I hate to admit I’m from the Dakotas when I read shit like this, from SD State Rep Michael Clark, who was reacting to the Supreme Court decision about the anti-gay bakery in Colorado:
“He should have the opportunity to run his business the way he wants,” Clark wrote. “If he wants to turn away people of color, then that(‘s) his choice.”
As Erik Loomis points out in LGM, there are a lot of racists in South Dakota, and by “any color”, this idiot almost certainly means Native Americans.
Here’s the thing: Clark, who later apologized for saying what he thinks out loud, is from Hartford, which is at least 150 miles from anyplace in the state with a Native American population above the single digits. Minnehaha County, where Clark lives, is 2.7% Native American. This fucker probably doesn’t even encounter a Native American on most days of the week, especially in a tiny burg like Hartford. Yet he’s ready to throw them out of the stores.
This is just another example of the racism from afar that has infects Trump voters in lily white communities. These people live tens, hundreds or even thousands of miles from the people they hate. So, the “threat” they perceive is almost completely theoretical, injected into their thick skulls by Fox News, fed from memories of what Ma and Pa used to say, and powered by their latest heaping helping of Chik-fil-a.
Also, too: If there’s anyplace where the old adage “line up the biggest 100 assholes on earth and the first 25 will be state legislators” is more true than South Dakota, I can’t name the place. This guy fits right in with that crew of retrograde knuckle draggers.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Only so long as those same POC’s get to throw Molotov cocktails through the asshole’s windows of shitty bakery afterwards, Mikey, with no consequences, while he watches his life’s work burn to the ground.
What, don’t you value freedom? I’m sure if it were a Muslim business you wouldn’t have any qualms, you prick.
/ Just to be clear, I don’t advocate burning people’s places of business down. But damn love to see the looks on Clark’s and the homophobic baker’s faces
The Moar You Know
It is sadly staggering how many folks believe this. It’s like civil rights legislation never existed, which for jackholes like this is probably true. I have spoken with a couple of that ilk who believed that business owners were prevented by law from serving blacks and THAT was the issue addressed by the Civil Rights Act. It’s not a failure of the educational system, it’s merely a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.
Barbara
So basically he drew a straight line between refusing to serve a gay wedding on the basis of religious belief to refusing to serve a customer based on race in no time flat. But of course, they are not racist, no siree.
jonas
Does the SCOTUS decision allow me not to serve South Dakota legislators at my discretion?
Arm The Homeless
This is why I spend an inordinate amount of time looking for GOP/ Trump leanings in the social media of prospective employees, and then trash those that do.
Race and ethnicity are protected classes, but being a fucking fascist shit-beaver is a choice; a choice they won’t be able to make in my office. Fug’em all
catclub
@jonas:
race? no,creed? no, color? no,national origin? no
asshole from ND? probably ok.
germy
I seem to recall Rand Paul making the same argument a few years back.
Which is why I chuckled when I read about him being shoved off his riding mower.
M4
@Barbara: I’m actually all for consistency here. Being LGBT should be subject to the same scrutiny as being a racial minority. So if you can refuse service to me due to religious beliefs for being gay, then you can refuse business to nonwhite people because they bear the curse of Cain, or whatever Mormons believed until a few decades ago.
ETA: because it’s important that people understand the ramifications of their policy wishes.
Frankensteinbeck
Interesting. I have long said that assholes demand to be praised for being assholes. If they see their assholery as a virtue – and they do – then they will admire even bigger assholes. They will elect the biggest assholes they can find. As a result, elected Republicans would not be smarter or more moderate than their base. They would be the meanest, most self-centered, dogmatic, racist, ignorant trolls in the population.
Planetpundit
Born and raised in SD; the Alabama on the Prairie.
Patricia Kayden
He must have forgotten that thousands of African Americans fought dearly for the right to shop, eat, sleep, and transact business with entities which serve the public. We’re not going back.
Patricia Kayden
@M4: So the ramifications don’t hit White people?
