I think we all know what Trump is getting at here:
Donald Trump is upping the ante against President Barack Obama’s legitimacy, raising questions on Monday night about how the president was admitted to two Ivy League schools.
Trump openly questioned how Obama, who he said had been a “terrible student,” got accepted into Columbia University for undergraduate studies and then Harvard Law School.
“I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump told the Associated Press in an interview, a claim he’s made in the past but one he doubled down on by suggesting he’s probing that area of the president’s life.
“How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records,” he said, without providing backup for his claim.
Trump added, “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard.”
“We don’t know a thing about this guy,” Trump said. “There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.”
Apparently Trump is mad that Obama didn’t do things the right way- inherit his good fortune from daddy.
WereBear
As we used to say in Brooklyn, “The noive!”
cleek
the more he speaks, the less i think he’s doing this for TV ratings. because, these aren’t the kinds of things you say if you want to attract a general TV audience.
cathyx
Who told him Obama was a terrible student? Where did he hear that?
Ghanima Atreides
Want in?
Who will be the first pundit to legitimize/mainstream birtherism?
Citizen X—Tucker Carlson
Paul and cat48—Thomas Sowell
Omnes— Chunky Bobo
Jenjen and Mastertroll Doug—Charles Lane
Hermione— Bobo
Opie Jean and Hungry Joe — George Will
Fuckhead—Maureen Dowd
danimal—Dr. Krauthammer
ThatLeftTurnInABQ—Howard Kurtz
Grumpy Code Monkey
Black. Blackity black black. Black black black black black. Black! Black black black. Black? Black!
Neeeegro.
dmsilev
But remember, Trump isn’t a racist because he “gets along well with the blacks”.
dms
Ghanima Atreides
@cleek: something like 74% of independents are nonbirthers. I do not see this as a winning strategy.
ant
the folks over at redstate arnt very fond of him.
they say he’s a liberal.
dmsilev
@cathyx:
“Some people” have said that Obama was a bad student. And now that the story is out there, it would be irresponsible not to speculate and we must report the controversy. Also, Democrats attacked George W. Bush’s academic record, so there.
(I think I’ve been possessed by the ghost of David Broder. Anyone know a good exorcist?)
dms
jonas
Obama a terrible student? WTF is Trump talking about? In his books, Obama talks about struggling to figure out what he really wanted to do with his life, but he was always a deeply impressive student with top grades. You don’t get into Columbia or Harvard Law with a shitty academic record, even with all the affirmative action in the world.
bemused
Aside from Trump being a massively offensive turd, he is as dumb as a rock.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
can i get an unmod for Ghani please? im officially requesting a name change.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts of Conservatism theme is played out since mistermix started copying me.
mai naem
Apparently none of this kind of stuff bothered the Trumpster Dumpster when Dubya was in the WH. Another loser who can’t handle that a black man from less fortunate roots has gone further ahead than him.
suzanne
The world is such a difficult place for rich white men.
RosiesDad
I wonder when we get to see Trump’s prep school and Fordham transcripts to demonstrate that he earned his way into Wharton.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@cathyx:
Well, he’s got good reason to assume Obama was a bad student. Because, you know….those people aren’t quite as smart as his people, you know.
@dmsilev:
Aren’t they at a point where they think Hickabee…ahem…Huckabee, is a progressive, simply because Beck said so to try and insult him?
@dmsilev:
Don’t forget, we have to leave it there. Also, too.
lacp
I guess he really did sign up Limbaugh to be his campaign manager.
amk
shrub was there first, trump, the chump.
(Although, come to think of it, these ivy leagues seem to be overrated, aren’t they ?)
Jay C
@cleek:
So what then do you think IS The Donald’s “strategy” in, apparently, making personal insults against Barack Obama the centerpiece of his “campaign”?
I mean, it’s easy to understand the attraction of that approach: the 27%ers will eat it up, of course (and we’ll probably start hearing a chorus of “where are the transcripts?” any day now from the fever-swamps of the blogosphere): but does he really think this will garner him anything but bad publicity? (Yeah, I know what they say: but how does focusing on personal crapola like this make him look any more like a “serious” Presidential candidate> Or does he just not care?)
cathyx
We all know George W was top in his class. Let’s see, how did he get in there?
cmorenc
I want to see the Donald’s academic transcripts. What’s his alma mater anyway?
pablo
Sigh, bring back the Alien and Sedition Act!
maya
I see where he’s going, but, the usual bid after 1 spade is 1 NO trump.
mk3872
Classic white rich guy view of blacks in the Ivy League.
I saw and heard it ALL THE TIME from Penn pukes when I lived in Philly – attending Temple, I couldn’t make it in the Ivy League.
mk3872
One day in the future, my grand kids will learn about the history of our nation’s first president to be of a race that was once formally enslaved in America and will learn about this embarrassing episode in our country.
WereBear
I know it might be hard to grasp; but is it possible The Donald is actually a stone-ignorant, clueless, racist?
And he comes by such “thoughts” naturally?
And he is, at heart, a Tea Partier? For similar reasons?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@cathyx:
Obviously, he deserved to be there. I mean, his last name was BUSH for god’s sake! Not like it was some blacky black blackity last black name like Obama! I mean, isn’t that proof right there of inadequacy, to have to try and stand out by daring to have a non-Christian, non-white name?
…but seriously, that seems to be another cause celebre amongst the wingnuts: trying to prove beyond doubt that Bush was somehow infinitely more intelligent and intellectually curious than Obama. Their proof….teleprompters.
kd bart
I think I’ve solved the Kennedy Assasination. It wasn’t The Mob. It wasn’t The Cubans. It wasn’t even right wing factions in this country. It was a group of Kenyan Muslim Marxists who brought Kennedy down. It’s obvious that Kennedy stumbled upon the 50 year long master plan to install a usurper in the White House sometime early in their scheme and he had to be taken out. Of course, Bobby stumbled onto their plans after Jack’s death and he also had to be taken out. Chappaquidick was set up as a warning to Teddy to not to go prying into their plans. Later on, he was brought in as a key cog in their master plan to bring the usurper to power in the early part of the 21st Century. Thus, Obama’s entry into Harvard. It is all so obvious.
Ghanima Atreides
@dmsilev:
well….dont forget that EDK and GG’s libertarian hearthrob GaJo said racism is over in America because we elected a black president and we are now “colorblind”. It is no longer possible to be a racist in the libertarian vision of America.
El Cid
We Real Americans are sick of all these affirmative action babies, with their welfare Cadillacs and their births out of wedlock, and their grinding and gyrating dancing and their sleek, athletic builds, and their ramming their massive packages down our throats, and we can’t take it anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: Wharton.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Ghanima Atreides: I’ve got Halperin
Nemesis
Welcome to 21st century racist murika.
The Trump card always beats the spade.
russell
I can see that we as a nation will be taking the high road in 2012.
Sounds like somebody’s daddy forgot to kick in to the endowment.
Cat Lady
It’s been really interesting to watch Obama make otherwise sane people lose all of their shit by doing everything in the manner this country is supposed to value. If I weren’t such a naive Pollyanna, I’d say that certain people’s skin color and not the content of their character seems to matter, a lot.
Sly
@Ghanima Atreides:
Hannity has been trying to mainstream birtherism for a month or so. I guarantee you he’ll be the first host to have Jerome Corsi on to pimp his book when it hits the shelves in a few weeks.
And if Hannity doesn’t count because he’s a feckless hack, then everyone on that list should also be disqualified.
mr. whipple
Trump is one slip of the tongue away from his Macaca moment.
WereBear
@Cat Lady: I think they are panicking over the fact that it does work :)
JPL
Are Michelle and Barack legally married? Enquiring minds what to know.
Dr. Wu
C’mon, Donnie. Call him a nigger. You know you want to!
mk3872
@mr. whipple: Weird. How is calling the President of the U.S. an illegal alien and “too dumb for Ivy League” not yet at the Macaca level? Seems worse to me.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
cancel out everything else except;
]
and print it. forget the press corps, why can’t we have better editors.
eemom
What fuckery is this?
Is Trump unaware that Obama’s entire life has been defined by Wealth and White Privilege?
Sheesh. Get with the program, Donny-boy.
FlipYrWhig
It’s that kind of shameful discrimination — the kind targeted at the sons of vulgar privilege — that clamors to be redressed.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@mk3872:
But it’s a national race, and one viral video will not create a backlash unlike in Virginia.
Besides the “Macaca Moment” involved a random onlooker being singled out and racialized. This involves a hated national figure and a Democrat for god’s sake. That just means they haven’t gone far enough for the national media’s taste.
