Some idiot with a gun wanted to started to start a race war, get his Confederate bros to rise up and yadda yadda, so he shot a bunch of people. Adding to Elon’s post below, I think we should survey how that worked out.
The Governor of South Carolina, one of the two oldest and southest states in the Old South, held a news conference to ask her state’s lege to take the damn flag down. The other state would be Mississippi, where the Speaker of the state House just asked his people to get rid of the Confederate iconography on their own flag.
Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 20, 2015
Good point, Mitt. https://t.co/Ryusfp8Xbh
— President Obama (@POTUS) June 21, 2015
Wal-Mart will stop selling anything with a Confederate flag on it.
eBay has categorized the confederate flag as a “symbol of divisiveness and racism” and banned listings that include it.
One of the most important flag makers in the US will stop making Confederate flags.
The Council of Conservative Citizens, which non-southerners should imagine as a hybrid of the Chamber of Commerce and the KKK, with less LARPing and lots of semi-clandestine support among elected good ole’ boys, has become radioactive on a level comparable to NAMBLA or Nickleback.
It seems like there is a message for anyone considering mass murder to make a political point. All those sexy sexy guns are like that magic rifle from the Fifth Element: no matter where you aim it, the gun ends up shooting your own foot.
***Update***
And Amazon.
lamh36
I’m seeing some concern trolling from some segments of the interwebs all aflutter over these companies saying “we’re done” with the flag.
it’s about business. this is probably NOT the first time Amazon or the other retailers have wanted to nix selling it. if the items were SUCH a big seller, I also imagine the retailers would not be ready and willing to stop selling.
AnderJ
As radioactive as Nickelback? Umpossible!
lamh36
Oh and you’ve got to check out Bill Kristol’s twitter TL…is it hilarious.
It reads like parody
Cacti
Unlike Mississippi, the confederate battle flag has never been part of the State Flag of South Carolina.
South Carolina’s flag is a palmetto and crescent moon on a field of indigo, and dates back to the Revolutionary War. It’s actually one of the better looking state flags in the union.
The confederate battle flag started flying on the South Carolina capitol in the early 1960s, as a way of telling the Civil Rights Movement “Welcome to South Carolina, colored entrance in rear.”
Anyone from SC who tries to make a heritage claim for the rebel rag is clueless or a liar.
lamh36
Asked and answered!
According to MSNBC’s Craig Melvin who’s reporting from SC…not surprised, but still.
Yes the flag will be flying as Sen Pinckney’s body lies in state.
https://twitter.com/craigmelvin/status/613428622351802369
ETA: I’ve just asked Melvin to clarify that the Confed flag will be flying, just to make sure. I’ll edit with confirmation if it comes.
Mike J
@Cacti: Crescent? Moooselims!!!!!!!!!
cahuenga
Saw the post was tagged “assholes” and thought I should comment.
BGinCHI
Can anyone make a case against building internment camps for anyone who would vote for Mike Huckabee?
Corner Stone
Damn, what’d NAMBLA ever do to you?
WereBear
@lamh36: That is messed up. No point to dragging their feet NOW.
Jerks.
WereBear
@BGinCHI: Nope.
Cluttered Mind
@Corner Stone: Yeah, why does everyone hate the North American Marlon Brando Look-Alikes?
chopper
@BGinCHI:
i can. internment camps? taking it a little easy on em, aren’t you?
schrodinger's cat
True, but gloating seems a bit unseemly since those 9 folks are still dead for no fault of their own. Also, these symbolic victories are wonderful but unless the GOP politicians pay an electoral price for being last Rhodesian lite, it will remain just that.
Lee
I was thinking the same thing.
With the way his war is turning out, I’m beginning to think this guy must be related to Rumsfeld.
Cluttered Mind
@chopper: Perhaps foster homes for their children, run by Josh Duggar.
Patricia Kayden
Funny how Republicans are trying to create a scandal over donations given to the Clinton Fund but had no problem taking money from out and out racists like the Council of Conservative (aka White Supremacist) Citizens. They’re only giving back or giving away the CCC’s donations because of the publicity generated by Roof.
