I thought this was a joke when I saw it on Charles Pierce….but it’s not!
The idea seems to be that Bobo said mean things about the Tea Partiers and drove them into the arms of Trump. And those mean things can’t be true because an anonymous blogger in San Francisco saw Tea Partiers picking up trash once. Persuasive stuff.
henqiguai
Did you mean “SAW Tea Partiers picking up trash…”?
The Ancient Randonneur
Are Reynolds and Hoft in some sort battle to the death for the Stupidest Man on the Internet bragging rights?
bystander
How long before there’s an op ed piece on how Obummer made Bobo create Trump?
Doug!
@henqiguai:
Should be “saw’
MattF
@bystander: But he did! I can’t think of anyone else who could possibly be responsible. And neither can Glenn Reynolds.
boatboy_srq
Wait. The Teahad is/was bourgeois? Really?
[headdesk]
It will be a Day of Days when the Reichwing stops redefining hitherto-accepted terms to suit their own ends.
LAO
If you can get past his starting point (tea party arose out of legitimate concerns rather than being a reaction to the first Black President) he is partly right. The tea party definitely feels betrayed by the Republican failure to deliver on the promises it made to its base. Of course, would be nice for him to acknowledge how bat shit crazy and wholly divorced from reality those promises actually were.
To be clear — I do not accept or believe his initial premises re: the legitimacy of tea party grievances.
C.V. Danes
Denial ain’t a river in Egypt.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sorry to go OT so quick, but Senator Professor Warren has some thoughts on Trump
I think the Trump meltdown is gonna put all his nuttiness on parade again
MattF
@boatboy_srq: You mean, like the F-word. There’s also the A-word, the B-word, the C-word, the D-word, the E-word, the G-word, the H-word, the I-word… Etc.
? Martin
Everyone is responsible for Donald Trump except for the GOP voters that keep voting for him. I understand the GOP opposition to the Democratic party, but they really need to stop being opposed to democracy itself.
Felonius Monk
Undoubtedly this was court ordered community service in lieu of jail time for wrecking something.
? Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Someone needs to reach out to the Warren campaign and inform them that all Trump-related tweets needs to end with ‘Sad!’. It has been so proclaimed.
LAO
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She is really the best!
boatboy_srq
@LAO:
Which base these days is almost entirely White, male, Xtian, and somewhere significantly below the 1%ers in wealth and influence. Which in turn makes Trumpets only Teahadis who’ve given up the last pretences of being polite.
Librarian
Yes, because right wing mobs never, ever leave trash behind. They always clean up after themselves. Like those guys in Oregon.
scav
Trump is pretty much the empty calories of the current news cycle. I can’t decide if he’s more the astonishing levels of salt or sugar they add to all manufactured foodstuffs — both have merits. Or, maybe it’s more along the lines of everyone calling all drinks a something-tini that blew past, or adding pumpkin spice to every possible foodstuff in November. I’ve no doubt 419ers in Nigeria have worked up a patter about the vast assets of a man with your last name, killed in a tragic stampede at a Trump event. Provide your bank details now or the Trump campaign will get its hands on all those millions..
boatboy_srq
@MattF: In this case, “bourgeois” (and prior to that “fascist,” “socialist,” “tyranny,” “religious liberty” and the rest of the dogwhistle). There is a point not too far from where things now stand where the U.S. and the GOTea will be unable to function together because they speak fundamentally different languages.
LAO
@boatboy_srq: I agree. My lame point was we should not be all that surprised by the Trumpets (I like that name) because the predictable outcome of republican over-promising to tea party voters. How many times have they voted to repeal ACA?
Paul in KY
@LAO: Those fucking ‘tea partiers’ don’t even read Brooks. Now, their users & bosses do, but the doofuses out there with their stupid signs & tricorner hats & whatnot don’t.
Major Major Major Major
Sigh.
Life was easier when Doug was gone. These people were easier to not hear about.
dedc79
O/T but opposition to Garland nomination is at 27+2%.
Brachiator
Glenn Reynolds and David Brooks. Two Dopes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
LAO
@Paul in KY: Agreed.
catclub
@bystander: You say that as thought it hasn’t already come out.
schrodinger's cat
@scav: Empty calories? He is far worse than that, he is like cyanide in the coffee.
