Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Interesting coincidence, this being the lede for the site.
I just watched my DVR of the TumpSNL show and was surprisingly modified in my characterization of the Trumpit [only slightly]. Meaning he portrayed himself on SNL as the character he portrays for the campaign, meaning the campaignTrump is not actually Trump but a character he fabricated based on what he thinks we think of his Boss character, and all the biases he sees in the population around him. That he is deliberately playing a long con game, trying to wake us up from our deranged attitudes, by being the bufoon everyone starts to laugh at.
Then again, shaking my head. too optimistic. Trump is just being the A-hole he wants to be and has the money to get away with it and keep himself famous in the process. Time to flush trump.
I have been following the hate speech laws debate for a while; both sides make valid arguments and neither really convinces me.
Free speech is of paramount importance. The idealist in me thinks that hate speech should be countered with speech, not laws. This is the side I am biased towards.
On the other side, words do have effects and manipulate the culture we live in. As a member of a privileged majority, it’s easy for me to underestimate the real weight that hateful speech carries on persecuted minorities, and we as a society can’t afford that.
While I’d appreciate any opinion stated directly here, any resource that treats the problem seriously would be welcome.
Microaggressions are used to intimidate and demean people that are considered “beneath” the aggressor with repetition. Hate speech is macroaggression. Which is why it should be regulated.
‘Hate Speech’ can be used to classify political speech and shut it down. It is hard to prevent that when conservatives are in power.
The old Moments of Political Madness thread closed, (PZ said it was automatic after three months), so he opened a new one for us.
This sounds promising: the Pentagon is close to completing a plan that will close the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/259548-pentagon-plan-to-close-gitmo-very-close-to-coming
Republican presidential candidates will be participating in another debate on Tuesday. This one is hosted by Fox Business Network. Moderators will be FBN’s Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo; along with Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker.
Christie and Huckabee suffered from bad poll numbers, so they will be part of the kiddie table debate at 7 p.m. (Some sources say 6 p.m. Eastern Time, but does anyone care?) The other kiddie table debaters are Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum.
Lindsey Graham and George Pataki didn’t meet the poll number cutoff, so they have been eliminated from both debates. No TV time for them.
The main debate will be aired at 9 p.m., and will feature Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, and Rand Paul.
This fits into our “the company they keep” category.
Link
Here is a convenient link for the First in the South Democratic Candidates forum; the forum that was hosted by Rachel Maddow on November 6. All of the segments are available on one website page:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-first-the-south-democratic-candidates-forum
This is good news: one whacko Republican project has been scrapped thanks to lack of support.
Arizona Central link
Backlash from the public can be a good thing.
Hate speech isn’t a monolith. There is stuff that IMHO should be clearly criminalised such as
a) advocating or urging violence towards a group and
b) blood libel and other such pernicious lies.
If as a result of a) a physical crime is committed, the hate speaker should be convicted for the same crime.
Other, more subtle hate speech is more difficult.
Political dog whistles….
I saw a Facebook post by an organization that wants to ban the Democratic party because … they had racists 50 years ago.
I’m not kidding, that was the logic presented. They ignore how the parties changed after LBJ. You’d think it was a Poe but they had people there supporting them. One claimed that things are worse for minorities in Democratic districts ignoring all other factors. Another said Democrats are still racist today as if it was the GOP that put the first non-Caucasian in high office. In any case, if that’s cause to ban one party, then you might as well ban both.
What if I said that “We’d better off without group X”?
Am I “advocating violence” or not? It could be very easily interpreted both ways.
Hillary Clinton and Israel
“Religious figures who encourage killing are, of course, only Muslim; only Israeli security must be vouchsafed. The synagogues of Manhattan will love that, too.”
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.684711
F.O. @ 13
Well, are you advocating violence? Intent matters. So does the meaning of being without group X, whether it means group X disbanding their organizations or current members of group X not existing. Also has anyone tried to commit violence as a result.
Whatever the intent, there are probably clearer ways to say what you mean than saying “We’d better off without group X”.
@Ice Swimmer: yes, of course. But it would be easy to use ambiguous words to avoid the law.
Who is going to adjudicate intent?
Religious authorities are skilled in saying without saying.
Hey, what about the Pope saying that marriage equality is a “defeat for humanity”?
I believe that “inciting violence” is a crime already.
What if I say “If someone from group X dies or gets killed, we’ll be better off”?
Am I just making a point or am I actually pushing people to kill someone?
Even if I am just making a point, what if someone takes my point to its conclusion?
What about those who advocate death penalty?
“Let’s kill all violent criminals”. Is this hate speech?
Would we be ok if the law punished only hateful speech towards underprivileged minorities?
Would “whites” “christians” “the ultra-rich” protected by hate speech laws?
You cannot have “hate speech” and a First Amendment at the same time. Can’t be done. And to paraphrase on Supreme Court justice, “The First Amendment is not there to protect speech that we just dislike a little.” With the exception of speech intended to provoke immediate violence, one-on-one, all speech is protected. Cost of doing business.
F.O. @ 16
Yes, inciting violence is usually a crime. Courts will have to adjudicate intent in the criminal cases (like they do when they adjudicate between, say, murder and manslaughter). Otherwise, you, me and everyone else will have figure out what’s acceptable and what isn’t and it may not be easy.
“If someone from group X dies or gets killed, we’ll be better off” is a reckless way to make a point and you should have been aware that there’s a risk that someone tries to take action. If you say it from a position of authority it may be an order to kill in some cases.
I don’t know what to say about the rest of the stuff. This hate speech issue is complicated and I’m not sure if I’m smart and knowledgeable enough to go any deeper.
jsrtheta @17:
Um, if an exception is made for speech intended to provoke immediate violence, then other exceptions can be-and have been-made as well. I’m not advocating for an exception in the case of hate speech, but my point is that free speech isn’t absolute. Not all speech is protected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions
With compliments to Dispatches From The Culture Wars:
Ben Carson Upset About Being Held Accountable for Things He Says http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2015/11/09/carson-upset-about-being-held-accountable-for-things-he-says/ -Carson self-destructs?
The Second Greatest Political Scandal Ever? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2015/11/09/the-second-greatest-political-scandal-ever/
“Facing criminal charges, relieved of her law license and threatened with removal by the Legislature, Pennsylvania’s attorney general seems to have decided that if she has to go, she’s going to take others down with her”
Leaks. Yum.
@19 Tony:
Indeed, there are exceptions to free speech. There are even exceptions to the general illegality of killing another human being (defense of self or another when no other option is available, or in carrying out a government-approved execution). But these exceptions are narrow. The fact that free speech is in the Constitution means that any exceptions to it have to be as narrow as possible to fulfill other compelling interests of the state. Inciting violence is illegal since the state has to ensure safety, for instance.
I’ll note that speech banned for the sole reason of “obscenity” does not fall under this category, though. That’s simply a case of the government letting public will override the Constitution. But this does highlight the issue that the Constitution isn’t magic. The government can do things that violate it when it wants to (just look at all the holes in the fourth amendment). What’s really going on with free speech is that Americans place a high value on this liberty, and they don’t want it infringed unless you can convince them you’re not infringing any of the truly valuable parts of it. Inciting violence? Not valuable. Obscenity? Not valuable? Hate speech? Nat valu– wait. What if they call what I’m saying hate speech? Is it hate speech to say “There is no god and Christians are wrong.”? Is it hate speech to say “There is a God and atheists will burn in hell.”?
You can say hate speech isn’t valuable, but since you can’t get an agreement on what hate speech is, you can’t safely ban it. Just like you can’t ban “slander” without a good definition of it. We have a good definition of slander. We don’t have a definition of hate speech that we can get Americans to agree on. (Yes, definitions exist, but particularly in the current political climate, Americans won’t agree to them.)
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Donald Trump said some stupid stuff related to the faux war on Christmas:
BuzzFeed link
Rachel Maddow covered the Republican candidates that were featured speakers at a conference led by religious conservatives who think that homosexuality should be punished with death.
The video begins with a summary of the Democractic “First in the South Forum” and then moves on to other subjects. The video is about 19 minutes long, and the Republicans who want to kill gay people appear at 6:20.
This falls into our “the company they keep” category.
Congressman Mo Brooks has endorsed Ted Cruz for president. Brooks is the guy who wants to impeach Hillary Clinton on inauguration day if she is elected president.
Jeb Bush is embracing his brother George W. Bush’s educational policies. I guess Jeb is no longer playing the “I’m my own man” card. Jeb said that the “soft bigotry of low expectations, which is what my brother called our schools, basically … does a disservice to every child in America.” Jeb also adopted some of W’s foreign policy stances by saying that Iran, Russia, Syria and Cuba are “creating this axis of … opponents of the United States.”
This is a followup to comments 7 and 24, providing more details about the Christians who want to kill gay people … with Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz’s support. Ted Cruz is polling high enough to be on the main stage for the next Republican debate. He is a serious (though seriously whacko) candidate for president … and here he is hanging out with a guy who suggests that if your gay children invite you to their wedding you should smear cow manure all over your body and sit on the church steps.
Please do scroll down to watch the video. You have to see this to believe it. Amazing.
Right Wing Watch link
All three of the presidential candidates who appeared on stage with Mr. Cow Manure Kill the Gays have made “persecution” of christians a primary issue of their campaign.
I personally would be 100% okay with Kevin Swanson covering himself in shit every time a gay person gets married.
Senator Claire McCaskill is one of just twenty women in the U.S. Senate. She recorded a video for the Stephen Colbert show. Her list of topics on which men should just shut the hell up includes “ethics in gaming journalism.”
YouTube link
Some experts have weighed in on Ben Carson’s comments about the pyramids:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/world-news/ben-carson-pyramids-experts-egypt
Interesting:
It’s a great photo.
Link
I didn’t even know that snowflakes and reindeer were particularly christian symbols…
Seriously, if you’Re offended by a plain red cup you should probably try some anger management therapy.
Saad @27, thanks for the laugh.
In other news, Republican/conservative politicians have suggested that it is fine to defund Planned Parenthood because, in part, “Pregnancy Care Centers” and other so-called clinics can take of everything Planned Parenthood does, including taking over some of the sex education classes taught by Planned Parenthood.
Oh, no. Bad idea. Case in point, the Pregnancy Care Center that taught eighth grade children that being married would protect them from STDs.
Sneaking christianity into the public schools system via bogus educational classes.
Link
Donald Trump says some more stupid stuff about the Starbucks holiday cups:
WTF? Now we have “neo-pagan” white supremacists?
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/11/10/3720999/white-supremacist-plot/
Well, not exactly. The First Amendment is a constraint on government only. And the statement that false statements of fact are prohibited is patently false in the political context as the Supreme Court has said that politicians can indeed lie without government sanction.
Libel and slander law governs private suits, not government prosecutions. There are First Amendment considerations, but. again, the government cannot itself go after you for libeling someone. Criminal libels laws have been repealed.
Certainly, child pornography does not receive First Amendment protection, though simulated child pornography does. Threats are usually criminalized under menacing statutes or harassment statutes, and are of a piece with words that provoke an immediate violent or disorderly response. Though threatening government officials can be, and is, banned. (Related to, though certainly not the same as, harassment-types of speech.) Prosecution is extremely difficult under these laws precisely because of the First Amendment. And try finding a recent successful prosecution for “obscenity.” Maybe in Mississippi.
Speech that constitutes furtherance of fraud is not protected, but it is the fraud that is being addressed there, not speech per se. So, yes, my brush was perhaps a little too broad, but not by much.
“Hate speech” is not a crime anywhere in the U.S., and never will be as long as we have a First Amendment.
Ice Swimmer, I cannot think of any situation where the statement you use as an example could be prosecuted. It might be considered a part of a crime, but the crime itself, not the speech, would be prosecuted.
Trevor Noah takes Ben Carson down, down, down on The Daily Show.
Link
Scroll down for the video.
The network that is hosting tonight’s Republican debate, Fox Business, is is also the network that:
Promoted conspiracy theories around President Obama’s birth certificate. Yes, they were birthers.
Promoted the conspiracy theory that SEAL Team Six did not really kill Osama Bin Laden
Freaked out about the Keystone XL pipeline. (Obama rejected the pipeline to appease “the French,” etc.)
Claimed that the Muppets brainwash children against capitalism.
Claimed that the Lego Movie was anti-business.
Used footage of women in bikinis to discuss crime.
Claimed that President Obama intended to offer reparations for slavery.
