.
His many fans will be pleased, if maybe not shocked, at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest triumph. Reports the Washington Post:
It’s fair to say that both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Lin-Manuel Miranda were already having a pretty impressive 2015. Coates, a journalist lauded for his insights into race, politics and culture, launched his memoir, “Between the World and Me,” straight to the bestseller lists. Miranda, already a Tony-winning composer, wrote and stars in the season’s hottest ticket on Broadway, the genre-crossing musical “Hamilton.”
Their year just got better. Coates and Miranda are among the 24 people awarded MacArthur Foundation fellowships on Tuesday. The so-called genius grants are an annual vote of confidence given to some of America’s best and brightest scientists, writers, artists, academics and entrepreneurs. And the big check that comes with the fellowship doesn’t hurt, either…
“I take it as a mandate to, excuse my French, go out and kick [butt],” Coates said. “I’m supposed to go out and do something beautiful, something remarkable and great. That’s the meaning of the award, for me. They say, ‘We expect big things from you.’ I expect the same from myself.”…
He is working on his next book but declined to share any details.
“For writers, the hardest thing in the world is space and time to write,” he said. “Hopefully, [the grant] will give me that.”…
The Atlantic has the full list of this year’s 24 recipients.
***********
Apart from crowing that we knew (about) him when, what’s on the agenda for the day?
David Fud
Almost finished with Coates’ new book. It is eye opening to someone with every privilege in America. I hope he can reach into white America and wake us up. Maybe the grant can get him over that particular mountain in the coming years.
Edit for clarity.
OzarkHillbilly
Nobody deserves it more.
OzarkHillbilly
@David Fud: 10,000 unemployed comedians and here you are giving it away for free.
(said with regretful acknowledgement of the social awareness of my race)
Schlemazel
Wow, that is great news for TNC and well deserved. I don’t know if it was JC or who got him on the link list but I am grateful they spotted him, his stuff has added more to my thinking than just about anything on the internet.
Woodrow/asim
I’m still in shock and delight that Marvel tapped Ta-Nehisi to write the Black Panther comic.
And that no one has made the comment that the son of a real-life Black Panther is going to write BLACK PANTHER.
Soonergrunt
Ta-Nehisi Coates has another new job– Writer for Marvel Comics’ Black Panther.
This is very good news for anyone who loves comic books.
EDIT:
@Woodrow/asim: I didn’t even see you beat me to it.
Baud
Congrats to TNC.
As far as the GOP goes, I guess the big news is that Trump isn’t so populist on taxes after all. But I have a feeling no one will care.
Gimlet
Waiting by my phone for that call from the MacArthur people.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/rush-limbaugh-mars-leftist-plot-214179
“OK so there’s flowing water on Mars. Yip yip yip yahoo. Hey, you know me, I’m science 101, big time guy, tech advance it, you know it, I’m all in. But, NASA has been corrupted by the current regime,” Limbaugh said on his show. “Don’t know how long it’s going to take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow going to find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda.”
Limbaugh said that although he wasn’t entirely sure what the agenda was, he was going to “assume it would be something to do with global warming.”
He also talked about the burden he faces of “being right and being alone,” which he said “is a challenging existence.”
Frank Bolton
Congratulations, Coates. I will be watching your career with great interest.
Elizabelle
Wonderful news. He’s up for a National Book Award too, isn’t he?
Thought his making the final five for that was reason for your shoutout, and then it is even better, a MacArthur Fellowship.
Congratulations.
Punchy
Can this be translated into English, please?
Patricia Kayden
Congrats to TNC!! Although I rarely read his Atlantic posts because I find them to be a bit depressing, I’ve always liked how he tells it like it is.
Germy Shoemangler
@Gimlet:
Maybe Lush Rimbaugh is worried that if life is discovered on Mars, the liberals will demand human rights for it. “But they’re not human!” he’ll yell. “They’re little green men! And the liberals are out marching for them!”
Patricia Kayden
@Gimlet: If Limbaugh is “right and alone” then I’m a guinea pig. He’s such a self-parody just like Trump and Palin. And why is anyone listening to anything he says — especially when it comes to science?