Amazing.
Cluttered Mind
@Lee: No way. Rumsfeld would never in a million years use his own hands to commit violence when he could use someone else’s instead.
Cluttered Mind
@Patricia Kayden: It’s almost like they learned nothing from what happened to Trent Lott.
GregB
We’re gonna need a bigger ash bin.
Peale
@schrodinger’s cat: yep. The flag comes down, but voting rights disappear anyway. It’s not like there’s this sudden change of heart about a lot of things.
BGinCHI
@chopper: Baby steps.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lamh36: Wrong-Way is getting the crap smacked out of him from every direction. It’s great.
Germy Shoemangler
This week’s New Yorker cover
chopper
@BGinCHI:
first they came for the confederate flag, and i did not speak out because i am not a confederate flag…
BGinCHI
What’s the difference between the Republican Party of 2008-2015 and a White Supremacist party?
The only answer I can think of is “Honesty.”
Arclite
Now if we could just do something about the availability of guns.
And cover mental health as part of standard care (my insurance only covers 50%, vs. the 90% for most issues).
WereBear
@Arclite: Yes. Sickly ironic that Republicans are the first to blame white gunmen on “mental illness” and then make sure few can get treatment.
lamh36
Yep
Mandalay
@lamh36:
Kristol has completely lost the plot. He’s ranting about “the left” getting rid of the Confederate flag while Republican presidential candidates trample over each other to proclaim their support for its removal.
geg6
@Patricia Kayden:
And every time one of those fuckers try to make hay out of Clinton Initiative donors, this will be brought up. I hope.
Gin & Tonic
@Cluttered Mind: Yeah, poor Trent, probably suffering from a hernia he got carrying his money to the bank.
You know that he’s probably making ten times what he made as a US Senator, right? He’s managing the lobbying practice at Patton Boggs, the US’s largest (by revenue) lobbying firm.
Keith P.
@Mike J: That Shuh-ryuh really does creep slowly, doesn’t it?
Brendan in Charlotte
Haley’s attempt, while admirable, sounds too much like our Governor McCrory in the newly insane state on NC.
He vetoed 2 pet Republican bills (abortion and the ability for magistrates to opt out of their job if those icky gays want to marry), after loudly trumpeting that he would.
Both overwhelmingly Republican state houses promptly overrode his vetoes.
He actually campaigned to Republicans supporting those positions.
So he gets to try to look like he’s being picked on by both parties…
Ravi J
Shorter Romney:’Take down the confederate flag, fellas, and raise a Mornon flag’.
lamh36
@Mandalay: the dude is ridiculous. I mean he’s jewish right, so does have have the same feelings when discussing the symbol of the people fighting on behave of the persecutors of his people?
Turgidson
@lamh36:
Bloody Bill WRONG Kristol never fails to find a way to prove he’s an even more clueless dipshit than we already thought. If there was an Olympics for that sort of thing, he’s Michael f’n Phelps.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: It’s not true they were not a fault. Like Michael Brown, like Tamir Rice, they were breathing while black.
Seonachan
@lamh36: Some great responses to Kristol there. I liked this one: “Isn’t being wrong about 21st century wars enough? Do you have to go back and be wrong about 19th century wars too?”
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh36: My god. Next Kristol will be defending the SS guards at Auschwitz. With a straight face.
gene108
@Mandalay:
Wonder, if Kristol got the memo about Roof’s manifesto talking some shit about the Jews…
There’s a pretty small step to going from shitting on blacks to shitting on Jews.
Brachiator
@lamh36: With the 4th of July coming up, I’m looking forward to reading Kristol praise the Loyalists who fought for Great Britain.
Mike J
Etsy has joined in refusing to sell treason flags too.
http://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-bans-sales-of-confederate-flags-related-items/
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI: And the White Supremacists are the honest ones.
