Rather than shout, I’ll just ask the question in a civil way: Dear Republicans, do you really want to endanger your party’s greatest political legacy by turning the 14th Amendment to our Constitution into an excuse for election-year ugliness?
They don’t care, and the media won’t hold them accountable. John King and David Gregory will gloss this over, pointing to “legitimate concerns about immigration.”
And does he really not know the answer to that question. They’ve just spent the last month denying their behavior the last four decades while declaring the NAACP are the real racists in America. Say what you will about my voting past, when I finally saw the light, I learned. Yes, EJ. The opportunity to whip up racial resentment months before an election is irresistible. It’s like catnip/crack/meth all rolled up into one.
Tone in DC
Like Klinghoffer said, they have gone from neocons to crazycons. And it did not take very long. At all.
Redshirt
My local news had a long segment this morning on the “controversial” mosque in NYC. They seemed to only cover Republican POV – that the mosque so near the WTC could be used to glorify the attacks.
I’ve lost the ability to be completely shocked, but damn. The Repugs control not just the national media, but the entire messaging at the local levels as well. Is there any question as to why we’re all going to hell when 95% of us consist on a diet of forced fed propaganda?
Comrade Javamanphil
When you are busy rewriting all of history, why would you care about your legacy? See: Liberal Fascism, In Defense of Internment, and anything written by Coulter.
Violet
It’s really frustrating that people like Dionne, who at least have a platform where they will be heard by a few people, go with things like this:
rather than something like this:
I realize I’m smoking crack when I wish a Serious Person would say something like that. Still wish it would happen.
gnomedad
Alan Keyes, of all people, is defending the 14th amendment.
BR
@Redshirt:
This is why I’ve probably posted a dozen times here that folks really need to read Endgame by Derrick Jensen. It’s not a happy book or a linear book, but one that needs to be read widely.
http://www.endgamethebook.org/
The problems are systemic and they aren’t just a matter of the GOP. It’s the natural end result of corporatism, unregulated free-market capitalism, jingoism, christianism, and profiteering all rolled into one.
General Stuck
Sheat, the election campaign hasn’t even started yet until after labor day. Whipping up racial tension and anxieties amongst the white natives has traditionally been done with some skill and restraint, and wingers not overplaying their hand and waiting for the right opportunity, see Willie Horton.
Not this time around, it’s Breitbart Barnburning round the clock and going after the founding document as well. I wonder how much, at this stage, with the tea bag nativists already primed to vote, that this strategy is coming full circle and now is only going to spark the minority vote to come out, and maybe some white dems that would have been resting on their laurels with dems firmly in power.
These twenty seven percenters can’t wait to pull the lever and need no more for motivation than a dark furrin usurper poaching on their White House.
The Tea Party didn’t do so well last night and polls have been dipping for them across the board amidst one overt ugly racist incident after another. America can be ginned up to worry about big bad scary black and brown people, but there is a limit for pure ugliness they will recoil from. We are hardly post racial in this country, but it isn’t 1969, or even 1989 any more.
The Bearded Blogger
Al this nativism seem like a huge gamble. Ten years from now, a full blown nativist party like the GOP seems doomed to failure, UNLESS they manage to disenfranchise a large part of the crayola box very soon, before demographics catch up to them.
LittlePig
The problems are systemic and they aren’t just a matter of the GOP. It’s the natural end result of corporatism, unregulated free-market capitalism, jingoism, christianism, and profiteering all rolled into one.
Please, no offense intended, but DUH.
Pancake
Aside from graham, the effort has received virtually no support from other Republicans. Additionally, Graham has explained that the focus of his concern is limited to those situations in which a pregnant foreign national illegally enters this country for the sole purpose of providing automatic citizenship to a newborn, hardly a racist attitude.
One wonders when Dionne and others of his ilk are going to learn that the willy nilly use of the charge of “racism” has no meaning anymore to the vast majority of Americans.
The Bearded Blogger
@General Stuck: That seems spot on, point of diminishing returns and all that. My only worry is the MSM that manages to minimize the ugliness that is modern conservatism. Of course, bad media is also reaching a point of diminishing returns.
joe from Lowell
As I wrote on a previous thread, we need to bring up the efforts to repeal the 14th amendment every time a Republican uses the words “Lincoln,” “Abolition,” or “Reconstruction” to defend themselves against charges of racism.
As in, “Yes, the Republicans used to be the party of Lincoln, the anti-slavery party. They passed the 14th amendment as part of that agenda. But today’s Republican Party has come full circle, and now wants to repeal that amendment.”
John Bird
Hey, neat. Just as Europe’s finally abandoning the savagery of a blood-based system of citizenship, we’re plowing right on back to it.
Sometimes I wish we had a competition of right vs. left in this country instead of one between barbarism and civilization.
MattF
On the subject of election-year racism from Republicans, you might have a chat with Mr. Dukakis about Willie Horton, or, for that matter– with John McCain about South Carolina in 2000.
John Bird
@Pancake:
Yes, it is in fact a racist attitude to deny citizenship to an American child because a pregnant parent entered the country illegally. You’re also a racist for defending it, as is Graham.
ruemara
You know why they do it? We are a very, very stupid species. If there is a point to disagree on, we are on it. If we can divide ourselves over tiny issues, we are so there. Maddow did a bit about Democrats seeking Republican votes by comparing it to ordering pizza with pepperoni vs broken glass and axle grease. We’re more like people trying to decide between white, wheat, gluten-free, pepperoni, no meat touching my vegetables, mushrooms & pineapple, with the extremes on either side complaining about eating raw macrobiotic or adding broken glass and axle grease. Meanwhile, we’re getting screwed by the powerbrokers who’ve been dangling the latest shiny object to tussle over. Meh.