Hosted a segment in which they asked the question, “Is there something about the female brain that Is a deterrent to having female tech executives?”
Right. I don’t think these doofuses will do a good job of moderating a political debate.
Link
Donald Trump was interviewed on Good Morning America. He said a lot of stupid stuff, and he made a lot of claims that are jut outright wrong. GMA let him get away with wrong stuff, let him get away with that crap without the slightest pushback.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the October unemployment rate was 5%, the lowest since April of 2008.
Donald Trump also said that Hillary Clinton is running for president in order to stay out of jail.
re #33
So Trump Tower has “one of the most successful Starbucks” which would imply that the other tenants in the tower really like that Starbucks. And Trump is going to kick them out because he does’t like their cup design. Isn’t it one of the most fundamental axioms of successful businessmen to give your customers what they want? Why is the Greatest Businessmen Ever ignoring that axiom?
re #39
I don’t know if that 20% figure is correct, but Trump is right that the official unemployment figure undercounts unemployment. If you have been told “no” so many times that you give up looking for a job, it doesn’t count you. If you go back to school because you need better qualifications than you currently have in order to get a job, it doesn’t count you. If you want a full-time job but you can’t find one so you accept a part-time job, it doesn’t count you. And if you used to be a white collar worker but you got laid off and now you are working at McDonalds because that’s all you can get, it doesn’t count you, either.
moarscienceplz @41
But there’s never a time that isn’t true.
Senator Marco Rubio alienated some potential voters today by getting a few key facts wrong when he was discussing Star Wars movies:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/marco-rubio-feels-bit-darth-vader/story?id=34974389
This is a follow up to comments 7, 24, 26, and 27, (one from Saad).
Here’s another quote from Kevin Swanson, pal and host for presidential candidates Huckabee, Jindal and Cruz.
He got one thing right, he and his ilk are really messed up.
A note from Rachel Maddow:
Lynna @34
I’m surprised more people aren’t aware of the white-supremacist-flavored branch of Asatru. It’s been an issue not only among Norse neopagans, but also in the wider pagan community.
Fast food workers are targeting presidential candidates to favor $15/hr minimum wage.
Hope they aren’t expecting the Rethugs to be sympathetic.
@WMDKitty- weren’t there a lot of Asatru who were freaking out about a black actor being cast for Heimdall before the first Thor movie came out?
I’m amused that the entire “hate speech” discussion has so far completely ignored the experience of the many democratic countries that have hate speech laws. OWHITUSAC!
jsrtheta @35:
I assume you were responding to my comment @19. In the future, it would be helpful if you at least include the comment you’re responding to, if not also the nym of the person you’re responding to (see: this post).
You can say that, but it doesn’t make it true. You can indeed have hate speech laws and a First Amendment. We would just have further restrictions on the 1st Amendment than we have now. It’s not impossible. Which segues nicely into Nick Gotts’ point above.
(btw, Nick, I don’t know if you’ve checked it out, but I’ve created a Lounge replacement at my blog, if you ever want to join us over there. There are several regulars who comment at the Speakeasy. I don’t have an email addy for you otherwise, I’d have sent an invite that way)
Lynna
Part of “Original German Fascism™ ” sought to reestablish a mythical pagan nordic aryan past. That’s where christians conveniently claim that of course the Nazis weren’t christian*.
In Europe you can hardly show any interest in old Germanic rites, culture, religion and tradition without stumbling into Nazis. It’S often a “gateway drug”: mildly ignorant kids get interested in Thor and Freya and want to wear Thor’s Hammer around their neck and they end up ina shop run by Nazis who will give them “something to read”.
microraptor
The problem there, IMO, wasn’t that Elba was cast as Heimdall, but that Elba wasn’t cast for every single other role in that movie as well. Though I admit that’s a problem I have with more or less all movies…
*It was more or less mandatory for members of the Waffen SS to leave the RCC so there would never be a conflict of loyalty, for example when they shut the whole population into the church and set fire to it.
Tony @49:
I’m new to this list. I am not as adept at posting as you would like. Sorry about that.
Now, if you’re done lecturing me (and you really should watch that patronizing tone, not attractive at all), I do take issue with your position. In this country, the First Amendment is about as absolute as any amendment can be, and for good reason. I have seen the prosecutions other countries have waged pursuant to their “hate speech” laws, and I don’t really care for that sort of “thought police” approach to criminal law. See, it all really depends on who’s in and who’s out, and how you can get a majority to squelch what it doesn’t like in the name of saving someone’s feels. And no, you can’t have hate speech laws and a First Amendment. This isn’t really a democracy anyway. It’s a constitutional republic. More to the point, the Bill of Rights was designed to protect the minority from the majority. And I have no desire to have the majority decide what is acceptable speech and what isn’t. Rather defeats the whole “rights” idea.
There are many reasons why First Amendment jurisprudence has gone the way it has, and it certainly hasn’t always been admirable. But on the whole, it is a damned sight better than having the government dictate what citizens can and cannot say. Once you decide that someone has the right to decide what is and isn’t acceptable thought, you can chuck just about everything out the window.
Including the need to take responsibilty and tone back your speech that hurts other people. That is the problem with “free speech”. A well known problem, which we are discussing the need for people to take that responsibility.
Giliell, and others, thanks for adding to my knowledge of neo-pagan white supremacists. That slime runs deep and looks to be ineradicable.
In other news, the Republican debates last night were mostly boring, but did include some face-palming moments. Here is one from Ted Cruz:
Yes, he said “Department of Commerce” twice — he meant for one of those to be “Department of Education.”
If you go to Cruz’s offensive website, you will see that he also wants to get rid of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and many offices related to protecting the environment.
How long has the National Endowment for the Arts been a target for conservatives? Seems like decades.
Cruz will not eliminate military programs, he will increase spending on those. He has to get rid of some things because he is offering trillions of dollars in tax breaks. See http://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9633134/ted-cruz-tax-plan
Addendum to Lynna’s #53, AP fact check of the debate. Besides pointing out Cruz’s error, every other candidate had their moments. Carson sticks out with claiming raising minimum wage loses jobs, and Chinese troops are in Syria. Bush made major errors in fiscal policy, that the economy can grow at 4%, and the Chinese Yuan is undervalued.
Thanks, Nerd. It takes a lot of patience to fact check those candidates. Thank you, Associated Press!
Yes, Carson was wrong when he claimed that raising minimum wages causes job loss. He was also wrong when he claimed that “Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate for black teenagers is 31.7%. That’s really high, but it is no where near the 80.2% that Carson claimed. He offered that bogus statistic because he was trying to make an assertion that if the minimum wage is lowered or eliminated, then those black kids will get jobs.
Carson also used his autobiographical details, namely that he worked as a lab assistant when he was young, to make his case. The trouble with Carson’s history, as always, is that he makes false comparisons and false assumptions. When he was 24 years old, the minimum wage was $2.10 per hour. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $9.29 today. That’s more than our current minimum wage.
Carly Fiorina was asked how she could claim that Republicans are better at creating jobs when the Obama record is 107,000 jobs per month, on average, and George W. Bush’s record was 13,000 per month. Fiorina replied, “Yes, problems have gotten much worse under Democrats.” WTF?
We’re supposed to put the U.S. economy into the hands of one of these doofuses?
Sounds to me like she accidentally told the truth–from her viewpoint. Bosses like it when unemployment is high: Makes it harder for people to demand higher wages or walk away from abusive jobs. Things have gotten “worse” under the Dems in that there are more jobs and therefore fewer opportunities to abuse employees. Fiorina called it like she saw it.
Answers from the alternate universe: Maria Bartiromo asked Rand Paul a question in which she noted that energy production has boomed under Obama, and that Obama recently announced a plan to cut carbon emissions (more than has been done already).
With the boom in energy production established in the question, Rand Paul still claimed that we could not continue to move toward energy self-sufficiency and pursue climate change goals at the same time. Why? In Rand Paul’s alternate universe, because of “the regulations that are hampering our energy that the president has put in place.” WTF?
jsrtheta @51:
I think you may have read my comment in the wrong way. There was no intent to be patronizing there. It was meant as a suggestion. I apologize for not wording it in a way that would have made that clearer. As for the rest, we’re not likely to agree. I don’t *want* hate speech laws in the US, but I do think we can have them and still have freedom of speech. It would just be a curtailed 1st Amendment. It wouldn’t eliminate freedom of speech.
About the Republican debate: Jonathan Chait said,
I heard Donald Trump telling interviewers this morning that the moderators were very good, much better than those pesky moderators from the previous debate. Yeah, the candidates like it when they can rest comfortably in their alternate reality.
In other non-news, in both debates, the undercard/kiddie table and the main stage, candidates made a point of hating on Hillary Clinton. Chris Christie even deflected direct accusations from Bobby Jindal by simply expounding on his hatred of Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump alienated immigrants even more, (is that possible), by continuing to lavish praise on an anti-immigrant policy of the 1950s (Dwight Eisenhower’s administration).
That immigration program was called “Operation Wetback.” Trump said:
Operation Wetback was not nice, not friendly.
White Supremacists love the idea. Trump is getting a lot of kudos online for his nice, friendly plan to deport 12 million people. For example, this is from Richard B. Spencer: “Operation Wetback, fuck yeah!”
From Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:
And there was this “we love moderators who don’t call us on our bullshit” moment:
During the Republican debate, the American Action Network (über conservation commie hunters) ran an ad. The ad focused on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The AAN doofuses spent $500,000 to make Elizabeth Warren look like a communist dictator.
Elizabeth Warren noticed.
Link
Scroll down at the link to watch the ad.
Some highlights … um, lowlights from the undercard/kiddie table debate:
Huckabee thinks Syrian refugees are just angling for American-style healthcare and “a good sandwich.”
Christie thinks Black Lives Matter is a movement that is “allowing lawlessness to reign.”
This falls into our “the company they keep” category.
Link
Give that woman a hat. Trump likes his supporters to be shallow, unthinking. Here’s Trump’s comment on raising the minimum wage: “We don’t win anymore. Why is that? Taxes too high, wages too high.”
Also, I would like to point out to Schlafly that Trump does not love America the way it is. That’s his whole point.
Maria Bartiroma included a rightwing myth in one of her questions:
The Wall Street Journal, among countless other sources, debunked that myth long ago. The faulty “participation rate” interpretation included children, retirees, college students and stay-at-home parents.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/11/10/fox-business-opens-gop-undercard-debate-by-push/206769
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/10/fox-business-maria-bartiromo-pushes-myth-that-a/206773
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/08/20/donald-trump-is-right-about-42-of-americans-are-unemployed-if-you-include-my-88-year-old-grandma/
Only two Republican candidates acknowledge that the climate crisis is real, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki. Both were excluded from the debates. They didn’t even make the kiddie table.
Poll numbers that, for the most part, have a margin of error somewhere in the 3 point range, were used to exclude Graham and Pataki, and to decide who was at the kiddie table and who made the main stage. Some of the major polls are even worse when it comes to margins of error:
http://www.stats.org/presidential-pollings-margin-for-error/
Tony!@49,
Thanks very much – I’ll come and check it out!
Ted Cruz via Lynna @ 53
WTF – How would the government (even if it is just the military, all other functions being apparently unnecessary) be funded if there was no IRS?
Lynna @64
She is right about the “acting” part, just not in the way she means it.
Or even the way it was back when it was supposedly great (in the 1950s).
From Lynna’s @61:
Ha ha ha.
The coddling that some claim is going on at college campuses is *actually* going on at RNC debates.
Further to the “hate speech” issue, I’m not feeling like getting into a long discussion on this right now, but while badly-drafted laws can certainly cause problems (see this post on Mano’s blog for a French example – the thread is a treat for anyone who’s been missing StevoR, BTW), on the whole such problems are grossly exaggerated, and there are much more serious restrictions on individual freedom, both in countries with hate-speech laws, and in the USA.
Ben Carson thinks the Chinese have deployed troops in Syria. Here’s some of his extended word salad on the subject of Syria:
In other word salad moments, Ben Carson claimed that regulations add ten cents to the cost of every bar of soap, and that’s something Hillary Clinton won’t tell you.
In conclusion Carson is confused. He likes the word “complex,” and he has used that word before to cover his confusion.
And, no, the Chinese have not sent troops to Syria.
Here’s Donald Trump’s most embarrassing moment from the debate:
Uh, Donald, China is not part of the TPP negotiations. Lots of people have legitimate complaints about the TPP deal. China is not one of them. In fact, one could argue that a major plus for the TPP is that is sets up the USA to manage the terms of trade in the Pacific, and not China. Not China.