Mandalay
@Ravi J:
Oh bullshit. Romney has truly led on this issue. He has loudly and consistently been against the Confederate flag for years.
There is plenty to not like about Romney, but on this issue he has been miles ahead of every other (white) politician. If more politicians had had the guts to take Romney’s position when it was a lot less politically convenient that fucking flag would have been long gone.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just “following orders” you know.
kc
Deleted my prior cynical comment.
I’ll just say it’s too damn bad it took the murder of 9 people to get to this point.
Iowa Old Lady
@Arclite: Wasn’t there something in the ACA about covering mental illness in the same way other illnesses are covered? Has Richard ever addressed this?
bystander
I’m all for the flag’s removal, but that’s not taking the place of meaningful gun control. This guy’s pending drug charges should have disqualified him from purchasing a gun.
What I don’t get is why more people who are the descendants of the Union soldiers who gave their lives, their limbs and their youth to preserve the nation, aren’t saying that their ancestors, the victors, don’t deserve this blatantly racist and seditious tripe. If you want to label yourself personally as a loser, be my guest. But appropriating public space to voice this crap is an affront to all of us.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: Zactly. Also better uniforms.
trollhattan
@Mike J:
Suppose one of the unintended consequences is finding out just how many damn places have been selling them all this time. Has Nieman Marcus ever had an “Antebellum His and Hers replica plantations” in their Christmas catalog?
kc
@lamh36:
I read that sales of confederate flags had spiked on Amazon (before the site decided to stop selling them). Much like, I guess, when 20 schoolkids got shot and Americans rushed out to buy the model of gun that was used to kill them.
kc
@bystander:
What I don’t get is the number of people from the north who retire to South Carolina and then write letters to the newspaper saying they’re from the north, but they sure do admire the confederate flag. No joke.
lamh36
@kc: appears to be in reaction to big retailers pulling merchandise
White Trash Liberal
This doesn’t erase the fact that none of those bigoted GOP meatsicles dared admit the murderer was racist. While I celebrate this baby step towards modernity, they still sing from the white power hymnal and will signal their true sympathies through deeds and rhetoric that further their white power goals.
bemused
@lamh36:
Gotta stockpile confederate flags and doodads just like guns and lightbulbs.
Karen in GA
@lamh36: Oh, FFS with this guy already. “Hmm. What are decent people doing/saying/thinking? Yeah, let me not.”
ETA: Decent people, or sentient beings with the slightest instinct towards self-preservation.
Eric U.
@trollhattan: I think both Walmart and Amazon were only selling them in their role as a marketplace for 3rd party vendors. At least I hope so
NonyNony
I mean, I’d hope so. Except that I would bet that if I wandered over to Stormfront (not going to do it) I’d find that the mouthbreathers are using all of this as evidence that the Black/Jewish/Liberal/Lizardpeople Conspiracy that controls the gubbmint is even more powerful than they thought it was and they’ll double down.
That doesn’t mean that this isn’t a good outcome. It’s just that I wouldn’t expect these losers to quite get the proper message from how it went down. They’re just going to double down and get angrier at their impotence.
shawn
@bystander: “I’m all for the flag’s removal, but that’s not taking the place of meaningful gun control. This guy’s pending drug charges should have disqualified him from purchasing a gun.”
well said. Pres. Obama said a similar thing about racism on WTF. Everybody gets all huffy pufy about symbols and words and it allows everybody (left and right) to do nothing real on the actual issues. Taking down a flag or getting people to stop saying a word are great. But getting that done feels like an acomplishment and it shouldn’t because it isn’t. Yes the symbols symbolize the evil underneath but I feel like we are constantly attacking the wrong part of so many issues. Maybe it is because it is the part that is easy to fix but it feels empty after a while.
jl
@lamh36:
” @BillKristol
The Left’s 21st century agenda: expunging every trace of respect, recognition or acknowledgment of Americans who fought for the Confederacy. ”
Kristol has lost it. He claims to be a ‘Grant-Sherman’ type of guy, and uses the history of the Democratic Copperheads to show off his history cred. But it is easy to find news articles that describe how the so-called Confederate Flag that is subject of controversy today is really the battle flag of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and was elevated to symbol of ‘Southern Heritage’ long after the Civil War as a protest against measures to ensure civil rights for all people, most notably in the 1950s and 1960s.