Xero
“Aside from graham, the effort has received virtually no support from other Republicans”
Except for McConnell, Sessions, Grassley, McCain, Kyl and a host of lesser-knowns.
ed
This year, 2010, They cast Thurgood Marshall as a Radical Activist Commie Judge. Thurgood Marshall! This should be a Big Fucking Deal. Also.
jrg
@Pancake:
Real Americans, or illegal Muslim Kenyan “Americans”?
Tom Hilton
It isn’t just birthright citizenship now; after yesterday’s ruling, Due Process and Equal Protection are in the crosshairs. In fact, I reckon there are wingnuts right now saying let’s just throw the whole thing out.
General Stuck
@joe from Lowell: While the fourteenth amendment was largely targeted toward post slavery blacks, it was debated for a long time and was also clearly to apply to other immigrants as well, like the Chinese and others. So they lie when claiming it is being misused to apply to Hispanics and others. Though it is wingnut approved when anti Castro Cuban republicans set foot on Murrican soil.
numbskull
@Pancake:
Really? So Mitch McConnell is no longer Republican?
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/mcconnell-renews-call-for-hearings-into-birth-tourism-and-birthright-citizenship.php?ref=fpblg
Better tell someone at the GOP that they need a new Republican Senate Minority leader.
Of course, by your criteria, McCain, Kyl, and Sessions are out of the GOP, too:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100803/ap_on_go_co/us_republicans_birthright_citizenship
Who knew?
John Bird
Before everyone’s guts shrivel at the idea of calling things like they are, I’d just like to reiterate:
This is a racist idea. Anyone who endorses this idea is a racist. While we’re at it, anyone who endorses a right to discriminate by race in public accomodations is also a racist. This means that many Republican senators – Graham, Kyl, McConnell, anyone who endorsed this – as well as Ron and Rand Paul, are racists.
The only reason not to call them racists is genteel weakness – the kind that needs to go sooner rather than later.
Can we please not be wishy-washy Serious Person weiners and let it slide because “it’s counterproductive to call racist Republicans racists”? This time? Before they start (seriously) calling for poll taxes and literacy tests?
New Yorker
Again, every time I think they can’t get any more insane, they go another round. I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’d rank the 14th amendment among the 5 most important ones in the constitution (behind the 1st and 5th, perhaps).
And why? Is this some sort of cultural kamikaze attack? The GOP has to know that their white, evangelical, rural base is doomed as an effective political force, so do they intend to take the entire country down with that base in order to gain something out of its death?
Erik
And the deafening near-silence of the pushback by Republican leaders against Graham’s proposal.
Chad N Freude
@Pancake:
The focus of Graham’s concern is trying to maintain his cred with the Neanderthal wing of his party. According to what you say here, Graham is OK if the illegal immigrant becomes pregnant after entering the country illegally for the sole purpose etc. And he’s OK if the pregnant illegal has another purpose in addition to having a citizen baby. And since his objection is so narrowly focused on illegal immigrants who, as chance would have it, are not 100% Caucasian, it’s hardly a racist attitude. At what college do you teach Critical Thinking?
burnspbesq
Off topic, and arguably worthy of its own post (hint, hint, Mr. Kain), but if you want to get really angry, read this lovely little piece from Scott Horton.
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007469
kay
@Pancake:
It’s ridiculous on its face, so it’s perfectly reasonable to examine his motives. Conservatives have been telling us for the last 4 years that they can’t document or find people entering this country illegally, and that the boarders aren’t secure. Lindsey Graham wants to modify the 14th amendment to address this specific issue?
Pregnant, foreign national, illegally enters, for the sole purpose of citizenship for the baby? Amending the US Constitution to address that specific set of facts is what conservatives have been working on for 2 months?
This is like election fraud. It’s a solution in search of a problem. When I see a solution in search of a problem, I wonder why they’re pursuing it.
I think Lindsey Graham is pursuing it because he has to placate the most rabid segment of the Republican base. I don’t think he means a word of it, and I hope like hell it bites him in the ass, when Americans realize we’re all birthright citizens.
LittlePig
@numbskull: I thought Mitch walked that one back on Tuesday. A new poll must have come in.
Anything to get out the base, now even to the point of attacking the Constitution. These “Real Americans” aren’t.
danimal
Guys, stop playing stupid. Of course EJ knows the answers to his rhetorical questions. He’s playing good cop by giving benefit of the doubt, not questioning the GOP’s intentions, etc. That’s ok, it’s a good thing for pundits (and presidents) to be a bit above the fray. He’s playing good cop; what the Dems sorely need is bad cops. That’s the missing piece in the equation.
Rather than expect Dionne (or Obama) to be nasty and critical (roles they aren’t espeshally suited-FYWP), we need a bad cop to come in and kick some butts as the good cop gives them a chance to step away from the crazy.
General Stuck
@Tom Hilton:
The south has only tentatively gone along with following the constitution and staying in the union so long as they could have outsized power to largely run things and get their way.
First it was with dems until they became race traitors and passed civil rights legislation, so they bolted the dems and fell squarely into the welcoming arms of the new “conservative movement” and shit was hunky dory until they screwed the country that threw them out of power in 06, and worse, elected a black man for POTUS in 08.