China may join the pact later, who knows — but they did not have a hand in outlining that pact.
Republican candidates for president have spoken at Liberty University before. Today, Ben Carson became the fourth candidate to speak at Jerry Falwell’s institution of not-really-higher learning when he delivered a speech to a “convocation” of about 13,000 people. The students were required to attend.
Perhaps because he was speaking to a conservative christian audience, Carson let loose with even more God talk than usual.
Link
I’m just gonna point out that today is a holiday dedicated to celebrating people who get paid to murder children.
Take a look at those pics of the MSF hospital America bombed that were posted recently, and remember that today is a national holiday dedicated to celebrating and honoring the people who committed that atrocity.
That even many seemingly-reasonable people are OK with that makes all the other moments of political madness that much easier to understand.
Jake Harban @74:
Words fail. Since much of the discussion here has been about “hate speech”, I must say that your is as obscene an example of “hate speech” as I’ve seen in years.
Mormon leaders in Utah recently announced that children of church members in same-sex relationships could not be baptized. As part of the same announcement, mormon leaders said that members in same-sex relationships are “apostates.”
One good outcome of all this is that more mormons are leaving their church. One bad outcome is that families who don’t fit the mormon mold, but who live in mormon-dominated communities are being ostracized, including the children.
I added this to our political thread because in the morridor (mormon corridor), you cannot separate the mormon religion from politics. Mormons have controlled politics in Utah, and in some adjacent states, for decades. To see their influence wane is a good thing. Maybe we’ll see more diversity in elected offices.
Slate link
The New Civil Rights Movement link
KIVI TV link
This is a followup to comment 76.
One example of mormons controlling the justice system in Utah, resulting in a judge who removes a child from foster parents who are gay and orders that the child be placed in a home with a heterosexual, married couple.
http://kutv.com/news/local/foster-parents-say-child-removed-from-their-home-because-they-are-gay
Some background information on the mormon judge:
Yep, mormon, graduate of BYU.
This is a followup to comments 76 and 77.
http://www.sltrib.com/home/3165669-155/carbon-county-judge-orders-same-sex-couple
From the readers comments below the article:
link to debunking of Regnerus study
Mormon leaders have been citing this study ever since it came out about three years ago.
Lynna, #53, quoting Cruz in the debates:
Other people called out the DoC for its accidental double-inclusion (when one mention should have been Dept of Education: irony, you fall so heavy and hard!). I wish to point out that the DoC is the source of the grants to advertise profitable companies profitable overseas enterprises.
That’s right, the US federal government gives McDonald’s money to advertise in other countries, because we want to help the job creators. If you think for one second that the DoC would be gone under a cruz administration, I’ve got some advertising time on Kyrgyzstan national TV to sell you.
Moreover, the Department of Energy? Cruz has been in the senate how long? Clearly he’s announcing this because the DoE is responsible for research grants for “alternative” power generation – things that we know work, but that are not yet widespread or not yet integrated into our national energy planning or whatever. Tidal power, power from underwater currents, solar power, wind power, micro-hydro and more have been subject to these grants.
But the single biggest responsibility (in perceived importance from insiders’ perspectives and in terms of total dollars spent) of the DoE is to oversee fission reactors and fusion research in the USA. The US does not want to lose out on the potential to sell fusion power stations to the world (or to license tech to those companies from competing nations who solve bits of the problem on their own). Nor does it want to lose out on the potential to sell power-generating fission plants that are safer, create less radioactive waste, and are harder to turn to military purposes. Nor does it want to lose out on the potential to license important pieces of such tech. Nor does the US want to axe its only regulator of private, power-generating fission plants operating within the US.
Cruz either knows this and fully intends to keep the DoE running with a budget not-much-changed (though possibly excluding some money for research into “alternative” energy), OR as a senator Cruz is one of the biggest idiots we have in the US government…
…or both.
Seriously. Ditch the DoE? He’s counting on the idiocy of the press to pass on such idiocy to the people.
Crip Dyke @79, all good points. Thanks for posting that analysis.
Ted Cruz cannot eliminate all of those departments. He has no plan to take up the slack in providing services that are essential, like collecting taxes, and, as you said, regulating power-generating fission plants. I can never figure out if Cruz is lying or just stupid in a really sneaky way.
Republicans troll media with ‘stophillary’ wi-fi password:
Images at the link. How pathetic.
@jsrtheta 75:
Were you planning to offer any evidence or did you just post it in honor of Say Really Absurd Things Day?
@Jake Harban 82:
I think your post is all the evidence that’s needed. To libel literally hundreds of thousands of veterans for one incident is ridiculous. Of course, the way you wrote it makes it sound like there is a national holiday for the people involved in only that incident, which is also ridiculous.
@jsrtheta 83:
So no evidence then.
Even if we presume you believe that no soldier has ever killed anyone except in the MSF bombing despite the fact that “killing people” is basically their job, even if we presume that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, and Cambodia never happened, you’re still trying to claim that: “Soldiers shouldn’t be celebrated with their own national holiday” constitutes inciting violence against them and that veterans are an oppressed group. Your posts contain nothing but self-evident absurdities.
No, I think they’re only evident to you. If you don’t understand how the military works (and you apparently don’t), and you don’t think that men and women who risk, and often lose, their lives for shit pay and the ingratitude of folk like you, are worth respect and honor, you are beyond hope. And believe me, that’s as politely as I can put it.
Look in the mirror. Pot Kettle Black.
@jsrtheta 85: Exactly what part of the Iraq war is honorable? Exactly what part of it should I be grateful for? Exactly why should I “respect” someone for being willing to risk their life for an evil cause?
@Nerd of Redhead, 86: Name one. I fail to see how it’s “self-evidently absurd” to suggest that invading countries and killing people is not something that deserves a national holiday.
Honestly, I’m somewhat surprised that you support the war. I thought it was generally considered quite unpopular around these parts.
@Jake Harban 87:
Who said anything about supporting the war? Not me. Not Nerd. (Not that I speak for Nerd.)
About Cruz abolishing IRS: There is an evil, destructive and corruption-prone way to collect taxes without a government agency. I find it unlikely that even Cruz would propose this, but for example ancient Romans had tax farmers or publicans, private contractors who collected taxes.
@jsrtheta 88: So you oppose the war but think it should be celebrated? Or perhaps you oppose it only on the grounds that it’s a waste of American lives and money while holding no concern for Iraqis?
Please do articulate your position on the war which is consistent with (a) the idea that Iraqis are human whose lives have value, and (b) the idea that American soldiers who conducted the war deserve honor, respect, and/or gratitude for having done so.
@jake harban 90:
I’m not sure if you’re being willfully obtuse, or if you merely need to grow up.
Like millions of people, I opposed the war. I respect those who, out of patriotism or even a mere honoring of a commitment, followed the oath they gave and fought. I expect yours are the type of ethics that would allow you to have blithely walked away from such an oath or such a commitment. Giving no thought to those you leave in the lurch. If so, I advise you never marry, or buy a house.
@jsrtheta 91:
I’m not sure if you’re being willfully obtuse, or if you merely need to grow up.
It appears that your ethics hold an “oath” or “commitment” is absolute and any action, including murder, is justified if it is done in service of a “commitment.” Would you respect those who, out of patriotism or even a mere honoring of commitment, murder doctors who perform abortions, or bomb federal buildings, or commit mass shootings in predominantly-black churches? Perhaps you believe that even the Confederate soldiers, who out of patriotism or honoring of commitment took up arms to defend slavery deserve respect.
It is dubious to claim that a member of the military is (1) Essentially is a (war-)criminal; or (2) Essentially is not a (war-)criminal. Both positions may or may not have merit, but neither applies universally — for any definition of “universally” (excepting, perhaps, severely constrained definitions). The USAnnihilate!Annihilate!Annihilate! soldiers in the multiple recent / continuuing wars did, and did not, do some “acceptable” actions. Their immediate commanders did, and did not, order “acceptable” actions. (Interestingly, whether or not the supreme command was as ambiguous(?) is debatable; as an example. the British PM of the time is thought to be a possible war criminal.) Of course, an “acceptable” action does not compensate for an not-“acceptable” action; and the definition of “acceptable” is very much open to discussion, ranging from “nothing is acceptable” to more nuanced positions.
I have no recollection of hearing of this particular case before, albeit I am aware there are individuals in “sanctuary” in USArseholirethanthouistan, ‘I’m so happy’: migrant woman free from fear after 461 days in sanctuary (boldfacing mine):
So, if yer black (or look like, to a racist, a POC), yer guilty and are likely to be shot dead.
If yer Muslim (or look like, to an racist, a Muslim), yer a terrorist, and…
If yer Mexican (or look like, to a racist, a Mexican), yer in USAbsoluteejitisan “illegally” and will be deported…
…and so on…
Tony @81, not only that, but the GOP was so proud of their stophillary wifi password that, for awhile, it was the only item featured on the home page of the official GOP website. You had to look elsewhere if you wanted to read about GOP policies, debates or candidates.
Chris Christie blames President Obama for the current unrest/protests on college campuses:
Washington Post link
Billionaire Charles Koch not endorsing Republican candidate during primary:
Snicker. The Grauniad can do a fine line in snark, even in a straightfoward news article. And they don’t give up:
I am actually going to give this Kochroach the benefit of the doubt about the “shopping for a candidate” quote(? paraphrase?) and presume he meant it in a reasonably innocent fashion; that is, not looking for one Faux & Kochroach Bros., UnLimited can buy / own (which is perhaps all the thugs in the kandidate klown kar, except, perhaps, to his credit, Teh Trum-prat).
The linked-to article at the end of excerpt suggests how deranged this nutter is: “‘People aren’t going to scare me off,’ Charles Koch told the MSNBC interviewers. ‘I’m kind of like Martin Luther when he was on trial. And he said, ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’”
Re blf’s comment 97: holy crap, the Koch brothers have one thing in common with all of the Republican candidates, overweening ego. Martin Luther, my ass. It is interesting that the Koch brothers haven’t found a horse to buy yet.
Just for fun, here’s another Carly Fiorina lie:
According to Fiorina, the detail that makes her lie not a lie is that the “green room setting” was at a conference, not on the set of a TV show. Still questionable in my book.
Trump’s lie, like everything about Trump, was even bigger, much bigger. He said he got to know Putin “very well” when the two were on “60 Minutes.” Uh, no, Donald. The Trump interview for “60 Minutes” was taped separately from the Putin interview for the show. Maybe Trump did a mind meld with Putin that transcended time and space.
Kochs are saying they won’t spend anything during the primaries. Sounds like horse race mentality to me. He doesn’t want to risk his money when the field is so numerously populated. When one gets through the primaries and into the final, I bet they’ll shell out the cash to ensure the winner (or at least try to ensure one).
Remember when we cheered the fact that members of the House of Congress passed a Highway Trust Fund bill before the November 20 deadline? Hurrah, Paul Ryan did something.
The funding bill passed 363 to 64, with most of the nay votes being cast by far rightwing whackos. The House bill still has to be reconciled with the Senate version, but things seemed to be going relatively smoothly … until now.
The Hill link
So far, Marco Rubio agrees with Santorum and has released a similar transportation plan.
The federal gas tax hasn’t changed in two decades. It should go up a little bit, not be eliminated. We have not kept up with infrastructure needs.
@blf 93: I’m not sure that anyone has ever claimed that every member of the military is a war criminal.
Your post appeared after mine and seemed somewhat like a response to my “debate” with jsrtheta, but I never claimed that all soldiers were (war)criminals. My point is that soldiers should not be celebrated simply for being soldiers; there’s a rather wide spectrum between celebrating someone as a national hero and arresting them as a war criminal.
While some soldiers are doubtless war criminals (bombing a hospital and torture are war crimes; we know both have been done), I used those examples to prove that soldiers are not inherently worthy of respect— if some soldiers commit war crimes, then it’s wrong to say all soldiers are heroes.
I would further argue that no soldier who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan is a hero. Because those wars were crimes, started entirely without merit and causing considerable harm, it is impossible for any conduct in said wars to be heroic.
This is perhaps an interesting read, Friction is now between global financial elite and the rest of us, by Robert Reich (“chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and […] secretary of labour [sic] in the Clinton administration”). I’ve only been able to quickly skim it, mostly due to a pair of obnoxious yippity dogs YIPPING AT FULL FECKING VOLUME and completely ruining my concentration…
Excuse me, I’m going to go yippity dog hunting. With thermonuclear ammo.