The Moar You Know
@Barbara: There’s kind of no other way to interpret the Supreme’s ruling on this, and that was the intent of at least five of them who voted for it. Just sub “religious belief” for “race”. It is for some people, Mormons in particular. I’m sure the Southern Baptists will get it in their platform by next week, if it’s not already.
@M4: What you said.
Mel
@Arm The Homeless: Thank you for this. My guess is that you have an office full of some wonderful and pretty damned “happy with the work environment” employees, who also treat your clients or customers well and do excellent work for you.
Good people make for good business.
M4
@Patricia Kayden: I’d like to think there are folks who are fine with a policy that discrimination against LGBT’s is okay who would think twice if they knew that this would also mean you could refuse service to black people. (I imagine this group would in fact include some nonwhite people.)
Failing that, I’ll ask you: do you think LGBT’s don’t deserve the same level of scrutiny?
Tim C.
PREACH! Seriously, I grew up in liberal Portlandia so when I went to college in the rural part of the state, I was expecting it to be more religious and more conservative. What shocked me was how a significant number of people had not just wrong ideas about the city, but absolutely absurd ones. “No… no there aren’t 1200 murders a year in Portland Oregon” This is what the GOP is now. Their fear and racism and stupid ignorance isn’t about their neighbors it’s about people who live very very far away.
rikyrah
He does all this grifting, and ANOTHER AIDE RESIGNS?
PHUCK. OUTTA.HERE.
Pruitt Aide Resigns Amid Scandals
Elaina Plott
59 mins ago
A top aide to Scott Pruitt, Millan Hupp, resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a source briefed on the matter and documents reviewed by The Atlantic. Her last day will be Friday.
Hupp, who worked as the director of scheduling and advance, has been entangled in many of the scandals dogging EPA Administrator Pruitt. In March, she was one of two aides who received hefty salary bumps, even after the White House refused Pruitt’s request for raises. And as The Washington Post reported on Monday, she recently testified to the House Oversight Committee that she regularly spent her days doing personal tasks for Pruitt, from hunting for housing to calling the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., to inquire about purchasing a used mattress.
According to one top EPA official, the 26-year-old was “tired of being thrown under the bus by Pruitt,” and weary of seeing her name constantly appear in headlines about the agency. Officials began drafting her resignation paperwork on Monday morning, just after portions of her congressional testimony were made public.
Hupp’s testimony contributed to the long list of scandals and improprieties plaguing the agency—including, most notably, that Pruitt rented a Capitol Hill condo from an energy lobbyist for just $50 a month, and spent more than $40,000 on a soundproof booth in his office on the taxpayers’ dime. For months now, according to multiple White House and EPA sources, officials as senior as Chief of Staff John Kelly have lobbied President Donald Trump to fire Pruitt.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
No. We aren’t remotely going back. Period.
Bobby Thomson
Not to defend Trump, but he didn’t make this guy racist. And Rand Paul has been loud and proud with his racism for years.
Barbara
@M4: @The Moar You Know: One thing you learn in law school is that there is nothing like race. Many people have tried to argue against invidious discrimination of all kinds by drawing analogies to racial discrimination but have been felled by their failure to account for the historical context of slavery and Jim Crow. I am not saying it’s fair or right, but it’s very obvious when you look at a lot of constitutional case law. The oppressive and overwhelming discrimination against African Americans is not like anything else that has happened in our country. There are similarities in certain ways to other kinds of discrimination, but nothing that is as all-encompassing. I hate arguing this point, because it makes it sound like I think there is a hierarchy of suffering and injustice when there isn’t, but in crafting legal arguments you have to realize that certain kinds of arguments that seem like they should be successful won’t be, and come up with different or better arguments.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tim C.:
I moved back to Kentucky recently. A local in a fast food restaurant found out I used to live in Los Angeles. He said there must have been a lot of crime. I told him no, and that Lexington was worse. He was absolutely baffled.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
That’s how I see it. Which is why the case was always bullshyt to me.