Doug!
@schrodinger’s cat:
He’s cyanide in the coffee of a cynical destructive political movement.
dedc79
Predictions on Reynold’s next column?
How Obama created the Zika Virus
How Jimmy Carter created Bolshevism
How Sasha and Malia created the KKK
How Judge Garland created abortion
Technocrat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
BOOM. There’s no way Trumplestiltskin can let that slide. I hope this is how we fight him in the general, constant mockery from all quarters. If Prof Warren can drop it this hard, I can’t wait for BHO to get going.
schrodinger's cat
@Doug!: So far yes, but when becomes the nominee, we may not escape the fallout.
ETA: So he is a radioactive poison, a gamma ray emitter.
LAO
@Technocrat: I expect BHO to be much more subtle. I love Warren but as a Senator she can be more direct than the President.
Grumpy Code Monkey
The pundits keep missing the point. The problem isn’t Trump, the problem is the people voting for Trump. That’s the scary id monster that the GOP establishment should be worried about. Trump should have fizzled out by September if the GOP base behaved anything like what the pundits believe.
The GOP base is the kid that gets off on torturing and killing small animals, and the punditocracy/GOP leadership is the parent that blames violent video games. They’re getting the cause and effect exactly backward.
LAO
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Well said.
The Red Pen
Good summary, but I would add that Reynolds also waxes rhapsodic about how these Tea Party Patriots were animated by completely imaginary threats and outrages.
jonas
The idea that any Tea Party types, much less Trump supporters, have any frickin’ clue who David Brooks is, is perhaps the the most hilarious thing about that post.
ETA: Whoops — yeah, what Paul in KY said.
Technocrat
@LAO:
No, I agree. Obama won’t (and shouldn’t) call anyone a “loser”. But his snark is comedian-quality.
LAO
@efgoldman:
Agreed — that was my point — I’m just not that articulate. But I do think it”s even worse. Because the Party leaders kept stoking the base’s resentments and making promises and claims it could not deliver on, because I think they never believed the base would revolt. And here we are.
LAO
@jonas: He is a Shade master. I’m going to miss him so when he leaves office.
ETA: Sorry Jonas, that comment should have been directed to Technocrat,
schrodinger's cat
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Haven’t they always been with us, though. Aren’t these the same people who would have been Dixiecrats prior to the Civil Rights Movement.
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: He may be if actually elected. But adding trite, logic-deficient discussions / rants about him or including his name as click bait traps adds nothing to the national diet of actually doing anything about him in either direction and usually adds no new information to the intellectual feast.
Paul in KY
@efgoldman: Those clowns think ‘Weekly World News’ and other fiction rags are legit newspapers!
Paul in KY
@jonas: What jonas said above!
Chris
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Yeah, I think one of the main stories of this election cycle is the realization of how completely out of touch with the average voters (on either side) the Village is. Most people have known that for years, of course, but now they’re starting to realize it.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: Mustn’t forget how Bill Clinton (or was it FDR?) created the Stamp Tax…
pseudonymous in nc
As ever when Ol’ Perfesser features, I check the UTenn salary database to see how much public money he’s getting, and the answer this time round is $163,870, in a state without an income tax.
Chris
The very best moment in the column is this –
Get that? That was the harsh, stinging, cruel, insensitive, elitist, demeaning, beyond-the-pale insult that David Brooks flung at the protesters. “I’m not a fan of this movement.” That was the big insult that drove them all into Donald Trump’s arms.
On another note, I wonder if Glenn Reynolds, who prides himself with having “actually ventured out to intermingle with” the teabaggers, has thought to go out and do the same thing about Trump supporters and ask them how they went from being teabaggers to being Trump supporters. Whether, in fact, they see any contradiction in what they did, rather than seeing the latter as a logical extension of the former. Because it’s not at all obvious to many people that there’s any dichotomy between “teabagger” and “Trump voter.”
Trollhattan
Trump U at least straight-up defrauded students by charging for an education not delivered. The poor students of Professor Reynolds not only are paying, they’ll have to be deprogrammed for whatever dreck he’s learnin’ them in the classroom. The poor sods.
BruceFromOhio
OK, finally realized what the connection to “Hoot-Smalley” is and Why It’s A Thing. Sheesh.