Jake Harban@101, my comments @93 were not a reply to any particular person, claim, or comment. I think we are saying roughly the same thing, namely, being a soldier does not inherently make one either a (war-)criminal or a hero. Many soldiers never fight and instead work in peacekeeping missions, disaster relief, and so on. Which also does not inherently make them heroes or criminals.
I tend to agree with your option about at least some of the people who fought in any one of the recent “my penis is bigger than your penis, so let’s kill a bunch of civilians / icky others” pretexts for stealing oil. And I perhaps especially agree about volunteers for “combat” positions in those corporate-mandated crusades, that is, those who expressed a desire to kill. (I am aware that the USAnnihilate!Annihilate!Annihilate! military is all-volunteer.) I am also extremely furious at the extrajudicial drone slaughter-them-icky-others programme.
Fewer mass shootings occur in states with more background checks: report:
(Tongue-in-cheek: Fortunately, there are no bans on using thermonuclear devices to discourage yippity dogs, other than you can’t set them off during wildfire season. However, you do have to have a license for the cannon, bomber, or ballistic missile.)
blf, I have a friend whose yippity dogs occasionally get on his nerves. He turns up the heat in his house and then the dogs just lie down and go to sleep. Worth a try.
In other news, President Obama is supporting more anti-discrimination legislation:
Link
Here’s a summary of what the Equality Act entails:
Link
Republicans in the House will not pass this legislation, but it has 170 Democratic co-sponsors in the House, and 39 co-sponsors in the Senate. The failure of Republicans to pass the Equality Act is likely to make a big splash. I hope so.
It it worth noting that, when they are polled, U.S. voters think that LGBT people are already protected against discrimination. That’s not true. We have some educating and communicating to do.
Chris Christie said some more stupid stuff about Black Lives Matter:
New Jersey Star Ledger link
Remember when Ben Carson said the Chinese had deployed troops in Syria, and then everyone said, uh, “NO”. Well, Carson is nothing if not consistently wrong, insistently wrong.
Carson reminds me so much of Sarah Palin. Whatever he says is right because … he said it. And then he claims to have “intelligence” that no one else has. Who are these mysterious sources of intelligence?
And why does the mainstream media persecute poor Mr. Carson so much?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-armstrong-williams-chinese-in-syria
State lawmakers in Missouri think they have a right to interfere at the most fundamental levels of higher education.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/kurt-schaefer-missouri-abortion-study
University officials aren’t having it:
The Donald said some stupid stuff about the students who are protesting at Mizzou:
Link
Lynna, the yippity dogs aren’t mine. I think they own different people, and simply don’t like each other. Unfortunately, neither of their food-fetchers seems to have any idea how to control them, one yelling (adding to the noise) and the other just going “Sssssssh!”(at the dogs as far as I can tell).
They’ve now stopped, presumably due to the several kilometres-wide smoking glowing crater. Or maybe just because they got hungry and dragged their humans apart to get fed. It’s rather hard to tell through all the smoke…
And speaking of annoying yippity dogs, the potential for kilometre-wide craters, and smokescreens, Rightwing pundits belittle mainstream praise of Bush and Kasich at debate:
Coal use in the U.S. has fallen by 25% since 2005. Good for the environment, bad for communities that rely on the incomes made by coal industry workers.
Hillary Clinton unveiled a plan to address the problem.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/12/3721674/hillary-coal-plan/
In many ways, Clinton’s proposal builds on actions already taken by the Obama Administration
blf @110, I heard Rush Limbaugh say that Kasich should not have even been on the stage, that he is not a Republican.
The rightwing media wants to collude with the rabid rightwing base to whittle the presidential field down to the most
conservativewhacko white dude on the planet.This falls into our “the company they keep” category, and is a followup to comments 7, 24, 26, 27 and 44.
I guess hanging out with the guy who advocating killing gay people, Kevin Swanson, was not enough. Ted Cruz is now hanging out with people who think that homosexuals are demonic enemies, pawns of Satan.
Link
National sorority Alpha Phi refuses to back Republicans’ Safe Campus Act:
Ah, a rapist’s charter. (Also, Benghazi!)
It’s unclear from the article whether or not any of the measuers in the more-sensible McCaskill and Gillibrand bill attempt to deal with the rape kit backlog, Victims’ hopes for justice fade as rape kits are routinely ignored or destroyed:
A particular problem is, apparently, anonymous (or “Jane Doe”) rape kits, which is the result of victims undergoing a rape exam but who did not want to report the incident. As The Grauniad says, anonymous rape kits are “meant to encourage rape victims to preserve evidence, even if they weren’t ready to report”. These anonymous rape kits seem to be particularly prone to destruction.
I’m not going to bother to excerpt this, except for a summary paragraph and then two paragraphs I found hillarious, Ted Cruz’s ‘crazy’ tax plan would cost US at least $16tn, thinktank says:
Right. The government will raise much of the funds it needs by taxing itself. Any other funding needed will be raised by taxing flying unicorns.
Teh Trum-prat appears to now be jumping multiple sharks at once (kudos to robro in the On my way to Skepticon thread for one incident). Another, Donald Trump likens Ben Carson’s ‘pathological’ temper to child molesting:
Dr Carson seems to be an eejit in multiple areas outside his specialty (which is probably true of everyone, myself included), but Teh Trum-prat seems be specialize in being an eejit. A particularly toxic and obnoxious one.
First Dog on the Moon’s handy guide to the difference between Uber and taxis: “One hands out mints, but also knows your name, address and mobile number. The other allows you to run away without paying. Which do you choose?”
blf @116, I heard an interview with Carson this morning in which he was asked about Trump’s having compared Carson’s “pathological” youth to incurable diseases like “child molestor.” Carson refused to take the bait. He said that he hoped Trump’s staff would help him out with the “pathological” part of Carson’s description in his book.
On the other hand, we can now add Carson to the list of Republican candidates who have said that they stand ready to shoot down Russian planes over Syria. He’s a master of talking calmly about totally bonkers ideas.
While Trump was comparing Carson to child molestors, he also claimed to know more about ISIS “than the generals do,” and he stands ready to “bomb the shit out of Middle Eastern oil fields.”
While Trump is being bombastic and stupid, he also dissed the people of Iowa for believing Carson: “How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?”
Trump doesn’t have an irony meter.
Both Carson and Trump claim to know more about Syria than the entire intelligence-gathering apparatus of the USA. (Carson claims he has proof that China has deployed people to Syria.) In that sense, they are the same. Mysterious, unidentified sources tell them stuff about Syria.
Congressional Republicans are trying, once again, to repeal Obamacare. Yes, they really are. 50-60 attempts were not enough.
After all that practice, they still aren’t any better at executing a repeal-Obamacare plan.
Link
Comments by two Republican Senators go further to put the main problem with repeal in plain sight:
Link
An analysis of the “I have secret information” ploy used by politicians is good for a few laughs.
Both Hunter and Ernst were reelected. Stupidity pays off for right-wingers.
Link
Rachel Maddow’s video segment on this issue
“Jihadi John” has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, probably. Link, Maddow video
Washington Post link
The GOP is so panicked by the prospect of a Trump or a Carson presidential nominee that they are considering calling Mitt Romney back into the race.
Ha, ha, ha, ha! I’ve seen that story on almost every news media site I checked today.
Washington Post link
This is a followup to my comment 34, WMDKitty’s comment 45, micro raptor’s comment 47, and Giliell’s comment 50.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/11/13/3721890/white-supremacy-odinism/
Oh, FFS, this brand of white supremacists managed to throw some misogynist darts at christianity.
On the personal front, I’m having a hard time enjoying my favorite, admittedly silly, Thor-related movies. Bah!
Good news from Portland.
We’ve seen examples of cities and states taking the lead on raising the minimum wage when the federal government fails to do so; and now we see the same dynamic in addressing climate change.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/13/3721960/portland-opposes-fossil-fuel-infrastructure/
Kris Kobach is back in LaLa Land when it comes to fighting fictional voter fraud. (Well, really he never left LaLa Land. He lives there permanently.)
I snipped a long conspiracy theory about voters being bussed to Kansas towns in order to same-day register and vote — a totally bogus, long-debunked story.
Link
Donald Trump performed a dramatic reenactment of Ben Carson’s story of trying to stab someone in the abdomen with a knife.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/11/donald-trump-ben-carson-stabbing
Bernie Sanders picked up a key endorsement in Iowa.
Good news for Bernie, but not the whole story:
Salon link
Oh, FFS. Here’s a Moment of Mormon Madness. Mormon leaders tried to clarify their recent asinine pronouncements and only made things worse (as usual).
For the backstory, see comments 76, 77, and 78.
It’s only a matter of time before these guys get kicked out of political power circles in Utah.
From the readers comments:
See comment 77.
In other Utah news, Judge Scott Johansen may soon see his own day in court.
The Guardian link
Donald Trump and Sean Hannity, (two entertainers, one a presidential candidate and one a Fox News host, both clowns), endorsed an anti-Clinton book that was dedicated by the author to a Holocaust denier, to a man who also blamed 9/11 on a “Jewish Plot.” More fodder for our “the company they keep” category.
Media Matters link
Disreputable crap, lousy source material. It figures that Donald Trump would like it.
Fox News is not happy with Jennifer Lawrence. Why? The actress support’s women’s rights. Fox host Andrea Tantaros said:
Link
Not that I expect consistency from Republicans, but shouldn’t they have a problem with Dr. Carson and his campaign aide attending secret intelligence briefings and leaking the information to the public? i mean, either they’re getting these briefings from the US government, in which case leaking the results is sedition and treason and undermining our troops and all that bad stuff, or they’re getting them from foreign governments, in which case their loyalty to Amurrica is questionable anyway.
Anton Mates @133, my bet is that Carson and his aides are being briefed by rightwing whackos. We may find out soon. Carson has promised to provide more information in about a week.
When Joni Ersnst claimed insider knowledge about WMD in Iraq, she hinted at a connection made by her spouse who served in Iraq. Carson mentioned “Generals,” so it may be that a rightwing whacko with a military background talked to him. There are, unfortunately, lots of rightwing whackos in the military.
Sure, but the problem remains, doesn’t it? This “secret information” isn’t public, so either the US government doesn’t know about it, in which case Carson’s hypothetical military sources are concealing info from their superiors, or the government does know about it and has classified it, in which case Carson’s hypothetical military sources are leaking state secrets. Either way, Nefarious Treason is happening.
The ragged edge of the far rightwing in the House of Congress has come up with a “Contract With America II.” The contract is a plan for all-out destruction, destruction that the House Freedom Caucus has blithely described as “positive.”
Bloomberg News link
The contract includes other “positive” agendas, like defunding Planned Parenthood.
Anton @135:
White House officials have already denied Carson’s claims. Some smirked a bit while doing so.
Chances are good that what looks like treason is just stupidity. The “secret” information is not real. It is conspiracy theories pulled out of someone’s ass and then flogged to gullible people like Carson as truth.
Carson is already making moves that indicate he will have to back down a bit. In an interview with Katie Couric he said that he meant to say that the Chinese government sells supplies to Syria.
One thing this incident confirms is that rightwing politicians, and their aides, do not know how to vet their sources.
Here is video and text showing the reaction of White House spokesman Josh Earnest to Ben Carson’s claim that the Chinese military is involved in Syria:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/josh-earnest-ben-carson-syria-speechless
Alabama just got slapped by the federal Justice Department for not complying with the National Voter Registration Act. Not slapped hard enough.
Link
Multiple attacks involving shootings have been reported in Paris.
Mother Jones link
More on the multiple attacks in Paris:
Washington Post link
MSNBC link for coverage of the violence in Paris. Apparently there were explosions as well as shootings and hostage-taking.
The goons lash out at the suggestion they do not need to kill people, Police union scorns LAPD award for officers who use non-lethal force:
The existence of an award makes a dangerous job more dangerous?
By this logic, awards for bravery also makes the job more dangerous.
We interrupt this excerpt: Police Protective League? Provocative name…
So an award for bravery “suggests that officers must go above and beyond their normal activities to cause harm”?
And, trained? One would hope so. So how do the goons in LA demonstrate this training? Well, to-date this year (mid–Nov 2015), the number of police shootings has doubled (Shootings involving Los Angeles police officers have doubled this year: “So far this year, there have been 45 officer-involved shootings, 19 of which were fatal, compared to 23 shootings through the same time period last year”).