I think they are tired of hiding or moderating their racist white superiority beliefs and are now letting that freak flag fly while trying to scare the rest of the nation into their innate paranoia and hatred. It may work some this cycle, but I doubt the country as a whole wants to return to Jim Crow and George Wallace.
wilfred
Repealing the 14th amendment would also strip corporations of their ‘personhood’, and with it their rights to influence politics through massive donations and other forms of financial pressure.
So go ahead.
The republicans are bluffing. There is no way they want a repeal.
Chyron HR
@Pancake:
One wonders.
Chad N Freude
The non-racist advocates for reform have the backing of the late President Andrew Johnson. The last two paragraph’s of the Dionne column:
Pancake
@John Bird:
Being falsely charged as a “racist” by a slug like you is something of a badge of honor these days.
scav
wait wait wait wait, brain hurt. one might be here with a religiously recognized sacred partner in procreation, fulfill that procreative mission and thus instantly become persona non-grata because of the lumbering anchor baby thus given by G-D.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Pancake:
The reason the charge of racism has no meaning is because bigots like you, Limbaugh, and everyone at FOX News (except Shepard Smith) are shameless dirtbags. Folks like Pancake revel in their bigotry and no amount of shameing will ever change that.
Martin
I think people are misunderstanding what’s going on here. This is just the GOP shoring up their base. When 40% or so of self-identified Republicans don’t believe that Obama is a natural born citizen, you need to address the issue. Rather than come right at it, they’re using immigration as cover to talk about the 14th amendment. Sure, there’s a nativist base to cover as well, but the GOP has made its pact with the loonies and if they want to keep the party in one piece, they need to do their part. This is how you make birtherism mainstream.
They’re slow-walking it enough that uninformed voters won’t notice, and the informed ones already drew up sides, so this development won’t have much impact there.
Ultimately, it’s going to come down to the conduits to the uninformed voters to point out what the GOP is doing. So long as they don’t connect the dots, it’ll work just fine.
Pancake
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Another deranged meathead heard from; I guess if it weren’t for welfare you and your dependents would starve to death. Better get on over to the welfare office before they run out of money, douchebag.
Chad N Freude
@kay: The anti-14thers will never realize or acknowledge that “we’re all birthright citizens.”
Why do we even bother responding to Pancake? I have yet to see him/her put forth a cogent argument on any topic.
Chad N Freude
Speaking of cogent arguments from Pancake: @Pancake
scav
I’m just a bear of small brain, I’m just trying to discover if infallible birth control is mandatory for green card holders and all those without the requisite impeccable ‘mercan genetic purity papers and what documentation I should bring to the local Walgreens.
LittlePig
“This provision comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called Gipsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood,” Johnson declared. “Is it sound policy to make our entire colored population and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States?”
Which leads in turn to drug criminalization in the early 20th century: opium was “a Chinese drug”, cocaine was a drug of the colored folk, and those Hispanics brought in that wacky tabaccy.
Sad, and still wrong today. But thinking about those bits of state hatred also makes me note that today we have a black President. That ol’ arc of justice does bend around, but it takes a very, very long time, especially with white males pulling it back like hell.
geg6
These fucking trogolodytes are calling the 14th the “Anchor Baby Amendment.” Fuckin’ a, that’s what they’re calling it. As is their usual MO, they are trying to change history and language for political gain among the brain dead and hateful.
Which is, basically, the GOP and Teatard base.
I hate these fuckers with a hate hotter than a thousand suns.
geg6
@Chad N Freude:
This. I wonder about this, too.
demo woman
Has anyone asked Michelle Malkin what she thinks? Her response would probably similar to Jindal’s. It doesn’t count because it doesn’t count.
Svensker
@Chyron HR:
Heh.
Also Palestinians = Untermensch Mudpersons. Which is NOT racist because it’s TRUE. So there. Also TOO, Rachel Corrie died thin, ha ha ha!
David in NY
@gnomedad:
But if Alan Keyes is making sense, does that invalidate the whole “crazification factor” at 27%?????
Asshole
I took it as a rhetorical question. If he were too dumb to know the answer to it, he’d probably be too dumb to write a column decrying it.
Corner Stone
Ok. It was fucking atrocious.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Pancake:
Yeah, because the first thing that would pop into a non-bigoted person’s mind his “throw out an insult about welfare!”
You give yourself away. Don’t blame me, I’m not the one who places the bigoted thoughts in your mind. You do.
Non-bigoted people don’t think up ways to deny citizenship to people who they think are “different” or “other”. Just doesn’t happen.
But shit like this is always popping into your head, right?
By the way, asshole, I’m single with no dependents. maybe you can come up with a better, more racist insult to throw back at me to prove you’re not a bigot.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck:
no, its just ingrained so deep they can’t switch it off. the conservatives have been memetically culled to be racists for 50 years. Every word Breitbart says alienates more youth and minorities, and he can’t stop.
this cycle is their last chance. the demographic timer is going to deliver an epic asswhupping by 2020, when older white conservative christian goes to 20% of the electorate.
permanent defeat is staring right into their eyes, and they still can’t switch it off…its like their blood and breath.
wilfred
@Svensker:
Speaking of untermenschen:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/24/887210/-HR-1553-introduced-:-Green-light-for-Israeli-strike-on-Iran
Pangloss
Rabbis are the REAL anti-semites.
ellaesther
It just slays me — infuriates me, actually — that the ethics troubles of a handful of legislators is a bigger scandal than this.
These dishonest people — who I believe are no more or less dishonest than the rest of the population, they just have better access to stuff — will come and go. As will the various Vitters and Craigs and so on.