Germy Shoemangler
@Punchy: Translation: He liked NASA before Obama’s election. Now he hates them. When a republican is back in the white house, he’ll like them again.
David Fud
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s ok. You still think you are white.
Baud
@Punchy:
@Germy Shoemangler:
The GOP has been trying to strip earth science from NASA’s budget because of their opposition to evidence about climate change. This is part of that fight.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gimlet:
How would he know? He’s never been either.
bemused
Granted I haven’t seen much tv news reporting on Trump’s tax plan but what I’ve heard so far has been heavy on on Trump’s “populist” tax cuts for the little people and no skepticism on his supposed plan to tax the wealthy more. Pathetic.
He’s got Grover Norquist’s seal of approval though.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: I got trapped in an unfortunate conversation once with a thoughtful conservative. He told me global warming was unproven; scientists disagreed. I brought up NASA and James Hansen. I told him they were precise in their measurements. They landed a spacecraft on a comet. They landed men on the moon.
His response? He brought up the Challenger disaster. His point? “They’re not so smart!”
Frank Bolton
@Baud: It’s a very big deal (and quite fortunate for us) that Trump is abandoning populist economics. On the off-chance that he gets nominated for President, his chances of winning the general election went from ‘slim’ to ‘zero’. It may not hurt him in the primary at all. It may in fact help him as far as that contest goes now that the Masters of the Universe have a reason to donate to his campaign.
But Trump’s still saddled with the basic problem that his brand of racism only really appeals to Appalachians and Southerners — states which the GOP already have locked down. It does nothing to stop the GOP from slipping with whites in the Rockies, Northeast, West, and Midwest… a trend that’s been happening (and mostly ignored) since 2004. And without leftist economics, there’s no reason to expect that he’ll reverse the long-term slide.
In addition to probably not getting any states that Romney didn’t win, Trump stands a good chance of also not getting North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and even Texas. Especially if the Democratic Party uses Trump as a boogeyman to drive up the (frankly pathetic) turnout of Asians and Latinos.
Tommy
@Gimlet: I was on the phone today. Head down and working on shit. Guy says to me full stop we found water on Mars. Coolest shit in the world.
Baud
@bemused:
Here is CNN’s headline.
BruceFromOhio
@Germy Shoemangler: That’s a useful technique for illuminating hidden dickheads. Do 100 things right and one thing wrong, dickhead will only see or acknowledge the one thing wrong. Challenger was a horrible, tragic lesson in flouting safety in favor of speed, and bullying smarter people to whom we should instead be listening carefully.
Baud
@BruceFromOhio:
Another technique is to ask them whether they think climate change is real.
Baud
@Frank Bolton:
Aside from the northeast and the coastal west, what is your basis for this?
debbie
@Germy Shoemangler:
Or, as Carl Sagan might say, there are billions and billions of idiots in the United States.
BGinCHI
I noticed, with much sadness and distress, that Freddie deBoer was not on this list.
Penus
A friend’s little brother is on the list with TNC. Congrats, Will!
Tommy
@Baud: I have this tee on that says E=NC2. Dad loved it.
bemused
@Baud:
Didn’t see that.
Baud
@BGinCHI:
Freddie noticed that too.
Baud
@Tommy:
I’m sorry, I don’t get it.
Baud
@bemused:
It’s CNN. Why would you?
Frank Bolton
@Baud: The media, especially the television crowd, are all sniveling, asshole-licking courtiers when it comes to taxes. Every single Republican candidate since Carter have included cutting (federal income) taxes for the poor when they cut taxes for the wealthy. They rarely note that the rich get a much larger portion of the cuts than the poor with these plans.
It will be up to the Democrats and any allies they have in the alternate media, as usual, to point out what a sham Trump’s supposedly poor-favoring tax cuts are.
Oh, joy.
bemused
Raw Story reports on study by researchers at Stanford’s Grad School of Business, White people react to evidence of white privilege by claiming greater personal hardships.
Not news for many of us. I’ve heard white conservatives talk like this more times than I can count.