So the Chief goon has a problem, the goon squads supposedly under his command are running amuck. And seem to want to continue to impose an arbitrary rule enforced by terror and (probable) extrajudicial execution. An award isn’t going to solve the problem, but its existence isn’t a bad idea.
Ben Carson acknowledges that there are no Chinese troops in Syria. (note, Faux News item)
Then the weasel tried to backtrack to Chinese involvement.
The Grauniad on all the possible(? hopefully?) snark-jumping the thugs are doing, A ‘child molester’, ‘stupid’ voters and … Mitt? Welcome to the election’s silly season (my edits / redactions are in [square brackets]):
We now return to this excerpt after a prolonged bout of ROTFL… (Is this a contender for the most idiotic claim — “my sources are better than your sources!” — yet made by any of the thugs?)
There’s a debate tonight between the Democratic presidential candidates. With all of the focus on France, it seems likely that the debate will not have as large an audience as the last one, but the attacks in Paris should prompt the candidates to focus on foreign policy. We’ll see.
CBS has made some major changes to the debate topics in response to the attacks in Paris. The network says that security, terrorism, and foreign relations will be major topics. The debate is a 9 p.m. Eastern Time. It is being held in Iowa.
CBS will air their hour-long special on the attacks in Paris right before the debate.
Hillary Clinton’s comment on the attacks in Paris: “All our prayers are with the people of France tonight. We must stand side-by-side every step of the way with France and our allies around the world to wage and win the struggle against terrorism and violent extremism. Even in this darkest night, Paris remains the City of Light. No terrorist attack will ever dim the spirit of the French people or our common commitment to the democratic values we share.”
Donald Trump’s comments: “President Obama said “ISIL continues to shrink” in an interview just hours before the horrible attack in Paris. He is just so bad! CHANGE.”
Ted Cruz commented: “We must immediately recognize that our enemy is not ‘violent extremism.’ It is the radical Islamism that has declared jihad against the west. It will not be appeased by outreach or declarations of tolerance. It will not be deterred by targeted airstrikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life.”
I really disagree with Cruz’s suggestion that the U.S. should have more “tolerance for civilian casualties.”
This is good news:
120 heads of state will attend the climate talks.
Of course, in @145 I mean shark-jumping, not snark-jumping. I don’t recall if Lewis Carroll had anything to say about The Jumping Of The Snark, but if he did, it would be more sensible than perhaps anything the thugs have been saying.
‘Poverty pay’ leads Walmart employees to skip lunch — or steal it from coworkers:
This should go without saying, but I am seriously appalled. (I presume Ms Faulkner’s claims are broadly true, they certainly seem consistent with other reports.) Food deprivation is an incredibly nasty means of control, so nasty that even the Magna Carta prohibited it (“no one shall be ‘amerced’ (fined) to the extent that they are deprived of their means of living”), and, less ambiguously, as do FDR’s Four Freedoms and (later) UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, plus other agreements. There then seems to be an argument that Walmart is committing, deliberately, a variety of crimes, not just at a local and national level, but also at an international and world-wide accepted, level.
The Democratic candidates for president debated last night. I thought the debate was fairly good, though sometimes the moderators asked questions that forced the candidates to correct oversimplifications before they answered the question.
Here are some of Bernie Sander’s memorable moments:
Link
Here a few more details from the Democratic debate. Most of this is presented in “quick summary” fashion.
More later.
Link
Ann Coulter thinks that the attacks on Paris are a guarantee that Donald Trump will win the presidency.
That’s a sampling of Coulter’s tweets.
Cray cray batshit load of conspiracy theories following the attacks in Paris:
Salon link
“SNL” just destroyed Ben Carson: Jay Pharoah’s epic send-up of Carson’s exaggerated life story
Scroll down for video.
Mormons leaving the faith, in public, and in droves.
http://www.sltrib.com/home/3178894-155/hundreds-rally-against-new-mormon-policy
Short video, plus text.
This will weaken the mormon church’s domination of politics in Utah.
A few comments from mormons:
Okay, that’s enough of that. You get the idea. Mormons have their hateful heads in the sand. Their most developed skill is self-delusion.
Trump blames Obama, and offers a simple solution:
Sheesh.
During the Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton said:
Republican candidates and rightwing media were quick to condemn Hillary’s comments:
For what it is worth, most Muslim leaders in the USA echoed some form of the distinction Hillary Clinton made.
It’s interesting to see that a lot of christians do not want to be lumped into the same category as, say, Westboro Church members, (or mormons for that matter), but they are willing to lump most Muslims in with “radical Islamists.”
So literally saying “we are at war with the jihadists” apparently means saying “we are not at war with radical islam(ists)”. Do these right-wing hack-jobs ever grow tired of lying through their teeth?
zenlike @159, I think the rightwing whackos really, really need someone to blame. It’s an emotional need. Donald Trump channels them most clearly, most simply, and most revealingly when he says, “When will President Obama issue the words RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM? He can’t say it, and unless he will, the problem will not be solved!”
I actually like Clinton’s distinction. For one thing, it acknowledges the fact that a lot of Muslims disagree with the Jihadist organizations. For another, it puts the jihadists/terrorists in a category that almost everyone can agree to fight against.
President Obama’s comments at the G-20 summit match Clinton’s more closely than Trump’s.
Some good news from the summit, Obama and Putin
USA Today link
zenlike @159
Clinton didn’t use the magical incantation the
Radical Christian Terroristsconservatives want her to use. Jihadist does not equal Radical Islam Terrorists because reasons!Excerpt from a much longer article in The New York Review of Books:
A Syrian refugee who is now in Germany put the attacks in Paris into perspective:
There’s some hyperbole in that statement, but you get the idea, and the empathy.
Stats:
Link
Lindsey Graham made a promise he can’t keep, a promise that makes him sound like blusterer-in-chief Donald Trump:
A bit more from the Democratic debate:
Link
Hillary Clinton Was Right in That Minimum Wage Fight and Her Rivals Were Wrong
This is a closely argued, in-depth presentation, so I’m not going to try to excerpt it.
Well, this is a novel event, rightwingers are praising the French. Here’s what Erick Erickson said: “Dear President Obama, today France is leading from the front to contain what you couldn’t contain leading from behind.”
Erickson was responding to the announcement from the French Defense Ministry about a raid conducted last night: the raid included at least 10 fighter jets and was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.” Twenty bombs were dropped. The raid was conducted with coordination from U.S. intelligence assets.
Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal said this morning that President Obama has a “deep seated aversion to using military force.”
How do right-wingers square this rhetoric with the statistics from the Pentagon that show the U.S. has carried out 6,353 airstrikes in the last 15 months. All of our allies in the region, combined, have carried out 1,772.
Republicans have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to ignore the fact the Obama’s offensive in Syria and Iraq is more aggressive than that of France. In fact, they ignore the offensive altogether most of the time.
More blather than help is coming from Republican presidential candidates.
This is not an argument about having an effective strategy, but an assertion that impugns Obama’s character and motives. He “does not wish to defend this country” — really?
One can argue about Obama’a approach and effectiveness, especially in Syria, but one cannot argue that he doesn’t want to defend the USA.
Cruz went further:
Link
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/isis-paris-attacks-rubio-republicans/416085/
Peter Beinart corrects Marco Rubio’s misapprehension when Rubio calls ISIS a “civilization” and Beinart corrects Rubio when he makes a lot of other basic errors in reference to the attacks on Paris.
An excerpt from President Obama’s press conference today:
Link
More stupidity from the rightwing:
Link
8.5 million people watched the Democratic debate on Saturday night. This is lowest number of viewers for any primary debates in 2015, but is still higher than the viewer numbers for any debate in the 2012 presidential race.
A lot of people have noted that Saturday night is not a debate-viewing night for many people, and that the attacks in Paris dominated the news. I was kind of surprised by the 8.5 million. I thought it would be less.
In Democratic candidate news, Hillary Clinton has promised that if she, as president, raises taxes, families earning less than $250,000 will not be affected. I’m not sure about her threshold there. Seems a bit high.
In Republican candidate news, Jeb Bush looks like a loser in many respects, but in terms of congressional endorsements, he is winning. Link
Donald Trump waxed bellicose and unintelligible on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program:
This is a followup to comments 54 (Nerd), 71, 107, 121, 133 (Anton), 138, 144 (Nerd), and 145 (blf).
When Ben Carson said he had “better sources” than the U.S. government for the claim that the Chinese military was involved in Syria, we all wondered who the heck his source was. Now we know. Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Dees.
Talking Points Memo link
Oh, yeah. Couldn’t you just see that coming?
What else does Dees believe? That Common Core educational standards are a threat to national security; that allowing gays to serve openly in the military degrades “moral readiness”; and that the U.S. in going to quickly go the way of the Roman Empire thanks to decadence and evil. He thinks U.S. troops should be christian troops. And he told Ben Carson that the Chinese are involved in Syria.
The growing list of governors who say they do not want Syrian refugees in their states:
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
As an aside, Dylann Roof collected his guns in Louisiana.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, was more reasonable:
The governors who want to refuse Syrian refugees are disconnected from reality and from the laws of the USA:
Think Progress link
Some Paris “Truthers” are claiming that ISIS is a wing of the American military. Others are claiming that the CIA and French Intelligence coordinated the attacks.
bleh. What garbage.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/16/here_come_the_paris_truthers_theres_no_such_thing_as_isis_its_a_creation_of_the_u_s/
Jeb Bush definitely wants to go to war:
While the climate change meeting is taking place in Paris, starting Nov. 30, ALEC will be holding its States and Nation Policy Summit in Scottsdale Arizona: Alternet Ben Carson will be speaking on Dec. 4 according to ALEC’s own site.
Bush I!I, et al., “Freedom Fry” Warroirs, sending others to die so teh monkeys can surrender.
</shark>Newsflash: if you are already regularly bombing the positions of an entity for months on end, you are already at war with them.
Yes, I am looking at you, Bush. And at you, Hollande. And at all those pundits who repeat the same nonsensical “tough guy” message.
Steve Bell on the Paris attacks — cartoon.
I had a neighbor try to talk up the French airstrikes to me today. She got kind of offended when I brought up the long history of bombing campaigns that failed to win wars, starting with the Battle of Britain in WW2.
Pteryxx @179, Ben Carson needs ALEC. He wants to be a far right warrior, but he definitely doesn’t have the chops to write his own policies, nor to even help write legislation. He will depend on ALEC to do all that work for him. He’ll claim it as his own … and it will all be bad.
Carson already has a background in plagiarism, so a relationship with ALEC will fit right into his comfort zone.
ALEC needs to expand the services it offers to Ben Carson. He needs foreign policy help:
In that same interview, Carson took a step backward and repeated, strongly, his belief that the Chinese military is intervening in Syria.
When asked a question about handling the refugee crisis, Carson said:
Link
Regarding Bernie Sanders’s recent statement that climate change also contributes to terrorism, a statement much scoffed at on rightwing media all day today:
Slate linkM/a>
Anonymous sent a message to ISIS:
Rightwing media is in a paroxysm of joy over new fodder it has to excoriate President Obama. Here’s an account of what Obama actually said:
Link
So what did the right-wingers do? They edited the quote to make it seem like President Obama said he was “not interested in America winning.” They edited the video too.
The other rightwing orgasm is over President Obama having said previously that ISIS was “contained,” a statement he made in direct reference to geographical boundaries of ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq. Obama also followed up by saying that the U.S. and its allies had not yet succeeded in decimating all of the ISIS leadership. The rightwing take on this is that Obama claimed ISIS is “contained” and look! they got all the way to France, that’s not contained! The rightwingers deliberately misunderstood the previous comments. Or maybe they’re just stupid.
Oh, FFS.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sessions-duncan-spending-bill-syrian-refugees
Right-wingers are really heating up over ISIS, the Paris attacks, and what they describe as President Obama’s cowardice.
Right Wing Watch link
Rachel Maddow and Richard Engel cover the attacks in Paris. There’s a lot more detail here than we’ve seen before.
Segment two
GOP immigration panic not justified by facts of refugee screening
Amanda Marcotte gets it right:
Supreme Court Justice Scalia just compared protections for gay people to protections for pedophiles.
Talking Points Memo link
Meanwhile, as the Rethuglican Pols felate the donors at the donors at ALEC, the October temperature anomaly has come in at an astonishing 1.04 degrees C above the historical average for the month. This is the highest monthly anomaly measured…ever.