New Yorker
Ah, the good ol’ days, when the Ivy League was a bastion for the semi-literate sons of wealth, and there were strict quotas keeping the negros and the Jews from infesting the place.
suzanne
@mr. whipple: I half-expect Trump to get so pissed off at Obama in the next couple of weeks that just decides to keep it simple and attempts to deck him. Sad thing is the 27 percenters would probably think highly of that.
Trump makes about as much sense as m_c. Intellectual equals.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sly: Hannity is a hack who is known far and wide as a hack. The others are considered to be “serious.” Perhaps it is distinction without a difference, but those were the rules when Comrade DougJ set up the game.
ploeg
@JPL: Their wedding pictures are obviously posed.
Josie
@Jay C: Trump is probably like the man in the video posted yesterday in that they surround themselves with people of like minds and make so much noise in their self-imposed bubble that they come to believe that the whole nation agrees with them. I think they were genuinely shocked when Obama won the election and truly believe that it was rigged. They think they will now have a do over and that things will work out differently this time if they just stay true to their beliefs–sort of sounds like the definition of insanity, doesn’t it?
PeakVT
@suzanne: You just don’t understand the horror of having to attend Princeton or Yale.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Jay C: Pretty sure the Donald’s strategy is to demonstrate to everyone, as loudly as possible, that he is a complete and utter moron.
jazzgurl
Trump the rump is a typical low-class chump who has made it big with money, that’s about all. Now let’s see; what else has he got to recommend him,oh yes, a loud mouth, a don’t care what I say attitude, racial overandundertones,and lots of bravado and shit stirring statements.
I just wish that Obama could put it out there and publicly tell him ‘Kiss my black ivy-league, charismatic arse’!
Chyron HR
Because the Constitution says that if the President was a poor student, then he’s not the legitimate President, right?
I’m sure I saw that on Schoolhouse Rock or something.
Shalimar
@cathyx: Shrub always seemed like more of a bottom to me. But I admit I don’t want to spend any time thinking about it.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Unfortunately, that’s just as likely to help him secure the nomination as it is to hurt him.
Blue Galangal
Translation: My investigators discovered that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii. Therefore, obfuscate! Create another fake controversy!
Maude
It’s typical Trump. He dislikes someone and tries to undermine the person.
At this point, he should be made to provide evidence of his claims.
I am tired of him.
cleek
@Jay C:
not sure. maybe he’s trying to become the new King Of The Crazies. there’s always money to be made selling fear to the gullible.
Joey Maloney
@maya: FTW
Krowe
Maya @ 8:56 wins the thread and owes me a new keyboard after my spit-take.
James Hare
Trump obviously doesn’t know much — Obama started at Occidental College and transferred to Columbia. Get the man’s history right, chump!
Amir_Khalid
All this just makes it more and more plausible that The Donald is pretending to run for President only to drum up publicity. Either that, or Trump is planning an insanity defense for some scam he’s got in the works. (I can speculate, right?)
Next, he’s probably going to say that affirmative action was what made bestsellers of Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope(ghostwritten, of course, by Bill Ayres).
rikryah
he graduated MAGNA CUM LAUDE from Harvard Law School. I’ll say it again…these mofos think he, and FLOTUS got their degrees in crayon.
The Dangerman
@cleek:
I’ll have to disagree here; his ratings for the last show where he makes his “announcement” should be epic.
Trump is all about keeping Trump’s name in the media and, since the Birtherism thing had pretty much run its course, now he’s pulled out the Affirmative Action card.
That, too, will run its course, which will lead to the next charge of “blackity black black black”.
Trump could win the nomination, sure, but he has NO chance in the General; surely, he knows that, so he isn’t running. It would ruin his brand. This isn’t that far different from Palin; both are playing the Rubes.
Admiral_Komack
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
The President’s a ni-GONG!
Jay C
@Josie:
Naaah, because I don’t think that Donald Trump – nor, for that matter, even the lowest of the redneck 27% – is either “stupid” or “insane”, in the usual sense of the words. It doesn’t make his cheapjack appeals to bigotry and/or resentment any better, though (the opposite, IMO).
ADD: to #19 : I’ve changed my mind: I think the next stage down the tubes in Obama Derangement Syndrome probably won’t come from the blogosphere: disgracefully, it most likely WILL be from something approaching the “mainstream” press…
Mandramas
@Ghanima Atreides: Interesting, sister. That means that the 23% of the independents are birthers? Crazification factor, anybody?
pk
Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann. Multiple wives, affairs, unmarried pregnant daughters, playgirl spreads, insanity. The trashiest of white trash. And yet the republicans have not explored raw sewage. Something may still crawl out and run for President.
Mandramas
@Chyron HR: I remember a similar argument used to send President Lisa Simpson to Monster’s island.
Admiral_Komack
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Put me down for Halperin, too.
Ash Can
@cleek:
@WereBear:
At this point I really can’t make up my mind. With all the different viewing choices available these days, there’s almost no such thing as a “general” audience these days. Maybe Trump did an analysis of his and found it was made up of teabagger idiots, and instead of changing the show to appeal to a broader/smarter audience, he decided to lock in his base.
Then again, “racist asshole” is looking plausible too. And I realize the two explanations aren’t mutually exclusive.
sidhra
@pk: Dick Cheney: Rested, Ready, and Animatronic.
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
They’ve been saying for a while (already in the 2008 election) that Huckabee wasn’t a true conservative, and justified it by saying he was “soft on crime” (because he pardoned a guy who then committed another crime, a murder if I recall) and because he’d done outreach to Hispanic churches.
I suspect they’re afraid Huckabee might be too inclined to follow his own lights instead of taking orders (and the “Wall Street vs Main Street” rhetoric might’ve hit a nerve).
Deep Thought
The strategy is to get at least some unofficial records from Obama’s education, which will show what an egghead elitist he is.
Seriously. GWB got cred for getting C’s at Yale.
aimai
@rikryah:
This thing is really starting to get to me. Because its turtles all the way down. These assholes despise higher education, policy wonks, self educated people, readers, learners, academics and universities. They’ve spent years making fun of them, attacking them, and attempting to defund them (unless they can buy a building and get their name on it). And since the Jews fought against quotas keeping them out the wasps have circled the wagons against all outsiders: jews, asians, and blacks arguing that they either don’t deserve the education they have fought for (affirmative action) or that they are cheating by studying all the time. It is incredibly difficult to get into a top school. They have their pick of the entire country. Even *if* Affirmative Action was worth the cost in pixels of typing it, which it isnt, it only gave outsiders a slight leg up on insiders like Trump who otherwise would monopolize all the seats at the top schools because they can pay, not because they have the grades.
But the nauseating quality of this charge–birtherism plus plus anyway whatever the guy is black–is simply going to go unrefuted by the mainstream press which prefers, a la Christiane Amanpour, to pretend that the birthers are like a rich uncle who comes to dinner and farts. God forbid that you should reprimand the old bastard. After all, he’s got the money.
aimai
Admiral_Komack
@maya:
You’re good (bows in respect).
Comrade Javamanphil
@The Dangerman:
As Greg Sargent has repeatedly pointed out, until he releases his financial data nobody should seriously consider he is running. That’s his tell. Can he afford to reveal to everyone what a complete fraud he probably is with his wildly variable estimates of personal net worth?
Jay
These days, when I hear of the latest garbage to come out of Trump’s mouth, I silently thank you Balloon Juicers for teaching me a wonderful acronym, because said acronym allows me to neatly sum up my feelings about him: DIAF.
aimai
@Chris:
Well, the “soft on crime” thing was that he spitefully released someone because one of that criminals victims was a relative of Bill Clinton. He wasn’t soft on crime at all, he was engaged in a very direct form of intimidation and attack on Clinton’s family.
The real hate on Huckabee, I believe, is that he actually attempted, briefly, to argue for an income tax to help the poor in his state. He even attempted to drag Jesus into it. The good people of his state with money rose up and threw him from the temple, just like Jesus would have, and the notion of caring for the children, sick, poor, and elderly was smitten from the record.
aimai
Admiral_Komack
I hope the IRS investigates this clown Trump so throughly, he won’t have a cardboard abode he can call his own.
aimai
@mr. whipple:
But is there such a thing as a macaca moment anymore? Isn’t Gracie Allen…I mean George, up and running again?
aimai
Chris Wolf
OK.
Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School= fail.
Gotcha.