But the Constitution? The Constitution is this country! How can you say you’re trying to save America from the Constitution? I – just – I’m speechless with rage, frankly.
Svensker
Kinda of OT, but relating to racism and bigotry…
I’m on facebook to stay in touch with far-flung rellies and friends. A few of those rellies are Teatards and normally I don’t respond to their silly posts. But when they say really racist shit I try to make an opposing comment in a calm way, just to let them know that there are other viewpoints. However, with this mosque thing and the 14th amendment thing, these folks are really going nuts and saying some just horrible shit that is a) upsetting and b) a pack of lies. How do you guys handle this? Any advice?
David in NY
@Pancake:
Wonder if Pancake’s talked to Majority Leader Trent Lott lately?
What, Lott resigned as Majority Leader? Whatever for?
ellaesther
@Pangloss: Obvs.
Svensker
@wilfred:
I know. Just horrifying, isn’t it? I wrote to my evil Christian zionist congressman about it last week, but I’m assuming he’s a co-sponsor.
Do you think they can pull it off? A few months ago, I thought not, but now I’m not so sure.
kay
@Chad N Freude:
If you scratch a conservative’s support for immigration reform, you don’t find humanitarian concerns, you find free trade. Labor should move freely cross-border, just like goods and capital. John’s new conservative poster is honest enough to make that argument, and did, but conservative politicians won’t, so they couch it in lofty terms of “what is an American?”
Lindsey Graham is that kind of free trade conservative, and the former President Bush was too.
I just wish they’d admit it. They can’t, because it’s political suicide, so they scream and yell and distract the base with all this nonsense. That dishonesty comes at a cost to the rest of the country, because it’s so incredibly mean-spirited and divisive, but it’s a cost they’re willing to have the rest of us pay.
New Yorker
@David in NY:
I think it’s more the broken clock effect. Glenn Beck has made sense now and then too (like when he defended the constitutional rights of the idiot who tried to blow up Times Square with a barbecue grill propane tank).
geg6
@Svensker:
Seriously? I would un-friend them and tell them exactly why I’m doing it, in no uncertain terms.
But then, I have no trouble burning bridges with assholes like that even if I grew up with, married into, or was born into my relationship with them. There’s a very good reason I will never again speak to my two brothers and I don’t regret it for a minute and never will.
But that’s just me.
Scott
@Svensker: I’ve defriended more than one racist douchebag on Facebook, and I’ve told ’em why, and then posted a longer post about it so everyone on my list would know the truth. I don’t think I’ve got any responsibility to remain friends with racist motherfuckers…
@David in NY: Hey, didn’t Trent Lott have to resign because he expressed support for racism?
debbie
Svensker, I try not to get upset, pretend they’re not purposely trying to piss me off, and correct their misperception. I always include a link to the most reliable source I can find that will bolster my point.
Then I go into the next room and scream into my pillow.
kd bart
I’m currently reading “Last Call” by Daniel Okrent about the rise and fall of Prohibition. Substitute “Hispanic” for “Eastern and Southern European” and the attacks by American nativist and xenophobes against immigrants haven’t really changed much since the early 1920s. The only difference being that a great many of those leading the attacks today are probably the sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of those who were attacked 85-90 years ago.
scav
@Svensker: At some point, the mere genetic overlap of chomosomes in common is meaningless. I’d rather have someone at my back that thought like me than simply shared an ancestor.
jacy
@Svensker:
First of all, realize whose ideas can possibly be confronted with facts and whose ideas can’t. There are some people that there’s no reasoning with. If they absolutely can’t be reasoned with and will not discuss anything in good faith, then just let it go. I don’t go to my in-laws’ house any more, because I don’t have the time or energy to listen to thier ignorant bullshit. I tried for years, and I’ve just quit because it’s not worth it. Does it hurt their feelings? Maybe. Do I care? Not in the least. Life is too short. Just cut them out and let them know why and let that be the end of it.
For those who are simply misinformed and open in some way to learning, I’ve found non-confrontational and factual is best. If there’s a specific point where they’re misinformed, arm yourself with “neutral” facts, i.e. not from a blog they might view as overly partisan but actual wording of a bill or reporting from source they are OK with, and show where they’re misinformed. Sometimes it’s a slow process, but if you’re patient and don’t let yourself get frustrated, it can work. I haven’t changed a lot of minds, but I’ve changed a few.
ruemara
@Svensker:
I kindly, gently, without malice in my heart, provide links, factoids and analysis that ever so lovingly kicks their asses. Usually, I can cut a thread short in about 2 posts. Then it gets deleted. Rinse, lather, repeat until they shut their yaps or defriend.
debbie
@ geg6:
I’ve got three very conservative brothers (one’s quickly turning into a birther/bagger ever since he moved from MA to GA), but I don’t think I could shut them off. For one thing, I’d miss my nieces/nephews/sisters-in-law too much.
We’re about to the point where we don’t discuss politics anymore, but there’s plenty else that binds us together. Life’s too short.
David in NY
@Svensker:
I tell them to butt out of New York City’s business, or we’ll send some Brooklyn gangs to bust their heads.
Seriously, I do say the first (not second) clause of that last sentence. I also point out that they are insulting moderate Muslims, who will be of enormous help to us in defeating radical Muslim elements, and it is inimical to national security to alienate such Muslim. (I am in a position to say that those people are neighbors of mine, and they are very nice.) I cite to the Time mag article about this particular, moderate group. I quote Bloomberg’s speech, which has many wonderful parts. I say it against conservative principles to allow big government to choose when churches can get built, or what people can use their own land for.