“A rare one-word distillation of Wingnut cluelessness and loopiness, in an especially crystalline form” seems to apply to a of things of late, Arkon.
BruceFromOhio
@pseudonymous in nc: Money can’t buy you love.
Mai.naem.mobile
@bystander: that’s Hillary did her voodoo pantsuit thing with Michelle, on Obummer to make Bobo create Donald Trump.
James E Powell
@LAO:
Right, because the No. 1 promise they made to the tea party rabble was that they were going to destroy that black president and put him and all his uppity supporters back in their place.
Doug!
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
And to some extent the people managing the campaigns of the people running against Trump.
patroclus
I think Brooks created the Trump movement while dining at the salad bar at Applebee’s.
bystander
@catclub:
Under previous theories of the etiology of the Trump phenomenon, Obummer was considered the prime mover, with no intermediaries. This new theory, that Bobo created the Trumperia, currently fails to take into account Obummer’s uncanny (voodoo?) ability to use thought control to make his enemies act against their own interests. This breach of repub orthodoxy will have to be explained sooner or later.
GregB
Has there ever been a definitive study on how FDR created Adolf Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin?
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Compare with Warren Buffett’s Million Dollar Bet – The bet is who will make more in ten years.
Some really smart hedge fund managers chose five really smart hedge funds; Buffett took an S&P index fund. Guess who’s winning.
Miss Bianca
@Technocrat:
OK, I think “Trumplestiltskin” is my new fave rave nickname for the Orange-Coiffed One…
catclub
@GregB: Probably scrawled in crayon by Michelle Malkin.
James E Powell
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
They aren’t missing the point, they have all sworn an oath that they shall never disparage nor describe with accuracy the mental and emotional states of the American voters. They are always to be spoken of as wise and good and generous and kind and never never never racist. There are two exceptions to this rule: 1) American voters does not include African American voters because they’re just so different and 2) any voters who openly support leftist or anti-war candidates because they’re just crazy.
bystander
@patroclus:
See what happens when you leave the sneezeguard in the kitchen when the buffet opens? Anybody can infect the exposed bleu cheese crumbs, croutons and ranch dressing. Charles Pierce may want to consider this in connection with his theory of prion disease infecting the repub party.
As for the history of the parties and their constituents, both parties were historically racist. The difference is that, among repubs, it used to be considered bad form and low class to express openly your disdain for entire groups of people. That rule of the patricians who ran the repub party went the way of Henry Cabot Lodge.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: My point was different, that people like Trump’s supporters have always existed. What is different is that they have now completely taken over one major political party. The Republican establishment cannot or will not stand up to the Trumpistas.
Iowa Old Lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hitting Trump as a businessman is absolutely the right tack to take. It points out that he’s weak in an area he’s claiming as a strength and it drives him crazy.
James E Powell
@BruceFromOhio:
What this year’s Republican primaries really needed was more
cowbellMichelle Bachman.Trollhattan
@Iowa Old Lady:
Absolutely, he has the bidnez acumen of Bush the Lesser, and we’ve been down that path already.
When I hear supposedly sane, ed-you-cated folks defend their Trump support it’s always some form of “he gets things done” or “he builds things.” The bubble has taken on a life of its own, like Rover in The Prisoner.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh yeah. You know that and I know that.
The problem is that people like Brooks and Reynolds don’t know that; they seem to believe that the batshit crazy didn’t exist in the Republican base until Obama unleashed his Magic Scary Negro Mojo Ray on millions of unsuspecting white Americans.
Again, cause, effect, exactly backwards.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think the bigger story is how out of touch the Republican establishment is with their base. The big reason Trump was able to walk in and take over is because so many Republican voters are angry at their own party’s leadership. The leadership had assumed that the rank and file were on-board with their whole project, but it turns out that the base doesn’t really hate Social Security and Medicare, and they are dead set against immigration.
I think this is an area where the Democrats actually have an advantage because of the diversity of their coalition. They have the same problem, maybe even worse, about having factions within the party who disagree on important issues, but at least everyone is aware of it. Politicians know they need to do something for each different interest group, and the interest groups themselves know they are unlikely to get everything they want. It makes everyone’s expectations more realistic.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I call bullshit. No one with an ounce of sense would pick up anything off the streets of SF without a biohazard suit on.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: The Village has shown that they are not reporters at all but courtiers and propagandists. They were pimping Rubio long after we all knew that he had zero chance at the nomination.