Fiddle, you bloated plutocratic bastards! Fiddle!
Something from the democratic side, where somebody needs to read the law:
By law, the FDA cannot look at company financials, and doesn’t have any say in setting drug prices; they are on the sidelines. Why does anybody in government think otherwise, unless they are unaware of the laws covering the FDA?
I worked at an FDA regulated company. Our SOP, in accordance with law on FDA inspections, was specific: no financial information was to be disclosed to the FDA at any time, even if requested.
And the next Republican candidate to suspend his campaign for presidency is… Bobby Jindal.
“This is not my time”
Salt Lake City elects first openly gay mayor. Conga Rats Jackie! Applause to the Salt Lake City voters.
Here’s an odd insight into the psyche of the Koch brothers: it seems that they think their money has a good influence on our political system, but everyone else’s money is “special interest” money that should be banned.
And, from a different interview:
Link
The Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce website reported that a Koch bothers’ annual tax filing showed that Charles and David Koch spent about $126 million in the most recent midterm elections, on those elections in which we saw some really terrible candidates win.
The Koch brothers aren’t always successful when they throw their money around. They’ve been less successful in presidential races, for example, but since they adopted the tactic of focusing on down-ballot races they’ve been winning.
What we know about the latest police raid in Paris, in which two are dead and seven suspects were arrested:
Four police officers were injured.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/62ef16f18c4c454580edca722ed85c74/explosions-gunfire-paris-police-raid-apartment
Part of President Obama’s recent speech is worth repeating:
The rightwing in the USA is demanding that the U.S. refuse all Syrian refugees, that the country take in none, zero.
France was just attacked, but President Hollande confirmed that France will take in 30,000 refugees:
When will the French start calling Republican governors cowards?
Trevor Noah analyzed the stages of political grief.
One of the stages is “just say something batshit crazy.”
Noah also discussed the immediate reaction, which is anger, a reaction that normal people move past. He then went on to cover the reaction of a Governor in Alabama.
This is a followup to comment 197, in which we see the Koch brothers claiming that the money they put into political campaigns does only good.
Their tax filings show that they give millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations, and to anti-choice organizations.
Think Progress link
We see you, Koch brothers. We see right through your PR and your layered approach to distributing money. We see you making sure LGBT people and women feel the burden of your retrograde politics, of your social conservatism.
Congressional Republicans are being good at wasting time … again. They are also making their anti-regulation, anti-environment attitudes known … again.
Link
Marco Rubio was not present for the vote.
Ben Stein said some really stupid stuff:
:
Link
“Because he’s part black …”, WTF?
To Ben Stein (comment 204), we can add Tony Perkins as another right-wing doofus pushing “liberals hate America” propaganda.
Link
Another one forgets where the Kandidate Klown Kar is, blames Mr Obama, Republican Bobby Jindal suspends presidential campaign (“suspend” is liar-speak for withdraw):
WTF is it with this racist incantation the thugs are pushing? If chanted or whatever, daesh evaporates, thugs will all elections forever, pigs fly higher, and the peas leave?
Hillary Clinton received another endorsement from a labor organization:
Link
Mr Obama is (quite rightly) annoyed, ‘Offensive and hysterical’: Obama lashes Republicans over Syrian refugees:
Unfortunately, Mr Obama does not have the authority to feed these eejits to the peas.
I’m tempted to suggest the best targets for Mr Obama’s extrajudicial slaughter-by-drone are the thugs in Congress, but I will not stoop to that short of immoral illegality. Which highlights another point, the murders-by-drone is not helping either, Obama’s drone war a ‘recruitment tool’ for Isis, say US air force whistleblowers (my emboldening):
Sputters with rage…
blf, thanks for the highlighted quote above, where the drone program is questioned. Now I hear that the Russians are carpet bombing Raqqa. Even worse. I don’t know if this is accurate, but an MSNBC report put the number of civilians still in Raqqa at 500,000.
In other news, Donald Trump has gone from saying that he would “strongly consider” closing mosques in the USA (yesterday), to saying that he definitely would close mosques (today). His reasoning? “We’re going to have no choice, absolutely no choice.”
Bill O’Reilly lectured Muslims on overcoming bad PR:
Link
More obnoxious rightwing nonsense about the attacks in Paris:
Link
Even more obnoxious rightwing nonsense about the attacks in Paris:
Link
The MOARDUR! spews, Rupert Murdoch to Obama on refugees: admit only ‘proven Christians’:
The MOARDUR! is vehemently anti-BBC…
Va. Mayor Rejects Syrian Refugees, Refers to Japanese Internment Camps
This guy is not a Republican. This guy is a Democrat who, until just after he made that statement, was on Hillary Clinton’s presidential committee. Hillary, I’m pleased to report, promptly gave him the boot.
Indiana Governor, Mike Pence, actually refused to let two Syrian refugee families come to Indianapolis.
Chicago Tribune link
Mike Pence is a christian homophobe, so perhaps we should not be surprised that prejudice and unfounded fears are his default mode.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who recently said that he wouldn’t rule out making every Muslim in America carry special identification. I assume Trump would corner of the market on whatever this new version of identity was, and then he would charge Muslims a lot for the privilege of wearing it.
And yet another rightwing dunderhead says stupid stuff about refugees, and about Muslims in particular:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/elaine-morgan-syrian-refugee-camps
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton said, “It would be a cruel irony indeed if ISIS can force families from their homes and also prevent them from finding new ones.”
like a Crescent+star on their clothes (in bright blue) to indicate Muslimness?
I’ll be frst to Godwin that with: remember Hitter made all the Jews wear Star of David on their clothes for instant. public, ID? Trump wants to go that way, hmmm why am I not surprised?
microraptor @214, I was really glad to see that Hillary Clinton did not suffer that fool gladly. She was right to kick him to the gutter.
In related news, George Takei is reaching out to the bigots who are pushing for refugee internment camps:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/george-takei-david-bowers-internment
slither tove @218, I’m sure The Donald would tell you that he will make the most beautiful identity patch for Muslims! It will be so beautiful that it will make your head spin, and not only Muslims will want to wear it!
Whoops, I let autocorrect turn “slithey” into “slither.”
Rand Paul said some stupid stuff about war, refugees, and well … just about everything:
Link
I suppose everyone knows this by now, but I’ll post an update anyway.
The chief psychopathic honcho of the attacks in Paris is dead.
Link
This is hilarious, US gives Russian newspaper grammar lesson over ‘fake letter’ to LGBT activist (image of the marked-up letter):
This is from Paul Ryan’s Twitter feed:
Shame.
Uh-oh. This is not good. Contrary to other reports, the vote to pause the Syrian refugee program really does look veto-proof:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/house-vote-syrian-refugees-defying-veto-threat
Bernie Sanders gave a speech in which he described his brand of Democratic Socialism.
Think Progress link
This is sloppy. It’s not “veto-proof” until the Senate passes it by the appropriate majority. And they haven’t even scheduled a debate on it yet.
I’m a bit late to the party, but that thing that Egnor was jabbering about was pathetic. Any attempt to make dualism seem scientific or intellectual is nothing but turd-polishing, and the same goes for all other supernatural bullshit. I especially hate when science deniers try to use wonky faux-philosophical bullshit to “disprove” science. They honestly think that we should throw out empirical evidence in favor of a bunch of word salad and misappropriated philosophical concepts.
To be honest, that last part has turned me off of philosophy as a method of describing scientific concepts. Using “pure logic” to describe the nature of the human mind, or the fabric of space-time, or anything else that can be empirically studied is usually just a way of denying the results of empirical evidence. The arguments usually consist of making unfounded assertions and treating invented concepts and distinctions as if they had meaning in the real world.
Since I love bulleted lists, I think I’ll list off my grievances with the whole idea of a “soul”.
– If there’s some sort of intangible ectoplasm that resides in the brain and gives people consciousness and complex thought, then actually show me. If it’s there, then it should be possible to study the brain and detect the influence of the soul on it, and the brain’s influence on the soul. No neuroscientist has ever detected some mysterious otherworldly force influencing people’s brain activity, so why should I have any reason to think that there is one?
– Does the soul come in multiple parts? Why, if memories and personality traits and math skills and the like are produced by our soul, is it possible to cut these various functions off from each other? It’s possible to alter your brain in a way that cuts off access to your memories, so does that mean that the part of your soul that houses your memories is separate from the part of your soul that houses your conscious mind?
– Why exactly would we even need a brain if we had a soul that could think, house our memories, and direct our bodies? Wouldn’t we just have all of our sensory and motor nerves leading to a single point where they intersect and send and receive signals to and from seemingly nowhere?
I think that the whole idea of dualism should have been thrown out the second that people figured out that the brain was associated with cognition. The boilerplate spiritualist assertion that the brain is some sort of “radio receiver” for the soul comes across exactly like every other attempt to reconcile superstition with science; a convoluted ad hoc rationalization that tries to crowbar bullshit myths into the science that made them obsolete.
Mike Huckabee compares Syrian refugees to spoiled milk (I think?)
Source [YouTube]
His analogy starts around 1:55.
In the beginning he also spews some lies about Hollande closing the French borders to refugees.
What the fuck?
Happy Birthday, Lynna! It’s going to be a good bday here, I hope it will be one for you, too.
Caine @230, thank you! This day promises to be better later when it warms up enough to melt the ice off the walkways and streets.
In the meantime, I had apple pie and canadian bacon for breakfast. Inside my house it’s all warmth and indulgence.
Caine, if I read you right, happy birthday to you too! And adding mine to yours for Lynna, who provides so much to the Pharyngulites, thanks and happy birthday, Lynna!
May you both have so many more as you desire, and may each be better than the last.
jsrtheta @227: quite right. I should have made that clear. Also, Harry Reid said that the bill wouldn’t pass the Senate, so we’ll see.
In the meantime, it is depressing that so many Democrats joined the Republicans in voting for the so-called “American Security …” bill.
We can give Republican Ken Buck points for creativity. He connected the Republican problem with Syrian refugees to Benghazi:
Talking Points Memo link
If you are tracking the progress of the Republican-dominated Benghazi Committee, you already know that it did not implode after Hillary Clinton made it look so bad. No, it is still stumbling along. A new high was hit this week: taxpayers have now paid $5 million for this “ridiculous sham,” as Steven Benen called it.
How Republicans help President Obama fight terrorism … NOT.
Link
Video clip of racist Trump answering question about his proposal of tracking Muslims by making them register
When a reporter asks how he actually plans on making Muslim Americans register, he answers “good management… and we can do that”.
He is every bit as clueless as Ben Carson about how the government works…
Here are the 47 Democrats whose constituents should shame them for voting for xenophobia.
Pete Aguilar (CA)
Brad Ashford (NE)
Ami Bera (CA)
Sanford Bishop (GA)
Julia Brownley (CA)
Cheri Bustos (IL)
John Carney (DE)
Gerry Connolly (VA)
Jim Cooper (TN)
Jim Costa (CA)
Joe Courtney (CT)
Henry Cuellar (TX)
John Delaney (MD)
Lloyd Doggett (TX)
Tulsi Gabbard (HI)
John Garamendi (CA)
Gwen Graham (FL)
Gene Green (TX)
Janice Hahn (CA)
Jim Himes (CT)
Steve Israel (NY)
Marcy Kaptur (OH)
Bill Keating (MA)
Ron Kind (WI)
Annie Kuster (NH)
Jim Langevin (RI)
Dan Lipinski (IL)
Dave Loebsack (IA)
Stephen Lynch (MA)
Sean Maloney (NY)
Patrick Murphy (FL)
Rick Nolan (MN)
Donald Norcross (NJ)
Scott Peters (CA)
Collin Peterson (MN)
Jared Polis (CO)
Kathleen Rice (NY)
Raul Ruiz (CA)
Tim Ryan (OH)
Kurt Schrader (OR)
David Scott (GA)
Terri Sewell (AL)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)
Louise Slaughter (NY)
Marc Veasey (TX)
Filemon Vela (TX)
Tim Walz (MN)
And Happy Birthday, Lynna and Caine :)
Wish I were in Caine’s house, we could celebrate together. Birthday wildness!
In other news, some Republicans buck the xenophobic tide:
Link
More rightwing nonsense mixed with incitement to violence:
Link
Yeah, Republicans are holding xenophobic votes in the House, and Republican governors are pretending that they can deny refugees access to their states, but none of them have given good reasons for their actions. Rick Snyder is a good example.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/11/20/3724498/snyder-refugees/
Oh, FFS. These people are hopeless.
