His fellow GOP candidates have been busily insulting people of color, Spanish speakers, immigrants, gays, women, and atheists. Where’s an aspiring Leader of All Bigots going to attract a little media attention in such a throng?
Reports Julian Brave NoiseCat, at HuffPo:
GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul took to the airwaves Thursday to broadcast his theory that Native Americans “don’t do very well because of their lack of assimilation.”
The Kentucky senator’s comment followed an exchange with conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham about what she called “separatist” immigrant communities. Ingraham was incredulous that “the MSNBC crowd” supported Jeb Bush’s penchant for speaking Spanish at campaign events.
Asked whether he thought speaking Spanish was appropriate, Paul veered off to talk about the only people who never immigrated to this country: Native Americans.
“I think assimilation is an amazing thing,” Paul said. “A good example of how, even in our country, assimilation didn’t happen — and it has been a disaster for the people — has been the Native American population on the reservations. If they were assimilated, within a decade they’d probably be doing as well as the rest of us. But instead, seclusion and isolating them — we took their land, and then we put them all on small quadrants of land.”…
Of course, Rand Paul is probably grateful that he wasn’t getting much media attention in August, when three of his top associates were indicted for financial violations during Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign. (“Two of the indicted aides, Jesse Benton (who is married to Rand Paul’s niece) and John Tate, were running the main super-PAC supporting Rand Paul’s presidential campaign,” according to Russ Choma at Mother Jones). Or when, a week ago, “Federal prosecutors prevailed… in their yearlong fight to force Google Inc. to turn over the emails of an indicted Republican consultant with close ties to Ron and Rand Paul.” That “dispute… [had] gotten attention in libertarian and technology circles as a test of the government’s ability to broadly review email accounts during criminal investigations”, but Rand’s guys lost, and capital-L Libertarians don’t seem to have much time for losers.
And he didn’t help his status with the True Believers at Reason by sucking up to Kim Davis, presumably in an attempt to try and milk some hometown sympathy (or at least an attaboy from her Liberty Counsel puppeteers).
He’s been reduced to defending Donald Trump from Hugh Hewitt, which is an inversion of normal Paulite alignments that make him sound almost like a reasonable person.
Should’ve stayed fat & happy in your old man’s little fiefdom, Rand. That’s a lifetime gig with very nice bennies and no heavy lifting, exactly what you were born and bred for. Running pantsless onto the national stage screaming LOOOKIT MEEEE! just hasn’t been nearly as fun or profitable as you expected.
***********
Apart from waiting for the overburdened RNC to finish sweeping some of its minor embarrassments candidates under the rug (insert your own Trump/Rand hairpiece joke here), what’s on the agenda for the start of the big weekend?
Schlemazel
The real tell of the power of the Glibertarian hoards within the GOP has been the total lack of movement in the polls for Ayn Paul despite his hateful rhetoric. His screeds are just as wonderful as tRump’s but he gains no traction from them. Sure, some of that may be because the giant hair sucks all the air out of the room but mostly it shows how small and ineffective the Paul crowd is and how little the rest of the morans on that side respect them.
Baud
I’m surprised Rand didnt blame the Native Americans’ plight on that Democrat Andrew Jackson. He really is off his game.
RK
Can’t say I’ve heard Paul all that much but I wouldn’t call him hateful. And he doesn’t get traction because republicans aren’t libertarians they’re authoritarians.
Keith G
Getting ready to begin the fourth day of my work week. Sunday is my Friday.
I am reading a history of the early Middle Ages. I have just finished several interesting chapters about the process and impact of the migrations that changed Europe c. 350-500.
Among the groups of migrants/invaders were people who are now referred generally as the Huns, Bulgars, Franks and others.
Karma?
Anyway, I do suggest reading histories of early Europe and Asia as an interesting way to put current times into a different context.
OzarkHillbilly
Yeah. Right. 150 years after the end of slavery, and blacks are doing just as well as the rest of us. Oh, wait a minute, he did say assimilated, not red lined into ghettos.
Yeah, uh Rand? Keeping them secluded and isolated was the plan. Jeebus, is he the dumbest fvck to ever fall off the turnip truck?
@RK:
Then you haven’t been paying attention. The man surrounds himself with racist KKK rejects.
Joey Maloney
Now I’m picturing three-year-old Rand marching downstairs during one of Mommy & Daddy’s cocktail parties, dropping his little PJ pants, and whizzing all over the rug.
OzarkHillbilly
Alaskan woman steals police car with husband handcuffed in back
The following day troopers arrested Amber Watford, 28, and Joshua Watford 38, in a home about 45 miles (72 km) north of Anchorage in Wasilla, where they were found hiding in Sarah Palins basement, the report said.
OK, I made up that last part, but is Wasilla a crazy magnet, or what?
Baud
@Keith G:
There’s a Yale or Harvard video on the same subject available on the tubes and iTunes U. I really enjoyed it.
satby
Glad to see Rand getting no traction this year. His followers are dolts. But I suspect a lot of them switched allegiance to tRump because they want loud and proud racebaiting, not more subtle dogwhistling.
bystander
I can’t look at Rand and not think of Pierce’s (?) descriptor, “tribble topped”. Makes me smile everytime I see him.
Gimlet
This Trump fella is right. A wall at the Mexican border would not only protect ‘Merican jobs but give many other benefits as well.
In fact I think my state should put one on the border with neighboring states to protect our jobs.. Wait, not just our state but my city! Not only can we protect jobs but we can keep out all that cultural contamination too. Now if we block TV, radio and censor print…
Baud
@satby:
Trump is the George Wallace Democrat the Republican base has been waiting for.
Gimlet
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah. Right. 150 years after the end of slavery, and blacks are doing just as well as the rest of us. Oh, wait a minute, he did say assimilated, not red lined into ghettos.
We tried to help those people get homes and be like the rest of us, but they tanked the world’s economy. Ingrates!
Comrade Jake
I just want to express my appreciation once again for Trump’s world-class trolling of so much of the conservative establishment.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud: he wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
Baud
@Baud:
Pre-coffee comment. Trump is obviously the type of Republican their base has been waiting for — one who campaigns in the Wallace style.
Bobby Thomson
@Joey Maloney: I’m picturing the same from 53-year-old Randy.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson:
No. Of course not. The sum total of GOP minorty outreach is “weren’t we awesome in 1860?” They were, of course, but who cares?
Ken
This is that famous libertarian emphasis on everyone being part of a larger group and following the consensus social rules, right?
Gimlet
@Baud:
The association of today’s Republicans with the 1860 Republicans works as well as Hitler’s association with the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” marking him as a “Socialist”.
Matt McIrvin
You know, the reason the Cherokees got mythologized as the people that every white American claims to be related to is that they tried really, really hard to assimilate into white American society. And they got marched out to Oklahoma anyway.
Baud
@Gimlet:
He wasn’t even German!
OzarkHillbilly
2,000 cases may be overturned because police used secret Stingray surveillance
Defence attorneys and civil liberties activists told the Guardian that prosecutors and police departments go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being forced to reveal their use of these devices. They do this by using Stingrays in the first instance, then reverse-engineering a case which they can safely bring to trial without mentioning the surveillance equipment.
That 2,000 cases is in Baltimore alone.
