a different question. Democrats in the past have said “nah, I don’t think so” but maybe the VP role changed that. I don’t know.
Immanentize
@Brachiator:
Biden is not going up in the polls. That is hugely worrisome for him, I would think. A third of the vote is not a commanding place to be for a Vice President front runner.
Warren is up at Sanders’ expense. Buttigieg is up at O’Rourke’s expense. Otherwise, status quo.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Polls ain’t prophecy. And if I am following 538 correctly, early general election polls are not as strongly predictive as primary polls. So, yeah, Biden stands a good chance of being the nominee, but declaring him the winner is premature.
I don’t have anything against Biden. But he is a stumblebum at times when it comes to campaigning. His gaffes are appalling.
The thing is, we don’t have to have a coronation today. If he does well in the actual primaries, I will happily support him.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: That’s why we have primaries.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
How does one say, “What have you got to lose?” in Spanish? That would make a nice campaign hat.
Immanentize
@Kay: I think his role as VP to Obama added a great deal of shine and respect. But it is clear, now that he is on his own, that he is not improving his own standing but hurting it every week.
He might be able to beat Trump today, but in 17 months? Who can say?
Cacti
@MJS:
And he didn’t formally endorse Clinton until June 2016. Not making early endorsements seems to be his MO.
Josie
@zhena gogolia:
I agree. I also think Harris is capable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: I suspect he didn’t need the trump model, it’s pretty much how he’s addressed Anita Hill and that whole fiasco, “I’m sorry you’re so upset.”
@Josie: “nimble” is a good word, and a strength. The Biden of the last couple days is not nimble.
trollhattan
@Kay:
My fondest Biden memories, beyond how he and Jill generally bonded with the Obamas, are his VP debate performances. He was blessed with a moron in Palin and avoided acting like a misogynist bully against her, then cleaned the floor with dead-eyed Paulie. Done and done.
Cacti
@The Moar You Know:
Yup. It’s how we end up with 12 years of W. Bush and Trump.
Another Scott
@opiejeanne: Sorry I misunderstood your comment. I agree that it seems like a very strange way to phrase what happened.
Glad to try to help! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Omnes Omnibus:
you are on point
Kent
@Josie:
This. For example, when Trump was stalking and lurking behind Clinton during their debate she should have just turned around and said something to the effect of: “Are you lost Donald? Do you need to take a moment? [turns to the moderator] Can we get someone to help Donald back to his place?”
We need a nimble candidate who can push his buttons ruthlessly in subtle ways. Honestly I think women candidates are better at that then men. He just doesn’t know how to handle women. And those who think we need a male candidate I think are compeltely wrong. Trump has wiped the floor against all the male candidates he has ever faced. Despite all the illegal meddling in the 2016 election from voter supression to Comey to the Russians to the NYT’s email obsession she still beat him by over 3 million votes. And Clinton was a flawed candidate in many ways.
RedDirtGirl
I just tweeted a photo of my new button in response to President Obama’s tweet.
Make America Better.
Miss Bianca
@Cacti: ftr, I will be really surprised if Obama ends up endorsing Biden over the candidate who actually wins the primaries. Which is why he will be making a late endorsement in 2020, as well.
I don’t expect Biden to win the primary. And I don’t think front-running in early polling is predictive. If that were so, we would have had John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani as Presidential candidates.
Nothing against Biden, it’s just that I expect him to lose traction and other candidates to gain as time – and exposure – go on.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Immanentize:
I made the point at the time that the police framed a guilty man, and got caught because the guilty man was rich and could demonstrate what happened. Juries do not like cops cheating, and it showed in that trial. Long way of noting that I agree with you both. Professional tangential tidbit- we’d scheduled Barry Scheck easily a year in advance of a CLE , and then OJ’s trial happened, so he couldn’t present. I got the assignment to find a different DNA speaker, because I worked for the head of the Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association that sponsored it.
James E Powell
@Josie:
Hillary Clinton made Trump look clueless. And silly.
rikyrah
Putin has told the USA to sit their azzes down when it comes to Iran.
uh huh
uh huh
dnfree
@raven: So your ancestor did not live to regale the younger generation with his tales.