Kristol is very elective in citing history.
Any whites in the South who are feeling all butthurt have to recognize that continued toleration of racism in that region is polluting their desire to honor the good parts of their heritage. Which might be a minor corollary of what Obama was talking about when he mentioned (perhaps too directly), but did not ‘use’ the N-word.
Pee Cee
@kc:
Because of what it stands for: racism. Same reason you see pickups with confederate flags outside the former confederacy.
What I don’t get is that anyone from up north would retire to South Carolina – full stop. I get that we don’t have winter here, but y’all ever been here in the summertime?
jl
@shawn: I agree. Thing is, as long as cultural history is allowed to be hijacked for ulterior motives, which i think is a problem with many who are so invested in ‘Southern Heritage’ the whole effort to sift through one’s history and honestly evaluate it, honor the good parts, learn from the bad parts, is polluted.
If those who are not racist but are so invested in ‘Southern History’ don’t deal with how that tradition has been and is being hijacked to promote racism, all that will happen is another symbol will be hijacked.
Every group, every region of this country has very dark aspects that do not deserve to be honored. Have to honestly face that, or whole project of honoring one’s heritage is polluted and will be hijacked by people who want to preserve the dishonorable parts of heritage.
lamh36
Um…what?
ThresherK (GPad)
@Eric U.: No idea on that.
However, it does point up the “who owns it” bit for the several tiers of Amazon link sales. This may be the tripping point for a bunch of things to be codified there.
Walmart online has struck me as a,bot aggregator of links to almost any vendor anywhere. All the charm of shopping at a Walmart ultimately buying from someone who has met, uh, Walmart’s rigorous selection system, with a layer of Walmart cookies and links laid on top.
That makes Amazon (with its own systemic warts) look good by comparison.
muddy
@Corner Stone: NAMBLA = NRA
Both of them concern an inappropriate and dangerous sexual fetish that hurts others.
shawn
@lamh36: Clayton Bigsby
dogwood
@Pee Cee:
I hear you. I’ve always given southerners their due credit in the area where they are tough as nails. And that’s their ability to survive and thrive in that oppressive heat and humidity.
lamh36
Scalise!!!! yeah..naw…
Oh and hmmm wonder what their polls are telling them:
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@NonyNony:
Honestly, has anyone who said they were trying to start a “race war” ever actually managed to do it? Charles Manson? This asshole?
Amir Khalid
@lamh36:
I remember what Stevie Wonder had to say about it:
Cacti
@lamh36:
The Ku Klux Klan who popularized the confederate battle flag also despised Jews, Roman Catholics, and pretty much any religious group that wasn’t evangelical Protestant.
Kristol seems to have a bad case of Stockholm syndrome.
p.a.
@Pee Cee: most are probably snowbirds. Anecdotally, many recent retirees I know are moving to N.C., Tennessee, Ga. and not Florida. Fla’s rep as stupid central is getting around.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@shawn:
If there’s momentum to get rid of the flag now, I say let’s take advantage of it and get rid of something that’s been an open sore since 1962. Since even Republicans are climbing on the bandwagon, now’s the best time to do it.
Mike in NC
Bill Kristol is merely being consistent. He has always been on the wrong side of every issue imaginable.
Waiting to see more pro-Confederate pushback from NRO, Jonah Goldberg, Limbaugh and all the other usual suspects.
schrodinger's cat
Has Balloon Juice darling, Larison, weighed in on this?
japa21
@NonyNony: What the hard core flag defenders are probably saying, or at least I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, is that the massacre was actually a conspiracy cooked up by the n****r in the WH to convince people that keeping the flag up was a bad idea and a way to get sympathy for those animals.