Gimlet
@OzarkHillbilly:
They would rather use torture and then reverse-engineer the case, but the public is still not in general agreement with this.
satby
For the big weekend: bulldozing my bedroom (figuratively) to remove all of my stuff, dismantling my queen platform bed, finding a place to store my mattress in this teensy house, and then assembling the two twin beds that were delivered for my exchange students, who arrive this week. I don’t have air conditioning and my bedroom should be about 90 degrees every single day this weekend.
If I finish that, then I move on to ripping up the carpet in the other bedroom where I will set up a futon for me to sleep for the next ten months.
Just contemplating all this holiday weekend fun makes me tired.
Gimlet
@Baud:
I heard on Faux, he was an “Anchor Baby”!
RK
I’ve never seen anything racist or hateful from him and, while it may be for show, he seems to have made an effort to engage the black community– something other high-profile Republicans apparently don’t do. He may indeed be racist, or dismissive of minorities, but I can’t say I’ve really seen it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gimlet: From what I hear, that didn’t stop them in Chicago.
scav
hmmm, this bright little idea of his would rather pop to his lips the week of Denali, now wouldn’t it?
satby
@RK: He has publicly stated that businesses should be allowed to discriminate and that he would have opposed the Civil Rights act. You must have missed that.
OzarkHillbilly
@RK: Rand Paul aide has history of racial comments
Rand Paul spokesman resigns as controversy swirls over writings
You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas:
Rand Paul On ‘Maddow’ Defends Criticism Of Civil Rights Act, Says He Would Have Worked To Change Bill
OzarkHillbilly
I am in moderation. I thought 3 links was safe. Silly me.
Sorry RK, you’ll just have to wait for Anne or somebody to fix it.
Bobby Thomson
@RK: you’re blind. He opposes the Civil Rights Act, among other things.
RK
@satby: Isn’t an unfettered marketplace part of the libertarian position, at least for a certain subset. That perspective may lack empathy but it’s not necessarily hateful.
Germy Shoemangler
Headline on CBS This Morning:
Annual West Point pillowfight ends in injuries, concussions.
Participants put heavy objects in the pillowcases, like helmets.
debbie
@Gimlet:
How long until one of them pipes up with a suggestion we build a wall around China — one that actually works?
Elizabelle
@satby: Good luck!
I’m going to pop this link in a few threads this weekend:
CREDO Mobile online petition to change Reagan Airport’s name back to Washington National.
Petition has links that explain how the travesty of naming it for RWReagan came around. Trust me, there was no local groundswell. Washington National honors the president and describes the city the airport serves. Twas Republican overreach.
NYTimes from February 4, 1998: Grover Norquist that started this foolishness. (There’s reason enough for the change, right there.) Trent Lott shepherded it through.
The Democrats should NEVER have let them rename, and they didn’t even get anything in return. (NYTimes story explains.)
I’d have waited until Nancy passed to organize to change DCA’s name back, but take advantage of the Denali publicity.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
Newsday report says no one has been punished. Amazing, since concealing helmets in the pillowcases could possibly have led to fatalities.
OzarkHillbilly
@RK:
Slavery isn’t necessarily hateful either.
RK
@OzarkHillbilly: If you’re referring to some of Paul’s associates being racist I just read a bit of that on my own. (Paul’s father was tied to racists as well if I recall correctly.) That he keeps such company is troubling to say the least but I still can’t say I’ve seen him be hateful or racist or propose anything that would demonstrate he is, though he indeed may be. I’m off so I’ll read the replies later.
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t think libertarians endorse slavery.
Chris
@Schlemazel:
Yeah, this is why I’ve never understood why people pay any attention to the Pauls. They have zero following. As their showing in presidential election after presidential election shows.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
It was more than offensive that an airport would be named after the man who made air travel such a misery in the early 1980s. There were many very scary moments on and above the runways.
satby
@RK: yeah, I guess nothing says “liberty” like the right to refuse service to people based on arbitrary categories without regulatory repercussions.
We’re done here.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
The number of Washingtonians who’ve never called it anything but National or DCA is considerable. I can only say I’d be completely on board with de-naming it.
(Also, I’ve been dreading for a while the day that someone important decided to put a Ronald Reagan Monument in DC).
satby
@Elizabelle: Thanks, I will need it.I honestly have no business hosting, I live too close to the financial edge, but these kids weren’t going to be able to come otherwise.
And when I worked in DC occasionally I flew into Dulles just to avoid having to land at National, because of the name change. I hated the guy that much.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
That’s awesome.
Cervantes
He’ll think of something. They always think of something.
PS: What did I tell you? His understanding of “assimilation” is remarkable, too.
MomSense
@satby:
Oh my! That is a big, steaming project for a hot weekend. Be careful!
These Republicans are proving my hypothesis that half the country is stupid. Calling genocide a failure to assimilate is disgusting.
Baud
@MomSense:
Very Borg-like.
Woodrowfan
can they get rid of that awful statue of RR that’s in front of the airport now too? I flip it off every time I drive past it when I go to National. Maybbe move it to the Reagan Building in DC. put it in the basement.
OTOH, Dulles wasn’t any better than RR. We’re blessed with airports named after 2 reactionaries.
Germy Shoemangler
Two thieves in Brazil targeted a woman, not realizing she is a MMA fighter. One of them grabbed her cellphone and got away, but she subdued the other thief:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpWSNXU8nw0#t=137
Cervantes
@Woodrowfan:
And that’s just in the DC area.
OzarkHillbilly
@RK:
Serfdom is the preferred Libertarian nomenclature.
All Libertarian philosophy can be reduced to “the strongest have the freedom to do whatever they want, and everybody else has the freedom to die if they don’t want to do what they are told.” or to put it another way, “the freedom to hate.” Rand pretties it up with all kinds of flowery language, but it all comes down to that.
Right now he is defending Kim Davis in her “struggle to force everyone else to live by her religious principles” otherwise known as “I hate gays.”
japa21
Yes, I think Paul is a hateful, little man. But at least in this case he isn’t blaming Native Americans for their situation, unlike when he has blamed blacks for theirs. He really is saying it is the fault of the White establishment. But he really comes off as a condescending jerk most of the time.
Patrick
@Elizabelle:
We renamed an airport after Reagan eventhough he gave weapons to our arch nemesis Iran. Shouldn’t major airports now be named after Obama since he got a treaty with Iran?
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: yep. It’s like he’s making an argument for affirmative action or something.
Maybe he’s hoping we can take their children away to boarding schools and foster homes again.
Zinsky
Rand Paul said some conciliatory things, but why should Native Americans “assimilate” into our culture? They were here first. I know this is heresy to say, even among many liberals, but America was built on the blood of African slaves and the indigenous people we slaughtered. You can deny it or get mad at me for saying it, but that is the truth.
Elizabelle
They did, of course, name the second biggest government building in DC after Reagan, but that was not good enough for Norquist.
From the 1998 NYTimes article: G.O.P. Tries to Wrap Up an Airport for Reagan
Change the damn name back to Washington National.
Trent Lott dissembled on that at the time too:
Facepalm. And the D of C was named after George Washington, wasn’t it?
OzarkHillbilly
@satby:
My hat is off to you.