Chris
@kd bart:
I believe that was in fact the original conspiracy theory (the Marxist part, at least). You don’t hear much about it these days, though.
OzoneR
@Ghanima Atreides:
A few more weeks of this, that’ll be down to 55%, you watch
Sly
@Omnes Omnibus:
Then I’ll need to see the precise wording of the rules, because even under a more narrowly tailored definition of seriousness, several on that list should still be disqualified.
mk3872
@New Yorker: But I’m sure this only makes Trump even more of “the people’s candidate” in the eyes DC insiders like Halperin and Klein.
Chris
@aimai:
I’d say the general theme is “they hate professionals.” By professionals I mean people who do their job without regard for ideological rightness. They just color it up with the name “anti-elitism.”
Which is why in foreign and national security policy, in information media, in science, and a ton of other things, you’ve seen the creation of all those parallel “expert” communities whose job is to present “evidence” and “studies” that back up whatever the conservative party line is. Such a system is what got us into Iraq.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sly:I am sure an obsessive like matoko_Grainger-Atreides can provide the link.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
OT: Ugh…. New Gallup poll shows that while 2/3s of folks are scared the Ryan plan will cut too much from Medicare and Social Security…they still end up preferring Republicans on the budget anyhow. Because apparently Dems are just evil fucking tax and spenders who are the cause of all our economic woes. Oh, and Obama is directly responsible for rising gas prices and thus apparently 2/3s of independents worried about it will decide it’s all his fucking fault and won’t vote for him.
Citizen_X
@jazzgurl:
Oh, no. He’s low class, that’s for sure, but he’s not lower class. Trump’s daddy gave him $20 mill to start out with when he finished school, and left him $400 million when he died.
Trump’s not trailer trash–a derogatory term for working-class whites that I won’t use–but he is definitely rich white trash.
Admiral_Komack
@suzanne:
Trump attempts to deck President Obama.
President Obama blocks the punch, gives him a left jab, and then drops Trump with an uppercut.
The Secret Service then unload their bullets into Trump.
THE END.
Culture of Truth
I heard Trump’s internet handle is Angry White Dude
Mark B
I’m still mad at Trump for killing the WFL. He’s been pretty toxic to almost any enterprise he’s been involved in.
Cacti
If Trump just goes ahead and calls him a nigger, he’ll have the GOP nomination sown up before summer.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
They don’t therefore he wasn’t a terrible student. Case solved. Trump is in love with his own voice.
J.D. Rhoades
@ant:
the folks over at redstate arnt very fond of him.
they say he’s a liberal.
Well, he did advocate a Canadian style single payer health system and a tax hike on the wealthy. But that’s okay, because the only thing that counts right now is he says what the rubes want to hear.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Mark B:
Don’t you mean the USFL?
The Dangerman
@Chris:
Kinda amazing, really; stuff comes out, drip by drip, but is ignored so that we can learn more about The Donald and his nonsensical charges. For example, the deathbed “confession” of E. Howard Hunt, who pointed the finger at a man who had killed previously (look up Wallace, Malcom).
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Hey, don’t be hating on the Donald. With hard luck and perseverence over the past few decades, he took 400M in net inheritance and turned it into 200M of net wealth leveraging 2B in realty.
Jose Padilla
This isn’t new. I remember in ’92 right wingers in Texas questioning how Clinton got into Georgetown and then got a Rhodes Scholarship. The implication was that his mother was banging somebody important.
Southern Beale
I think Trump has locked up the racist Tea Bagger vote. All 22% of ’em. Way to go, Donald! You’re a freaking GENIUS!
Chris
@aimai:
I did NOT know that – HOLY FUCK. But I can totally see him doing it.
@aimai:
Didn’t know that either, but there you go – following his own lights.
Huckabee and the entire religious right, Pat Robertson and James Dobson and the rest, really would be heroes if they’d taken a stand on principle on that issue, standing up for Christian values, refusing to bend them to political considerations, and denouncing the corrupt Boss Hogg types running the party for what they are. But the perks of being in a cog in the machine are just too good.
Dennis SGMM
We may be over thinking this. My hypothesis is that Trump saw how much money and recognition the Snowbilly gets just for running her mouth and decided that he wanted some of the action too. He can likely run in a couple of primaries without releasing his financial records and then he’ll be Republican Presidential Candidate Trump for life. An added benefit is that he may do well enough in capturing the 27% crowd that the other Republican candidates will have to slobber his knob and cut a deal – Cabinet post? – to get him to bow out.
Culture of Truth
How do we know Obama actually attended these schools? Where’s the evidence?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I heard that Trump has a vagina instead of a penis. How did he have children if he has a vagina instead of a penis? We don’t know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about Trump.
300baud
Back from vacation, I’m delighted to see that the Balloon Juice commentariat is in fantastic snarking form. A perfect antidote to my accidental exposure to the press corpse via hotel TV and airport-mandatory news. Thanks, all!
Todd Dugdale
It looks like Trump’s “investigators” are just lifting everything from Orly Taitz’s court briefs.
Culture of Truth
The argument was also made that the young Bill Clinton was recruited by the Soviet Union to take down America from within. This was stated by at least one sitting Congressman.
Chris
@Culture of Truth:
How do we know Obama’s actually President? Where’s the evidence?
Show us the ballots! Teach the controversy!
Villago Delenda Est
The Donald has to crank up the crazy, because he’s running out of time.
He’s got until 16 May to wrap this thing up.
Why 16 May?
That’s the day NBC has as a deadline for the decision to renew The Donald’s TV show.
eric
@Chris: they hate being told what to do by someone they find morally inferior. Morally inferior comes in different packages: black, jewish, gay, godless. They look at the sciences and the academy and see all of the foregoing.
Bowser's Clown Copter
@Mandramas: You mean Monster Peninsula?
Tone in DC
@El Cid:
El Cid – April 26, 2011 | 9:01 am · Link
We Real Americans are sick of all these affirmative action babies, with their welfare Cadillacs and their births out of wedlock, and their grinding and gyrating dancing and their sleek, athletic builds, and their ramming their massive packages down our throats, and we can’t take it anymore.
You owe me some damn iced tea (and a monitor), Ruy Diaz.
RalfW
This new “investigation” Donald has vomited up just tells me he is not serious about running. His terrified GOP friends have asked him to bankroll a major, multi-pronged media slur campaign.
He’s trying to be a single-handed Swift Boat to sink Obama and make it easy for a tax-cutting winger that will exempt all real estate earnings from taxes. Because that will create jobs, of course. Or it’s what’s fair for rich people. Or something.
Villago Delenda Est
The Donald has plenty of money. Just ask him sometimes…he’s got billions!
But you can never, ever have enough attention. The Donald lives for the attention. He’s getting even more of it with this nonsense. After all, we’re all taking about him. He’s in heaven!
Mark B
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Yes, of course, the USFL.
The Golux
Yes but he only graduated Magna Cum Laude, not Summa Cum Laude.
Slacker.
one two seven
So, Barack Obama was an allegedly bad student and that means he isn’t qualified to be president, but Scott Walker – college dropout = American hero.
Got it!
Omnes Omnibus
@Culture of Truth: I, for one, remember that it made the news when the Harvard Law Review elected its first black president.
RalfW
@Villago Delenda Est:
That gives us a few weeks to crank out some choice words of boycott to NBC’s advertisers on
the Biggest LooserThe Apprentice.Tone in DC
Admiral_Komack – April 26, 2011 | 9:48 am · Link
@suzanne:
I like it.
Bulworth
Somebody please tell me that Trump is leading all other potential GOP presidential candidates. The only other thing Democrats need besides a buffoonish opponent is for Republicans to pass legislation eliminating Medicare. Oh wait.
JPL
What will Trump say next?
Tone in DC
‘Scuse the excessive tag fail above.
I must be channeling the corporate/mainstream media today.
I think Trump’s campaign manager told him he needed to ratchet up teh crazee. And Trump was more than happy to do so. Joe Klein, Halperin and others saw this and saluted smartly, cuz it would be inappropriate AND irresponsible not to speculate.
joes527
So, I think that this is the deal.
The constitutional scholar Trump has cooked up a scheme to run for president w/o ever making a financial disclosure. There is a legal theory in someone’s mind (utter bullshit of course) why the constitution says that he really isn’t obligated to make a disclosure.
All of this “where are the documents?” crap is laying the groundwork for the continual change of topic that will be the only possible defence of his bullshit legal theory.
I give it a 74% chance of working.
jrg
Trump is a scumbag. 2 things come to mind, though.