The Moar You Know
@Patricia Kayden: It’s a fucking shame that we don’t teach the history of Rome, or of Weimar -> Nazi Germany, or even for that matter what happened in the Deep South after the Civil War. Because if we did teach these things, people would know…in a democracy, you can go back. Very quickly and badly. I would hope the election of Trump would have clued some of my fellow Dems (this is NOT aimed at you, to be clear) into this possibility, but so far, very few seem to understand it.
Barbara
@rikyrah: You can see it that way but the Supreme Court doesn’t.
Mel
@rikyrah: We can’t go back. We can not. We won’t.
They can try to disrespect humanity, drag us all backwards, and ignore the law, but this is one fight they are NOT going to win.
Tokyokie
`@Tim C.: My mother was somebody who knew exactly what non-whites wanted and deserved, all without really knowing a single person of color.
M4
@Barbara: is there only a constitutional right to public accommodation based on race then? I’m sure gender or disability could be seen as more apt analogies. (I recognize this is moving away from the OP, I’m curious)
Mandalay
@Bobby Thomson:
Trump may not have have made him racist, but he has definitely enabled and empowered people like Clark through his policies and his own racist behavior.
Trump has created a climate where a politician feels comfortable making racist comments in public.
Mel
@rikyrah: You are absolutely right. Every battle is a battle we are fighting for every one of us on this planet, regardless of what the tag line is. We are all in this together, and we have to stand united.
trollhattan
Will note in passing that Trump’s judicial nominees refuse to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee whether Brown v. Board of Education was a correct decision. If I were on the committee I’d follow with “Did the correct side win the Civil War, why or why not?”
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Trump: the face that launched a thousand lips.
rikyrah
Mulvaney attacks CFPB and breaks the law too
https://twitter.com/KarlFrisch/status/1004416062895554560?s=19
M4
@trollhattan: “Firstly, please don’t yell, Ms. Harris, it makes me uncomfortable for some reason. Secondly, I would hardly say that’s up to the courts.”
joel hanes
@Barbara:
The oppressive and overwhelming discrimination against African Americans is not like anything else that has happened in our country.
Native Americans would like a word with you about this assertion.
Sab
@The Moar You Know: Yeah. I have never understood why Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson are treated as great presidents.
catclub
@M4:
I think everyone here is in stead referring to parts of the 1965 civil rights act which forbid discrimination in public accomodations based on
race, creed, color and national origin. I am not sure if gender and disability were in there in 1965, they might be now.
So I am not sure there IS a constitutional right to public accomodation, except as the SC never struck down the 1965 Civil rights act.
I am sure others know this better than I do. But why should I let that stop me from sprinkling a little of my ignorance over the the rest of the internet?
schrodingers_cat
@Mel: Agreed. This President and his party has been clear on what they want. They want R voting wealthy white males to lord it over everyone else. They must not be allowed to succeed.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
I predict the Republicans in Congress will do nothing about it.
schrodingers_cat
@Mandalay: Yes indeed. These people always existed but now they emboldened to display their bigotry.
Bobby Thomson
@Mandalay: he has benefited from such a climate that already existed. The cause is the increasing homogenization of communities where racists self select, which removes any electoral deterrent to letting freak swastikas fly.
Ruviana
@joel hanes: I am thinking that Barbara is making an explicitly legal argument because people of African heritage and/or descent were legally enslaved under U.S. law. Were Native Americans abused and horribly treated? Of course they were but their status wasn’t the same legally. During slavery some escaped slaves lived among Native American communities where they blended in and were less likely to be noticed. Were crazy things perpetrated on any number of immigrants and ethnic populations? Yes. But those people weren’t legally enslaved as the law permitted it at the time. That was how I understood her comment.
rikyrah
Just the CRIMINALS, remember?