Elizabelle
Yeah, that was such a finger in the eye, complete congressional overreach re the airport name. Which had stayed descriptive and bipartisan up to then.
Bob Barr was involved in the name change. Once it occurred, the GOP jackholes on the Hill complained the signs weren’t changed fast enough. (At local expense, if memory serves.)
Germy Shoemangler
@Elizabelle:
And there we have the logic of every conservative message board commenter I’ve ever read or had the poor judgement to attempt to engage with.
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy Shoemangler: Reminds me of the clip of 2 cage fighters in drag getting jumped by a group (?) of homo haters in London. Can’t find a link, but I laughed my ass off.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
You had four links. The reply link to RK counts against the total.
Honus
@RK: they do, they just call it the “right to contract”
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: Facepalm! Thanx. I never would have figured that out.
Cervantes
@satby:
A mensch is what you are.
So to speak.
Cervantes
@Patrick:
Given how most Americans feel about time spent there, perhaps all airports should be named after Republicans.
Honus
@OzarkHillbilly: or, as friend of mine succinctly reduced it back in about 1979, libertarianism is “the politics of selfishness”
LAC
@debbie: to this day, I refuse to call it anything but national airport. That Reagan corpse dancing is what the GOP excels in.
RK, stop digging that hole. You are well on your way to the earth’s crust with all that parsing of “is” you are doing
Cervantes
@debbie:
True as far as it goes, what with Reagan’s union-busting and all — but let’s not forget that airline deregulation began with the Carter Administration and that it was neither all good nor all bad.
gelfling545
I’d say that the root of the problem was the failure of the Europeans to assimilate with the indigenous cultures.
Germy Shoemangler
New film: “The Walk” about Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the twin towers.
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/thewalk/
Got sweaty palms just watching the trailer.
Also, it seems like only yesterday when the towers were being erased from feature films. I wonder if this film could have been released ten years ago.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: Lived in DC when they changed the name of the airport. The city was kind of poor at the time and we spent millions just to change all the signs on the highways. I can assure you nobody I know that lived in DC ever called it Reagan National.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
“This is no place for fatalities — it’s a military academy!”
Shades of Kubrick.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Elizabelle:
I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t recall that detail.
Whenever the name of something on the Metro rapid transit lines changes, Metro has to spend a bundle for new signs, new maps, etc., etc. I remember it being rather costly to them when DCA’s name was changed. (It also happens when areas near the stops lobby for changes to remind everyone of what’s nearby to try to increase foot traffic – e.g. “U Street / African- American Civil War Memorial / Cardozo”.)
Since Metro is underfunded as it is (and has a broken safety culture at least partially as a result), having them spend the money for another change to DCA’s name seems like a bad idea to me. Just leave it alone is my preference.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who calls them DCA and IAD anyway, and BWI also too, though Marshall was a great man.)
Cervantes
Via @OzarkHillbilly:
Need I say more?
Tommy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: When I lived in DC nobody I know ever flew out of that airport. It is like something that caters to the rich. BWI or Dulles isn’t that far and you pay a fraction to fly out of it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Tommy: It made Grover and his pals happy, which I suppose is the main thing.
raven
@Germy Shoemangler:
Let the Great World Spin: A Novel Paperback – December 2, 2009
by Colum McCann
Honus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: if I recall correctly, most of the signs simply read “national” and the republicans were complaining that they weren’t changed to “Reagan National” fast enough.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Off to swim and run errands.
Germy Shoemangler
@raven: It looks like McCann went for a larger, deeper view of the times. The description makes me want to buy the book.
I suspect the movie will be more of a caper film about Philippe and his buddies pulling off “the tightrope walk of the century” although I could be wrong.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tommy: It often takes us an extra hour or so to get to IAD compared to DCA. We avoid IAD unless it’s a long trip that doesn’t have flights out of DCA.
Convenience is a big plus, especially with the unpredictability of the traffic around here.
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: Another person mentioned the Reagan building. That and the airport are a running joke if you lived in the town. The Reagan building is amazing, but nothing going on in it. Maybe that is kind of telling.
PurpleGirl
The Tri-Borough Bridge will always be the Tri-Borough Bridge to me. Forget that renaming for the carpetbagger Robert F. Kennedy. And the City had to pay for the new signs — if the family wanted the name change to pave the way for Caroline to start a political career, well, they should have paid for the signage.
Ditto the Queensborough Bridge. Fuck renaming it for Edward I. Koch. He didn’t have any thing to do with Queens. IIRC, his old congressional district didn’t start to have a sliver in Queens until AFTER he no longer was a congressman. The district was held by Nydia Vasquez at that point.
A Queens resident since coming home from the Manhattan hospital where I was born, 60-odd years ago.
raven
@Germy Shoemangler: I really enjoyed the book and you are right about the scope. I wonder how the film will differ from Man on Wire? I liked it but I had re-eanctments spliced into documentaries and I thought they went over board on profiling Philippe. Reminded me of Downtown and Z-Dogs.
rikyrah
Have said it from the beginning. Trump is NOT appealing to some ‘sliver’ of the Republican Party. He is speaking the language of the MAINSTREAM of this GOP, but he does not do it in Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles. It’s been interesting to see articles being written trying to dance around what Trump is saying, because the dogwhistles gave the MSM the cover to pretend that the GOP doesn’t represent what they represent. Now, we get the articles about how ‘there must be more’ to their support of Trump. No. He expresses their hatred of THE OTHER in plain language, and that’s what they want. There IS nothing deeper there.
………………………………………………………………..
What Donald Trump Understands About Republicans
SEPT. 2, 2015
Donald
Trump’s success is no surprise. The public and the press have focused
on his defiant rejection of mannerly rhetoric, his putting into words of
what others think privately. But the more important truth is that a
half-century of Republican policies on race and immigration have made
the party the home of an often angry and resentful white constituency — a
constituency that is now politically mobilized in the face of
demographic upheaval.
Demographic upheaval may be understating it. From 1970 to 2010, the Hispanic population of the United States grew fivefold,
from 9.6 million to 50.5 million. From 2000 to 2010, the number of
white children under 18 declined by 4.3 million while the number of
Hispanic children grew by 4.8 million. In 2013, white children became a minority, 47.7 percent of students ages 3 to 6.
We have become familiar with Trump’s selling point — that he, more than any other Republican candidate, voices nativist and protectionist views in aggressive and abrasive terms, without qualm:
“I Love the Mexican people. I do business with the Mexican people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad.” He has vilified Latin American immigrants as “bringing drugs, bringing crime” and as “rapists.”
Not very subtly, Trump conflates American blacks with Mexican immigrants. “I know cities where police are afraid to even talk to people because they want to be able to retire and have their pension,” he declared in Nashville on Aug. 29. “That first night in Baltimore,” when rioting broke out in protest over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, “they allowed that city to be destroyed. They set it back 35 years in one night because the police weren’t allowed to protect people. We need law and order!”
Urban gangs, in turn, provide Trump with an opportunity to link immigration and crime.“You know a lot of the gangs that you see in Baltimore and in St. Louis and Ferguson and Chicago, do you know they’re illegal immigrants?” Trump vows that after the election, “they’re going to be gone so fast, if I win, that your head will spin.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/opinion/what-donald-trump-understands-about-republicans.html?_r=1
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl:
Are you sure? I remember the Mario Cuomo campaign signs got rather ugly… (“vote for Cuomo, not the homo”)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Honus: The original Metro map called it “National Airport”. Now it’s called “Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport” on the Metro map. I don’t recall what the street signs on the Parkway called it (I’m sure the National Park Service had to spend more than a little to change all the signs and their maps, also too.).