Cervantes
@Gimlet:
Well, I suppose we could drown him in it — but that wouldn’t be efficient.
BGinCHI
@Baud: I can hear him furiously attacking his keyboard. The poor, unacknowledged genius.
I think we should make a list of people whose vanity means that every year they expect to find themselves there.
Jonah Goldberg.
MattF
@Gimlet: Saw that this morning. Maybe the point is that funding for NASA is just a giveaway to those librul scientists.
bemused
@Baud:
Exactly, ha. When I get insomnia in wee hours, I’ll watch CNN International which I can tolerate.
BGinCHI
@bemused: What about dancing? That is legitimately hard for white conservatives.
Also, self-awareness.
Cervantes
@David Fud:
If that means what I think it means, then kudos!
Cervantes
@Punchy:
Really, don’t bother.
Baud
@Frank Bolton:
I love that they all tout the fact that they would increase the number of people who pay no income taxes, a/k/a moochers in their world.
Baud
@BGinCHI:
Baud
David Koch
So challenging he’s dealt with it by marrying 4 times and snorting piles of pharmaceutical heroin.
Shana
Congrats to TNC! But also Lin-Manuel Miranda! “Hamilton” is truly as amazing as the press says it is. The best theater I’ve seen in decades. Really.
My day: after packing up her apartment with my SIL yesterday (whew) today the movers are taking my MIL’s stuff to the new nursing home, we help her settle in then go back to the old place to finish packing everything else for the movers to come take the rest of her stuff off for auction. Then Thursday and Friday we finish emptying her apartment and hauling everything left to Goodwill. Wish me strength please (the physical kind, everyone’s being great about the necessary upheaval).
Tom
@Punchy: “I’m anti-science but I like shiny toys.”
Cervantes
@Baud:
“M,” probably, is what he meant to type (rather than “N”).
BGinCHI
@Baud: Triumph of hope over experience.
I have the opposite default setting.
OzarkHillbilly
@David Fud: Actually, while of the white race, I’m not white. I actually got pulled over for DWB when I was living in Jennings. (all the cop could see was my very dark arm and a silhouette of my kinky hair, one look at my blond hair, blue eyes, and Caucasian features and suddenly he took his hand off his gun and became very pleasant and “Never mind sir, my mistake”)
A friend of mine got her butt thrown into the hospital for a week and had nobody to chaperone her daughter from school to grandma’s but me. The first afternoon I dropped her off in the projects, walking her to the door, several of Aiyesha’s cousins/uncles were inside and I got looks of great dislike/distrust. The next day when I picked her up and buckled her in she looked at me with absolute… (what does a 6 yr old know of hatred/anger/something?) anyway she looked at me and said with great disgust, “Your white!” I replied in my best ghettoese, “Sheeeeit Girl, I’s blacker than you!” Held my arm next to hers and I was a good 2 or 3 shades darker. Her eyes got as big as dinner plates. I can not imagine the conversation that night.
After my divorce, my ex began dating a very racist individual. Suddenly race became an issue for my sons. The oldest became somewhat fixated on it. He stated many times, “I don’t get it Pop. You’re black, were white. How can that be?” I did not know how to reply because I did not want to give currency to the idea of race as a way to define people, so I always said, “It doesn’t matter Bob. Color doesn’t mean a thing.” This led to several rather humorous situations like the time at a McDonalds when a cop paused at our table to get condiments from the adjacent counter and my youngest turned to him and said with great certitude, “My Pop’s black!” The cop looked at this very very blond, blue eyed 4 yr old for a few seconds, looked at me, turned, and walked.away.with.out.uttering.a.word. The issue finally got settled in their minds when my oldest looked at me and said, “I know what you are Pop, you’re just a whiter black.”
So I am not white (except for my ass, it glows in the dark) but I am of the white race.
Frank Bolton
@Baud: I know that Nate Cohn becomes more and more of a VSP with each passing year, but he had a pretty good analysis of the GOP’s ongoing problems with non-Southern white voters.
Long story short, since 2004 they’ve been slipping quite a bit. Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Michigan (all heavily white states) were states they’ve been able to compete much more vigorously for in the Clinton-W. Bush heyday.