1) This will always be a line of attack that’s used (and some will be sympathetic to), as long as race-based AA is in place. In this case, it’s clearly BS, but most of the hicks that would vote for trump wouldn’t know BS from banana pudding.
2) I always find it amusing when ‘wingers say that someone ‘is not intelligent enough for Harvard’, or claim that one of their own is smart because they went to Harvard… Then in the very next breath, claim that they are smarter than the ‘liberal elite’ because they are endowed with the ‘common sense’ that comes from not having a clue WTF is going on. Morons.
Marc McKenzie
Look…why doesn’t the Donald just call the President the N-word and get it over with?
I mean, isn’t that what many of Obama’s critics on the Right want to do?
Niques
@Citizen_X: The donald is proof that you can’t buy class.
Felonious Wench
@RalfW:
And then, the crazies will scream Obama obviously put pressure on NBC to cancel The Donald’s show.
The thought of his finances being subjected to a fine-toothed comb made me smile in wicked glee.
And my money’s on Bobo too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc McKenzie:
It’s been obvious for some time now that Rush Limbaugh, for example, is under tremendous strain to avoid blurting out the N word on the air.
It’s the one thing you simply cannot do as a public figure. It crosses a line that condemns you to the fringe where corporate sponsorship cannot go.
J.D. Rhoades
Look…why doesn’t the Donald just call the President the N-word and get it over with? I mean, isn’t that what many of Obama’s critics on the Right want to do?
No, they just want to hear the right code words. Then they know that the Donald is One of Them.
I’m having a running confrontation with a racist asshole commenting on one of my columns who remarked that Sure [Obama] was elected but just look at the demographics that put him in office. When I asked him to specify which “demographic” he was unhappy about, he’s persistently refused to answer the question, and sneered that I should “try goggle” [sic] if I wanted an answer.
They’ll never say “nigger” but they’ll wink and nudge their way around it.
RobNYNY1957
http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/law-expert-obama-will-preserve-constitution
On a more personal note, [Harvard Law School professor Laurence] Tribe called Obama the “best student I ever had” and the “most exciting research assistant.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/06/us/first-black-elected-to-head-harvard-s-law-review.html
The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School. The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University … .
J.D. Rhoades
@RobNYNY1957:
Clearly Tribe is part of the coverup. In the tank, I tell you, he’s in the tank!
Rommie
@RalfW: Never underestimate the egos of these people, so Teh Donald could convince himself he can win, and since he’s never wrong…
But I think you might be on to something, if he’s not serious about running. Maybe he really is just the designated mud-slinger and dog-whistler, meant to get the people and the media all riled up and ready to go after the near guy endangering America in the White House.
I’d really like to think Trump is pulling off the Screwy Rat role, but that’s too much to hope for when that much money and power is involved.
AliceBlue
@Ghanima Atreides:
I’m torn between Wolf Blitzer and Joke Line.
Kilkee
What an utter dick. This guy’s been saying for weeks now that “I’m a very smart guy. I went to all the best schools. Did very good [sic] there.” Actually, he couldn’t get into the prep school his siblings attended, so got shunted off to military school. Then undergrad at Fordham, which is a fine school, but, hell, it ain’t Harvard Law. And surely Daddy must have made some significant donation to Wharton to entice them to take this dirtbag. Clown.
Villago Delenda Est
@Todd Dugdale:
Well, the quality of Taitz’ research has been cited by numerous Federal judges in their decisions.
So it’s indeed wise of The Donald’s crack team of investigators to exploit that rich resource.
Dr. Squid
@Citizen_X: That would be worth over a billion after inflation. Anything made over that arose from the principle:
If you owe $100,000, it’s your problem. If you owe $300 million, it’s the bank’s problem.
EconWatcher
I just can’t get exercised about this stuff, because Trump is so obviously a joke. It’s like PeeWee Herman critiquing Plato.
I can’t bring myself to believe that the polling for Trump is real, either. The 27%ers are just having fun while he says all the nasty things they want said. When push comes to shove, I don’t think they’d really vote for him in a primary.
Cacti
@J.D. Rhoades:
I disagree. Demographics and time are not on the side of the Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan electoral model of the GOP.
The southern strategy is in its death spiral and it’s not going to go quietly. I expect the appeals to racism to get louder and uglier the closer we get to 2012.
NonyNony
@J.D. Rhoades:
Tell him you tried Google and you’re wondering if it’s the overwhelming number of people in the 18-44 year-old age brackets, the larger proportion of people with college degrees, or the large percentage of Catholics that he’s referring to. Or act outraged and respond with a “how dare you say that the votes of women are illegitimate votes – since you must be referring to the 56% of women voters who voted for Obama to put him into office”.
Lots of demographics voted for Obama. Play dumb – pretend like you’re dumber than he is. Eventually he’ll tell you or he’ll get exasperated and leave you alone in the future. Either counts as a win in my personal book.
chopper
Trump is trying hard to get his reality show extended for another season, so he’s drumming up attention. That’s why he keeps saying he’s going to announce on the final episode of the season. Ten bucks sez the financial crisis hit his balance sheet so hard he’s looking at staving off yet another bankruptcy and needs the cash desperately.
Mnemosyne
@Mark B:
Never forget that Donald Trump is the man who managed to bankrupt himself running a ca$ino. It takes a very special talent to fail in an industry where people literally walk in the door and hand their money to you.
eemom
@aimai:
Yup. And the teatards here in Ole Virginny are gonna eat him for breakfast. It will be fun to watch.
Alex
Do we have any of Obama’s academic records, from either college or law school? I really don’t know.
EconWatcher
@eemom:
What do you mean? Does Allen have a primary contest with a tea partier?
I live in VA, but I haven’t been following this.
ppcli
@J.D. Rhoades:
The next phase of birtherism: When they can’t find evidence of Obama being born in Kenya, they’ll say it’s because he was born during a trip his parents took to Niger. A nice romantic cruise up the Niger river from Nigeria. A little expensive for a young student couple, but we wouldn’t want to denigrate them by suggesting that they would be niggardly, and renege on the promises they made to one another.
Jason Stokes
@Villago Delenda Est: The [i]Donald has plenty of money. Just ask him sometimes…he’s got billions![/i]
Actually, Donald may really need the money. Some people say he’s had a negative net worth since around 1992, and has been shuffling his assets and declaring strategic bankruptcies to avoid creditors ever since. Some day, goes this theory, the whole remaining Trump empire will implode and Trump will become another Madoff.
But it’s true that Trump does need the attention. In fact, its plainly obvious he’s suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is why he’s unable to maintain stable personal relationships or stable business dealings, why he is addicted to debt, and while he’s delusional enough to think a presidential tilt is a good idea. NPD sufferers can be extremely charming, which is how he’s got away with it all these years. And that’s also why I can guarantee he is running — Trump is a sick, delusional man and this is exactly what an NPD sufferer would do. Charlie Sheen will put his hat into the ring next.
Chris
@Cacti:
That’s why the Muslim-bashing suddenly came out in force in the lead-up to 2010, and you can expect them to double-down on it. It’s perfect: a tiny minority without demographics on its side, you can endlessly sidestep the bigotry accusations with “national security” bullshit, and they’ve been tied to the President they’re trying to take down.
A Hermit
When will you Nigras stop calling the tea party racist?
http://wonkette.com/443972/tea-party-sportsman-tired-of-nigras-calling-him-racist
CMike
Not being a member in good standing of the cult of progblog race and class bigots who are ever quick to accuse others of being racists, or worse, having ignorant sounding southern accents, based on what you’ve quoted I’m not at all sure what it is that Trump might be getting at here.
Stefan
On a more personal note, [Harvard Law School professor Laurence] Tribe called Obama the “best student I ever had” and the “most exciting research assistant.”
Nice. Real nice. I was one of Tribe’s students…how do you think reading that makes me feel???
Omnes Omnibus
@Stefan: It probably makes you feel like you got into Harvard Law, you bastard.
slag
@jrg:
What a stupid thing to say. Are you suggesting that these people wouldn’t still be making this kind of attack even without any Affirmative Action programs on the books? Seriously? You think if race-based Affirmative Action programs never happened, this kind of argument wouldn’t be taking place?
Citizen_X
@RobNYNY1957: Obama’s mom planted those articles to make it look like he was really at Harvard Law!
Robert Waldmann
I quote “from memory” our President. He describes being admitted to and being offered a scholarship by a fancy prep school in Hawaii as his “first experience with affirmative action.” That pretty much affirms that it wasn’t his last.