Cheers,
Scott.
Tommy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I am with you. When I lived in DC I lived on Capital Hill. Two blocks from Union Station. A block or two walk and I could end up anyplace in the world. I flew out of National more than once or twice, it was just really expensive.
Elizabelle
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
@Honus:
Class. The Republicans gots it, always. From the Deseret News of Salt Lake City, June 1998 [note this is four months after the name change]:
rikyrah
Whole Foods’ security guard is fired after ‘slamming a customer into concrete pillars before choking him unconscious in bloody attack when he tried to pay with food stamps’
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A Whole Foods Market security guard in Oakland has been fired after he allegedly assaulted a customer Thursday night
The attack reportedly began inside the store and an eyewitness shared disturbing images of the bloodied victim to Facebook
Witness Zoe Marks says the victim was not ‘shouting’ or being ‘violent’ before the guard slammed the man into concrete pillars
Marks says the guard put the shopper into a chokehold and ‘suffocated’ him before throwing him on the ground outside unconscious
Police are investigating the incident and the victim is in stable condition at a local hospital
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3223093/A-Foods-security-guard-fired-reportedly-slammed-customer-buying-groceries-concrete-pillars-chokehold-throwing-ground-unconscious.html#ixzz3ks8MuBi2
Elizabelle
Got to say, I am loving that Southwest picked up some good landing slots at Washington National Airport. Am using DCA a lot more than before. It’s way more convenient than Dulles, which can be expensive to get to.
(I used to take the train to BWI for low-cost flights, but Southwest has leveled the flying field for me.)
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: What I mean is that he didn’t represent Queens in Congress. His congressional district was centered in Manhattan — Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. That campaign against Mario Cuomo was for mayor, IIRC.
rikyrah
September 05, 2015 7:30 AM
Why Donald Trump Will Defeat the Koch Brothers for the Soul of the GOP
By David Atkins
In order to understand how Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican field despite openly promoting tax hikes on wealth hedge fund managers, hedging support for universal healthcare and other wildly iconoclastic positions hostile to decades of Republican dogma, it’s important to note the that the Republican Party was teetering on the edge of a dramatic change no matter whether Trump had entered the race or not.
Demographers and political scientists have long been predicting that the Republican Party is due for a realignment—the sort of tectonic political shift that occurs when one of the two parties either take a courageous political stand or falls into danger of becoming a permanent minority, shifting the demographics and constituencies that sort each party. The last big realignment in American politics is generally considered to to have occurred in the wake of the Civil Rights Act, when Democratic support for civil rights legislation moved racially resentful, mostly Southern whites into the arms of the Republicans while picking up support from women and minorities. Republicans, of course, hastened this process through their use of the Southern strategy to maximize conservative white fears and resentments. It is arguable that the Democratic shift toward the conservative and neoliberal economics beginning the late 1970s as a response to the increasing power of money in elections and the rise of Reagan was also a minor realignment that moved many wealthy social liberals out of the Republican fold at the expense of blue-collar Democratic workers.
Conventional wisdom has argued that demographic trends showing the rise of Latino and Asian voters would spell the need for another GOP realignment—this time away from minority-bashing Southern Strategy politics, toward a more ecumenical, corporate-friendly fiscal libertarianism and militaristic foreign policy that would in theory attract conservative-leaning voters across the racial spectrum who had previously felt unwelcome in the Republican fold due to its racial politics. Republican leaders are well aware that every election year the voting public becomes more diverse, and that permanently losing the Latino and Asian votes the way Republicans have the African-American vote would mean a permanent disaster for their party. The Blue Wall becomes more formidable for the GOP with every presidential election cycle, largely due to demographic change.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_09/why_donald_trump_will_defeat_t057458.php
boatboy_srq
They’re really aiming for an epic defeat in 2016, aren’t they?
Cervantes
Via @Elizabelle:
Bill Clinton signed that name-change into law.
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl: I know, I made a bad pun, based on the rumors Mario’s campaign staff circulated.
Tommy
@Elizabelle: I was living in DC when this happened. It was bizarre to watch/experience. At the time we were like the murder capital of the nation. Poverty. We had a lot of shit going on and this, this is our focus? Even the Republicans I knew, not working on the Hill, where like this is fucked up!
Elizabelle
@Cervantes: Yeah, Clinton did.
He and the Democrats should have known better, but maybe the fact it was so early in the Congressional term (by design) — they were looking for the good will that never materialized.
Whole thing was shameful, and the name change was inflicted on local residents.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tommy: IAD used to be substantailly cheaper because it was less convenient for most people and because the Airport Authority (which runs both) was trying to build traffic out there. Now there’s often little difference in the fairs. E.g. Kayak says the cheapest DCA to IAD fares to Austin are the same from the two airports. (Probably has to do with Southwest flying out of DCA a lot, as Elizabelle mentions above.) It’s $31 cheaper from BWI.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@PurpleGirl:
Yes, in ’77.
Tommy
@Elizabelle: I am no longer in the DC area but happy to hear you said Southwest has a foothold. I know the airline is a love hate thing. But almost all I fly. Even before 9/11 I was taught as a kid to get to the airport early. I am there like four hours early. Works if you are flying Southwest :).
Elizabelle
@Tommy: I heart Southwest.
Germy Shoemangler
HRC works to rebuild party infrastructure
Clinton’s pitch is especially resonant in Iowa, where her team is already encouraging rural Democrats to run for their school boards and county commissions. It’s not just a standard exercise in party-building: Team Clinton is betting that the organizing and goodwill generated by this outreach will pay dividends when it comes time to flip the switch on her own caucus and primary machines.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: As it turned out, Koch was gay. He just hid it very well until after he was out of elective politics. Also until he moved out of the rent-contolled apartment on Waverly Place and into the fancy luxury place on Fifth Avenue.
Tommy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I should be careful. Lived for 15 years in DC but that was a decade ago. Things change.
MattF
This is an open thread, but this is the paradigm case of off-topic.
Tommy
@Elizabelle: They do a few things that piss me off but I am right with you. Love the airline and it is almost all I fly.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: Huh, that’s interesting. They’re still not offering any direct flights from MHT to DCA, though.
I fly out of Manchester if at all possible, because it’s tremendously more convenient and pleasant than Boston Logan for me, and Southwest has a near-monopoly on the airport, with some nice fares. But you have to go through either BWI or Chicago Midway to get to a lot of places. My parents now live in Colonial Beach, VA, and I figure that if we’re renting a car to go see them we might as well drive from BWI as from National or Dulles.
benw
@Zinsky:
Man, you gotta get some new liberal friends. I’ll try not to attack you for stating basic US history.
It’s almost refreshing that Rand’s thesis is NOT explicitly racist towards indigenous Americans. Of course, his brand of gobbledygook is such newly-politicized-college-freshman dorm room nonsense.
Chris
@Tommy:
Gotta say that wasn’t the case when I was there. DCA was a blessing in terms of being metro accessible for those of us who have no car. (All three are technically accessible, but it’s much less of a pain getting from downtown to DCA than the other two).