And I attack the right-wing memes that this is an “insult” and ask how that works.
They still froth at the mouth, and start to call me names, but that’s how it goes.
Rick Taylor
__
If they did, they’d no longer be a serious person. I think Krugman used to be a serious person once. . .
demo woman
@Svensker: Expect MSM to go along with this and scream about Iran and nukes.
The sanctions appear to be working so they have to create an alternate story.
The present administration is doing more for immigration than previous administrations but by listening to MSM you would think the opposite true.
burnspbesq
@Svensker:
You don’t get to choose your family, but you do get to choose how you interact with them. Unfriend them, and tell them why you’re doing it.
Nick
@Pancake:
At a time of 9.5% unemployment, the fact that Graham is focusing his concern on something only a few thousand people tops do every year is pretty telling.
bemused
No, the R party doesn’t care. A portion of the 27 percenters may have been willingly snookered that R’s are on their side and Dems are satan’s accomplices but I think that most 27 percenters are just plain thrilled they can openly let their hate freaks flag fly.
scav
@debbie: The existence of other people and those relationships certainly complicates matters. But if they don’t know what you believe do they really know you at all or is it all a pretty pretty facade? Depends. There’s no simple answer. But life is also too short for lying about who you are in order to preserve the dictates of a hallmark afternoon special.
arguingwithsignposts
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
But what about your countertops?
mcd410x
@ruemara: This. There’s so little diversity in our species we turn molehills into mountains in order to create some.
mcd410x
If CNN existed in 1865, it would have show after show discussing how plantation owners were the real victims of slavery.
Svensker
@debbie:
Yup, that’s where I am. I love my brother dearly — the fact that somehow he’s changed into an amazing asshole in the last 8 years doesn’t erase the fact that he carried me home after I fell off my bike and broke my arm when I was 9, or that he cleaned the house and lied to our parents after my senior year high school party went very wrong. My cousins, not so much, but if I cut them off, then that puts all kinda other relationships in a tough spot.
Prolly just keep trying to stay calm and counter the stuff that I feel can’t just be allowed to pass, but otherwise, ignore.
Xecky Gilchrist
@General Stuck: The Tea Party didn’t do so well last night and polls have been dipping for them across the board amidst one overt ugly racist incident after another.
Interesting. From here, I’m thinking that the Republicans’ best strategy is probably a drive to become stupider and angrier.
Corner Stone
@wilfred: Am I incorrect in believing the minority party can not bring a resolution or bill up for a vote in the House?
I thought only the majority party set the agenda.
NonyNony
@Chad N Freude:
Pancake is not required to put forth a cogent argument on any topic because he/she is a troll whose only purpose it to pick fights in the comment threads.
As to why people respond to Pancake – because they like to argue on the Internet with trolls? Because they haven’t figured out that he/she is a troll out to get their goat? Why does anyone anywhere ever bother responding to trolls? Something psychological, I suppose.
Mnemosyne
@Pancake:
Next up, Graham amends the US Constitution to prevent people from smuggling in dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you.
Hey, it’s just as realistic as Graham’s vision of millions of women sneaking across the border, checking into US hospitals, giving birth, and then sneaking back across the border solely for the purpose of getting that sweet sweet US birth certificate.
debbie
@scav:
Oh, they definitely know my politics and what I believe, just like I know theirs. They do this either to try and push my buttons, or to vent their own unhappiness that for the first time since 1980, things are not going their way.
I’m more tenacious than they are, and I’ll throw the truth at them until they’re buried in it.
I used to belong to a Facebook group that I thought might help me workwise, but as soon as they started talking about white turbans making for great target practice, I unfriended them — right after I told them off.
arguingwithsignposts
@Svensker:
A couple of years ago, my step-mom was passing around viral e-mails about Obama to all of the contacts in her address book. This was right before the ’08 election. I usually just deleted them, but one caught my eye, and I hit “Reply All” and politely explained the facts with links and all.
Within a day, she sent out an apology to all the contacts regarding her previous e-mail and promised not to discuss politics in future e-mails.
Of course, she still sends around a few e-mails that would be easily debunked by going to Snopes, but …
Facebook? If only there were a way to filter out those posts by keyword.
Corner Stone
@Svensker: No amount of facts, linkage or calmly reasoned debate will ever change the situation with your friends/family.
I largely skip it in RL with people I want to stay in contact with.
scav
@debbie: Can’t really ask for more than that. You’re lucky.
Mike in NC
This is utter bullshit. Can somebody cite even a single case?
Besides, the only amendment these people care about is the 2nd.
Svensker
@Corner Stone:
Agree with that 100%. I just think that you need to pipe up when something too horrible is said, if only to register a protest.
But occasionally the facts do get through. I stopped being a Repub in 2001 and our own Cole woke up a few years later. It can happen.
ErikaF
The GOP (and right wing) doesn’t want gov’t to be able to control them. So they want to repeal the 14th Amendment would prevents gov’t from revoking citizenship from them without their consent. And they want to repeal the 14th amendment that ensures that they are treated equally and prevents gov’t from discriminating against them. And they want to repeal the 14th amendment that ensures that gov’t must use due process (aka, law) in gov’t dealings with them.
So how does that work with the limited gov’t thing again?
numbskull
@LittlePig: Nah, he came right back with it yesterday. It’s hard to keep track of the pandering, ain’t it?
John S.