Felonius Monk
I suppose it is too much to hope that Bobo’s next column will be titled Why Glenn Reynolds is Full of Shit and an Idiot Besides.
Paul in KY
@pseudonymous in nc: Thanks for ruining my day ;-)
Paul in KY
@GregB: I think Jonah Goldberg is working on that. Will be in his next ‘book’.
LAO
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And trump’s response to Senator Warren. The Indian…
rikyrah
huh
HUH?
Black People Twice As Likely To Be Arrested For Pot In Colorado And Washington — Where It’s Legal
BY CARIMAH TOWNES
MAR 21, 2016 11:58 AM
When Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, drug policy advocates and pot consumers believed racial drug arrests would drop dramatically. That logic inspired voters in Washington, D.C., Oregon, and Alaska to hit the polls two years later in favor of less restrictive pot laws.
But it turns out that advocates and consumers were only half right. Drug arrests have plummeted overall, yet black people are still disproportionately arrested.
Between 2008 and 2014, marijuana arrests decreased by 60 percent in Colorado and 90 percent in Washington. However, a study of FBI Uniform Crime Reports conducted by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice’s Mike Males concluded that black people in 2008 and 2014 were twice as likely to be arrested for marijuana — in both states.
“I am surprised and disappointed by this,” Males told the Washington Post. “The forces that contribute to racial disparities under prohibition are clearly still in place after legalization.”
According to a national study from the ACLU in 2013, black users are 3.73 more likely to be arrested for possession than their white counterparts, even though both groups use pot at the same rate. As a result, black people are disproportionately slapped with mandatory minimum sentences and languish in prison for decades even as more states consider legalization.
Despite the positive ramifications that legalization was expected to have for African Americans, a recent Buzzfeed investigation found that they’re also left out of the weed market in states where the drug is legal.
Thanks to centuries of oppression, the piece notes, black people who hope to profit from marijuana sales generally can’t afford the $250,000 start-up costs to get their businesses off of the ground. And banks are unable to give them business loans, because the federal government, which still considers marijuana illegal, insures them. With easier access to cash and property, white men dominate the legal industry.
catclub
@efgoldman: I bet if you looked back at Romney in 2012 it would be the same thing, he did not get majorities of primary voters until late in the process, but he won with 33-45% of the vote.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: If he is the nominee, don’t you expect most of the Republican primary voters to fall in line and vote for Trump. So its a distinction without a difference. They may not be more than 50% of the Republican primary electorate but they are in charge.
Technocrat
@LAO:
For some one who has admittedly mastered social media, Trump is surprisingly to troll.
LAO
@Technocrat: He is so thin skinned! I’d be amused if I didn’t find the whole thing enraging.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: What charges are they generally getting hit with?
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
Per RealClearPolitics’ numbers, The Donald only has a plurality of just under 39.5%. But that’s still some 2 million votes head of Jackhole Ted.
? Martin
I’ve written before about the role of automation on manufacturing jobs vs the role of free trade. Apple just dropped a pretty decent example of that.
It’s a robot that disassembles iPhones so the individual components can be reused/recycled in a more effective way than just shredding the phone or bundling them up and dumping them on some poor community (Guyiu China). Recycling has extremely low margins, so it either needs to be done cheap or it tends to not be done at all, and automation is an almost necessary solution. This is one of those things that is almost certain to be converting social capital into new jobs – recycling as something we see as inherently good, but couldn’t afford to do before and therefore simply wasn’t a job at all until we could concentrate it sufficiently through automation. And it begs the question what this could develop into in terms of new industries.
LAO
@rikyrah:
@Paul in KY:
I looked at those Thinkprogress posts and — admittedly, I haven’t looked into the local marijuana statutes in those states — simple possession (personal use) is rarely a felony or a misdemeanor, it is usually a violation in most states.