Also, people love that spot where you can watch planes fly right over you as they take off.
Tommy
@Matt McIrvin: Midway might be the worse airport in the nation. As an Illinois resident I’d like you coming to my state. I do not ever wish you are in that darn airport for more than like ten seconds!
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Thank you, rikyrah. You’ve put up some great links recently.
Enjoy that swim! Think I might take up the habit after this weekend (kids go back to school; presumably less crowded rec centers …)
Elizabelle
@Chris: Gravelly Point! I love watching the planes.
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
You’re funny.
canegiallo
@boatboy_srq: No, they are not aiming for an epic defeat. They are winning big and will continue to win at the state level. They will almost certainly retain control of a majority of state governments even in some blue and purple states. And that is where the REAL damage is being done on denying health insurance, attacks on women’s right to choose, tax money paying for religious education, attacks on voting rights and on numerous other fronts. The only thing the Democrats have is (probably) the Presidency and a dice roll on what comes out of the Supreme Court.
Steeplejack
@Matt McIrvin:
How do you like Colonial Beach? I was down there once about 10 years ago and was strongly drawn to it, but I don’t know why. Just one of those inexplicable “I like this place” feelings. It seemed like a bit of a backwater then, but with potential to be a semi-cool place.
What made your parents move there?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
ObOpenThread: I entered Colbert’s raffle for a chance to ask JEB? a question on his premiere show. It could be quite a challenge to come up with one that isn’t mean and makes him look like a victim, that isn’t too easy for him to spin into some motherhood-and-apple-pie story, that isn’t something he’s been asked a million times before and has a canned answer for.
He probably has canned answers to topics like Iraq and bin Laden, and opinions have likely hardened on them so there’s little hope of getting people to change their mind about him over them, so my thinking is it’s better to ask him about domestic policy.
The closest I’ve come thus far to something that might fit the bill is something like this:
We are well aware of the many tragic foreign policy mistakes your brother made as President. What do you think are two important domestic policy mistakes your brother made? Since you’ve surrounded yourself with many of the same advisers he had, what did you learn from those mistakes to prevent you from making serious domestic policy blunders if you were elected President?
Probably not to-the-point enough, though.
What would you ask him given the chance with a national audience?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@Tommy:
Possibly — but we’ve had worse.
There used to be a landfill right on the Potomac, full of garbage, always — and I mean perpetually — on fire. It was a kind of hell. The flares grasped daily at the clouds, the plumes of smoke were acrid, the stench awful.
Not far away, naturally, was an amusement park for kids, with towers and a Ferris wheel and what-not.
And in between the two was Hoover Field, by far DC’s most dangerous runway ever.
Eventually they razed the airfield, the amusement park, and the garbage, and on the new site, appropriately enough, the Pentagon was built — by the same federal contractor who built National Airport, the Jefferson Memorial, and various other local attractions.
OzarkHillbilly
I don’t fly much, but I have taken a plane trip or 2 over the years. In all that time, and the dozens of flights I have taken, I have never flown Southwest. Never even had a choice. Why? Because as near as I can figure, they don’t go there (meaning the places I go to).
Kinda funny to me.
Mike J
@Chris: When I lived in Fairfax I traveled all the time. There was one guy who often went on the same gigs I did who always wanted to fly out of BWI on a Southwest cattle car. He’d rent a town car to take us to the airport so any cost savings were shot, but we’d get to sit in beltway traffic for an hour and a half to make up for it. I preferred taking metro to National, fly into Logan and take the T downtown. Faster, easier, cheaper, at least for somebody with only a briefcase for luggage. As a bonus, since I was a frequent flyer I often got upgraded and got my coffee in the morning and drink in the evening before we left the gate.
Chris
@benw:
I think Rand is using the memory of a crime committed by whites against non whites (“look what happened to the poor poor Indians”) to justify current white chauvinism (“assimilate” in a conservative mouth usually means “these people should adhere to the norms defined by white people.”)
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: exactly.
Tommy
@Chris: The little rural town I live in is named after Native Americans. The mascot of our schools, an Indian. It might be cool if we could go and talk to one of those Native Americans. But we can’t because we killed them. Rand doesn’t get to give a shout out to Native Americans. He just doesn’t.
Betty Cracker
@bystander: “Tribble-topped presidential aspirant” is my original description of Paul, so far as I know. But I’m happy to be mistaken for Pierce.
raven
Fuck it, I can be sick here or be sick at the game. Go Dawgs!
PaulW
My two cents on Kim Davis being a bully and nowhere near the martyr she wants to be: http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2015/09/thoughts-about-kentucky-county-clerk.html
Also, I’m trying to get a trashy urban fantasy novel written this weekend, see how far I can get.
MattF
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: You might go directly to specific questions about domestic policy, like what-do-you-think caused the financial meltdown, or what-do-you-think about voter fraud and voter ID, or (more esoteric) what do you think about post-meltdown Fed policy.
scav
@Chris: He’s also cannily ignoring all influences peoples active biases might have on the process, especially as brakes. All assimilation would take is a decade! if it weren’t for that tidy economic, safely in the past, incident with the reservations.
MomSense
@Baud:
It’s amazing how well science fiction can describe the human condition in the here and now.
Matt McIrvin
@Tommy: I’ve only ever been there to change planes, and it seems OK for that purpose, much less horrible than O’Hare… though the last time, we got stranded overnight and had to sleep in the terminal, which was so heavily air-conditioned that it was frigid inside.
Tommy
@raven: Darn right.
I recall the first time I posted a comment here. About college football. You came down on me like a ton of bricks. I was like is everybody here an asshole? Told you were an acquired taste. If there was anybody here I could go see a college football game with it would be you.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: We fly into DCA if we’re just seeing the sights in DC and don’t plan on renting a car. It’s fine for that purpose, though the final approach to the airport is a scary thing.
I used to use Dulles because I lived a few minutes from there. Dulles is a nifty-looking place, but ticketing and security seems like it always takes unreasonably long, similarly to what we experienced recently at Denver International.
JPL
@rikyrah: The injured person won’t need food stamps for long.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s Southwest’s business model: they don’t actually try to fly everywhere, only to places where they can get sufficiently good deals. Often they’re smaller peripheral airports in a given metro area.
There are smaller airlines like Allegiant Air who do that to an even greater degree, flying out of smaller airports that all other passenger airlines have abandoned. Often, they only go to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. It seems as if you can build an airline business just on taking tourists to Disney World and spring break out of airports that aren’t considered commercially viable for any other passenger flights.
MomSense
@boatboy_srq:
I hope so. At least this election might tell us how deep the rot is.
shell
\Hmmm. If memory serves, theres been lots of attempts to “assimilate” Native Americans. Forcing children away from their parents and put into special schools far way. Where they were forbidden to speak their native language or follow their customs and were often beaten if they did. How’d that all work out for them?
Matt McIrvin
@Steeplejack: Pretty much that. At the time they were living in Chantilly, Virginia, a few miles from Dulles Airport and the Udvar-Hazy Center, and with all the sprawly development the traffic was getting so horrible that you’d have to plan half an hour to get to places just a few miles down the road.