Kent
@Miss Bianca: I agree. No way Obama makes any endorsement before the nomination process is over. I mean maybe if there was some utterly vile and inapproprate candidate gaining traction. But we don’t have that. I would expect the first time he would weigh in would be during the Convention where he will be given some sort of major role.
trollhattan
@James E Powell:
Agree. Sadly, she remained a girrrrrrrrl. Plus the Russians evidently did not like her.
rikyrah
Think Russia didn’t mess up 2016 voting? Ask the black youths at NC Central U., where crashed computers ruined Election Day, right after a Russian hack? Why are feds just investigating now? Why won’t McConnell make sure it won’t happen again? My new column https://t.co/fl7xs1t7CQ
— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) June 20, 2019
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and all the polls showed HRC beating trump, handily. And then the margins started getting smaller. Again: Why the fuck did Biden bring up Eastland? If you’ve managed to skate past some pretty awful remarks about race in the ’70s, maybe don’t fucking bring up your old racist friends from the 70s. He wants to talk about working with McConnell, talk about how you’re door will always be open to the minority leader when he’s ready to compromise. You want to talk about bipartisanship? talk about how things used to be before the Republicans trumpified themselves, ask loudly whatever happened to your old friend Susan Collins, you don’t recognize her anymore, talk about how you never would have thought George Romney’s boy would look the other way at so much corruption and brutality and damage to our standing in the world.
And if you do step on your dick, again, don’t ask for a fucking apology from somebody who pointed out you stepped on your own damn dick
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
As someone who comes from a conservative Southern family, they view affirmative action AS reparations. They basically think affirmative action meant that ‘less talented’ black people were ‘given’ jobs and college admission that ‘should’ have gone to ‘more talented’ white people. They feel white people have now ‘suffered’ enough.
Miss Bianca
@Kent: If I hear “Clinton was a flawed candidate” one more time, I am going to have an event. Her “flaw” was to be a competent, feminist female candidate in a country whose misogyny is even more deeply engrained – and even more taboo to acknowledge – than its racism. Period. Any “flaw” you can point to was ginned up by the media, the right-wing noise machine, and back-stabbing fellow travellers like Jill Stein and Wilmer to the point where a dust mote became a huge fucking beam – and all too eagerly seized on as license to hate her by a society that, at its rotten heart, really, really hates women and really, really, wants to keep its license to keep them down.
dnfree
@Cacti: Thanks for sharing. Interesting also that some of these veterans lived two or three decades into the 20th century. I wonder what they thought of the “lost cause” revival.
rikyrah
I thought the primary process was about when we could vet candidates. This came out of Biden’s own mouth. Why can’t he be called on the carpet for it?
James E Powell
Long article by Alex Pareene. Painful to read because most of it’s true.
JR
Biden’s not my choice but if he’s our choice he is my choice
rikyrah
@Miss Bianca:
I admit that I underestimated the misogyny.
And, even with that, she got 3 MILLION MORE VOTES.
Once again, I will point out, that, in those questionable states,
RELIABLE DEMOCRATIC PARTY VOTERS WERE DENIED THE FRANCHISE DUE TO VOTER SUPPRESSION.
The amount of those voters DENIED THE FRANCHISE, was AT LEAST 3 TIMES the margin of Dolt45’s ‘ victory’ in those states.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
I really like your formulation that they framed a guilty man.
James E Powell
@Kent:
The press/media, let by the NYT, would have savaged Clinton for her weakness, lack of poise, and inability to deal with pressure. Remember when she called Nazis and openly racist shouters deplorable? Even the rest of the Democrats would not stand up for her. Kind of like now, with AOC and Ilhan Omar. See the Alex Pareene article I linked up above. Pinche Democrats are pinche cowards in the face of RW outrage. It’s like they’re trained lapdogs.
dnfree
@The Moar You Know: I’m over seventy, and I think Biden is a disaster waiting to happen. That’s what has happened when he’s run for president before. His mental acuity hasn’t improved with age. I have in the past blamed part of Biden’s spontaneity on his medical history (aneurysms). I don’t think he would wear well over the next year-plus, and I don’t think he’s adept at framing Trump as clueless. I think he’s dreaming of a past bipartisanship that is gone and would just come to appear more and more mired in the past and unable to address the issues of the present. Buyer’s remorse would set in fast if he became the nominee.
matt
Burning McConnell at the stake would be a nice kicker to add to a reparations package.