Even in the Rockies, also heavily white states, the margin has been going down from +20-25% in many states to 10-15%. This is not a big deal for Presidential elections as only Montana (+10% in 2012) is even close to flipping, but it spells major trouble for their ability to compete in the Senate.
Baud
@BGinCHI:
One needs eternal optimism when one is running for president.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I was so waiting for you to say “I was born a poor black child…”
Baud
@Frank Bolton:
Thanks. I appreciate the comment.
bemused
@BGinCHI:
I like to think of it as conservatives being born with much less self-awareness DNA (if there was such a thing) and unless life events come along to kick them in the ass, they don’t learn to develop the little they have.
It’s so maddening to hear them huff and puff about how they grew up without much but managed to work hard and get somewhere, of course without any help from anyone. They do resent white people getting food stamps, etc too but they really get steamed about white privilege. They must have some awareness or feelings of guilt deep down or they wouldn’t get their panties in such a twist.
Jeffro
@Baud: Trump just needed a plan that was bigger, better, bolder than Bush’s. That is about the extent of the thought that went into it. It differs from Bush’s only in terms of magnitude of the tax cuts (i.e., revenue losses)
Jeffro
@Frank Bolton:
Dems can tar them all with the same brush (no need to focus just on Trump): “Once again we have budget-busting tax cuts aimed at enriching the wealthy and running up the deficits that conservatives supposedly care about. Jeb!’s plan is W’s old plan on steroids, and Trump’s plan is Jeb!’s, only yoooouuuuge…”
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Heh. Solidly middle class white with all the inherent privileges thereof. I should note that all of that occurred when I was steadily working outside. These days I’m a shade lighter than I was then. My skin color I get from my old man, Slovenian mountain stock, the hair color and eyes from my Scots/English mother (w/ an assist from the old man).
WereBear
You just keep spiraling yourself deeper into despair there, you bloated sack of protoplasm and hate.
Karma note: I’m not wishing it on him. I’m just observing what he’s doing.
C.V. Danes
@David Fud: Sorry, but white America is only reachable by Fox news…
WereBear
Yay for Ta-Nehisi Coates and Lin-Manuel Miranda!
OzarkHillbilly
I await with bated breath for someone to ask Trump how he plans to give tax cuts to people so poor they pay no taxes** to begin with.
**no income taxes, which we all know are the only taxes that matter. That and estate taxes.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: Right. Taxing wealth is just a commie fantasy.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
The CNN story I mentioned above actually did say that Trump’s plan would increase those numbers from about 45% to 50%. But Trump will take credit for all of them, I’m sure.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I had to laugh at this. My 100% Black Irish mom tanned darker than many of my black friends skin tones. I’m as pasty pink as is possible without actually being albino. People never think my mom and I are related, even though in everything but coloring I’m a clone of her.
The Golux
@Baud:
Might this be a Star Trek reference?
Edit: Nope, it’s a music reference: https://youtu.be/FnnZ91F_Vys
Jeffro
Here’s a topic perhaps for further discussion: if GOP candidate X were to drop out today, where do you think X’s supporters would flock to (assuming all others are in the race at that time)? To save some time, let’s not worry about where Jindal’s, Graham’s, Pataki’s, or Santorum’s supporters would go, or whom Jim Gilmore would throw his vote to:
My thoughts:
Trump: 1/3 Carson, 1/3 Cruz, 1/3 Kaisch
Carson: 1/2 Trump and 1/2 Cruz
Cruz: pretty widely split…Fiorina, Christie, Rubio, Carson…anyone but Bush
Bush: Rubio and Fiorina
Fiorina: mostly Rubio with some Kaisch and Bush
Rubio: Christie, Fiorina, Kaisch
Christie: same as Fiorina’s supporters (R/K/B)
Kaisch: mostly Bush, then Christie
Paul: they’d just return to their parents’ basement
Huckabee: they’d just go back to watching televangelist shows (j/k…they’d flirt with Carson then fall in line with whomever the nominee is, like they always do)
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: I wish it on him, with all the vehemence and loathing I can muster.