There’s nothing that says you have to sever ties with them. I have some estranged siblings, and I still communicate with their kids pretty regularly through Facebook and over the telephone. Now sure, mom and dad could cut them off from that, too, but then my nieces and nephews would see why I don’t speak to their parents. And their parents won’t let that happen.
Likewise, I will NEVER speak ill of their parents to them. Ever. Hell, I even will take the side of the parents on occasions where it is warranted. But there’s absolutely no reason to cultivate any sort of animosity. It will get back to their parents in a second, and that’s all the excuse needed to slam the door in your face.
I first became an uncle at 15, and I didn’t become a father until 29. It was nice having the opportunity to learn from my siblings and my own mistakes with their kids before having my own children.
scav
It can take time. Didn’t speak to my sister for a solid decade but we’ve now got a solid understanding of where we both are and where we respectively get cut off at the knees. It works.
Corner Stone
@Svensker:
Obviously I agree it can happen. But IMO it doesn’t happen by someone else showing consistent logic and facts. I think it’s the unique person who can lift their head up, take a look around and say WTF? Or be slapped in the face by something so egregious that the dissonance is too much to bear any longer.
I guess some people just need to be given free reign to figure out their path.
bemused
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s not just the totally fact free politcal viral emails that go around that drive me crazy. I’m constantly amazed at the smart people I know who will send other email regarding cell phones, “local” police alerts, health scares, you name it, that have been circulating for years. It’s pretty easy to spot these emails as stuff as obviously questionable that should be verified but they never seem to hesitate to send them on even after I have directed them to snopes or elsewhere on previous crap they have sent to me. Why are they so trusting about email rumors when they are suspicious of verbal rumors they hear from co-workers or friends? I just don’t get it.
Corner Stone
@Svensker: BTW, how were you a Quaker and Repub at the same time?
FFrank
Facebook is its own lil bear.
I’ll hold back and not put in my comments unless people are commenting on my page. Or if I see a genuine piece of false propaganda that is easily attack (gotta choose battles wisely). Then I make sure I’m armed for bear with sites snopes, NY times, Usa today, factcheck.org and anywhere that seems like a neutral page that doesn’t have political coverage.
I use tools of facts, then humor and sarcasm, wit, and lastly shame. I will call a racist a racist but I have to back it up with their own facts.
I refuse to all these lies, restrictions of freedom and false Flags spread. I’ve seen the damage that they have caused including killing people (Iraq). I’m not on as many mailing lists as I Used to be. But will everyonce in while do a reply all. Then all bets are off and I use as much shame and facts as possible (unless I do not want to lose a friendship although I don’t have many conservative friends that i consider worth keeping their friendship after seeing their ugly side).
suzanne
@Svensker: I have decided to let my liberal freak flag fly, and anyone who doesn’t like it can hide or unfriend my ass. I have also unfriended a couple of “friends” who I have since learned dislike everyone who a) votes Democratic, b) has had an abortion, and c) supports TEH GHEYZ. They merely view me as a slightly more charming and humorous evil. To maintain semi-good relations, I make sure to comment on all the other stupid shit they post in a positive way…. “Congrats on the new job! Happy birthday!” Blah blah blah.
But, really, I’ve decided that life is too short to hang out with people I don’t both like and respect. Even if they’re family.
numbskull
@bemused: I don’t get it either. But even beyond this, I don’t understand how people who I know are smart (in other ways) will take personal offense when I respond to their emails with anything other than mindless nodding. I’m finding it extends well beyond political topics these days.
It’s not like I’m calling them numbskulls. Usually I couch responses with verbiage about how, yes, this seems like it could be true, but it turns out…blah blah blah.
Their getting upset with factual responses leaves me thinking “Dayum. If you identify so closely with every bit of tripe you send out, maybe you ought research it a bit before sending it out!”
It’s truly weird.
Cacti
The greatest revenge the Confederates ever got on Lincoln was taking over his political party.
Svensker
@Corner Stone:
I was an atheist Republican who became a Quaker liberal. Heh. Eat that, Ann Coulter.
To rub salt into Ann’s wounds, I became religious in the 90s and it was partly my new found belief in Divinity and the Quaker belief that there is “that of God in every person” that sparked my loathing of George Bush’s wars and ideology and lead to my becoming a liberal. So, double heh, Ann.
FlipYrWhig
@bemused:
This is the most baffling thing to me too. Why believe this stuff in the first place?
My wife’s theory is that interacting via the computer confers a kind of intellectual cachet, consciously or unconsciously: in other words, reading something _on the computer_ makes it seem more likely to be true.
SiubhanDuinne
@Svensker #80:
Thank FSM you don’t indulge in superfluous commas.
Nick
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s reinforcing an already held belief.
CalD
A: It wasn’t their party. You’re thinking of the party of Lincoln.
The party of Lincoln (aka, progressive Republicans) split from the Republican party in 1912 I believe it was, and formed the American Progressive party with Teddy Roosevelt as their presidential candidate. After that they began migrating into the Democratic party whereupon southern segregationists, not liking their company, split from the Democrats and formed the States Rights (Dixiecrat) party led by J. Strom Thurmond, then joined up with the Republicans.
Or to put it in a little more compact form: Today’s Republican Party; the Party of Lincoln: Two different things.
twiffer
@FlipYrWhig: interesting theory your wife has:
personally, i’ve found the oppostite if more often true, but then i’m not the sort of person to forward email chains.
Nick
@suzanne:
Me too, and I usually get some angry vulgar reaction or told the shutup because I’m work in the media and not allowed to have opinions.