I’d say the transfer from Occidental U to Columbia U was affirmative action too. Obama may exaggerate, but it seems that in his last two years in High School and first two in college he acted like a normal teen ager plus also was worried about seeming white.
I don’t know about admission to Harvard Law, but obviously no one has become President of the Harvard Law review because of affirmative action. Also having read his books, I have noticed that Obama writes better in real life than I do in my dreams.
I would say that without affirmative action we would not have President Obama and that is one of the main reasons that I am sure that affirmative action is an excellent policy. I think he is the first President who is both principled and competent to be elected in my lifetime (that’s a dodge since Kennedy was elected the day before I was born). So I say four cheers for affirmative action.
Tsulagi
Trump simply did the math. What’s needed to be a serious R-can for that party’s nomination. Articulating intelligent policy positions? Nope, none of that. You go for birth certificate conspiracy and affirmative action excess. Those would be winners in the serious party.
Look forward to non-elitist Trump continuing down the serious check list. Like Multiple Choice Mitt, getting a new, shiny NRA Life Member card. Jesus can’t be far behind after that. Which then would make a good segue into family values. From Trump. Limbaugh’s hillbilly heroin patriots and weekend tweekers would/will eat it up.
gene108
Hate to point this out to y’all, but Obama, Sr. has a Master’s in Economics from Harvard. That makes President Obama, technically, a legacy student at Harvard.
I’m not saying President Obama is stupid or anything, I’m just surprised no right-wing nut job has brought this out, since the Left brought out how Bush, Jr. was a double legacy to Yale, which explained how Bush, Jr. got in.
Surprised there’s no tit-for-tat here.
Also, too I’m surprised no one has tried to come up with a consipiracy theory about how Obama murdered his mother before running for state Senate in Illinois – she died of ovarian cancer, shortly before his entry into politics – or how he murdered his grandmother – who died of something 80+ year old people get, shortly before in inauguration – to hide the truth behind his origins, i.e. there’s no one left alive to subpoena, who could testify under oath that President Obama was born in Kenya.
David Hunt
@Chyron HR:
Actually it all ties into the birther meme. He called on Obama to “show his records.” I’m certain that Trump is trying to set up a win-win where Obama releases nothing indicating that there’s something to hide (instead of not justifying this crap with a response) or the bonanza move: he actually does release some sort of school records which fuels the fire of birtherism with things like “if you’ll release your school records, why won’t your release your real birth certificate?”
Oh, and bonus points: note that “show his records” is a highly non-specific request. If Obama fell into that trap, nothing that he released would be satisfactory to the crowd yammering for it. Transcripts with great grades are just more proof that he coasted by due to affirmative action. Releasing actual work like school papers (any legitimate student would have kept everything starting in the first grade and laminated in case of future need) lets them pick apart the whole mess still arguing the grading was fixed to favor him and let them cherry pick stuff that he wrote for something embarrassing. Et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Stefan
It probably makes you feel like you got into Harvard Law, you bastard.
But did I? Someone should look into this and make me show my records.
Omnes Omnibus
@Stefan: Good point. You’ve run circles around me logically.
Stefan
Hate to point this out to y’all, but Obama, Sr. has a Master’s in Economics from Harvard. That makes President Obama, technically, a legacy student at Harvard.
Not really. Having a parent who got a graduate degree in Ec. in no way advantages you in applying for the Law School. They’re separate grad schools, separate admissions, it wouldn’t be taken into account at all.
Bruce S
The only thing we should be asking ourselves about Donald Trump -as Democrats – is how we might help facilitate his move into the Republican primaries. He seems susceptible to his own delusions, so there’s a chance it could happen. I’m 100% behind his candidacy. He’s the only one who fully synthesizes the Republican coalition of a socially nihilistic economic elite, the most craven opportunists, aligned with the aggressively ignorant of various stripes. The guy’s got it all!
J.D. Rhoades
David Hunt:
Oh, and bonus points: note that “show his records” is a highly non-specific request. If Obama fell into that trap, nothing that he released would be satisfactory to the crowd yammering for it.
And that’s really why he won’t do it. When some people were finally honest enough to admit that there was a sure ’nuff Amurrikin Birth Certificate, they moved the goalposts and started demanding his financial aid info to “prove” he hadn’t been sent to that there fancy college by some furrin power.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@gene108:
vince foster killed obama’s mother, every one at bingo says so.
Villago Delenda Est
Funny how the birther demographic never asked to see the paper trail of the military adventures of the deserting coward, isn’t it?
slag
@Robert Waldmann: Yes, his “first experience” with affirmative action was having white family members who could help him get into Punahou. Which means that we are all products of affirmative action of some sort. Yet only some of us get called “affirmative action babies”. Why is that, do you think?
RobNYNY1957
I agree with Stefan. Getting a graduate degree at Harvard does not confer “Harvard man” status. I’ve seen graduates of Harvard College get pretty testy when someone who went only to graduate school there claims to have gone “to Harvard.”
gene108
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
LOL!
Good one.
Midnight Marauder
@JPL:
“Niggers, am I right?! Yeah, you get it.” — Donald Trump, emerging bigot
john b
i thought i read in ’07/’08 (the last time this came up) that obama didn’t put his race in his college applications.
cyntax
@gene108:
Yeah, but from the right wing perspective being a legacy makes you legitimate. If Obama comes from a respectable family, that challenges all the other memes they have going about him.
gypsy howell
Jeez, this is actually making me excited to watch next week’s episode of Donald Trump’s reality show presidential run. How low can he go, you ask? Tune in next week!
Here are some sneak previews:
Malia and Sasha were born out of wedlock! To different fathers! (Have we seen THEIR birth certificates? Well, have we?)
Obama was a juvenile offender who robbed liquor stores for drug money. His records were … expunged! Demand to have the courts unseal the records!
How low can he go? How low CAN’T he go?
Froley
Trump will not run for the simple fact that he doesn’t want to reveal his finances (as required by law).
Midnight Marauder
@EconWatcher:
I think you are being way too generous here. Imagine that you are the type of human being whose focus in this world is so narrow that a cultural punchline such as Donald Trump could waltz around spouting transparently bigoted nonsense and that was the REAL TALK you had been waiting for! Consider you are the type of person who will self-report that you are a single issue voter and that your single issue is that you refuse to accept that nigger in the White House was born in your United States of America.
If it’s not Donald Trump they vote for, it’s the next clown who goes after the crown of Transparently Obvious Bigot. These fools are all in against the nigger.
catclub
@Todd Dugdale: “Orly Taitz’s court briefs.”
Also known as tennis panties?
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Ah, this brings back fond memories of my college years. Dipshits took great delight in telling me I only got into college because of Affirmative Action and I may or may not have taken great delight in paying them back with various hijinks, the likes of which I can’t describe because I’m still not sure about the SoL on some of them.
Benjamin Cisco
@Ghanima Atreides: Put me down for Monica Crowley.
Stefan
i thought i read in ‘07/’08 (the last time this came up) that obama didn’t put his race in his college applications.
Whether or not he did, I think the fact that his name was Barack Hussein Obama might have been a tip-off….
eemom
@EconWatcher:
not yet, but I assume he will. Still way early in the game. I’ve heard of at least one teatard potential challenger though I don’t remember her name.
I’d like to see Cooch take him on. That would be so many kinds of awesome, I bet I could sell tickets.
MazeDancer
Sponsors will not like letters and complaints about Trump’s racism.
The Donald is free to be a repulsive, racist, pathetic excuse for a human, but it’s not going to equal corporate support on a mainstream network. No matter what the ratings for his last show.
Even Glenn Beck found out complaints to sponsors create consequences.
licensed to kill time
The funny thing about Trump is that he’s just discovering all this. I heard him on Anderson Cooper last night and he was delivering all these stunning revelations that I’ve been hearing about for YEARS now. He’s a bit slow on the uptake.
Get with the program, Donald!
MoZeu
Bottom feeder.
Evan
@Ghanima Atreides: Not a winning strategy for the general election, but it’s red meat for the primary. I don’t really believe the Republicans are dumb enough to nominate Trump, but here’s hoping.
gogol's wife
The obvious evidence of Barack Obama’s clear intellectual superiority to pretty much every other politician (and pundit as well) makes Trump look like even more of an idiot than he looked before. Columbia was lucky to get him.
Yes, I’m an Obot and proud of it.
artem1s
@Ghanima Atreides:
Buchanan. He’s going to get pissed sooner or later that he’s not getting enough crazy time on TV.
Ghanima Atreides
@suzanne:
well no. I am hardly a fan of market-based economics, and I am certainly not a birther. That was pretty weak even for you, suzanne.