Sloegin
TNC has the chops, now he has the goods.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Whoops forgot the obvious for Fiorina and Christie – their supporters would naturally flock to the other campaign in addition to the R/K/B group
Cervantes
@Frank Bolton:
Thought you might be interested in the following perspective:
It’s also from Cohn, in Barack Obama and the New America: The 2012 Election and the Changing Face of Politics, Larry Sabato, ed. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & LIttlefield, 2013, p. 121.
David Fud
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, if you read Coates, he talks about folks thinking they are white. He calls it the Dream. The Dream is toxic to the dreamers and those oppressed by it. As you probably know, race is just a social construct. So… not sure what else to say about it when you say you are in the white race. Maybe you Dream. I don’t know. In any event, thanks for your story. You have had more challenges in your life due to your skin color than I have knowingly had, and you seem to be doing well enough.
Frank Bolton
@Jeffro: I don’t think that your question is really answerable at this time, because I don’t think that Fiorina is going to stay as the VSP’s darling for very long and your calculus factors her into a lot of outcomes. She’s showing herself to be a whacko-bird culture warrior of the Rick Santorum type.
The VSP were a little too desperate to find an avatar capable of taking down Donald Trump while also forwarding establishment positions and picked someone who might be capable of doing the former — but certainly not the latter. Expect them to, in about a month or so, pin their hopes and dreams on Rubio or Kasich or even Bush. Fiorina will be left to quietly rot. It’s not even clear that her voters will be going over to the establishment candidates, because her rise came at the expense of Trump and Carson.
Elizabelle
I am loving teh Google Doodle today. Thought it was Supermoon at first glance, but they punked us.
Missed Trevor Noah’s debut last night.
Lucky for us asleep before 11:00 p types, Comedy Central is rebroadcasting in a few minutes (9:00 a EDT) and at 6:30 p.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Elizabelle
Oh, I like Trevor Noah’s voice. Never heard him before. Graceful opening.
Says women and Americans turned down the hosting spot, and now the jobs “those people declined” is now being done by an immigrant.
Promises to continue “the world on bullshit.” Covering the Pope occupation now. Pope emojis, etc.
Zing: “Hates climate change and loves immigrants. He’s like a young Bernie Sanders.”
also: tiny car means the pope is “undercompensating.”
sparrow
Coates is wonderful, a joy to read. I hope he does find time and space for another book.
He’s also not a bad speaker. Strange story: I live near a small Catholic University in Baltimore. One fine day, on a whim, I decided to walk through the campus, which I had not done before nor since. As it happens, I arrived at the main auditorium at the student center 15 minute before Ta-Nehisi was scheduled to give his “A Case for Reparations” speech. I got a really good seat & got to see in person someone I have been reading for years. Totally random but awesome!
Elizabelle
Trevor Noah calls Boehner “the bouncer at Club Congress.” And it’s the worst Club in the world. Not enough women, too many old guys.
Clip of Marco Rubio announcing Boehner’s resignation. Cut to still. “That is the face of a man not used to getting applause.”
Makes it very clear that Boehner was ousted because he would compromise too much and “the radicals got what they wanted”.
Liking this new Daily Show. Again, where you go for truthful political observations.
ThresherK
@Woodrow/asim: Not to have someone hate the new comic, or make up lies about the real Black Panthers, or do anything but laugh at the threat (sic) of the New Adventures of the Black Panthers (Fox, 2008), but there is some good absurdist comedy to be had there.
I’m thinking something along the lines of Dave Chappelle’s black white supremacist, or SCTV’s remake of The Jazz Singer, where Eugene Levy’s record producer dad didn’t want to let his singing pro son Al Jarreau (!) out of a concert tour for his true passion, being a cantor.
Too bad Key and Peele have wrapped up.
geg6
If there is one thing I am grateful to Andrew Sullivan for, it’s his pointing me to TNC. I love his writing and he has opened my eyes to a world I cannot ever really enter but that I have struggled my whole life to understand. Hated his comments section for the most part (so insular and condescending, IMHO). But TNC is brilliant. Good on him.