JPL
Mitch just arrived at the White House in a Tan Suit……
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dnfree: also the death of his son. I saw what my brother’s death did to my parents, including my very stoic father, and my brother was not the adored paragon Beau Biden was to his very un-stoic father. Besides the cronies who’ve been telling him he should be president for the last thirty years, I think Joe is running for his son.
rikyrah
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
WHO is the biggest beneficiary of Affirmative Action?
White Women.
Period.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
Yep. But this early on, where people are in the polls is more an issue for their campaign strategists than for the rest of us.
Also, Biden is stumbling over stupid stuff. He may find a way to defeat himself before primary voting gets underway.
Cacti
@Miss Bianca:
The only “flaw” I could fairly ascribe to Clinton as a candidate was that she wasn’t terribly charismatic, and she herself admitted as much. It’s more accurate to say that she was uniquely vulnerable, as you noted, from a combination of woman + 3 decades worth of attacks from the GOP slime machine and the “librul” media. That’s what made 2016 close enough to steal.
MJS
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And all of this is happening in the friendly confines of fundraisers, and rallies. These are unforced errors in what should be the easiest part of the campaign for Biden – ahead in the polls, no hostile questions encountered yet. The fact is that when Biden runs for president, he doesn’t do well. If we’re lucky, his pratfalls will occur during the primaries, leaving Democrats to make the choice. If we’re not, they happen after he’s won the nomination, and then we’re fucked.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Miss Bianca: Oh yes, and Hilary has did so well against Obama in the 2008 primary so there is no record of Hilary’s political judgement being questionable to the point of her outraging other Democrats out of pure petty spite to the point these Democrats would hate her to the point of tripping her up in an election. .
stan
Thank you ! That’s one of my pet peeves also. The word “Southerners” of course camouflages the issue. “Southerners” includes 4 million enslaved Americans who certainly did not support the confederate rebellion. It includes residents of kentucky or Maryland – states that did not join the slaveowners’ rebellion. It includes George Thomas, a Virginian who was a US Army general during the war.
You’re right, call them what they called themselves.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Ah, the combination of misogyny *and* racism: the warp and woof of the rotten fabric of our society. And any prospect of honestly addressing both and rooting both out is the thing we see uniting white supremacists all across the political spectrum – from Bernie-or-Busters to Mitch McConnell.
trollhattan
Ooh, Sweden-US ref is Russian. Watch out for intrigue!
Betty Cracker
@Immanentize: Yep. Biden washed out of two prior presidential runs for a reason. He’s a more formidable candidate out of the gate this time solely because of his association with PBO, not due to anything he did on his own. But if he keeps punching himself in the face, he’ll squander that advantage soon enough.
I don’t dislike Biden, and I’ll vote for him if he’s the nominee, obviously. But I sure hope it doesn’t come to that.
Aside from meaningless early polls, I’m mystified as to why anyone would think Biden matches up best against Trump, and I’ve never heard a Biden supporter offer a reason to back him aside from their own personal belief that he matches up best against Trump.
rikyrah
@James E Powell:
I am looking for a fighter. The other side doesn’t want peace..why should we?
I don’t think that a lot of Democrats understand this.
THEY put children in cages and are ok with it.
I believe it’s an abomination and evil…
What’s there to compromise on?
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Should immediately be deported for peak irony.
Miss Bianca
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’m sorry, are you typing while drunk? Or did you study English online? Because the spelling and grammatical errors are only the creamy and delicious frosting on the half-baked cake of incoherence that comprises your ‘argument’.
ETA: But let’s see if I can make sense out of it: so, you’re saying that Democratic voters are so shallow and venal that, notwithstanding that Obama, her 2008 primary rival, chose to elevate her to his cabinet, they would choose to hold a grudge on his behalf? Is that it?
trollhattan
Well that was fast. Horan nets #2.
Gin & Tonic
@dnfree: I do not want a President older than me at this point. And I do not believe that the USA of the third decade of the 21st Century should be defined by a contest between two septuagenarian white men.
John Revolta
Polls this far out don’t mean squat, guys. If they did, we’d have President Jeb! today.
The Moar You Know
@Miss Bianca: I will not. Gonna keep yelling it til my ears bleed.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
White FeeFees.
Josie
@Miss Bianca:
Thank you. I was sitting here trying to think of a way to answer that comment, but you did it more eloquently than I ever could have.
TenguPhule
Fucking fucking fuck.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: You’re gonna keep yelling, “I’m a racist, and by God, the Democrats had better be as racist as I am or they will be big fat LOOOSERS”? You go ahead and bleed out by your ears, then, Buster.