;)
warming up to swing on me and punch yourself in the neck again?
WaterGirl
@El Cid:
That sentence is a thing of beauty!
aimai
aimai@David Hunt:
Very good point, David Hunt. Basically, when they can deny the guy is even a natural born human, its a very easy thing to deny that his grades are his grades.
Anyone here from the Chicago area? About 18 years ago I saw a marvellous play there by Theater Oobleck (I think) about Vaclav Havel (the playwrite who would be president) and William F. Buckley (the spy who would be a writer) [I think that was the subtitle]. There was an incredibly surreal argument between the two characters about what a photograph of a military installation in Eastern Europe “means” when the two characters can’t agree on anything: provenance, object portrayed, political relations, etc…. As you watched it you felt yourself falling into the abyss of mirrors that is spookspeak and cold war politics. But I have the same sensation now, as I read this stuff about Obama and his history. Really, at this point, even considering some of their crazier points is enough to make you crazy. Perhaps Peggy Noonan was right and we’d better just “walk on by.”
aimai
Ghanima Atreides
wallah….an embarrassment of riches.
Citizen X—Tucker Carlson
Paul and cat48—Thomas Sowell
Omnes— Chunky Bobo
Jenjen and Mastertroll Doug—Charles Lane
Ghani_chan— Bobo
Opie Jean and Hungry Joe — George Will
Fuckhead—Maureen Dowd
danimal—Dr. Krauthammer
ThatLeftTurnInABQ—Howard Kurtz
Benjamin Cisco– Monica Crowley
AliceBlue– Wolf Blitzer AND Joe Klein
Admiral_Komack and Comrade Javamanphil — Halperin
artem1s–Buchanan
I’m sorry…but I think we cannot take Hannity, because that means we have to include Levin, Limbaugh, Malikin, Coulter, Beck, etc. The pundit first mainstreaming birtherism must have a few rags of legitimacy to dress in.
chopper
@suzanne:
trump may be a douchebag, but he’s not in word-salad territory.
chopper
@Culture of Truth:
how do we know obama’s even real? has anyone we know actually touched the guy? how do we know he isn’t an elaborate hologram?
Ghanima Atreides
@aimai:
Since Nooners was talking about Bush and torture I do not that is particularily good advice.
Marsupialus
“Some people” say that Trump is a terrible businessman.
Pass it on. . .
Fang
I’ve wondered if THIS is when we hit peak Wingnut (yeah, I know don’t we all keep thinking that). Consider:
1) Trump is taking this lying even more mainstream. He’s essentially basing his image on it – and we know the Donald loves his image.
2) Trump is constantly upping the ante – he’s taking the double-down we’re used to seeing to new heights. Or in short, he’s making it up.
3) He is now very popular because of this, he has found his niche.
4) He has the money and influence to keep going – and the ego not to stop.
5) I think he sees no reason not to run for president.
6) He can’t back down – he’s commited here.
So I see a chance that Trump is truly Peak Wingnut – he’s got a schtick, he’s got a marketing approach, and he’s got the ego-on-steroids to keep going. He has no shame and a big platform, and can basically keep making stuff up and running on bluster. You can’t get him to back down because he’s got the biggest publicity platform he ever had.
The quesiton is how insane is this going to go?
Ghanima Atreides
@chopper: you and suzanne should mail Cole about how awful I am.
He luffs mails.
;)
chopper
@Ghanima Atreides:
cleek, you sure are a genius.
Paul in KY
@suzanne: m_c makes waaaaaay more sense than that bloated sack of shit known as ‘The Donald’.
jrg
@slag:
Yes, genius. I’m saying that if race-based AA did not exist, people would not be bitching about it.
Furthermore, I honestly cannot understand why this is so fucking complicated. If you alter requirements based on the color of people’s skin, suspicion that this has something to do with someone’s success will arise even if AA had very little, or nothing at all to do with that person’s success.
Ghanima Atreides
@Fang: There is no peak wingnut. We are approaching the Wingularity.
We are at the knee of the exponential curve now and in the run up to November 2012 the slope of the curve will become vertical.
The Wingularity can only be described by high order transinfities like aleph-null.
As the Wingularity deforms the fabric of right wing reality with its infinitely dense specific gravity we will see the entire libertarian wing of the GOP pulled into the twin gravity wells of birtherism and islamophobia.
We will see men bark like dogs and speak in tongues, social justice angels and market-based demons will roam the land, and like Brother Mandramas says, independents will be drawn increasingly into the birtherism collapsar.
And like Chris says the mainstreaming of islamophobia has already begun.
JR (Not the other JR)
Shorter Donald Trump: “Blackity- Black! Don’t talk back!”
slag
@jrg: Maybe next you’ll start arguing that voting rights laws open minority candidates up to the argument that the support they’re getting “seems higher than it actually is” because of all those darned minority voters.
Really, I can’t understand why this is so fucking complicated. You don’t need actual affirmative action programs for people to claim or believe that THOSE PEOPLE are getting something they don’t deserve. All you need is THOSE PEOPLE getting anything at all.
If you really can’t grasp that basic concept, you didn’t just say something stupid. You are stupid.
Chris
@Ghanima Atreides:
From your link:
I suspect the average American Jew up until the last couple generations would have a rather different POV. Jews and their message were just as marginalized for most of history as Muslims are today – the change in their “messaging” has little to do with them changing the message and much to do with mainstream America starting to listen at long last. Ditto Catholics.
I love that he closed with some version of “don’t call us bigots.” To them, that’s the single biggest outrage in identity politics and one of the driving engines of their worldview – some white people are being called bigots (often correctly), and that’s the real outrage, that’s the real injustice in our society, that’s what we need to correct and we’re just going to stick our fingers in our ears and hum loudly until we feel “respected” enough again.
Ghanima Atreides
@Chris:
yessssssss. Its exactly like how they rage over appropriately being called racists.
You see….islamophobia is reasonable and understandable because ooooo! scary creeping shariah!
jrg
@slag:
Really? Social programs are denied to certain people based on race now?
The two examples are fundamentally different. Recipients of welfare, Medicaid, etc are decided on socioeconomic status, not race… Which is how I believe AA should be decided.
People complaining about race-based AA have a basis for their complaints in the context of race. That’s why it’s discussed openly, whereas people complaining about T-bones and Cadillacs in the context of welfare have to hide their racial sentiments in coded language.
neil
Am I the only one who thinks Trump is a mad genius? He keeps coming up with less and less plausible attacks against Obama–attacks that no sane politician would make but attacks that at least 25% of the Republican base is eating up like candy. The Karl Rove play is for the birthers to disappear going into the next election cycle, because everyone who isn’t a birther knows they’re crazy. Trump is making sure the this doesn’t happen–he’s pushing the Overton window in the opposite direction, hard, and at just the wrong time, when people are starting to look at Presidential campaigns for the first time.
Even non-dead-ender Republicans admit that Obama is intelligent; it’s probably his defining quality. And Obama’s academic record (unlike some people’s) is pretty much as objectively solid as his birth certificate.
Also note: in the same interview with this crazy attack on Obama, Trump mentioned that the Republicans were foolish to vote to end Medicare. I think it’s quite interesting that he always says stuff like this when blowing the dog whistle–stuff that no Tea Partier would believe if a RINO said it, but Trump is doing a bang-up job of making the real lunatic fringe think he’s actually the only truth-teller out there.
Also, he has never been known for his reluctance to make a fool of himself.
Paul in KY
@jrg: I disagree. These people would complain about any minority achievement, no matter what the context.
If AA didn’t exist, they would still make nasty comments about how the blackity black student got there in 1st place (probably something about being on the track team, even if the minority student is in a wheelchair).
Maybe AA is a quick & easy thing for them to rant on about, but their complaints have no basis in reality and of course reality has never stopped them from blathering on anyway.
Ghanima Atreides
@neil: you are correct. A+.
You see….the Rovites cant turn off the birtherism.
They tried from CPAC 2010 to 2011, but there are more birthers than ever.
They can’t turn it off so they have to mainstream it.
jrg
@Paul in KY:
I do think the complaints have a basis in reality.
There are rural whites all over the country who think that “God did it” is a scientific theory, that Palin would be a great leader, that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, that if you point out that blowing someone’s family up causes hatred of America, you’re a member of the “blame America first” crowd.
Those rural whites need access to higher education every bit as badly as urban blacks do… In some cases, they need it more.
jaleh
I still believe Trump is a plant by Dems.