They just used Roof and talked him into doing it and will probably make sure he gets killed quickly so he won’t spill the beans.
jl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Thankfully, not in the US today. But in the past, mere rumor and BS started mini-race wars of very majority and more powerful whites against blacks, Hispanics, Asian in areas all over the country. Think New York Draft Riots during Civil War, Tulsa Riot, anti-Chinese riots in California.
Sometimes I wonder if the institutionalized racism of law enforcement policy in some areas of the country (often far away from the South) is just very low level, softer, chronic version of those episodes.
Blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate, but arrest rates for blacks is, what, three or four times higher for those offenses. Don’t burn them alive in their homes or shoot, them. But just lock ’em up.
Steeplejack
@Pee Cee:
Air conditioning. And retirees don’t have to be out and about all the time.
lamh36
Cacti
So, Steve Scalise is planning to attend the memorial service?
Talk about having no shame.
Mike in NC
@Pee Cee: Lots of people from the north dream of leaving the Rustbelt when they retire. Many end up in Florida and discover they can’t stand the ghastly summers, so they settle for finding nice affordable gated communities in SC or NC where they won’t be forced to mingle with non-whites. They’re known as “halfbacks” since they refuse to go back to where it snows half the year.
Villago Delenda Est
@japa21: Roof tried to kill himself but he was out of rounds.
He left one woman alive so she could tell the world what happened.
schrodinger's cat
I just checked out K-Lo’s Corner of Crazy and found out that Rich Lowry has a sad about the Confederate flag issue. So Bill K has company.
jl
@japa21: No, silly. The Jewish bankers will be the masterminds. You don’t think the racists ever stop at hating on just one race or ethnicity, do you? That was Roof’s fantasy, that the Jews were masterminding the take over by the blacks. That sound familiar?
Unless of course you have an inadequate blah man /evil black super genius to be the mastermind. Wonder who that could be?
America’s Worst Lawyer, Larry Klayman, Explains How Barack Obama Got Those Blacks Shot In Charleston
by Doktor Zoom
Jun 23
http://wonkette.com/589266/americas-worst-lawyer-larry-klayman-explains-how-barack-obama-got-those-blacks-shot-in-charleston
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
So his requesting some Burger King grub was a second suicide attempt?
Cacti
@Mike in NC:
I lived in western NC for 11 years, and the popular thing for retirees was to winter in Florida and summer in western NC or upstate SC.
“Floridiots” was the unaffectionate term the locals used for them.
NotMax
@lamh36
Kristol Spew Caucasian
(With sincere apologies to Tommy James & the Shondells.)
Cacti
@jl:
Of course.
The black people were just the thralls providing the muscle for the Jewish bankers in their new world order domination plans. That’s pretty much the mother’s milk for any white supremacist conspiracy crank.
Mike J
@Cacti:
Know who the Klan liked?
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
The Republican Party hides it well enough to get votes from a tiny percentage of blacks and a moderate percentage of Hispanics and Asian Americans.
NotMax
*head/desk*
jl
@Roger Moore: Actually, I think there is a big difference. The rank and file of a standard white supremacist party is full of ignorant people who actually believe all the fantasy BS.
The post-Nixon Southern Strategy GOP uses racial division as a tool to gain power and money. The power and money are the real goals, and where the power and money goes, GOP wedge policy follows. Today, Walmart and Amazon lead the way, and I think GOP may be surfing along on the marketing savvy and knowledge of those two and similar corporations.
Part of what we see going on today wrt to flag is problem of GOP and all their vast social opinion engineering fronts dealing with tools that are starting to go out of control. The bigshots think that their propaganda will not go out of control, but it always does unless you are willing to go Nazi or Stalinist in domestic security. So you get Bundy ranch, you get anti-government nuts assassinating random cops sitting down for lunch break, you get paranoid haters and nuts sitting through a Bible study in a church and assassinating a bunch of African-Americans to try to start a race war.
Piece at TPM by Ed Kilgore touches on this issue.