ETA: And I’m dying to see Hamilton. Just dying to see it.
gene108
@Soonergrunt:
I have my doubts about what insights Coaetes can provide for the life of a Wakandan Prince.
Maybe a Buddha like trip about how the Prince has so much while others have so little?
What would be interesting is if this iteration of the new Black Panther is the son of Storm and the old Black Panther.
There was a spin off with Azari (Storm and BP’s) kid with other junior Avengers, but I did not really follow that series much.
It would be good to tie in past plot elements.
Gian
@Punchy:
you really have to hear it, with the shuffling of papers, and some table thumps and pauses mixed in
Elizabelle
@geg6: Yes. Yea Sully. Intro’d me to TNC, and led me here to John Cole land. Props where due.
PS: Our chances of seeing “Hamilton” just went to “which year?”, hmmm?
geg6
@gene108:
He’s a huge comic geek. He’s written about comics about as much as anything at his blog. He must just be over the moon. What a year for him!
Kay
I loved the reperations piece. I think the “property” part of racism- who got to own it, who got to benefit from generational gains that accrue to people who own property and ripple over generations- makes people uncomfortable because it’s tangible and measurable. I’m always struck in my practice by how people don’t need a whole lot to become or stay “middle class”, but they do need it. 10 or 20k (or equivalent value) well-timed, can make all the difference in the world because all they have to work with is the possibility of gains over time. If that’s missing for a couple of generations it’s a big deal, again, over time. The detriment compounds just like the benefit compounds. It ripples.
debbie
I’m listening to Glenn Beck interviewing the guy who created the PP videos. Aside from his saying he’s got 300 hours’ worth of videos to share and his statement that as a Catholic he was totally disappointed by the Pope for failing to focus on abortion (“missing his Mother Theresa moment”), the guy states that while interviewing a doctor who performed late-term abortions, he saw a momentary glint in the doctors’ eyes that was the look of a cold-blooded predator.
I hope the House hearing goes well today.
OzarkHillbilly
@David Fud: I don’t read TNC enuf, not enuf to get the “dream” reference, haven’t picked up either of his books but both are in the queue to purchase next.
Yes, it is a social construct, but that makes it no less real. Let us get this much straight: When I say I am of the white race, I am just repeating what society has told me every single day of my life. I have had no hardship because of my darker shade. I know in fact that I got several jobs because I was white.
I brought all that up merely as a point of humor to highlight the absolute stupidity of how our society has divided us by race. And in particular when it comes to my son’s confusion, my own discomfort in talking about race and my difficulty in finding the right words with which to discuss it.
I have a long ways to go in my education on Race in America, a long ways to go.
Patricia Kayden
@sparrow: Lucky you!!
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
It is imaginary, an over-blown fiction. Its effects are real.
Nor is it the only imaginary, over-blown fiction that affects the real world.
David Fud
@OzarkHillbilly:
As do many of us, friend. It seems I am blundering my way towards some understanding, though there is only so far that I can without feeling the need to drag some other folks who think they are white with me. I borrow this language directly from Coates’ most recent book, and I think it may be apt in getting folks interested enough to attempt to understand what he is talking about.
Sorry for getting my dander up a bit and trying to drag you with me. Enjoy your readings.
Kay
@debbie:
I wish they’d just admit they put the fetus ahead of the woman. Lawyers are idiots in a lot of ways- it’s narrow, it’s “legalistic” – but one thing they have to do is grapple with reality. Someone had to tier these rights because it is not just the fetus- there’s a woman there. Everyone bitches about Roe but good fucking luck figuring out something better. Choices are made, and anti-abortion people make them too. That the anti-abortion crowd denies that choices are made doesn’t change the reality. There is ONE side of this that has actually wrestled with what is a really hard question and it is NOT the anti-abortion side. The woman isn’t going away. She exists as a person apart from the pregnancy. They need to deal with this unique situation- there is nothing else like it- not acorns, not baby chicks, not the death penalty. Them writing her out of state law with these statutes where she disappears doesn’t change that.
debbie
@Kay:
You also never hear a shred of compassion for the babies once they’re born, and you never, ever hear an anti-abortionist demand the man keep his zipper zipped. Without these, they have no credibility.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: That is a more accurate way of phrasing the science of it, but to say it is imaginary flies in the face of the reality every American lives every day. It is a very real social construct, and it is via social constructs that we arrange and live our lives. Saying it isn’t real is as false as saying the sky is pink. It may be true on Mars but we don’t live on Mars, just as we don’t live in some mythological colorblind utopia, we live in a very racist America.