Link
There’s not even a way in to start unraveling the nested, twisted stupidity.
Vaguely related to @150, Walmart employee fired for redeeming $2 of cans finds groundswell of support:
Kudos to Walmart for employing an ex-con.
Oh for feck’s sake! Even if that is a violation of policy / rules it’s hard to see why it is a firing offense. The amount involved is trivial, Walmart did not loose possession of the empty cans (Mr Smith redeemed them!), and the intent on Mr Smith’s part seems to have been both clever and honest.
Cross-posted from the “Cowards …” thread.
Seven Republicans running for president spoke at at an event called “Presidential Family Forum” in Iowa yesterday. Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul were happy to associate themselves with Bob Vander Platts, the organizer.
Vander Platts wants to defund any courts that rule in favor of marriage equality, and he thinks that government should be an instrument of God. “God’s principles and precepts” govern government.
Some tidbits from this evening of bigotry and silliness:
When Huckabee said he would fall to his knees and “make a call to God,” the audience responded with the loudest applause.
That’s what Huckabee would do if simultaneous terrorist attacks were made on Times Square and Yankee Stadium on September 11, 2017.
NBC News link
And there’s this from Ted Cruz:
Cruz also claimed that President Obama is “serving as an apologist for radical Islamic terrorism.”
President Obama spoke about ISIL again:
Vice President Joe Biden said:
The above text is excerpted from longer speeches.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/weekly-address
The racist mayor who used the example of interment during WW ][ has issued a sort-of apology, Virginia mayor apologizes for invoking WWII in justifying Syrian refugee ban:
Bullshite on every count. How in fecking hades is using an exceptionally disgraceful chapter within living memory either “respectful”, “measured”, “moderator”, or sensible? Not to mention a complete lack of both logic and historical knowledge, plus undisguised full-on bigotry.
Indeed. As the current top comment puts it:
Yes, Sarah Palin is fulminating in all-caps on Twitter, but Democratic legislators are still pushing for a gun-control measure that would prevent terror suspects from purchasing guns in the USA.
Gun dealers can’t sell to convicted criminals or to people with severe mental illness (two of the ten prohibited categories), but people on terror watch lists? Oh, yeah, gun dealers can sell them a weapon.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/democrats-terror-list-suspects-gun-sales
‘Americans saved my life’: former refugees from Iraq perplexed by US fears:
That would have been when Bush ][ was president. A point probably lost on the current thugs, who would, if they are even aware of it, somehow connect that operation to Benghazi!
The not-so-slight problem here, Mr Sindi, is you are familiar with reality and rationality, not to mention compassion and comprehension. The occupants of the Kandidate Klown Kar not only do not know what those words mean, they do not the words or the concepts.
Let’s deny Isis its binary struggle — and celebrate the grey zone:
Not to take away from Mr Freedland’s point, but whilst computer code can be “clean and neat”, most of the time it is not.
Rancid peanuts (Huckabee), rabid dogs (Carson)… and now we have rattlesnakes courtesy of Sid Miller, Texas agricultural commissioner. All of the Republican comparisons of Syrian refugees to … something, all of them are demeaning, insulting.
Millers comment was accompanied by two photos, one of a nest of rattlesnakes (too many to count), and one of a line of refugees walking. Among the refugees are women, children, old people, families, and men young and old.
Link
Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that Sid Miller also proposed a bill that would make guns and ammunition tax free.
Some good political news for a change-
The citizens of Louisiana chose not to elect a conservative asspimple as their next governor:
Tony @251, I was so glad to see they didn’t elect Vitter. As you may have noticed, Vitter tried to rescue his failing campaign with a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric after the attacks in Paris. Vitter also called in a Duck Dynasty cast member to campaign for him.
And, oh my!, now it looks like Louisiana will reap the benefits of Medicaid expansion. Lot’s of good news.
Now that Vitter is out of the race for governor, we may have even more good news coming down the pike:
Washington Post link
The black man was a Black Lives Matter activist, Mercutio Southall Jr.
About the incident, Donald Trump said,
Posted without comment*
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_wonk-burglars-615am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
*Due to concerns about high blood pressure
Here’s another, recent, xenophobic lie from The Donald:
Mashable link
Nope. Not true. Maybe Trump watched that in his dreams? Maybe he can’t tell the difference between New Jersey and Afghanistan?
And former Governor George Pataki tweeted: “Not sure what luxury spider-hole @realDonaldTrump was hiding in on Sept11 but I saw Americans come together that day”
Ben Carson gets some of the history that is, so he says, most precious to him wrong.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-thomas-jefferson-wrote-constitution
Ben Carson said earlier that the founding fathers had “no elected office experience.” He was wrong then too.
Cross-posted from the “Jesus Fascist Christ” thread.
This is a followup to comment 25 on the Jesus Fascist Christ thread.
Link
So where did this image of bogus crime statistics come from? From a neo-Nazi who uses a swastika for an avatar.
Some media outlets basically let Trump get away with this particular racist lie by calling Trump’s tweet “controversial.”
Also, Trump did not tweet “racially charged crime data,” as CNN reporters said. Trump did not tweet data. Trump tweeted a neo-Nazi meme that is false, wrong, a lie, bigoted and racist.
A few media outlets got it right in reporting on Trump’s trumped up crime stats, calling them “very wrong,” “wildly incorrect,” “wildly inaccurate,” and “false statistics to make a racist point.” I guess we can write all of those sources off as “liberal media,” including The Washington Post and The Daily Beast.
Another source for media responses, and debunking, of Trump’s false crime statistics.
Trump’s poll numbers have gone up again.
First EPA chief accuses Republicans of ignoring science for political gain:
Quibble: Whilst Mr Ruckelshaus certainly did play an important role in setting up the EPA & valuable regulations, the “father” figure could be argued to be Rachel Carson (and her book, Silent Spring).
And Faux, Exxon, & Kochroach Bros., UnLimited…
As a follow-up to @258, The Grauniad has a nice round-up of some of the thugs’s idiocy regarding AGW, Climate change and the Republican party: ‘America is not a planet’ (all emboldening in the original):
USArseholierthanthouastan! Rah rah rah!! Therefore, AGW isn’t a problem, and even if it was a problem, it ain’t involves us ‘cuz US isn’t a planet!!! Besides, the cow jumped over the moon.
Right, let’s repeal the Law of Gravity. That way, all that nasty GHG will float off into space where, other than inconveniencing the cow, it won’t be problem. So no moar AGW, which isn’t real anyways.
You mind is so open the cow could land there.
And that’s why cows should be sent into orbit around the moon: To reduce the amount of GHGs.
I would put this in the Discuss: World Politics thread, except it seems to be closed (presumably due to the three month statute of limitations expiring…). Anyways, Poland’s recently-elected rightwing nutjob (RWNJ) govrenment is enthusiastically throwing shite around. The day after the recent events in Paris they close the country to Syrian refugees (not sure what the current situation is, they got a lot of flack for that).
Now, one of the RWNJs is trying to ban a play by the Austrian playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, Polish minister tries to ban Nobel winner’s ‘pornographic’ play: “Piotr Gliński’s move seen by civil liberties groups as a sign country is poised for a return to draconian state censorship”.
That article also mentions that the RWNJs have been up to even more mischief, “Within a week of being sworn in this month, the Law & Justice government has sacked Poland’s intelligence chiefs and passed a legal amendment that could allow political control of the constitutional court.”
Another RWNJ thinks the protocols of the elders of zion is real! Polish defence minister condemned over Jewish conspiracy theory. This kook is apparently something of a conspiracy nutter with the usual denial of actual evidence and invention of falsehoods.
I like this proposal from Hillary Clinton:
Daily Kos link
Reuters link
Clinton’s proposal also includes respite care, (care for caregivers). Having taken care of my parents for more than two years as they slowly died, I understand how important respite care can be. In fact, stats for caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients are scary, with caregivers sometimes dying from the stress.
blf @260, some of those Polish politicians would be right at home among Donald Trump’s supporters. Elders of Zion, really!?
This is a followup to comment 261.
Bernie Sanders thinks Clinton’s plan is good as far as it goes, but that we clearly need to go further.
He proposes a broader expansion of Social Security, one that includes an adjustment that takes into account the years an adult is not in the workforce because their job is taking care of their children.
A policy that I can get behind too.
Another group of (wannabe) terrorists has been found: The National Weather Service. Philadelphia bomb squad responds after weather instrument falls and hits car. It’s unclear from the article whether the radiosonde’s recovery parachute failed, or if the person who called the bomb squad is an eejit (the radiosondes are clearly marked and contain postage-paid return packaging).
Good news, news that should shame Donald Trump and other islamaphobes:
Jack Swanson is seven years old. He lives in Texas, and his heart in the right place.
https://www.facebook.com/ArsalanIftikharFanPage/timeline
Finally.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/08/police-shootings
Texas Governor Greg Abbott actually told nonprofits in his state to stop helping Syrian refugees.
Link
Fruitcakes claiming to be Muslim are not the problem. Cats are. They have revealed their nefarious plans with the recent “lockdown” in Brussels, National emergency? Belgians respond to terror raids with cats: “An official request for citizens to avoid tweeting anything that could inform terrorists what is going on resulted in a national outbreak of pet pics”.
County election boards in North Carolina moved a lot of early voting places, and they closed others. One result:
Link
Insightus link
This is a followup to comment 51 on the Jesus Fascist Christ thread.
Ben Carson is backing up the Trumpster’s claims that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered while the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-trump-cheering-nj-9-11
This is an older article / analysis from Reuters I stumbled across whilst searching for a more recent article about a certain village in Syria (whose name escapes me at the moment (Dabeq?)) where, apparently, the more fervent nutjobs in daesh think Armageddon will “soon” occur, Apocalyptic prophecies drive both sides to Syrian battle for end of time. Broadly, this article, and the article I’m trying to find, suggest one powerful motivation and recruitment tool / technique for daesh is the promise of the eminent “end of the world” blah blah blah, not unlike some xian nutters…
Dabiq.
Oh, dear. This is so confusing. Whatever shall I do when it comes to holiday shopping? The American Family Association put out its “Naughty or Nice” list to let me “know which companies are Christmas-friendly,” to make sure I do not support the “secular forces in our country that hate Christmas because the word itself is a reminder of Jesus Christ.”
My problem? Liberty Counsel (they provided lawyers for Kim Davis) also put out a list that “applauds retailers who acknowledge the reason for the season, and exposes those who do not.” And the two lists are contradictory!
Can I shop at Barnes & Noble or not? Can I shop at The Gap? These and other retailers appear as “nice” on one list, but “naughty” on the other.
I have also been asked to contact Staples in order to thank that company for putting Christ back in Christmas, but American Family Association lists Staples as “naughty.” I am so conflicted that I think I’m going to have to ignore these lists.
Lynna,
I’d suggest limiting your shopping to those businesses that made both naughty lists.
Lynna@273, A moar reliable means of determining teh naughty, teh nice, and teh neither naughty nor nicers, is to read the entrails of yer thanksgiving goose. Most people use turkey(the bird, not the country), which is where they go wrong, turkey entrails are about as believable as an essay supposedly by the mildly deranged penguin explaining why she prefers peas over, say, cheese. Turkey entrails aren’t completely wrong all the time, unlike say, thugs. And turkey entrails are easier to clean up after than thugs, and you don’t need to use brain beach.
CaitieCat@272, That’s it, thanks (Dabiq is also the name of daesh’s English-language propaganda magazine). I still can’t find the article I am looking for (my Generalissimo Google™-Fu seems to have a case of turkey entrails), but I did find this (short) scholarly article on the subject, ISIS Fantasies of an Apocalyptic Showdown in Northern Syria (from the Brookings Institution). The article concludes:
What a Maroon @274, good plan!
In other news, Donald Trump has gotten so bad that Ted Cruz is positioning himself as the more reasonable alternative. Back in August Cruz was loving him some Trump: “I have been glad to praise Donald Trump for speaking out boldly and brashly and for focusing on illegal immigration.”
Now Cruz is backing slowly away from white-supremacist Trump: “I’m a big fan of Donald Trump’s, but I’m not a fan of government registries for American citizens. The First Amendment protects religious liberty, I’ve spent the past several decades defending religious liberty.”