Undocumented man faces deportation after delivering pizza to Brooklyn Army base
POSTED 4:25 PM, JUNE 6, 2018, BY NARMEEN CHOUDHURY AND ALIZA CHASAN, UPDATED AT 04:33PM, JUNE 6, 2018
BAY RIDGE, Brooklyn — A man is facing deportation after he delivered a pizza to an Army base in Brooklyn and leaders in the borough are doing all they can to bring him home.
“They treated me like a criminal. I did not commit a crime,” Pablo Villavicencio said in Spanish.
He spoke to PIX11 News from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in New Jersey.
“My daughters need me,” he said. “My wife needs me.”
His family said Villavicencio could be deported as early as next week.
Villavicencio said he was delivering pizza, as he has done countless times before, to the Fort Hamilton Army Base on June 1. He said he showed his New York State identification card at the security gate and was allowed inside.
But when he reached the delivery address, he said, he was confronted by another officer and asked to show another form of identification which he did not have.
Villavicencio said he was detained by military officers, one of whom called ICE. Since then Villavicencio has not seen his family.
M4
@schrodingers_cat:
In order to say “bakers can decide not to serve gays, so therefore they can also refuse to serve racial minorities” I imagine one draws one’s ‘reasoning’ from conlaw, not legislation (or one could also draw it from a belief that this case invalidates the civil rights act)
Edited for clarity
Ruviana
@catclub: If I’m remembering correctly gender (sex back then) was added during the voting process by Southern Democrats who thought that the hysterical (heh) joke of putting sex in the bill as a category would doom it to defeat because it was so ridiculous. Oops.
TenguPhule
@Ruviana:
Do you really want to get into the nitty gritty about the legal violations against the Native Americans?
According to every treaty the Federal Government violated, Native American’s should own 95% of the USA.
Its the one consistent place where almost every administration has done a Trump against them.
john r
Author says “Also, too: If there’s anyplace where the old adage “line up the biggest 100 assholes on earth and the first 25 will be state legislators” is more true than South Dakota, I can’t name the place.” Easy for me, Floriduh has 95 of them as legislators and #96 is the governor.
The Moar You Know
@catclub: Gender is a “protected class” believe it is called, disability is covered by the ADA. Sexual orientation is not covered federally last I checked. And won’t be anytime soon.
cthulhu
@M4: We’ve already been there. Plenty of the resistance to integration and civil rights laws were based on supposed deeply held religious beliefs. So this is nothing new. But it should be remembered, that at this point, sexual orientation and gender identity do not hold the same protected status as race and biological sex at the federal level. Policies were certainly enacted under Obama but those sort of protections can easily go away.
M4
@The Moar You Know: it hasn’t been standardized but few courts apply strict scrutiny to sexual orientation.
Ruviana
@TenguPhule: No, I wanted to point out what I think Barbara was saying in her comment. I wasn’t really planning on a competition for who had it worse. Lots of things are really really bad. But sometimes they are really really bad in different ways. We can discuss all those things and all those ways without turning it into a competition.
schrodingers_cat
@M4: I never said what you have quoted, it was catclub.
JanieM
@M4:
My version of consistency would be that if you can refuse to serve me, then I can refuse to serve you. If they can discriminate *because* of their religion, then I should be able to return the favor. If they can refuse to serve me because of their belief system, then I should be able to refuse to serve them because of the incompatibility of their belief system and mine.
Also @joel hanes:
Try “Killers of the Flower Moon,” by David Grann, for one episode in that sad story.
M4
@schrodingers_cat: my bad, tiny phone screen and all.
Calouste
@rikyrah: 26-year-old woman, in a position most likely well above her experience, gets a hefty raise… I wonder if she knew exactly which used mattress Pruitt wanted to purchase, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
arrieve
@Frankensteinbeck: I grew up in San Francisco — not exactly a small town. Whenever I came home after moving to New York, multiple people always asked, “But is it SAFE there?” So it’s not just a small town phenomenon.
schrodingers_cat
@M4: No worries.