TenguPhule
I’m not sure if I’m happy or appalled.
TenguPhule
sigh. Must be five o’clock somewhere.
Patricia Kayden
@Immanentize: Trump is doing an excellent job of motivating those of us who aren’t Deplorables to vote for his Democratic opponent. I can’t see things getting better for Trump by next November.
TenguPhule
Oh gods. Jeremy Hunt vs Boris Johnson for PM.
Britain is utterly fucked either way.
Gravenstone
“who I then spent every waking moment of his terms in office trying to undermine and sabotage by using the not inconsiderable power of my position in the Senate”.
Seems Mitch left out a few words in his statement. Racist fucking piece of dogshit that he is.
Matt McIrvin
@Cacti: Hillary Clinton said true shit that you’re not supposed to say. Biden says nonsense that you’re not supposed to say.
MisterForkbeard
@TenguPhule:
You’d think he should also be known for chasing teenage girls and getting banned from local malls, but okay.
A Ghost To Most
@Immanentize:
I grew up along Lake Ontario. I agree with the demographics, but the people I know there are all spiteful bigots. 12 years away is still too short.
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: Maybe it’s a good thing. We know Moore is beatable. If they run a non-pedophile, Jones is probably toast because Alabama.
kindness
Circular firing squad, part infinity.
Racism is larger here in the states than I thought it was not 10 years ago. The number of Trump’s deplorables surprised me. I don’t think most people are racists. I think most people are good people. They just stay out of the spotlights.
Is racism in this country so large that an issue like reparations could sink the Democratic Party? Maybe. I’m not sure. Is it worth gambling with election outcomes? Again, I don’t know but I am very concerned it would kill us. As Trump should have shown us, there are enough stupid Americans that can easily be ginned up to vote Republican for bad reasons. Lingering racism & resentment isn’t something that will help Democrats. That is what Trump is running on. We shouldn’t help him.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker: I’m afraid that this time Moore might win because its Alabama.
TenguPhule
@MisterForkbeard:
Too many similar white men so he gets lost in the crowd unless you get more specific.
chris
@TenguPhule:
zhena gogolia
@TenguPhule:
He says that when he has no answer.
Aleta
30 minutes from now, at 4 pm
Haven’t found a link for streaming but there should be one somewhere …
I’ll put relevant Twitter link for possible watch, lower down from this.
Also:
TenguPhule
@chris: Fatter, dumber and hornier then Trump.
gvg
@zhena gogolia: Yes, it does explain so much. I personally thought the LAPD lost that case a year or so before it happened when Detective Furman wasn’t fired over his book boasting the police planted evidence all the time to get rid of people they were sure were guilty. I thought every single person who even got a ticket had a basis for a law suit and a way to fight “evidence”. Most juries are pretty deferential of police testimony but if a department gets a bad reputation with the public, lots more cases can win, so more choose trials, etc. A police department needs to guard their reputation. That book showed the department was crooked, not because it might be the truth, but because the Chief and his bosses didn’t care enough to fire the guy and investigate all his prior cases.
Immanentize
@A Ghost To Most: Well, my Dad did used to say that my hometown was a great place to be from.
worn
@dnfree: Traveling, so I will have to make it brief. But both these comments are on point as regards how far in the past was slavery. I am 51. My great grandmother, whom I knew as a wee lad, had a large farm* in Muscogee County, Georgia. A number of African American families also lived on the property as tenement farmers / sharecroppers and among these folks were ex-slaves. I am still sometimes floored, when I take a moment to think about it, that it’s one degree from me sitting here in 2019 to someone who was enslaved. That doesn’t feel so very far in the at all to me. I repeat, I am only 51.
*Had a farm. The land was taken as part of the expansion of Fort Benning. The family cemetery still exists out there on the base.
J R in WV
@Ladyraxterinok:
Yep.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: HRC was a flawed candidate?! Find me someone who isn’t. Hell, Obama snuck cigarettes and really didn’t grok public schools (Two words: Arne Duncan).
Immanentize
@J R in WV: Can we convince enough GOP voters that Doug Jones is Alex Jones?
chris
@Betty Cracker: There is talk of Jeff Sessions running. I can’t…
germy
@TenguPhule:
Trump said he thinks Iran shooting down the drone was an accident. I think this is related to Putin’s recent comments against war with Iran.