They’d often spent some time in the summer in Lewes, Delaware, and they were looking for someplace that was sort of a quiet beach town like that. Colonial Beach struck them as being a lot like Lewes, only not as far up the scale of development yet, and also closer to my sister and her family in Richmond.
benw
@Chris: @scav: Exactly! He sounds sympathetic towards Native Americans and is not racist in the specific sense that he says they can be just as good as the “rest of us” (meaning white people), but sneakily turns that around and lets current white America off the hook by making reservations a failure of the past AND elides the fact that assimilation really means “eradication of all indigenous culture and replacement with white norms” assuming us white people let them in. Also, there’s the tidy fact that if all the Native Americans moved off the reservations, the US would get the rest of the land…
benw
@raven: That’s the spirit. Besides, after your first 3 drinks you won’t even feel it… or your toes.
Chris
@benw:
It’s not the first time he’s done this. Remember when he said “I’m not crazy about democracy, democracy gave us Jim Crow?” Sounds sympathetic to black people, doesn’t it? Except it’s a lie – the suppression of democracy gave us Jim Crow, since in many places the black population outnumbered the white. And in this day and age, skepticism about democracy usually means voter suppression laws and the denial of an elected president’s legitimacy, in both cases largely to target black people.
kindness
Rand seems to forget Tennessee’s role in the Trail of Tears saga for a very large Cherokee Nation.
satby
@Baud: sorry, and LOL. I missed that.
gelfling545
I initially read “throng” as “thong”. That would attract attention all right. Nausea too.
Matt McIrvin
…and I was trying to figure out recently precisely why that was. Orlando is a huge destination for obvious reasons, but it isn’t the busiest airport in the US by a long shot (that would be Atlanta Hartsfield), so why are there airports where you can basically only go to Orlando (and similar places)?
I think it’s just that tourist travel and business travel are fundamentally different in their demand. If you’re just doing Disney World and spring break flights, you don’t actually have to have so many flights; people will plan their trips around you if you offer the deals. Whereas for business travel, you need to offer more flights throughout the week and the ability to get a (possibly expensive) seat at the drop of a hat, which means the minimum amount of volume necessary to make money is much larger.
ThresherK (GPad)
What’s Rand gonna do for Libertarian race relations to top his appearance at Howard U?
maurinsky
@raven:
That is one of my all-time favorite books. A work of art.
eyelessgame
The thing about Rand Paul that hits me every time that I see him is that intellectually he is an earnest, nerdy fourteen-year-old who has just read Atlas Shrugged.
He is not personally prejudiced against people on a racial basis. He is completely and almost touchingly honest.
He is also profoundly and terrifyingly uninformed, incurious and arrogant about it, and completely unconscious of his own arrogance. He is utterly incapable of empathy or imagination – of putting himself in another’s shoes and seeing the world from another perspective than his own, because he read the manual that trains the reader to avoid ever seeing the world from any view other than one’s own.
He has a tiny, walled-off set of knowledge, he has applied Ayn Rand’s fully enclosed brand of philosophical nuttery to that knowledge, and thinks there is nothing else that is worth knowing: all else can be determined through pure reason, and learning from environment or experience is pointless, just as Rand said.
He seems like an earnest, naive, self-assured fourteen-year-old because, I believe, that’s when he read Atlas Shrugged and that book froze his intellectual and emotional development forever. I’ve seen it happen to other people; it is, I’m convinced, what happened to him.
When he told a roomful of African-American scholars that it used to be the Democrats who were racist, he honestly expected them to be shocked and surprised by this – he expected his audience to be ignorant of the national realignment due to the Civil Rights movement, because he is ignorant of it.
When speaking to a medical professional in a Senate hearing who was asking for a portion of a department’s budget to be allocated to a specific need, he was sarcastically asking why the professional wasn’t asking for more money, because in his mind she was one of Rand’s moochers, wanting money for itself, and that she had a plan for what to do with the specific amount she was requesting was, to him, a distraction. He was not able to entertain the notion that there was anything else going on but a moocher begging for some of the looters’ cash.
He is a complete, convinced, true believer in the Laissez Fairy, the Invisible Hand, the Gospel of Ayn Rand – he lacks the intellectual capacity for deceit.
Steeplejack
@Matt McIrvin:
Thanks, that’s about what I figured. I have been to Lewes and like it, but it is getting resort-ified (not entirely in a bad way) because of its proximity to Rehoboth Beach. When I was in Colonial Beach I wondered if it could be the next Rehoboth—the people I was with were sort of halfheartedly looking for a cheap vacation house—and also what factors determine whether someplace will be the next whatever. I’m sure there are markers, but some of it seems like chance.
Chris
@eyelessgame:
I think this is the result of an entire generation of Republicans growing up in a hermetically sealed echo chamber.
Debbie
@Germy Shoemangler:
As raven said, great book. I would think most people would not be upset to see the towers at this point. But I remember a sense of sadness when they “appeared” in fiction soon after 9/11.
Gene108
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Do you agree or disagree that increased Federal spending on roads, infrastructure and science research will help the economy, since Republicans in Congress have opposed this sort of spending for the last six years?
eyelessgame
@Chris:
Possibly that’s all that’s at work here – but Rand Paul’s specific demeanor, specific sorts of blindness, and the things he says seem, to me, to point to something more than the typical Republican echo chamber. He seems honestly befuddled by people not falling into Ayn Rand’s stereotypes, which are a lot more specific and directed than the assumptions of the echo chamber in general.
Mike G
@Tommy: .
Repukes are useless at solving actual problems, all they have is vapid symbolism and distractions.
WaterGirl
@Gene108: I like your question a lot. I would change the order a bit:
satby
@MomSense: @OzarkHillbilly: @Cervantes:
Thanks all. Took a cleaning break to catch up. Living alone with animals leaves me with a high tolerance for disorder and I am kind of happy to have a deadline to work toward. And I’m really looking forward to kids around the house again.
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I like what you’re trying to get at with your question.
I would think about listing the two worst foreign policy mistakes and the two worst domestic policy mistakes – unnecessary war with Iraq, etc. Then say:
Jeb!, you have chosen many of the same foreign and domestic policy advisors as your brother. If you follow their advice, aren’t you concerned that you would lead us into another unnecessary war and another devastating economic downturn?
Chris
@eyelessgame:
That might be. I just feel like this kind of aggressive disconnected obliviousness is becoming more and more of a thing among conservative politicians. Romney and Palin both came off like people who had no idea how clueless and out of it they sound to people who aren’t already in the cult. The Randroid thing specifically, that’s more niche, I guess.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris:
That reminded me to look up something I’d been wondering about. In the Dunning-esque history textbook I used in high school, they emphasized strongly that a lot of white former Confederates were disenfranchised during Reconstruction; in fact, I think that’s the context in which I first read the word “disenfranchisement”. The implication was that those black politicians who were elected in the South during Reconstruction were only elected because white people couldn’t vote. But I hadn’t heard people talking a lot about it lately. So I wondered, how widespread was that really?
The answer turns out to be “somewhat, but not nearly as much as they implied”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_oath
The eventual disenfranchisement of African-Americans supposedly protected by the 15th Amendment through terrorism, coups d’état and Jim Crow bullshit was, of course, much more complete.