Steve in the ATL
SCOTUS’ holding that corporations can have religious beliefs is one of the things that, left uncorrected, will ultimately lead to the end of the USA. Current interpretation of the Second Amendment is another.
trollhattan
@john r:
If there are only a hundred slots the state legislators will be in the fight of their lives against the HOA board members. Pray for injuries.
eclare
@JanieM: That was an excellent but heartbreaking book. I think I picked it up based on a recommendation here, maybe IOL….
Brachiator
This is America. Racists have never needed Fox News to tell them what they already feel deep in their hearts.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: Corporations are people too. Thanks to Justice Kennedy.
I might add that their taxes are lower also.
Major Major Major Major
@JanieM:
I did very much enjoy the Church of Satan’s response to this.
JPL
In celebration of Ramadan, the dinner will be attended by Ambassadors. They did not invite a member of the Palestinian community.
mainmata
@jonas: That’s why the decision was so narrowly crafted. If a later case gets decided more broadly against gay married couples. it will lead to complete chaos and essentially the gutting of the Civil Rights Act and widespread discrimination for all kinds of reasons. If Kennedy retires soon, another reactionary will be appointed and we’ll be right back to the 1890s.
justawriter
North Dakota liberals used to be able to laugh at South Dakota but things here have really deteriorated since the millennium. There used to be a significant contingent of moderate Republicans who believed that government should be competent even if you disagreed with it. They were able to make common cause with Dems to make sure the loonies didn’t screw things up too badly. I think we lost a lot of smart people when there was a regional slump in the economy from 2000-2008. (North Dakota’s economy is counter cyclical, we do better when the rest of the country shits a brick) Then the Bakken Boom happened and we gained a whole lot of population mostly from Texas and Idaho, and as some cheeto once said, those places don’t send their best people. So now here I stand, surrounded by degenerate Trumpists, praying to a God I don’t believe in that they won’t destroy Social Security before I retire in nine years (instead of four, Thanks Newt) so I can cash out and move somewhere sane for my declining years. Sorry for the rant, but I can’t exactly say this stuff out loud around here and the pressure builds up.
West of the Rockies
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Not helping.
Major Major Major Major
@West of the Rockies: At least he remembered to put a disclaimer at the bottom. Progress!
azlib
Ironically, our very conservative pundit here at the AZ Republic excoriated the Supremes for punting on the issue. He is of the opinion they should have upheld the decision of the Colorado Commission. I am sure he will be dutifully pillored for is apostasy.
Citizen Alan
@M4:
90% of the reason I will hate the Bernie Bros and Greens forever is that if Hillary had become President, I’m quite sure we’d have 5 votes for simply apply the Civil Rights Act of 1964 directly to gender and sexual orientation, which would at a stroke grant LGBTs the full panoply of civil rights in housing, employment and public accomodations. But no, Hillary wasn’t pure enough, so now 1 in 8 federal judges is a Trump appointment.
debbie
@Steve in the ATL:
Don’t leave out Citizens United!
Mandalay
@Sab:
Well…arguably, Wilson’s second greatest achievement was the creation of the Federal Reserve and the FTC. Inarguably, Wilson’s greatest achievement was that the creation of the Fed and the FTC drives Rand Paul fucking nuts, makes him miserable every day of his life, and causes him to constantly throw absurd hissy fits about it in public.
For that alone Wilson has earned our nation’s eternal gratitude.
Barbara
@joel hanes: Native Americans are another sui generis category — treated horribly but in other ways and using different legal weapons, also cultural weapons, and genocide. But the subjugation of African Americans during the Jim Crow era was specifically carried out using legal disabilities, probably because African Americans lived among the same white population that had formerly enslaved them (although, certainly, legal restrictions abounded in non-slave states as well). African Americans were also subjected to high levels of violence, of course. Native Americans were subjugated using tactics aimed at destroying their language and way of life. It’s not a hierarchy, it’s just a difference that you need to keep in mind when you are trying to obtain legal redress for specific kinds of injustice and discrimination.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So Larry Cokeblow, a walking exemplar of white mediocrity failing up, had some stupid shit to say about the war on success being “over”.