OzarkHillbilly
@David Fud: No apologies necessary. Least of all for being honest.
catclub
@Baud:
I have hopes that the rubes might notice this one. It is not nearly in their favor as much as in the favor of the billionaire class.
ruemara
@Baud: Who is this fellow that shows up to Berniesplain the unskewed polls for us anytime the election is brought up?
@bemused: That ain’t just conservatives.
Kay
@debbie:
I’m just unsuited to their approach. I just have no respect for this soft-focus, Mother and Baby Hallmark card approach to pregnancy and childbirth. I don’t want people like that anywhere near me in a real situation. I would consider them at best useless and worst case possibly dangerous to mothers, babies, anyone involved.
I actually had one as a night shift nurse during what turned out to be terrifying delivery of my youngest child- I felt like I could tell with what I considered her creey comments on the nature of female suffering, and I told my husband “get her away from me”, and he did.
Cervantes
@Kay:
I agree, but consider the following: Harry Blackmun, author of the majority opinion in Roe, was a lifelong Republican; was nominated to the judiciary by Republicans Eisenhower and then Nixon; was a good friend of conservative Chief Justice Burger; and when Roe was being considered had voted with Burger maybe 90% of the time and against liberal Justice Brennan maybe 90% of the time; and had even voted in ’72 to keep the death penalty and again in ’76 to reinstate it.
So while I agree that one side more than the other has wrestled with what is a really difficult question, I don’t know that anyone — excepting every unsure pregnant woman — ever wrestled harder than Republican Harry Blackmun.
Cervantes
@debbie:
I think that’s what poker-players refer to as a “tell.”
Cervantes
@ruemara:
Someone who looks at the data.
Try it when you have a moment. You might even prove him wrong.
debbie
@Kay:
Unbelievable that a nurse would feel you needed to know about female suffering while you were in the midst of labor! I’d have punched her, no matter the pain.
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
As your stories have indicated, you have thought about — and dealt with — the question. Therefore, it’s not up to me to “correct” your words; I simply stated things in my words. I think we see eye to eye on this question and I’m happy for that.
I’m off now. Have a great morning.
Frank Bolton
@ruemara: Assuming you’re talking about me, this has nothing to do with Bernie. HRC, Biden, Webb, Obama with the 22nd Amendment repealed, whoever would be facing the same calculus. And it’s nothing to do with unskewed polls. Just compare the state-by-state election results from 2000 -> 2004 -> 2008 -> 2012. No matter how you slice it, a straight reading of the results shows that:
A.) The GOP has been doing poorly in any states with a significant number of racial minorities, with the exception of 2004 Bush and Latinos.
B.) The GOP has been losing ground with non-Southern and Appalachian whites. McCain’s 56-57% and Romney’s 60% of the white vote has been driven exclusively by these areas. Outside of these areas, the GOP has seen lean-R states become swing states and swing-states become lean-D.
C.) The GOP is about to hit a ceiling on the Southern and Appalachian white vote anyway. They got between 80-90% of the white vote in these areas. And 80-90% sort of masks the problem, because white support is significantly lower in the urban areas — and the lion’s share of the growth in the white population has all been urban. Even though the black % of the population in Georgia and the Carolinas has been falling, the Democrats continue to close the gap in these states thanks to urban whites. The GOP has pretty much maxed out their support with whites and pure urbanization is going to whittle down those numbers.