Carl Nyberg
@mai naem: Excellent follow-up question.
Did Trump have these concerns about McCain (awful student), Bush (clearly verbally challenged), Gore (law school drop out) or Bush 41 (low IQ legacy)?
Yes, I include Bush 41 on my list of low IQ recent presidents. I saw him interviewed after being POTUS and he’s not an articulate man or a deep thinker.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ghanima Atreides:
We’ve got Jews imposing absolutely bizarre (to my admitedly white, Anglo-Saxon-Scot, protestant upbringing eyes) ON OTHER JEWS IN THEIR COMMUNITY laws right now.
At this minute.
And no one cares! It’s a purely voluntary legal system for determining divorces, who gets the kids (in the eyes of that community), who is a member (of that community). If you don’t like it, you can leave! You might cut yourself off from all your relatives in the process, and hurl yourself into the unspeakable evil of the more secular society that surrounds you in the first place, but, hey, you’re out of there! That crazy Rabbinical law no longer affects you.
Once again, the fanatical Jeebofascists are projecting their own intense desires (to bring everyone under their fucked up morality at gunpoint) on other religious groups.
Midnight Marauder
@jrg:
And this is the part where it is pointed out that a lot of those people who desperately need access to higher education decided to throw their lot in with political forces who don’t give a fuck about helping them get that education, so long as they prevent those pesky blacks and other coloreds from getting one either.
Let’s not pretend like this is some kind of either/or proposition here.
slag
@jrg: We can debate the efficacy of specific Affirmative Action programs all day long (and some of us have), but we really shouldn’t be doing it under the pretense that these programs enable/foster these kinds of race-based attacks. That’s just absurd.
Carl Nyberg
People who are bigoted aren’t approaching public policy rationally. They want what they want.
You can tinker with affirmative action or eliminate it and they will still think Blacks are getting too much and Latinos are stealing their jobs and women who get abortions are cutting off their balls.
They choose to adopt a bigoted worldview.
jrg
@slag:
I concede that racial attacks would be directed towards Obama even if AA never existed. I disagree that AA does not enable certain race-based attacks, but we’ve both made our points… So I’ll leave it at that.
Dr. Squid
@David Hunt: Why bother releasing the records? I dunno, maybe the Kerning Platoon of the 101st Chairborne swooping into action might have some entertainment value.
slag
@Carl Nyberg: Exactly. People who rail against Affirmative Action rarely have any meaningful concept of what any specific AA program is designed to do or actually does. It’s just another excuse. One of an infinite supply of “Special Rights!”.
Chris
@Ghanima Atreides:
The whole thing is fucking ridiculous. First of all, asking “what does the American Muslim community want?” as if the entire community was some sort of monolith and all of them want the same thing is fucking ridiculous. You can’t even extrapolate “what they want” like that for the Catholic community, whose religion is far more centralized and authority-driven.
Second of all, the number of American Muslims who want a theocracy is frankly irrelevant. The total number of Muslims in America is – what? Not even two percent of the population? Even if every single Muslim wanted to turn the government over to Sharia Law, they couldn’t do it. The numbers aren’t there and I doubt if they ever will be. It’s like freaking out over “black racists.”
Third, the system’s secular enough that even theocrats from the majority religion haven’t made much headway in getting their agenda passed – they’re treading water on their couple of hot button issues, and the broader thing of “making the Constitution reflect the word of the living God” just ain’t never going to happen. So the idea that Muslim theocrats could do what Christian theocrats can’t despite far more money, influence and numbers, is pretty hysterical.
Muslims are not a monolith, they couldn’t take over the country even if they were, and theocracy of any kind is pretty much a nonstarter. Next.
aimai
@jrg:
Well, under the old laws there was nothing to prevent them from getting a higher education but classism and an indifference to, or hostility to, education itself. Read Albion’s Seed and discover just how self sabotaging poor whites can be with respect to education and how willing to allow their economic betters to run the show with private academies. But in other parts of the country than the deep south, historically speaking, “poor whites” clubbed together to build land grant universities that subsidized their children’s education. When such places were segregated those poor whites got the benefit of taxpayer money while african americans did not.
AA doesnt’ really exist in this country in the form that aggrieved white people think it does. The Bakke case brought the notion of some kind of quota AA to public attention in Med School but Bakke specifically didn’t sue the Med school to force them to give him one of the slots held open for the children of alumni and big donors. Nor did he sue to get one of the hundreds of slots given to worthier white people. He sued to gain total access to all the slots supposedly reserved for AA students.
In reality, of course, every poor white in every state in the union has nothing to be aggrieved about if he/she didn’t even bother to apply to the schools he’s complaining about. If you don’t put your name in for the many scholarships and benefits given to students at X place you weren’t, definitionally, harmed by someone else getting them.
Confederate angst at black people getting goodies that should be reserved, in their entirety, for white people began with reconstruction and hasn’t ended since. If it didn’t exist it would be constantly reinvented, like Polish anti semitism without Jews.
aimai
Paul in KY
@jrg: (IMO) It is much, much easier to be white in this country than black. This country was created by the white man, for the white man (at one time, exclusively & enshrined in law). If a white person (with all the advantages in general that being white confers here in the USA) can’t make the grades to get above whatever line is arbitarily drawn (below which they start fighting it out with AA entries) then fuck em. Go to community college. Entry to the college of your dreams is not a birthright.
slag
@jrg: And I will concede that without a set of programs collectively named “Affirmative Action”, racist people would not be overly convincing should they choose to run around screaming the name “Affirmative Action!” everywhere.
There. I think we made some progress.
Ghanima Atreides
@Chris: yeah, but 70% of americans were against the “terror mosque”.
And Iraq just publically humiliated America by rejecting our generous offer of more “protection/occupation” and we are getting an epic asswhuppin’ in A-stan.
Who do you think bubba is going to blame for this?
EDK is the first libertarian blogger that I have seen to mainstream islamophobia with his frontpaging of Kowal.
We don’t need a pool for mainstreaming islamophobia like my birtherism pool.
WINNAH!
Bex
@Ghanima Atreides: Ann Coulter, now on her eleventy-millionth “book” tour.
Chris
@Ghanima Atreides:
Yes, but interestingly, that number got smaller and smaller the closer you got to the actual site of the mosque. It culminated in Manhattan, where a plurality of voters were actually okay with having the mosque there, and Lower Manhattan where that plurality turned into a majority.
I have to say, as gallows humor goes, conservatives concern-trolling about “ohhhh, the victims’ families feelings!” takes the cake. You remember what they were saying on the actual day of the attack? All I remember was Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson gloating about how God had finally punished the East Coast for having that many faggots and feminists.
But nine years after the fact, suddenly they give a shit how New Yorkers feel. Yeah. Okay.
mikeyes
Any publicity is good. The Donald knows this.
There is no way he is running for President, for one thing he would have to reveal all finances, something he is not going to do. He is very good at getting everyone’s goat and pushing his agenda which has to do with fame and TV ratings. And it costs him nothing. This is the guy who boasted he “screwed” (G)(K)adaff(q)i.
Chris
@Ghanima Atreides:
Yep. I’ve got a theory that the Iraq War actually did more to encourage Islamophobia in the U.S. than any terrorist attack.
Bush’s party line after 9/11 was “Muslims are good people, they’ve just got a few bad apples and if we just invade them they’ll greet us as liberators and we can all be happy together…” But after a few months of Iraq (even more than Afghanistan) it became clear that we were not, in fact, being greeted as liberators, so that narrative fell apart.
Thus leaving the Repub propagandists with few options. They couldn’t admit that there was any misconduct by American troops, or any incompetence in the way the administration was running Iraq. They certainly couldn’t admit that Bush fucked up royal by invading in the first place. So instead, we got this bullshit narrative about how what a noble enterprise the entire war was and it only failed because the Muslims were too savage and ignorant to appreciate the great gift we were giving them. (One of the money quotes I still remember after Fallujah was “we’re fighting for the freedom of a people who have not yet earned it.”)
So basically what you said: someone had to be blamed for what went wrong, and who better than the Iraqi people? Extrapolating from there to “Muslims suck” in general was a pretty small step.
Dennis
@suzanne:
Oh, come on. Trump doesn’t have friends, just victims.
Monala
I recently read something about results of a study regarding bigotry/racism. Bigotry/racism were lowest in communities with either a) low diversity; or b) high diversity and low segregation. So that’s why bigotry is often lowest in places like Vermont and Manhattan. You’re less likely to be prejudiced when there are no people who are different around you, or when people who are different are your neighbors and friends. So the fact that Manhattanites were more in support of the mosque than people in other parts of the U.S. makes sense to me.