This morning, my status was;
But But But Gays are unnatural it says so in Leviticus, right?
And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.- Leviticus 19: 33-34. You wanna rethink that immigration stance now?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’m still waiting for the xenophobic geniuses to tell me what they’re going to do about Mexico when their dream immigration policy is adopted and we deport 10 million people into it. It already is not the stablest civil society on Earth and I’m thinking it might take a decided turn for the worse after the mass deportation.
BC
@Pancake: So the GOP wants to dismantle the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment because they have nightmares about pregnant women en masse crossing the border to give birth? There is no rational study that this is happening – such as, hospitals in border states having influxes of pregnant women who are suspected of being here illegally or, say, massive amounts of birth certificates issued for babies being born at home by women suspected of being here illegally. There is no reason to fashion public policy on the basis of what scary imagery the GOP can think up next.
Svensker
@SiubhanDuinne:
:)
bemused
@numbskull:
@FlipYrWhig:
If there isn’t a study on this, there should be. It’s baffling.
FlipYrWhig
@twiffer:
Yeah, seriously, it’s basically a punchline that “I read it on the Internet.” But there’s definitely a stratum of people who are much more gullible online than in any other aspect of their lives: they’d never believe it if someone sidled up to them at the gas station and started talking about how the president was going to put people into concentration camps, but _text_ from a stranger is somehow convincing. I think it’s the thrill of secret knowledge — Glenn Beck also capitalizes on that, and he plays it up with all the trappings of scholarship, like the blackboards and pointers. But I like the idea that the computer is more trustworthy as a deliverer of secret facts, because — especially for people of a certain age and education level — it makes you feel smart.
Corner Stone
@suzanne: Oh come on!
This was added specifically for you:
And I get nothing for it!?
Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
redoubt
@kay: When you said this I couldn’t help thinking of NAFTA, and how it was pushed through by Bush Senior although Clinton signed it. Fast forward eighteen years and Republicans are pretending they never intended their precious (shortsighted profit-driven) baby to grow up into this.
twiffer
@FlipYrWhig: age is certainly a factor, as there was a time where you had to be smart just to use the damn things. now the difficulty is stuff is so dumbed down you can’t manipute anything anymore.
i can tell you though, the shit i’m going through to try and get my GPS maps updated is not making me feel smart. quite the opposite. in fact, we’ve progressed to my laptop deciding EVERY FILE i download is corrupt. we’re on to reinstalling the damn network adapters.
Svensker
@Corner Stone:
I shutter to think it, but, wallah! King Caddy Corner Stone Has Free Reign!
suzanne
@Corner Stone: I’m a positive-reinforcement kinda girl. :)
suzanne
@Svensker: And waits with baited breath, even though he could care less.
mslarry
@ErikaF:
not to mention, if memory serves wasn’t the 14th amendment in response to the Dred Scott case? So if they repeal the amendment does that mean blacks are NO LONGER CITIZENS too…. just askin’
Corner Stone
@suzanne: Actually I could care less than I do. You’ve broken my heart. I’m just going to lie prostate on the floor until I recover.
catclub
@John S.:
“It was nice having the opportunity to learn from my siblings and my own mistakes with their kids before having my own children.”
….So I could make a different, unique set of mistakes with mine.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: And this is only funny because I used to train with a Pekiti Tirsia fighter who all the time said prostrate when he meant prostate.
And yes, there are key strikes planned for the prostate area of the body in P-K.
Frank
@Svensker:
If it was just me I would just ignore these people. I have learned from experience. At a party I met a nice guy who owned his own business. He seemed pretty smart. However, he turned out to be a real live tea bagger, which I didn’t know when we first got talking. He accused Obama of being a socialist. He refused to tell me what the word socialism meant. When I explained what the word meant, I asked him for examples of how Obama was a socialist any differently than Bush/Reagan were socialists? He couldn’t.
Furthermore, he knew for a fact that there were death panels in the health care bill even though he refused to tell me where in the bill. He thought it was armageddon that the government should now come between him and his doctor. He refused to say why it was OK for some insurance bureaucrat to come between me and my doctor.
Finally, he thought Obama’s birth certificate was a legitimate issue.
I eventually tried to change the subject away from politics, but he refused to let it go. It was not very pleasant. Since then, I just avoid these people. They are as important as dirty dishrags.
suzanne
@Corner Stone:
That sounds painful. It’s not supposed to be detachable, is it?
He was selling it for twenty-three but I talked him down to seventeen….
HyperIon
@wilfred wrote:
I need to hear more about this.
Thanks for mentioning it.
How come you are the first?
It seems a rather cogent point.
Uloborus
@BC:
Fashioning public policy on what scary imagery the GOP can think up next is one of the core principles of conservatism back as far as I can read in the history books. Usually hating someone irrationally is involved. Karl Rove made it an official tactic to manipulate it cynically instead of just going with their own private apocalyptic fantasies. And, well, you can see where that’s gotten us.
catclub
@mslarry:
If the 14th is repealed then the government is no longer prohibited from stripping a citizen of their citizenship.
You would think that people who fear Obama’s government concentration camps would be concerned about something like that.
Also if all of the 14th is repealed, Confederates who lost their slaves can demand reparations – which is probably the real motivation for the repeal effort!
catclub
@HyperIon:
He is first because he is pretty ‘creative’ in that interpretation.
I just read the text of the 14th, so am now an expert
You’re welcome.