Apparently, in white world success consists of getting big piles by ripping people off, not by supplying goods and services to people who want to engage in trade with you on a mutually beneficial transaction.
Cokeblow then segued to not knowing when those benefits would genuinely be felt in the form of higher wages or in workers experiencing the benefits of scale or of the greater productivity, and then whines about being “given a chance”.
Fuck that guy. He’s lucky that nobody has tracked him down to bash his fucking addled brain out with a baseball bat.
debbie
@Sab:
Glenn Beck considers Woodrow Wilson to be the source of all Progressive Evil. Interestingly, he’s never mentioned Wilson’s racism.
Citizen Alan
@joel hanes:
Also, for most of this nation’s existence, being gay was per se criminal in that doing pretty much anything to confirm one’s homosexuality was an imprisonable offense. Or at least in those jurisdictions where it wasn’t considered a mental illness instead.
Citizen Alan
@Sab:
Historical ignorance. I was taught that Andy Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans but nothing about the Trail of Tears.
Barbara
@justawriter: Well, even with all those all those new loons North Dakota managed to expand Medicaid and South Dakota did not.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I just heard reporting on NPR that he is downplaying the EU/Mexican/Canadian objection to tariffs. There might be some fun a-brewing this weekend at the G7.
Barbara
@Citizen Alan: Yep, but by the time most people might have been in a position to express their orientation, they had gone to the same schools and received the same education and advantages (or disadvantages) as other people of the same race, gender and demographic make up. Race defines socio-economic status in the U.S. in a way that sexual orientation does not. Again, it’s not a hierarchy, it’s a difference that is amenable to different kinds of legal remediation.
Citizen Alan
@Steve in the ATL:
IIRC, it was the GURPS Cyberpunk role-playing game whose late 21st century setting dated the end of American Democracy to a SCOTUS holding that the 1st and 2nd Amendment guaranteed the rights of corporations to form private armies that could use lethal force to defend the corporations’ interests. After that, federal elections were completely irrelevant.
trollhattan
@justawriter:
Is it because you were invaded by wingnut Bakken Field workers?
Something similar happened in NW Iowa where I hail from, which flipped from Democratic to Steve King for no reason I can figure. Possibly farm depopulation left mostly loonies behind, in which case thanks, mom and dad!
MCA1
@Tim C.: The Right has been using that myth about cities forever. Dens of iniquity and you’re lucky if you don’t get shot within 24 hours, so best not to even visit. Stay out there in the sticks, safe in your cocoon of ignorance and misplaced resentment. That way you can work 35 hours a week at the Walmart and bitch about the lazy urbanites with their college educations and imported cars without knowing about the 60 hour work weeks that make those things possible. Continue to suck off the teat of the federal government while everyone else creates new industries and engages in 21st century capitalism to keep you and your dying lifestyle afloat. Watch an opioid crisis your Republican congressperson enabled by taking millions in campaign contributions from Big Pharma shatter your community while you blame some foreign gang and rail about crime levels that are at their lowest in decades in the actual cities.
Apart from doing something about the 2nd Amendment, I’ve become convinced that the #1 structural political problem, stemming from our foundational documents, that we absolutely need to fix is the disproportionate power of the smaller population states in the Senate, particularly as those states have become more and more dominated by the rural West. People fueled by that bs myth about cities have ridiculously outsized power over the rest of us. We couldn’t convict an impeached Drumpf (not that I think the supine GOP would impeach him, of course) because all it takes is Senators representing LESS THAN 15% OF THE POPULATION to vote against it. Not one Senator from a state larger than South Carolina, 24th most populous state in the union, would be needed. That’s 34 Senators whose constituents are barely greater in the aggregate than those of Feinstein and Boxer.
Mitch McConnell has used that particular well-meaning mistake on the part of the Founding Fathers to destroy American government. It’s a deep fundamental problem for the polity as a whole.