What Haley’s Confederate Flag Speech Really Means For The GOP
” But push comes to shove, her [Gov. Haley’s] loyalty is to the same Golden Calf of unregulated capitalism worshiped by Scott Walker, not to the regional aristocracy of the Old South. ”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/nikki-haley-confederate-flag-speech
Kerry Reid
@gene108: And Catholics. The Klan hates Catholics, too — a fact I am forever pointing out to conservative Catholics who make common cause with right-wing fundies over abortion and Teh Gheyz.
ETA: I see others already addressed this upthread. But yeah. Catholics who think the far-right fundie set wouldn’t toss them on the pyres if they had the opportunity are delusional.
trollhattan
@jl:
Wasn’t her first comment re. the flag that she hadn’t heard complaints about it from the state’s bidnezpeople? Seem to recall her saying something unsettling like that. (Who was it that elected you again, lady?)
Botsplainer
Trent Lott and the CoCC – a trip down memory lane.
http://archive.adl.org/mwd/ccc.html
trollhattan
@Kerry Reid:
Watching the PBS series on Prohibition a few years ago I was surprised at the Klan’s support of it, to the point of holding large marches in D.C.. Talk about strange bed(sheet)fellows.
Kerry Reid
And I hate to sound cynical, but I have a feeling a lot of the push from the GOP side around the flag now looks like this.
satby
@lamh36:
I had to go reply to Kristol on Twitter with “and proud to do it too!”
Kerry Reid
@trollhattan: Booze made the darkies and the papists get all likkered up and rape nice white southern Christian ladies! I did a tour of Frances Willard’s home in Evanston for an article earlier this year. One thing I learned was that Willard (who was president of the WCTU, but also very active in suffrage movements, etc.) was initially using that line about booze causing crime among the lower races. She got her ass handed to her by Ida B. Wells. And stopped using that rhetoric.
So people CAN learn and evolve. The connections between feminism and temperance make some sense, inasmuch as a lot of women were negatively affected by men drinking. So the push for suffrage and the push for temperance came about at the same time. Not a completely overlapping set of activists, of course — but definitely connections.
I kinda wish someone would push to get Ida Wells on the currency. She is hands down my favorite American badass activist and organizer.
mdblanche
@jl:
Yes.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@jl:
I probably should have been more specific, but you did hit on my point: Manson and this jackass were expecting/hoping to spark a “race war” of black people killing white people. I’m pretty sure that hasn’t ever happened since the days of slave revolts (and killing your slavemaster is a whole heck of a lot different than killing random people).
I think the whole “race war” thing is based on an assumption that black people are just as violent and hate-filled as white people, so of course they would react as white people have done for a couple of centuries (at least) and start rampaging around killing indiscriminately.
Frankly, the closest I’ve heard to it was some nasty gang killings here in the LA area where black and Latino gangs were too lazy to seek out actual members of other gangs, so they just started gunning down the first Latino or black person they saw. But I’m pretty sure that the actions of criminal gangs can’t be ascribed to the black or Latino populations as a whole.
GregB
@mdblanche:
Henry Gibson’s speech was lifted from a documentary about white racist supremacists called Blood in the Face.
It also had the unforgettable line: Seig Heil and let’s have lunch.
trollhattan
@Kerry Reid:
Fascinating. Thanks!
Mandalay
@shawn:
Making that vile flag to become toxic to mainstream America is a massive accomplishment (even if Dylann Roof deserves most of the credit), regardless of gun control laws.
You sound like you’re whitesplaining.
kc
@Cacti:
Yeah. It’s gross.
jl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree. I am well known here as an advocate of notion that ‘race’ as a fundamental category of humans is myth. It does not exist, beyond a very few very superficial surface traits. Except for those, individual variation swamps inter-group average differences in pretty much every important biological characteristic and capability.
So, i always start out as very doubtful about the idea that one can make any generalization about a whole racial or ethnic group based on the behavior of a subgroup that is subjected to certain environmental, economic, political power relationship, and social histories.