HyperIon
@demo woman wrote:
is this snark?
i thought there was some evidence supporting the contention that SHE is an anchor baby.
HyperIon
@catclub wrote: He is first because he is pretty ‘creative’ in that interpretation.
Care to elaborate?
Because I have been googling
“which amendment makes corporations persons?”
and the consensus seems to be….the 14th!
you also wrote: I just read the text of the 14th, so am now an expert
um, reading and understanding are not exactly the same thing.
Seriously, I’m interested in your take on this.
Links, please.
catclub
@HyperIon:
1. “you also wrote: I just read the text of the 14th, so am now an expert”
That was a joke son, a joke.
2. Here is the text of the 14th Amendment. You tell me where there is any mention of corporations.
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
3. My hazy understanding of corporations will quote from Wikipedia on ‘Corportate personhood’:
“In the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized that corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
So I do not see the fact that the Supreme Court may have mentioned the 14th Amendment when THEY determined corporate personhood to be the same as the 14th amendment granting personhood to corporations.
I agree about reading and understanding being different.
Comrade Kevin
@Corner Stone:
Ask Richard Nixon.
wilfred
@catclub:
Once corporations were recognized as people they had the same rights as people as recognized by the 14th:
If the 14th amendment were repealed, and correct me if I’m wrong but this whole charade is dog-whistle states rightsism, then decisions on equal protection would revert to individual states.
It’s a kind of non-linear solution for curtailing power.
http://money.howstuffworks.com/corporation-person1.htm
HyperIon
@catclub: thanks for the substantive reply. and sorry about mistaking your joke for a serious remark. who can tell these days?
anyway i found this here
Through the 14th Amendment, Congress granted equal protection under the law to every person [source: Library of Congress]. That last word is important, since in the eyes of the law, a corporation is an artificial person.
So here’s my restatemant of wilfred’s comment that i hope you find more accurate:
Better?
HyperIon
wow, wilfred, we collided.
we must have been reading the same thing simultaneously.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Well, that’s kinda how it works: if the Constitution needs to be interpreted, the Supreme Court interprets it, and what they say goes, at least until they reverse themselves later. (Which is what happened when Brown v Board of Education reversed Plessy v Ferguson.)
Since the Supreme Court said that the 14th Amendment grants personhood to corporations, that’s what it does, because no other SC has reversed that. Like it or not, we’re stuck going by what the SC says the Constitution says.
alix
Notice, they’re not talking about the 17th amendment any more. It’s enough to give me whiplash.
“Oh, no! The 17th amendment, which we lived with the entire 20thC, turns out to be putting us in imminent danger! We’ll be destroyed if we don’t repeal it!”
“Oh, no! Forget about the 17th Amendment! It’s the FOURTEENTH amendment that will destroy us! Yes, we lived through 150 years with that, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to destroy us!”
“The Twelfth Amendment! What’s that about?????????? Okay, that one is totally destroying the country!”
“No, now it’s the 11th Amendment!”
And the theoretical party leaders fall for it every time. How about, “Don’t be stupid.” No, they’ll never say that! They say, “We should have hearings.”
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
please read the link from Hyperion:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/corporation-person1.htm
since it was a comment from a (possibly heavily biased
court reporter) that made the link to the 14th and personhood.
My interpretation is that the effect of rulings is that
the SC now says that corporations are persons.
What _kind_ of persons are corporations? Well they are persons
as defined by the 14th amendment. But the 14th did NOT say that corporations are persons. It said that persons
have certain citizenship rights. Here is the text again:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”
I would argue that since a corporation is neither born nor naturalized, it is NOT a citizen. (Note that corporations cannot vote. [Maybe they just haven’t tried.] Many citizens can.)
I distinguish this from saying what the rights of persons
are under the 14th amendment.
My point is that corporations were not granted personhood by the 14th amendment, they were granted it by the SC saying they were persons (if they even actually did do that).
Does anyone want to read Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific Railroad to see if the SC actually mentions the 14th amendment?
wilfred
The point is that if the 14th Amendment were repealed the rights that it grants to corporations as persons would no longer be relevant. It’s not that the 14th gives personhood.
Such rights would then become a states’ rights issues. For example:
That’s the equal protection clause being applied to Blackwater. But if there no equal protection clause, which would be the case if the 14th amendment were repealed, then what?
It would be a matter for local authorities – which is what the republicans say they want, but really don’t.
HyperIon
@catclub: Does anyone want to read Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific Railroad to see if the SC actually mentions the 14th amendment?
No, because IANAL.
Thanks for weighing in though.
Now I am completely confused.
Cereative Anarchy
On of the last great hypocracies of our age is that there is no space between the words “Immagration” and “Racism”. I ask you who are the racists, those who seek to change our laws to what they see as the betterment of our country or those who do not pause before making the assumptions that immigrants legal and otherwise are of a different ethnicity than Americans? We must acknowledge that the Ammendment is being exploited as a loophole to bypass immagration law because we know it to be a fact. Our Constitution must serve the interrest of our Country not the unethical when not illeagal aims of foriegn parties. Rather than pretend the 14th Ammendment is sacrosanct and invoilate while we know it is harming us, we should enter the conversation about how it would be best ammended to protect the interrests of our Country and those that wish to join it.
burnspbesq
@wilfred:
“That’s the equal protection clause being applied to Blackwater. But if there no equal protection clause, which would be the case if the 14th amendment were repealed, then what?”
You could get creative with the Due Process clause of the Fifth. Repeat after me: “the right to equal protection of the laws is a property interest.” See how easy that was?