He will not defy Putin on this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: Yup
we really are through the fucking looking glass when you catch yourself being almost glad that Vladimir Fucking Putin is there as a counterweight to Lindsey Graham.
Betty Cracker
@kindness: FWIW, my guess is Trump would win reelection in a huge landslide if Democrats make reparations part of the party platform. It’s an issue that’s tailor-made for Trump’s brand of demagoguery. It would expand his base, something he hasn’t bothered to do on his own.
Gin & Tonic
@germy:
I understood him to have said that it was a “Big Mistake!” That, depending on tone, is not at all the same. But I’m not going to watch or listen to or read him.
gvg
@Fair Economist: Yes. At this time reparations would just get stolen again with lots of tickets and fines. We need to fix some institutions seriously.
Its also self defense. I can’t understand why so many whites think it isn’t also happening to them just less often. Bullies and thieves hurt everyone. White people die from lack of healthcare and police brutality and they lose money by minimum wages not going up. It doesn’t get them down as often, but it does happen. Its not safe to allow corrupt cops and confiscatory laws.
Immanentize
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Remember our big war with Venezuela? Putin flew in a few hundred Russian troops and there seems to no longer be a big crisis in Venezuela. Poof!
J R in WV
@stan:
Or call them something more descriptive, like Southern Slavers, which they were — if you don’t want to use Confederates. Southern Traitors also works. I could go on, but why? We all know that they were anti-American and actual for-real traitors.
Hob
@Cacti: I suspect that your sarcastic bit about “my progressive betters” means you’re really just venting at someone else here you don’t like, but since I’ve seen your premise (Obama picked Biden for VP, Obama is a smart politician, therefore Biden is good) elsewhere too, here’s what I think about that:
The VP might become President, so it’s an important job in that way. But history strongly suggests that presidential candidates, even very smart ones, don’t really pick their VP based on who they think would be a really good president besides themselves, or who they think is a good communicator. They certainly don’t do it based on who they think would win a presidential election. They pick someone who would do well in the nearly-always-extremely-unimportant job of VP, and whom they feel they can work well with personally. Biden was fine for that.
So there’s no inconsistency in saying Obama’s decision made sense, and also saying Biden is a really bad presidential candidate.
rikyrah
@Aleta:
I really do want folks to think about this. They are diverting the money for their camps to these rotten private prison people. They are losing children – deliberately, IMO. And now, because, they are disgusting, vile human beings, they are now bringing up one of the most shameful and disgraceful times in American History – the imprisonment of Japanese Americans- by using their old internment camps.
THAT is phucking deliberate.
And, I’m supposed to find something in common with these muthaphuckas?
I don’t think so.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: I dunno, but it seems to me that there’s an awful lot of pre-emptive pearl-clutching over the issue. Has anything – literally, *anything* – been said about making reparations a plank in the Democratic Party platform? Near as I can tell, the only thing that’s happened so far is that the issue has come up in front of a House committee. And judging solely by the reactions to *that*, it seems painfully apparent that a whole lot of white people are ready, eager, and willing to lose their shit if we even *talk* about reparations. So yeah, you’re probably right that it would be strategically bad for us right now to commit to it – but that’s not something to be proud of.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: Since 2017, I have said that Trump does not have a deportation policy, he has a detention policy. Much cash from the public coffers going to these private prison people. And they knew it would happen! Look at their stocks right after the November election.
Jay
Keep in mind, Coates last mention of $4,000,000,000,000.
That’s a conservative estimate of the value of real estate stolen from African American home owners through bank fraud in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Aleta
I don’t have a definite link to the speakers at 4 pm, but here are possible places to look or look later for a video.
https://twitter.com/HiguchiJD
https://twitter.com/JACL_National
https://twitter.com/AAAJ_AAJC
@HeartMountainWY
Shirley Higuchi, one of the speakers, is currently chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and on the board of the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation.
Here’s the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation statement on the use of Fort Sill as a detention center
EthylEster
@Kay wrote:
I grew up mostly in Tampa, Florida. In 2012 when it came time to sell my parents house (purchased in 1959 for about 13K), I was able to see the deed and read the language about how the owner agreed not to sell to black people. I had generally heard about this before, of course, but to see it written out was shocking. I’m sure the language from that document was “null and void” in 2012 but the thing is, the neighborhood was STILL completely white. “The New South” never got to Tampa.