That includes whites being on average more hateful of naturally prejudiced, or blacks being a whole host of fantasies entertained by racists, or Hispanics, or whatever group.
One of the first things that got me interested in statistics was numerical taxonomy. Interesting fact is that taxonomic algorithms used to separate plants and animals into different species and subspecies and ‘races’ (used in the animal husbandry and plant breeding sense) do not work on humans. They all spit out the same answer, not matter how you jigger and tinker with the method of splitting out biological groups. Algorithm always spits out the following: ‘Hi, I am your algorithm. I have finished my calculations. You humans are all the same bunch. Here is your biological racial tree, it is one line going to one dot, representing all of you. Give me a command and I will gladly call the Latex routine and draw it for you if you do not understand the result.”
gene108
@lamh36:
Why the hell does Kentucky have a Jeff Davis statue?
They were not part of the Confederacy. I know from history books a lot of Kentucky folks wanted to join the Confederacy, but a large contingent of Union troops helped keep them in the Union during the Civil War.
Patricia Kayden
@kc: I heard that too. It would be nice if Amazon refunded the buyers and refused to fill the orders.
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
Yes, last October, and Haley didn’t give a flying shit about that flag until this week, when it became crystal clear which way public opinion was blowing. Even last week after the massacre she was non-commital, and said that she had more important stuff to worry about.
Haley had a simple choice to make: to push for the flag’s removal or push for the flag’s retention, and she chose removal. Well bully for her, but let’s not kid ourselves that she didn’t realize her political career would be over if she had gone down the other path.
opiejeanne
@Mandalay: he sounds like a concern troll to me. Earlier he posted about why he didn’t vote for Obama, because of lack of experience on Obama’s part the first election and I don’t know what the second time, and now he’s saying similar shit about not voting for Hilary. Lack of experience? I’m not sure but he sounded like that was part of his reason.
trollhattan
@gene108:
Was thinking the same thing. If it’s Daniel Boone shoving a bear-skinnin’ knife up Jeff’s arse, then I’m for keeping it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@jl:
IIRC, the average housecat has more biological diversity in their DNA than the average human. We’re really all pretty much the exact same make and model with different paint jobs.
fuckwit
@shawn: It’s the fucking high-school prom media. They care only about image, symbolism, surface perception. They’re MODELS for fuck’s sake. So this they understand.
But, how you speak and what you see does affect how you think, so, getting rid of overt racism and sexism such as hateful words and hateful symbols does help create a more tolerant environment. It’s just not sufficient, only a first step in many cases. If you look at the history of any tolerance movement (feminism, African American civil rights, LBGT rights, Jewish anti-defamation), these symbolic victories do indeed contribute to changing the culture over time.
Good riddance to the Dixie Swastika.
jl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): That squares with what I read too. I was surprised when I first read that all animals we think of as one species had far more genetic diversity than humans. I found it hard to believe.But it appears to be true.
On the other hand, we have only been here 150 to 200 K years. That is a very short time in the grand scheme of things biological.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
There was a hell of a lot of anti-Catholic bigotry behind Prohibition, not just a puritanical desire to prevent people from consuming demon rum.
LAC
@opiejeanne: lol! Yeah, the lack of experience at being a white male. Which is what is needed to be president, apparently.
satby
@Roger Moore: Specifically directed at the Irish and Italian immigrants in big cities.
Villago Delenda Est
@satby: A lot of drug laws have as much to do with “who uses drugs” as it does with any of the effects of the drugs, for good or bad.
TerryC
@kc: I added to that spike when I ordered the 4’x6′ one that I am going to burn on July 4.
Paul in KY
@cahuenga: Thanks!
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: That scumbag would have been right there with Benedict Arnold. Just wouldn’t have been as competent as Arnold was.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: Gee whiz, would I love to get that statue of the chief traitorous scum-lizard out of my capital rotunda!!
Paul in KY
@gene108: The POS was born in KY.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Sadly, that is not the statue. That would be one I would want kept, though.