Steve in the ATL
@debbie: absolutely right—that decision is a democracy killer all by itself. Also too gerrymandering.
debbie
@Steve in the ATL:
Have there been federal decisions about gerrymandering? It’s so bad here in Ohio that I assumed it was a state by state thing that the feds had no jurisdiction over.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Jesus Christ, and what I said was unhelpful?
ruemara
@Barbara: I’ve said to a number of lawyers, including a gay one, that I don’t care about the narrowness & the merits of the decision. The problem is it takes people like you & me – folks willing to read & learn who understand what the justices intended & what they punted on – to not apply what the this decision says on the surface, “My faith allows me to discriminate against you”.
Fuckers.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
There’s a special exemption for Larry Kudlow.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@MCA1:
That and the House not keeping up with the population. I truly think when (if?) we regain control the House we need to make that our first priority. The House can control how many seats it has, right?
Steve in the ATL
@debbie: oh yeah. Texas, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are still bitter about it, while Pennsylvania somehow won its case.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
This is how our Republic was supposed to work.
Ignorance of basic Civic responsibilities was never anticipated when they built this.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
At least I didn’t call for someone’s murder, even if deserving.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@debbie:
Do you think Issue One will help alleviate it?
JPL
I’m not sure what post this belongs on
https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1004428719316979715
Steve in the ATL
@Citizen Alan: “in 1814 we took a little trip/along with colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip’”
A cute song whose tone is a bit too light and sunny for what actually happened.
On the other hand, Guadalcanal Diary’s “Trail of Tears” is far more dark and honest. Plus, most importantly, my college band used to cover it.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Even without his brain, I assure you Larry would still manage to survive. Its not like he needs it even now.
TenguPhule
@JPL:
File Under, Insane/Stupid. This is right up there with those dancing Muslims he saw on 9/11.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
I imagine they did. That’s why they created the Electoral College and limited voting to white, landed elites. They believed doing this would prevent the passions of the masses from getting out of control. They didn’t believe in mass politics and democracy like you and I do.
The Founders believed that government was only for a wise ruling class of republicans to control.
Jeffro
@MCA1: Co. Sign.
Times Eleventy.
trollhattan
Stay classy, Wisconsin. Your AG sounds like a winner.
ruemara
Y’all. Don’t you dare play oppression olympics between blacks & Native Americans. We are pretty much dealing with very similar rates of death, culturally mandated oppression and horrific history. Blacks have made bigger strides towards equality, but we paid in blood that, ahem, some white liberals didn’t think was all that important back in 2016. Natives may not have been enslaved once early colonizers realized Africans were hardier, but they’ve been stolen from, languished without resources & still live in grinding poverty. Do NOT use us like this. There’s a slew of reasons not to do this with AA & indigenous peoples, but the biggest one is that resident POC do not need to feel like the pain of their ancestors is a woke measuring contest.
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Where did they ever encounter a wise ruling class?
M4
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: perhaps they were both unhelpful.
debbie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I don’t trust it because I don’t trust the Ohio Legislature. The citizens’ group that was working on their own initiative hasn’t stopped collecting signatures, so there may be a back-up plan in the works.
Ben Cisco
@ruemara:
Repeated for those in the back.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Given that the hotel is in California, I’m guessing that keeping the location a secret was at the request of the Ritz Carlton so they could make money off homophobia without having to suffer any consequences if the public found out.
debbie
@ruemara:
Sometime when I’m less upset about this kind of shit, remind me to tell you about NYC after Rawanda. “I’m more of a victim than you are.” “My victimhood matters more than yours.” “You have no right to use the word ‘Holocaust.’ ‘Well, okay, you can use it, but you can’t capitalize the ‘H’.” “I say we trademark it so no one else can use it.” Maddening.
Jim Bales
Possibly New Hampshire? From Wikipedia:
With 400 reps representing 1.3 Million people, NH ends up with some very special people in the state legislature.
Best
Jim
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
Yup, and dollars to [straight] donuts there were gay folks among the staff working at the thing, which brings to mind Willard’s bartender and his recording of the infamous “47 percent” speech. What are the chances…?