Dave
@rikyrah: regarding a real reconstruction: I wrote a novella about that , my wife found it scary enough for her to insist on a pen name as a publishing prerequisite for fear of confederate sympathizers retaliation
Betty Cracker
@Miss Bianca: I agree that’s not something to be proud of, and you’re right, no one has proposed making it a part of the platform. But for an issue that’s been discussed off and on for decades outside the political sphere, there does seem to be a lot more talk about reparations lately in the political context. The Democratic candidates have been asked about reparations at just about every town hall event. David Brooks of the NYT came out in favor of it a while back, and I find that timing awfully suspicious. Its potential as a wedge issue concerns me.
John Revolta
@Hob: The big thing they strive for on the ticket is “balance”.
Back in the day of all white guys running they’d do Southern guy/Northern guy. Now it’s man/woman or, in 2008, Young Black guy/Older White guy. I dunno if this holds up under factual analysis but it’s conventional wisdom and that’s what they go for.
Kent
@Miss Bianca:
OK, “flawed” was not a good word choice. I liked Clinton. I campaigned for her. I donated money to her campaign. I think she is one of the most talented politicians and leaders of our generation. But I think she was a mediocre candidate and campaigner. And compared to the Obama campaigns, I thought her campaign was not well run. They had all the money and should have had all the political talent in the world at their disposal. Yet I think they were caught flat footed by how fast the media environment and messaging and such had changed. I like the post 2016 gloves off Clinton a lot more than the cautious 2016 Clinton.
I know you can counter-factual this stuff to death. If she had been more of [THIS]..the media would have responded and crucified her like that.
I think the Orcs were at the door in 2016. And no one, not the Bernie Bots, not Obama, and not the Clinton Campaign truly understood the depth of the peril, the strength of forces arrayed against us, and the urgency of leaving everything on the field. But she was campaigning in fucking San Francisco trying to run up the score in the final weeks of the election: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/13/clinton-california-calls-landslide-victory-trump-bigotry-bullying
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Everybody from the O’Bros to Donnie Deutsch is banging the drums about Republicans already massively spending on Facebook ads, while the DNC is all tangled up in debate qualifications (a problem for which I see no solution, but if you can’t match Marianne Fucking Wiliamson’s polling and fundraising, Tom Perez is not your biggest problem).
Gravenstone
@rikyrah:
Because according to some here, he’s speeccciiiiiiaaaallllllllll. Or he’s an old white dude and therefore automatically above reproach. Take your pick.
jado
@opiejeanne</abe
Because we have to emphasize what is important (to white people) – the Civil War was between geographic entities, the North and the South, not between ideological opposites, Preservers of the Union and Traitors in Defense of Slavery. If you call them Confederates, you might remind them what the war was really about when they desperately want to pretend otherwise, and want you to agree to the fiction.
EthylEster
@Immanentize: I got to know Professor Ogletree via “Ethics in America” many years ago. He moderated some of the episodes. He was impressive as were all the moderators. A great “What if…” show that was the idea of Fred Friendly, an old CBS news hand who saw where the media was going very early on and tried his best to inform readers/viewers.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: If I thought David Brooks was smart and/or evil enough to be an actual ratfucker, I’d be suspicious. Since I think he’s a garden-variety gnome of the “I’m comfortable, and that passes for reasonable” variety, and I haven’t read whatever what passes for his ‘thoughts’ are on the subject, I can’t give you an informed opinion.
@Kent: Oh, so we’ve gone from “flawed” to “mediocre”? Generous!
I wonder how in the world she managed to win her Senatorial campaigns, or hell, even make it all the way to the primaries, as “mediocre” a candidate as she was. Or win 3 million more votes than the ass-clown who stole the election – surely as “flawed” and “mediocre” a candidate as ever walked the earth. Maybe “flaws” have less to do with election victory or defeat than outright cheating and theft of said election?
Ruckus
Biden has always been the same person that we see today. He’s not a bad guy, as old white guys go, but the reason that he might be able to beat drumpf is because of who he is. Look at his record in congress. It isn’t stellar, or even close. If he hadn’t been VP, no one would be giving him a second glance. So, look at his record as VP and tell me what he did as VP that would make him a good pres. Now look at the date on his birth certificate. Now look at the record of presidents within his age bracket. Now look at his record since he announced. Tell me honestly that you want Joe Biden to be your president. None of the answers to the above questions make him a reasonable presidential candidate. Not one.