In contrast, bigotry/racism were highest in places with both high diversity and high segregation; e.g., Alabama and Michigan. In those states, people who are different are all around you, but you tend not to know them, and thus can easily “other” them.
Paul in KY
@Chris: That’s what I’ve said before at Salon & GG’s site. The Neocons wanted us in Iraq to battle with Muslims (get killed by them) & thus bring American public opinion on Muslims closer to the Likud perspective.
Supremely diabolical, I think.
David Brooks (not that one)
@Chris:
There were two, equally celebrated cases.
Huckabee reduced the sentence of Maurice Clemmons in a way that made him eligible for parole; he was duly paroled by the board and murdered four policemen in Lakewood, WA nine years later (but not tried because he was killed a few days after the killings). Blaming that on Huck is a stretch.
Wayne Dumond was in prison for rape. One of his victims was a distant relative of Bill Clinton, who didn’t reduce his sentence. Huck was instrumental in his release; Dumond died while awaiting trial for a rape/murder, and was about to be charged with another. There were defintely shenanigans around the circumstances of his release.
A Conservative Teacher
How dare Trump ask questions of the Annoited One! To speak of The One in such a manner! The outrage! He and all of his right wing friends deserved to be marginalized and spoken ill of for asking such questions! Obama is our lord and savior, isn’t he?
Paul in KY
@A Conservative Teacher: Glad you’re finally getting with the program!
Jay in Oregon
@A Conservative Teacher:
Be careful, that straw man you’re flogging is flammable.
Mandramas
@Monala: Maybe I’m wrong with the meaning of “segregation”… but to me it is a practical synonym with “racism”. Or at least, it a symptom of racism.
Chris
@Monala:
Sounds plausible to me. It’s hard to make prejudiced generalizations about a community in which you personally have friends.
@Paul in KY:
Agreed – I just think it was a result of unforeseen events during the war, rather than something they set out to do from the outset. (Whatever their many, many, many flaws and sins, the Bush administration never seemed particularly dedicated to Muslim witch hunts in my eyes).
Monala
@Mandramas: In this instance, segregation refers to residential segregation. In places like Alabama, you have many all-white or all-black neighborhoods; in the Midwest, you have many predominantly black cities surrounded by predominantly white suburbs.
In contrast, you might have people with backgrounds of 20 different nationalities living on the same block in Manhattan.
As far as segregation being a symptom of racism, I’d say yes and no. Segregation can be the result of racism (people choose to live in segregated neighborhoods specifically because they’re segregated), but segregation also leads to it. You might choose a community because of the schools or homes or something unrelated to race, but because the neighborhood is segregated and you don’t have opportunities to interact with people of other races, you come to view them with suspicion.
Paul in KY
@Chris: I’m talking about what the Neocon motivation was. Cheney had his own motivations, Bush had his.
They felt that if American public opinion on Arabs could be brought much closer to the average Likudnicks opinion of Arabs, then the Palestinians et. al. would never get any justice or homeland & if Israel ever annexes the West Bank & expels all the Palestinians, American public opinion will be much more friendly.
Fang
@Ghanima Atreides
First, my compliments on your wit in your response. I was trying hard not to laugh out loud as your phrasing.
Unfortunately, I think you may have a point about the Wingularity (which I see as happening as one HITS Peak Wingnut, the unstopable insanity becomes self-perpetuating). It’ll turn into a kind of crazed, incoherent, reality-less sideshow. Wingnuts will be entirely in their own reality for a mad time in campaign season, with untold potential damage.
Calouste
Well, we now know why Barbour decided not to run. Trump is passing him on the right on race issues. And if you are the “fat redneck” governor of a Confederacy state and you’re still not the most racist fuck in the GOP primaries, what is your purpose of running?
neil
Those fat rednecks are such bigots.
maus
Eh, can we not jump to attention every time Donald says something stupid that the rest of the GOP has said for years?
He’s a blithering idiot, but masterful at receiving attention for repeating old media tropes, simply because he’s a “businessman”, and not a politician/talk radio host, whatever.
He’s just picking and choosing from the Becks, Coulters, Limbaughs, and it’s not so much shocking as dull.
Can we just drop discussion of him until something actually new and interesting comes out, or until the end of the season when we can go back to ignoring the broke old coot?
gil mann
@A Conservative Teacher:
No, he’s not, but since you brought it up, let’s see that guy’s birth certificate. And a paternity test.
maus
@neil:
Yes. He’s savvy, but he’s not saying anything particularly brilliant. His ability to pretend to have class while acting trashy has everything to do with the idiocy of the demographic he’s desperately clinging onto for income. If he had billions of dollars he wouldn’t be latching onto MLM schemes or require pubilc attention, he’d have a semblance of dignity and a quiet life.
maus
@A Conservative Teacher: Oh my god, they let just anyone become a teacher these days? With illiteracy infecting the educators, we really ought to defund all public education and fire them all, taking their pensions away.
Villago Delenda Est
@A Conservative Teacher:
The stupid. It burns!
barkleyg
Apparently Trump is mad that Obama didn’t do things the right way- inherit his good fortune from daddy.
and BUY the Harvard Law Review Editor position!
aimai
@gil mann:
It was a long thread, but I think you won it.
aimai
Bobby Thomson
I can’t be the only one to have observed that anti-Ay-rab sentiment has been common in certain parts of this country at least since the 1970s. Hell, one of my high school friends actually had his name legally changed circa 1990 because he was tired of putting up with all the shit.
No Iraq war was necessary to cause Americans to be bigots. They already were.
Ghanima Atreides
@aimai: agree!
that was awesome.
Julia Grey
Did he say he didn’t think Medicare should be ended? Or did he say that his friends in the Billionaire Buddies Booster Club were foolish to openly vote to end it at this juncture?
Perhaps he only means that the process of dismantling it should have been more secretive and incremental, and that the BBBC were giving the game away.
Mika Kay
Trump inherited his good fortune from daddy and Jews overwhelmingly practice nepotism.
Should I make a blog post about it? Or should I just wait for the cries of antisemitism?
uptown
I almost went to UC Berkeley in the late 80’s and my grades sure wouldn’t have cut it nowadays. It wasn’t that hard to get accepted back then if you were transferring from in-state. The baby boom was over and schools had more openings for transfers. Obama transfered to Columbia from Occidental in 1981. He also did something with his life before attending Harvard Law, not just sit around spending Daddy’s money.
maus
@Mika Kay:
I guess you should figure out what exactly you’re trying to say, because I don’t understand your point.
barkleyg
253 Mika Kay: What is your definition of overwhelmingly?
Remeber, Prescott Bush( last NAZI banker in America, and NOT JEWISH) handed down his nepotism to George H. Bush( Carlyle Industries), who handed it down to George W. Bush( WORST AMERICAN EVER), who is trying to hand it down to his next stupid, immoral generation
maus
@barkleyg: I really don’t get it, is she your usual Stormfront-ish brand of teabagger trying to attack Jews *and* liberals at the same time? Along the lines of “liberals are the TRUE RACISTS because…”
priscianus jr
@Ghanima Atreides:
THE
@Ghanima Atreides:
GA I’m really not reading this the same as you.
To me it is Kibuki transferring responsibility for any future failure to the Iraqis themselves.
If Iraqi democracy fails, or if the economy collapses, a year or three after the USA leaves, the Obama gov will be able to say:
“Well, we tried to persuade them to let us stay, dude, but they were a sovereign country, you know, and they insisted we leave.”
I don’t know what you’d call it, it’s moral insurance.
Pilate washing-his-hands syndrome or something.
Plausible deniability?
Cover your ass in advance?
grouchomarxist
Trump added, “I have friends …”
And that should have been an immediate tip-off that Trump was lying like a dog.
Chris
@priscianus jr:
All very true. More to the point, I’d say, that’s not the end of the story. France, in the 1930s, was tolerant enough to have a Jewish President (Leon Blum). But less than a decade later, the Vichy government was rounding up Jews en masse and turning them over to the krauts. (And while many prefer to remember it as an age of occupation and blame the occupier for everything, the truth is that Vichy had a ton of popular support in the public). Similarly, Germany before the 1930s had one of the best records in Europe when it came to tolerating Jews, but then that little pipsqueak from Austria took over and the rest is history…
It’s not as simple as “we elected a minority, yay racism’s over!”
Nick
Leave it to the conservatives to be able to believe Obama is an evil SOCIALIST mastermind and nearly retarded at the same time.