These three trends (should, ideally) influence both the Republican and Democratic strategies. Fortunately for the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, when it deigns to acknowledge its demographic problems at all, only think about racial minorities — non-white Hispanics in particular. However, even in 2012 doing historically better with Latinos (like 60/40 for) wouldn’t have gotten Romney the Presidency. In particular, the GOP doesn’t stand a prayer in the Midwest and Chesapeake unless A.) it does much better with blacks simultaneously with B.) it does better with non-Southern whites.
Trump going all-in on plutocratic bootlicking augurs very poorly for the ability of the GOP to win Presidential elections or even Senate elections.
Chris
@Frank Bolton:
Interesting. This was one of the points in Krugman’s “Conscience of a Liberal” – that outside of the South, the Democrats had actually been gaining white votes since the great civil rights flip, and that flipping the South accounted for pretty much all of the Republican electoral success. I don’t recall him including numbers, though, so thanks for the confirmation.
Chris
@Baud:
This saddens me, vaguely.
I told myself not to get too excited by Trump’s vaguely populist-sounding noises a few weeks back; after all, most Republicans don’t run by promising that they’re going to tear up the safety net. They run on cultural issues and xenophobic fearmongering, and then when they’re in office, announce that they have a mandate to privatize Social Security. It would be no surprise if Trump, too, was just bullshitting.
But still, I kind of had hopes for a prolonged split between the ex-Dixiecrat “socialism for white people” crowd and the economic royalists. It would’ve absolutely pulverized the notion that right wing economics had a mandate from the people – and it would’ve been ruinous to the party, hopefully just as bad as the 1912 and 1968 splits were. Ah well. I can dream.
Frank Bolton
@Chris:
You might get your wish depending on how Cruz’s ascent shapes up. He’s doing extremely well (for a Republican) with small donations this cycle. If Trump/Fiorina/Carson does flame out, it’s not out of the question that he picks up the George Wallace banner — and unlike the other non-Trump candidates, he has some wiggle room with the plutocracy.
Hillary Rettig
I wish someone would FP this:
The NY Times, which at the moment is running a multipage, illustrated feature on Trump, ran a nostalgia squib on how Bernie Sanders’ came in “dead last” in a *high school track meet.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/insider/1956-bernie-sanders-running-hard.html
Along with the specious coverage and blatant bias, many commenters pointed out that the main point of the story was wrong: he wasn’t last but #15 of a larger field of runners. (So – respectable!)
Here’s my comment :
The NY Times really needs to be thrashed for this coverage, and so I hope someone will FP it.
Cervantes
@Hillary Rettig:
The Times, as an institution, is a disgrace and has been for a long, long time. More power to you for pointing up and fighting its self-dealing mediocrity.
Hillary Rettig
@Cervantes: Thank you!
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
Don’t you work construction, framing carpenter, roofing, etc? Won’t the sun darken almost anyone several shades?
My Grandma grew up in a little river-boat town in Kentucky, born in the late 1800s. She never went outside for more than a couple minutes – walking to the car, to the grocery, back to the house – without a big bonnet. We would work around the place, pruning the apple orchard, raking up the leaves, etc, and she wore one of those big old-fashioned wide brimmed hats, or a bonnet,
To keep the sun off, lest she turn two shades darker, and be suspected of having a drop of Other. And she may well have had some Cherokee of Shawnee a couple of generations back. Her family has been in the mountains a very long time, and there weren’t many English/Scots/Geman immigrant women on the frontier in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Many of those pioneer men landed themselves an Indian lady partner.
But Grandma would never talk about such things, it wasn’t nice…
The brothers next door, in their 70s when we moved out here, spoke of the days when their grnadfather first cleared land to farm up here, and the “Indian Princess” who lived in a tiny cabin up the last holler on the right, when his folk moved into this area. Woody was a teamster on farms in Ohio when that meant putting harness on the team at dawn, while the horses ate a big grainy breakfast before going to work. Ancient history to some, an interesting life to others.
Elizabelle
@Hillary Rettig:
@Cervantes:
Maybe we should start calling it The Judith Miller New York Times.
Their political coverage has been that whacked out.
Gravenstone
@Gimlet: When has that fat bastard ever had to bear the burden of being right? And alone is how he should be, for the rest of his days. Alone, mocked, hated and shunned.