They are conflating two issues here — marijuana arrests and mandatory minimums — two different issues. (The weight to support a mandatory minimum in the feds for marijuana is requires a significant amount of marijuana — to trigger the 5-year mandatory minumim, defendant must be convicted of possessing 100 KG of Marijuana (or 220 lbs). Here is a chart.
As a federal criminal defense attorney — I am opposed to mandatory minimums.
prob50
@James E Powell:
Well, those who promoted the birther nonsense certainly rang the bell that got the Joe Plumber sector salivating into their tea cups over the prospect of removing Pressydint Blakity from office, stuffing a burning koran up his Moozalum butt and shipping him back to Afreaka. If you think I’m overstating just mosey over to one of their blogs.
boatboy_srq
@James E Powell: IIRC that oath has been broken recently – and in NRO no less – where there’s some very succinct disparaging of Flyoverland and the WWC as “failed” communities that should be “allowed to die.” The politesse was never about how b#tsh!t-crazy the conservatist rank and file are – it was always in the tacit permission for that segment to persist, even though the Ruling Elite among the GOP were convinced that wiping that insanity out of the gene pool was desirable even if it were unachievable.
No small amount of the dilemma the GOP VSPs find themselves in today stems from caving in to the FundiEvangelists on anti-choice policies and abstinence-only sex ed: without that breeding programme in everything but name, the Teahadis and Trumpets would have remained a fringe minority barely able to elect a single state legislator. They can’t stuff’em back in and ask for a refund, and it’s only the most frustrated voices that are telling them the US of A would be better off if they’d all just FOAD.
retiredeng
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hope Senator Warren knows how to play this to full effect. She needs to ignore his responses until he’s fully in the tank with more and more ridiculous retorts. And when he seems satisfied hit him again.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Liz knows that Drumpf is a thin-skinned sack of shit, and she’s baiting him. Trolling him hard. And the stupid motherfucker will walk right into it as as sure as there’s a briar patch.
JPL
@retiredeng: She’s an Indian, no way can she unite the country.
Doug R
@efgoldman: Hillary has pulled in a million more votes than him and two and a half million more than Sanders.
JPL
OT.. I’m listening to Drumpf and it’s difficult for me to follow him. Maybe the group that designed this year’s winner of the Post diorama, understand his mind better than I. link
NickM
Glenn Reynolds is still alive? Who knew?
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She should have added “Sad!” to that last tweet about Drumpf being a loser.
Turgidson
@Turgidson:
Damn, I see I am late to the party on that one.
Gian
@schrodinger’s cat:
clouds in my coffee
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est: I hope she keeps trolling him hard. He’s a thin-skinned stupid motherfucker, which makes it really entertaining.
Turgidson
@Chris:
Jebus H Crackers, Reynolds actually said this? The Right Wing lollygaggers are such fucking whiny babies and so addled by their own bullshit, it still blows my mind sometimes even though I’ve tried to learn not to be surprised by any of it anymore. Receiving a bit of extra bureaucratic scrutiny for your dark money organization’s request to be considered a non-profit (which was granted in almost every case, if I remember correctly) is now considered “harassed with impunity.”
Good lord, do these people think the world should have all its hard edges coated in Nerf foam so they don’t get hurt? And if so, wouldn’t that require a lot of regulation and government spending? Derp.
ETA: And he also said they were treated with contempt by the political establishment. To put it mildly, I don’t remember it that way. I remember liberal bloggers, and, occasionally, pundits, treating them with the dismissal and mockery they always deserved. But I remember the Village treating them with inexplicable deference and steadfastly refusing to point out that these brain-morons had no idea what the fuck they were even angry about, substantively, and that the motivation for their animus was almost undoubtedly a certain someone who dared to do any presidenting while black.
The stupid, it does burn.
Chris
@Turgidson:
They’re so used to the entire universe going their way that even a failure of full throated support is treated as “contempt.” Also, the siege/bunker mentality they and their Fox News bubble magnifies the effect of any criticism out of all proportion. I’m sure they think Jon Stewart and Paul Krugman represent the consensus of the entire mainstream media, rather than the voices in the wilderness they actually are.
mclaren
Deeeeeeeeeeeeeee-lightful.
Waiting for an op-ed by Limbaugh that says Glenn Reynolds created Trump. Then the circle will be complete.
Paul in KY
@LAO: Thank you for checking into it.