Chris
@WaterGirl:
I feel like it would be equally revealing, and less obviously a “gotcha question,” to ask him what he thinks his brother got right.
Germy Shoemangler
@Debbie: I remember when the first Spiderman movie trailer was yanked from circulation because it portrayed spidey trapping some criminals and their helicopter in a huge web spun between the twin towers.
benw
@Chris: Excellent analysis, thanks.
@eyelessgame:
Exactly. And he’s learned *just* enough in his college history to think everything he knows makes him the cleverest person in the room. Earlier in the thread I said his nonsense was just like a newly-politicizied college freshman. Lord knows, your description sounds way too much like myself arriving at college. Sad to think I was the equivalent of a 14 y.o.! :)
Germy Shoemangler
@eyelessgame: Did you see the video of Rand putting his hamburger down and bolting away when an immigration activist showed up to ask him questions? Someone as innocently befuddled as you describe would have stuck around for a conversation.
Just my opinion, but I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and what kind of game he’s playing.
Germy Shoemangler
@Chris:
“Mr. Bush, what do you think your brother got right?”
“Hey, no fair!”
Ruckus
@satby:
Here in CA I get to drive on the raygun freeway. Now because most people out here use the number instead of any name, I’d bet a lot of people don’t know it’s named after him. But I think it’s OK, I just think that I’m running him over every time I’m on it and get a little bit of a smile going. @Woodrowfan: It’s a little bit more satisfying than flipping off his statue
satby
@Ruckus: ?
WaterGirl
@Chris: Absolutely! That’s an even better idea. Either he stutters – because what the hell did W. get right – or he has to come out in favor of the war and other things.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Scott, I hope you see this suggestion!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris: I’m not sure what politics is like in KY. Maybe it’s different there. But I don’t think you can lump Rand in with the quasi-standard GOP echo-chamber. Rand is too much like his father and he was in his own, much smaller, echo chamber than the GOP’s.
I think they’ve got several partially-overlapping circles in their Venn diagrams:
1) There are the big-business-friendly CoC types: cut business taxes, cut income tax rates, cut the estate tax, cut labor regulations, cut environmental rules, relax zoning restrictions, let businesses get as huge as they can and accumulate as much wealth and market power and political power as they can without interference (“free markets!!1”).
2) There are the hankering-for-the-past (the 1850s were the good old days!) old white people: cut all varieties of immigration, more (their variety of) religion in public life and in the schools, eliminate social services, eliminate the IRS and the income tax, the only thing the federal government should do is protect the US from foreign invaders, devolve everything back to the states and the localities.
3) There are the tyrannical-federal-government-is-going-to-take-my-liberty types: no gun laws, no laws against discrimination, abortion and euthanasia and assisted suicide are always evil and must be forbidden always, no laws against any speech and incitement of any sort, no land-use restriction laws of any sort, sell off the federal lands or open them up for anything including mining claims and grazing rights.
4) There are the federal-government-is-giving-my-hard-earned-money-to-lazy-people-who-don’t-deserve-it types: cut social insurance, cut unemployment insurance, cut labor laws, cut minimum wage laws, institute a flat tax, eliminate the inheritance tax, cut business subsidies, no assistance for internet access or public transportation or caring for disabled or elderly family members.
5) There are the no-foreign-entanglement types who make some sense there (for about 5 minutes, as Charlie says,) but on almost nothing else.
Etc.
Rand picks and chooses, but likes people to think he’s mainly in #3. Other Republicans mainly stay in #1 and try not to say anything that will annoy stable-mates who are in the other groups (since they know that if they win the nomination they’ll eventually support them anyway). But they throw red meat to people in #2 and #4 while making sure that those good people think that the changes will only hurt “those bad people”… Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan are in #5, but about nobody else – Rand had to give it up due to pushback from his party-mates.
It’ll be interesting to see if this “Republican coalition” of contradictory beliefs finally starts to fall apart with Trump’s candidacy. We’ll see.
I’d like to think that Democrats and “Independents” who are disgusted by Trump and the rest will boycott the next televised debate (so that they can’t point to viewership numbers and say how compelling their candidates and positions are), “total viewership numbers were comparable to a Sunday morning infomercial”, but that’s probably too much to hope for… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Nice! I always say we have to make our own fun.
I’m hoping that racist police officers are not reading BJ, however, otherwise that will be just one more thing that would be unsafe for black people – driving while smiling. It’s just not that big of a jump from driving while making eye contact with the police.
Renie
@rikyrah: Its scary to think that if this woman did not take pictures nothing would have been done to fire this guy. I also couldn’t believe no one from the store called for medical assistance. Article doesn’t say but I hope police charge this guy with assault.
Germy Shoemangler
@Renie: Many yelp reviews address the beating:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/whole-foods-market-oakland-oakland?sort_by=date_desc
Reviewers describe a pattern of rudeness from employees and managers towards low-income shoppers.
BR
OT — what have folks heard about Bernie Sanders taking Cornel West to South Carolina for his next rally tour in a week? Seems like a off key / clueless move on Sanders’s part, but maybe I just don’t know the dynamics here? My gut sense is that West is divisive in ways both in black and white communities alike that are mostly downside for Sanders and little upside.
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G:
The Franks cold wrecked shit wherever they went (and it went on for centuries due to their stupid customs and laws and general proud ignorance), yet the Vandals are the ones who take the slur through the ages.
Vikings liked to raid, rape, and pillage, but they had nothing on sheer Frankish dysfunction.
Another Holocene Human
@Ken:
Apply lotion to the burn.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WaterGirl: rofl. I know there’s no chance that I’ll win. This is a thought experiment.
What I’m hoping Colbert (and the winner) will do is to unbalance him a little and make him say something that isn’t a canned answer. The thing about gene108’s excellent question is that he can fall into the “reasonable Republican” mode of:
“Of course infrastructure spending would help the economy. Unfortuantely, we [the richest country in the history of the world] can’t afford it. People [lumping the rich in with people making minmum wage] are taxed to much and things are too expensive because greedy unions [which are as common these days as giant panda twins] are taking all the money. That’s why public-private partnerships [toll roads] are the best solution [which does nothing for 100 year old sewer systems, 100 year old train tunnels, or public transit]. Similarly with science investments – it’s nice and important, but we can’t afford it. The most important thing is to carefully manage the budget in times of austerity….” :-/
I think it’s important to try to force him to say something that isn’t pablum.
E.g. for my “worst 2 domestic mistakes” question, I would hope he would say something to illustrate that he learned about the mistakes in responses to Katrina and New Orleans, or the disaster of the Bush Tax Cuts (that turned surpluses into huge deficits), or the mania for public school testing and privatization, or the gutting of kinda-affordable college education, or the housing bubble, or the lack of shadow-banking oversight, or Terri and Michael Schiavo (yeah, right), or the demonization of political opponents and refusal to compromise, or …. Of course, he won’t.
I hope Colbert makes it memorable. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Chris:
I think it may be to their seeming lack of attributing any humanity to those groups they deem to be lessor than them. If you aren’t in their group, you are less than scum. We do it as well, but seemingly for a different reason. We do it because we see them trying to/actually denying that humanity to others.
Another Holocene Human
@satby: That’s awful! I recommend gatorade, ice, and loud energetic music. At least tearing up carpet lets you destroy something. Wear a good mask for that. Gloves might help as well.