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
I’m not positive, but am pretty sure that when one speaks of Jim Crow laws in the deep south (from Virginia to Key West and west to Texas) it was indeed illegal to serve Black Americans in the same place where White Bigots were being served. Same for bathrooms, movie houses, water fountains.
It wasn’t just customary, it was the law, just as it was illegal for Whites and Blacks to have a marriage. Shameful, but true. Jim Crow laws kept Black folks under the shoe of all whites. All the time, everywhere.
In 1972 in Mississippi my wife was greeted by and hugged an older guy we both knew at work. She was very homesick, and hugged Herb, who was an electrical engineer from my hometown. Herb lived near wife’s grandparents, was a little younger than our parents, but older than we were by 25 years or so.
After he left the library where wife worked as a reference librarian, she was called into the head librarian and threatened with being fired for showing an inappropriate degree of familiarity with a black man old enough to be her father. White haired engineer type.
Mississippi was not (is still not!) over Jim Crow in 1972, not at all.
This is why the young black freedom workers were arrested in the 1960s. They were breaking the law, the Jim Crow law.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Ruviana: excuse me, but with all due respect, Native Americans were, in fact, enslaved in this country, and the transAtlantic slave trade involved selling indigenous Americans overseas as well as importing African slaves. See “Lies My Teacher Told Me” for a detailed, footnoted, primary source documented treatment of the topic.
ETA: what Ruemara said.
justawriter
@Barbara: There are still a few sensible Republicans but they are declining in numbers and influence. They can still work across the aisle and get things done sometimes. But we are getting to be such a one party state we may not have enough Democrats left for them to work with.
@trollhattan: The oilfield has a lot to do with, but it isn’t the complete reason. The farm community bought into the Sagebrush Rebellion bullshit of the Reagan years pretty hard. They were convinced that if only the heavy hand of the gub’mint was removed they could solve the long term problem of commodity oversupply by … producing more. Oh, but don’t stop sending us those government checks that are totally not welfare like the N’clangs get. The third thing is that the big money right realized what a bargain campaigning in the rural states is. For the price of one media buy in a major market you can pick up a senator or two and a representative plus a compliant legislature and governor. Give North Dakota Dems a million a year for staffing, training and organizing, (and not by requiring them to spend it on crony consultants) and I think the state could be competitive again in five or six years.
Matt McIrvin
@M4: In US constitutional law, anything implying racial discrimination gets strict scrutiny, which is the highest level; it takes a lot for something to survive that. Sex/gender discrimination only gets intermediate scrutiny, which is somewhat weaker (I think because we have a 14th Amendment but no ERA). Then there’s rational basis, which is weaker still–that basically says that the government can’t restrict your freedom in any way without some kind of legitimate government interest being involved, but that’s pretty broadly defined; it doesn’t take much to clear that bar.
Zinsky
These reptiles believe the social contract is an ala carte sort of thing, where they can pick which benefits they like from people acting together for the collective good (a/k/a “government”) and which social niceties they can just chuck out the fucking window because, ya know, we just don’t much care for them type of folk…
Sorry, dipshits, it don’t work like that.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim Bales: Also, the NH legislature are basically unpaid volunteers–they get some kind of nominal stipend, but it’s not enough to qualify as pay. So the job attracts bored retirees, obsessive cranks, people who do it as a hobby. Nobody can say taxpayer dollars are being wasted on their lavish salaries, but there’s a down side to that.
Parfigliano
@Planetpundit: Yup. Born raised in Pierre then moved to Rapid City after law school. The racism is proudly out in the open there.
boatboy_srq
@Barbara: OK, then, we have multiple instances of “slippery slope” developments in the wake of religulous-libetee arguments for LGBT discrimination where POCs have been the new target using the same justifications. Can we not argue that carving out exceptions for religious conviction is a gateway for certain (cough cough Southern Baptist or Mormon cough) denominations to reinstate religious justifications for racism to subvert civil rights guarantees?