A Ghost To Most
@Immanentize:
Hell yes. Of all the (many) places I’ve lived, WNY sucks the most, except for Biloxi (in 1975).
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Bill Clinton was the most charismatic and fiercely intelligent candidate I could imagine and then Obama showed up. The thing is they are anomalies. We do ourselves no favors by complaining that others don’t match up. We have to choose the best person available now. As long as we are doing ancestor stuff, I had a great grandmother who famously responded to one of her children who had wished for something by saying “Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one is full the fastest.”
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: I want the gop burned to the ground then salted over and then guarded by Egyptian curses. The party is completely antithetical to the American ideals and exists only as a criminal enterprise
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
I keep trying. I’ve been effectively told we shouldn’t shooting ourselves in the foot, that Biden is a democratic candidate and we need more than anything to beat drumpf. And we do. But if we beat him with Biden, we will never make any progress, we really won’t.
rikyrah
Ta-Nehisi Coates Clapped Back at Mitch McConnell for Saying ‘No One Alive’ Is Liable for Reparations. So We Came Up With a List
Michael Harriot
Today 8:00am
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks, I was trying to think of how to write just what you wrote. So I wrote what I wrote instead.
I mean, hell, JFK was a “flawed candidate” – but we forget that now, because he won, and because the media of the time, rather than hyperventilating about his womanizing and other unsavory character traits, kept their collective mouth shut, and because he was a white man (if a CATHOLIC white man, oh, quelle horreur). Oh, and also because he was assassinated by a nut job – that tends to do a lot of retrospective white-washing, as well.
Immanentize
Interrupting our daily election angst with a BREAKING NEWS announcement:
Woodrow Charles Whistler, my resident Ground Hog, is out munching on wild violets. Eat hearty, Woody!
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
We had a rabbit in our yard the size of a ground hog today! Very cute.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
It would be better than beating him with Wilmer. But I will take any win. I want Trump gone.
Also, I am not disqualifying anyone in advance of the primaries. Except for Wilmer. I am not interested in h at all, but if he somehow wins, then I’ll support him.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: That would be a hella rabbit if it was as large as Woody! Woody is probably Steve sized. at least.
Betty Cracker
@Ksmiami:
LOL! Gonna have to steal that one.
gorram
@kindness: I don’t think anyone at the hearing or here is limiting this discussion only to race, or for that matter a specific set of Black experiences with White supremacy. I think you might want to examine why you’re taking a discussion’s inclusion of race as a subject as demonstrating that this line of thinking is “race-based”
J R in WV
@A Ghost To Most:
Lived in Pascagoula, MS ’72-73… like going back in time to 1935 or so. The local folk wanted the Old South to be alive so hard, they couldn’t bear to witness my wife aged 24 actually hug a neighbor from back home the age of her parents, because he was a white haired black man. Inappropriate display of affection for a Black Man, wanted to fire her so bad, knew that was a really bad idea, knew they couldn’t really do it, tired so hard to make her quit in a rage instead.
Nope, she needed the job until I got discharged and we could move back to the USA. A real shame members of the US military have to serve in the CSA!!
A Ghost To Most
@Immanentize:
I had a (possibly rabid) wood chuck come after me in MD.
I chucked wood from the woodpile to drive it off.
gorram
@A Ghost To Most: Coates has said so in the past although that wasn’t really in the scope of the hearing’s discussion. To be fair, he also somewhat passed the buck on it in that what that looks like is complicated and sort of up to indigenous groups to determine. It’s also confusing because reparations for *parts* of the land theft and such have been paid, but that’s both inconsistent from specific group to specific group, only covers a small fraction of all of the land theft, and also (as is always the case with reparations) is open to questioning as just symbolic and not really adequate coverage.
Part of the issue here is that while anti-indigenous and anti-Black violence are both foundational to the United States as a society, the former can be seen as more colonial and the latter as more racial, even if both have elements of both types. For indigenous groups, there’s a much more active question of whether reparations in and of themselves universalize the vocabulary of their colonizers and normalize the colonial relationship. For Black American groups, there’s been generations of discussion about this, but a general consensus that the United States is their country, and so the discussion about its failings to them specifically aren’t complicated by the same question of whether they even *should* have a relationship with it.