Are you a creative person? Is there a way you might doll up the rooms on Monday to give them a personal touch? Stencils? Vinyl appliques? Something to put your signature on it after all that?
Cervantes
@Chris:
@Matt McIrvin:
Good points, thanks.
Elizabelle
@satby: I think it’s great you are hosting these kids. You are going to make such a big diff in their lives.
May Karma be good to you and your guests.
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I thought that Jeb! was really a strange choice as a first guest for Colbert. It seems pretty high risk to me.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: The other ugly thing was the way they forced Metro, with no additional funds of course, to change their signs NOW NOW NOW, all of them, instead of changing them on their normal schedule. Metro is unionized and most of the workers thought the change was a slap in the face. (Which it was. It was a deliberate slap in the face at Washington, DC, even though the airport is in Virginia, and at WMATA’s majority-minority workforce.)
If you were familiar with the WMATA/Metro spider map at the time, they never had the full names of points of interest at station stops because of brevity. They wouldn’t fit. So when they had to change “National Airport” (it’s the George Washington National Airport, but they never called it that) to “Ronald Reagan National Airport” (this is a system with stops like “UDC-Cardozo” and other mystery shorthand, well, mystery to tourists), the name stuck out like a sore thumb. If I recall correctly it didn’t exactly fit on the map.
I’m pretty sure they also threatened operators if they didn’t use the “Ronald Reagan” name. Hey, if you’re going to use the REAL full name it’s “Ronald Reagan George Washington National Airport” which of course makes the GOP sound like the fatuous prigs that they are.
Another Holocene Human
@Woodrowfan:
The Reagan Building is a joke too! I thought the guy did nothing but rail against bureaucrats, and now bureaucrats have to work there?
Wasn’t the sad, sorry DC Aquarium in the Reagan Building basement? Scary and depressing but they did have caymans when I was there. They were cute.
The J Edgar Hoover FBI building sounds like it’s a joke from X-Files. A joke perched on one of the most important Federal Triangle thoroughfares.
Mike in NC
@Another Holocene Human: I usually took the Metro when I was working in Washington, and never understood the need to have some stations with as many as 4 or 5 names. A dumb idea like that could only have been mandated by Congress.
trollhattan
@RK:
Li’l Randy showing up at Howard U to hector the students about how they don’t understand American history isn’t black outreach, it’s cred-building with conservatives to prove he’s got the balls to go deal with Those People.
Spare me the attempts to paint him with a different brush than any of his Republican henchmen. Once he capitulated on cranking up the defense budget he lost the last shred of veneer as a “different kind” of Republican, any more than his fraud of an old man is.
trollhattan
@BR:
The one thing I know about Cornel West, at least the current edition, is that he loves Cornel West. Bernie, I suspect, has been in the far north too long to truly grock racial politics.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Germy Shoemangler: rofl. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Cacti
Yep, the real problem for peoples in this country who were robbed of their lands, riches, history, heritage, freedom, and pride by the European settler population…
Is that they just don’t try hard enough to assimilate.
Fuck off, Randy.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Holocene Human: The sad little aquarium was in the Department of Commerce building, named after Herbert Hoover (it predated the Reagan building).
The Baltimore aquarium’s website says they’re considering opening some sort of building in DC, but nothing definite.
AxelFoley
LOL, I remember how for the last 6 years, folks on the left were worried about Rand, Christie, Rubio, Kasich, Cruz and Walker.
And all of them are getting their asses kicked by tRump and Carson and barely registering in GOP polls.
Another Holocene Human
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: damn, you’re right, it was U St-Cardozo, and UDC was a different stop, can’t recall which one.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy:
Depends on your destination, brah.
benw
@Cacti: Hell, the settlers spent a lot of their own time and effort to force them to assimilate and they STILL wouldn’t do it. Ingrates…
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: Sanford’s on the other side of Orlando from Kissimmee, ack-shu-all-lee.
Don’t tell the tourists, I guess.
Another Holocene Human
@shell: Beaten, raped, their hair cut.
Yes, let’s hear all over again about the wonders of residential schools in the US and Canada!
Another Holocene Human
@BR:
Yeah, I don’t know, but he does have his detractors, especially for attacking Obama so brutally and directly. Plus his allegiance with Tavis Smiley has un-endeared him to some.
I know that West has gone jetting around to funerals of Black people killed by racial or police violence. Brother Al got criticized harshly, especially by young people, for carpetbagging in (I guess they don’t realize he’s done that kind of thing for years? They think he’s just that old guy on TV Grandpa loves so much?). But if there’s been a peep about West I’ve missed it.
I feel like in the white community West’s supporters and detractors mostly split down political lines. Mostly. I distrust anything coming out his mouth because his ego seems to be the driving factor these days.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah, Allegiant flies into there, not Orlando International. I imagine a lot of people come in expecting to be able to hop the Mouse’s coach to Disney World and end up pissed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Poor Paul doesn’t even get it right as a Libertarian; in world divided between mouchers and creators he just argued that the Native Americans should be better moachers. I am beginning to see the Trump appeal is at lest Trump is true to his asshole philosophy.
Matt McIrvin
…but JetBlue has been doing the same thing at the Worcester, MA airport, running just one or two flights a day to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, and they actually go to MCO. It’s the only scheduled passenger traffic the airport has.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin:
@Another Holocene Human:
Saw that little aquarium in the Commerce Building the last day it was open, day before the most recent DC shutdown.
It was charming. Liked SharkCam windows, the displays, the little caimans (bound for Florida and Tennessee, I think) …
It’s hard to charge admission to an aquarium — as Commerce did — in a city of free and spectacular museums and the Zoo.
Marc McKenzie
Remember when we were told to “stand with Rand!” because of DRRROOOONZZZEE?
Yeah, how quickly we forget. On the other hand, no one seems to be shouting from the mountaintops that President Obama has been called the best President when it comes to the affairs of Native Americans…his administration has achieved much in regards to the welfare of Native Americans and many tribes have been very grateful.
Of course, I’m sure this shatters the “Obama’s worse than Bush” or “He’s really a Republican!” meme that’s been blurted out for years from the Left….but I guarantee that it will be ignored.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: For its last decade it was actually run as a branch of the Baltimore National Aquarium, and they probably spruced it up a bit. The one time I went was long before that, and it seemed like a random collection of not-very-interesting fish in small tanks with uninformative labels.
It didn’t have federal or Smithsonian funding, so charging admission was probably the only way to keep it running.
trollhattan
@Marc McKenzie:
Thankfully no, don’t recall that. My first and lasting impression of li’l Randy was when one of his entourage thugs did the headstomp on that girl during the senate campaign. Paul should have very publicly sacked the dude and apologized profusely. As if. Today he’s the same douche as then, only with power.
Cervantes
@Marc McKenzie:
Aside: I’m guessing “the Left” is more diverse than you think it is.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: I’m kicking myself for not picking up one of their postcards:
Yeah, I’d assumed it would be brown fish, but it was more interesting than that. Very well might have spruced it up over the years.
Sm*t Cl*de
New arrivals in a country should assimilate into the existing culture. Except for Europeans.
Matt McIrvin
@Sm*t Cl*de: CROATOAN