A Ghost To Most
@J R in WV:
Nailed it. I couldn’t get “Southern Man” or “Alabama” out of my head for along time after that.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Add Gabbard to that list. If she’s not a Putin puppet then she’s yet to stop acting like one.
kindness
@gorram: Because if you are giving help only to decendents of slaves it is pretty much by definition ‘race based’. I want to help the poor. I want to help those that need it. But I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to make that help contingent on ancestry.
Miss Bianca
@kindness: i notice you making the same arguments over at LGM. Interesting that over there your arguments are getting dragged as racist. And rightly so. Erasing the specifically race-based basis of slavery and Jim Crow and instead trying to make it all about an appeal to class – “but poverty!” – and fretting about how soon is too soon for the Democrats to talk about the racist basis of wealth distribution is, in fact, racist concern trolling. And it’s not nearly as good a look as you seem to think it is.
Jay
@A Ghost To Most:
A trick woodchucks and marmots have, and use sometimes, is to “charge” what they see as a predator. They don’t see very well at a moderate distance, mostly shapes and movement.
The charge is something most predators don’t expect and it often startles them enough that the woodchuck/marmot gets away.
I’ve had them charge my truck,
On the road.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Seconded.
Gex
@Miss Bianca: Thank you for saying this.
Despite the fact that we have a long, long history of special laws that hurt only black people, some people find the idea of special laws that help only black people to be utterly unacceptable. That black people can be singled out for harm, but not for benefit is a super racist result of what is being presented as not a racist view.
Reparations is not being considered in lieu of all the other economic policies. It is being considered in addition to them.
kindness
@Miss Bianca: Yea I did, Got slammed for it too. And I politely left.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I too don’t appreciate this attempt to shut down the debate and fall in line when we haven’t even had our first primary
misterpuff
@stan: No call them what they were: Traitors
Uncle Cosmo
@stan:
Maryland here. “The Old Line State” was kept in the Union by force of arms. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the state, Baltimore City was placed under martial law, & numerous public officials including practically the whole of the city government were arrested.
It’s not widely appreciated that the first deaths of the War of Slaveholders’ Attempted Secession occurred in Baltimore, where Confederate sympathizers rioted when a Massachusetts regiment bound for Washington had to march across downtown from the President Street Station to the Camden Station to continue their journey.
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: I love you, Miss Bianca. Have I mentioned that before?
Soprano2
@opiejeanne: The Ozarks were like the Confederacy during the Civil War, and in many ways they are still like the South. In Springfield we have what I think is the only National Cemetary with a separate section for Confederate dead. There is a house in west Springfield that is on the historic register because it was a hospital for the Union after the Wilson’s Creek battle. We have a Lyon Ave here, and Nathaniel Greene park. They reenact the battle sometime in August every year.
Hope you enjoy your trip!
opiejeanne
@Soprano2: Thanks. i have a good idea of what the ozarks were like during the Civil War. I’ve done a lot of research on the state as well as a specific region. Camden County was mostly a Union area, by a large margin. My great great grandfather is buried at Jefferson Barracks, wounded at Chickasaw Bluffs, died in St Louis a few days later. I’m going to visit his grave. No one in my Missouri family seems to know about Levi and they were stunned when I told them he enlisted in the Union Army. He was 36 when he died, had six kids and four step-sons.
It’s a constant battle to keep idiots from placing Confederate flags on his grave.
kindness
I came across poorly above. I don’t mean to imply that anyone here who wants to see reparations go forward is a racist. What I meant to convey was that the forces we are up against are amoral with no compunction of truth. Lying and stirring up shit between people is what they do. Those people, those media companies will level charges of racism against us. They will use the resentment and lingering racism in too many folks just like 2016. They ginned up the public with ridiculous lies and innuendo (Hillary) and sadly it worked with too many Americans. They will do it again. They aren’t bright enough to think of something new. They’ll go with what worked. We have to put our best foot forward in 2020. We need to not only keep the House, but take the Senate (doable) and the Presidency (also doable) to begin to get out from under the 4 years of shit TrumpCo is leaving us with. Shooting ourselves in that leading foot is a really poor strategy. That is what I should have said. Sorry for the confusion.
Gex
@kindness:
You can’t retcon this. You set reparations in opposition with helping the poor and declared reparations as not in anyone’s interest. That even in these times where the economy doesn’t work for most of us, it STILL is harder for black people is of no concern to you. You want to be “colorblind” and lift everyone up, with no concern that will still keep black people at the bottom because they face hardships unique to them.