That Cruz is ready to let go of his Trumpian life raft may be a sign that things will not always go Trump’s way. Of course, if things go Ted Cruz’s way, that’s just as bad. Different, but still rotten.
blf @275, that “glorious march to the end of the world” sounds like a description of wild-eyed Michele Bachmann on the campaign trail. Scratch the surface and they’re all the same.
I’m not fixing turkey or goose for Thanksgiving, so I don’t have those entrails to read. Maybe I’ll meditate next to some cheese.
American white supremacist and presidential candidate Donald Trump expands on his waterboarding position
Holy shit.
That’s it. I almost want to buy into the conspiracy theory that he’s trolling the GOP and in it to make the other candidates look bad because they’ll up their game to match his rhetoric.
Like you, Saad (comment 278), I would like to think that Donald Trump is just putting on a show. However, he and his supporters are real. They think that way.
Back in the 1970s Trump was sued for discriminating against people of color. This was in relation to some housing he owned. I think he has always been a dumbs.
That’s the Trumpster going back on his word to not run as an independent candidate … sort of. It’s the usual blather that could be interpreted many ways, but it can’t be seen as Trump confirming that he won’t run as an independent.
He signed a “loyalty pledge” to the GOP back in September. Now that many Republicans are desperately seeking a way to shut him up, Trump is interpreting that as people not treating him fairly.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-donald-trump-ben-carson/story?id=35336008
Marco Rubio does not know that showing video footage of captured prisoners is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
NBC News link
Rubio went on to say that he would like young fighters to see “how easily humiliated they [ISIS leaders] are humiliated by Americans.”
This strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do. It’s as if Rubio wants to run a recruitment service for ISIS.
Trump continues to claim that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Jersey City residents cheering when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. This claim has been debunked over and over again.
Now Trump is demanding an apology from new media for questioning him. And he is backing up the truth of his claim by pointing to people posting on Twitter that he is right. Sheesh.
Link
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/668867262456156160
Well, that didn’t take long. Turkey has downed a Russian plane that entered Turkish airspace. Putin is hopping mad.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/066bc52167e844bb9f5732d8650b0b35/report-turkey-shoots-down-warplane-over-airspace-intrusion
Here’s some good news. Kentucky governor, Steve Beshear, used an executive order to restore voting rights to nonviolent former felons.
http://insiderlouisville.com/metro/social_good/gov-beshear-signs-executive-order-to-restore-voting-rights-for-nonviolent-former-felons/
Putin’s mostly putting on a show for domestic (Russia) audience. Both he and Turkey are sending fairly clear signals this should not lead to military action or other forms of penis waving, and perhaps to not much of anything else either, Russia’s emotive talk won’t lead to military action, say analysts:
The fighters in the area are not daesh but anti-Assad rebels. Whilst some might be from Russia, Putin’s claim that is what he was waving his penis at is on the dubious side of fishy…
In the past few weeks Turkey has warned off at least two prior incursions, met with Russian military officers to try and avoid future incidents (making this incident even the more surprising), and issued a clear warning that it will “not tolerate” any further such incursions. It also claims to have warned the aircraft which was shot down multiple times, both before and after scrambling its interceptors. There’s some speculation Russia was testing Turkey’s resolve / “rules of engagement”, and if so, just got their fingers burnt (but if so, it’s a bit surprising (to me) the intruder didn’t back off before the incepting aircraft opened fire).
The facts behind Trump’s claim about Muslims in New Jersey cheering the 9/11 attacks:
Lots more detail at the Talking Points Memo link. Journalist Allegra Kirkland very carefully presents both the rumors and the debunking(s).
Regarding the Trumpster: “His right to spew nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need to swallow it.”
NY Times link
Excerpt from a longer, and excellent, opinion piece from the editorial board:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/11/23/3725051/trump-protester-beaten/
You will note that the first act of physical aggression came from Trump audience members:
This is good news:
Mother Jones link
This might be good news … we’ll see. The Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and the Science Channel may finally be ridding themselves of entertainment disguised as documentaries.
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/11/racing-extinction-climate-change-discovery-john-hoffman
Lynna @290: Great, now if they can just start putting in shows about science and animals back on the air in place of all the stupid reality shows about people who build tree houses and quit the sensationalism of shows like Fatal Attractions, the channels might go back to being worth watching.
In a giant, everyone-is-involved conspiracy, media outlets are not airing footage that would back up Trump’s claims that Muslims in New Jersey (“thousands” of them) cheered on 9/11.
No, that conspiracy theory has no basis in fact. But it is amusing that Trump’s campaign manager is resorting to such garbage to excuse the inexcusable.
Right Wing Watch link
This was in England, Train passengers stand up against racial abuse of Muslim woman:
Lynna, #279
Oh, maybe it’s because I didn’t start paying attention to Trump until the birth certificate stuff. You’re right. It was wishful thinking on my part.
I definitely know his supporters are real. Pictures of a bunch of armed white men in front of a mosque don’t lie.
Re @282, “Trump said, ‘I have the world’s greatest memory. It’s one thing everyone agrees on.'”
In that case (snicker!), ask teh trum-prat Which channel or network or show; To name the anchor or reporter; When he saw it (time of day); and What the “cheering person” who was interviewed said. I don’t think teh trum-prat has claimed anyone who was cheering was interviewed, but his reply to that question could be very illuminating.
Rachel Maddow covered the fact that Ted Cruz has buddied up with more religious radicals that promote violence. The video segment is 8:11 minutes long.
This fits into our “the company they keep” category. Cruz is buddies now with Troy Newman, an anti-abortion activist who backed people who actually bombed abortion clinics, and/or murdered doctors. Their claim is that such violence is “justifiable homicide.”
Troy Newman runs Operation Rescue. One of his most recent (June) forays into anti-abortion activity included a trip to California, where he said:
Cruz just finished speaking at an event hosted by Kevin Swanson, the guy who thinks the Bible justifies killing gay people.
About Troy Newman, Cruz said:
One of the ways in which Troy Newman stands up is maintaining a website that lists, state by state, the names of doctors and other healthcare workers who work at women’s health clinics. The site posts home addresses and phone numbers as well. Harassment is encouraged.
Cruz is rising in the Iowa polls. He is now only 2 points behind Trump.
Well this novel. Not only are a lot of right-wingers arguing that the USA should not accept any Syrian refugees, some conservatives are arguing that the USA was right to refuse refugees from Nazi Germany. So, that WWII lack of reason and compassion was a good example, a good precedent?
Holy crap.
Link
Salon link
That’s a link to text and video of an excellent takedown of Trump.
Excellent. I recommend this one.
Salon link
Stephen Colbert takes down Donald Trump.
It’s great to see Colbert and Seth Meyers doing a good job of reporting the news. The link in 298 is to the Seth Meyers clip.
Ready for some good news? The ACA, (Obamacare), is playing a stellar role in cancer detection.
Rise in Early Cervical Cancer Detection Is Linked to Affordable Care Act
Link
Crooks gotta crook, fraudsters gotta fraud, and Shkrell’s gotta greed & gouge, Martin Shkreli walks back on pledge to lower price of HIV drug Daraprim:
Cartoon. Meet ISIS’s newest recruits.
Link
New York Times slams ‘outrageous’ Donald Trump for mocking reporter’s disability:
(My connection right now is not being cooperative, so I don’t have a link to anything at NYT on teh trum-prat’s ableism.)
NOAA is getting support in their fight-back against the thugs’s “Benghazi”–style committee “investigation” of AGW, Top scientists accuse House panel of harassing climate researchers:
There is a brilliant comment (by “dphaynes”), which I quote in full:
A Line Has Been Crossed
Read the rest at the link — it’s quite chilling.
@blf #303: Trump’s ableism
Is there no low that is too low for this man? (Silly question…)
What I really can’t get my head around is (to steal a trope from Last Week Tonight). How is this (Trump’s candidacy) still a thing? He seems hell-bent on tossing as many people out of the good old “Big Tent” as he can, before the actual campaign has even started. (I recognize that this is something he shares in common with his fellow GOP candidates; I’m just saying he seems to be doing a more thorough job of it…)
But, quite honestly, how can this “to hell with anyone slightly different from us (white, rich, straight, etc, etc.) people” strategy be anything BUT political suicide? Even Ronald Ray-gun, whom I absolutely loathed, didn’t do anything this stupid. (James Watt did, but that’s another story, and he wasn’t campaigning at the time.)
In reference to the comments up-thread about Trump making fun of a reporter’s disability, about 1 in 5 people in the USA have some kind of disability according to the 2010 census. Trump may have just added almost 60 million people to the list of those he has insulted.
Part of Trump’s response to the backlash over his comments about reporter serge Kovaleski: “He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes.”
Talking Points Memo link
More details on the anti-Muslim ugliness in Texas:
Talking Points Memo link
Dallas Morning News link
Marco Rubio broke out in a serious case of God hives on Tuesday:
Link
Donald Trump has started linking to Infowars.com in order to back up his bogus claims about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on 9/11. Infowars is one of the worst rightwing conspiracy sites. Infowar has no credibility.
Link
Oh, please weep for them. Get out your tiny violins. Anti-gay dunderheads are running out of places to shop for christmas goodies. This makes them really sad.
Link
Hmmm, “Satan’s Office Party.” Sounds better than some office parties I have attended.
quotetheunquote @306:
Trump cannot go to low,
Trump is doing the political limbo.
“Carson’s learning curve works like a boomerang” — a great comment on his apparent inability to learn much of anything about foreign policies, Ben Carson to meet with Syrian refugees in Jordan amid foreign policy stumbles:
This could be quite amusing. Four-ish years ago a number of the thug candidates took various trips abroad, and all(?) of them succeeded in saying stupid things and insulting at least some of their hosts. My recollection is Mitt Rollingmoney visited something like four countries and insulted every one of them.
Re elf’s comments in 314: one virtue(?) of such a long campaign season is that the Republican candidates have more opportunities to insult not just the citizens of the USA, but also those living in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, etc. They need to cover all the bases. More fodder for late night comedians.
A really despicable anti-Muslim activist is said to have left Arizona to take his rhetoric and incitements to violence to New York.
NY Daily News link
In Colorado Springs, Colorado a shooter has opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic.
The latest report shows that the shooter shot one officer and then barricaded himself inside the Planned Parenthood building. There are reports of other, multiple victims, but no details yet.
Think Progress link
“elf”? (See @314.) Are we talking the LotR kind, the Pratchett kind, the Tpyos kline, the kind that lives in a hollowed-out MUSHROOM!, or something else…?
And which Klown in the Kandidate Kar is gonna insult which elfkind?
We must be talking about the kind that kan’t kount, @318 was referring to @315…
Re 318 and 319: damn autocorrect to hell. It keeps turning “blf” into “elf.” Maybe you are an LoTR elf?
Sometimes I catch the autocorrected mistake, and sometimes I don’t.
In other news,
Politico link
Here’s the latest news from the shooting in Colorado Springs:
While a 47 year old white man was shooting up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, Representative Adam Kinzinger criticized Planned Parenthood on live TV. Insensitive would be one way to put it, total flea brain would be another.
Think Progress link
Most of the Republican Candidates did not put out statements responding to the Planned Parenthood shooting. Ted Cruz issued the standard “praying for the victims and their families” response.
Hillary Clinton tweeted, “Today and every day, we #StandWithPP.”
Bernie Sanders tweeted, “We proudly #StandWithPP of Colorado Springs and the brave law enforcement personnel who fought to protect it.”
Marco Rubio was on Twitter, but his message was: “Stay warm this winter with our new cold-weather bundle. Shop now and save!” He referred people to Cyber Monday deals on his Marco Rubio merchandise site.
Donald Trump was on Twitter, but he sent tweets about his poll numbers.
President Obama commented:
Re @320, “damn autocorrect to hell.”
I just got a message from Ms Satan, Mr Beel-Zebub, and “Fly Lord” (who I think is either their pet dog or pet pea), pointing out that autocorrect is a human torture disavowed by Hades Inc.
blf @324, thanks for the laugh. I needed that.
In other news, anti-abortion activists are saying that the Planned Parenthood shooting was a robbery of a nearby bank. Sheesh.
They have their facts wrong. Many are reporting early and inaccurate information.
More here: Think Progress link.
Closer to truth:
To correct one of my earlier comments: the gunman is 57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear.
Washington Post link
Here is just a sampling of the heated, and factually incorrect, rhetoric that preceded the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado:
Link
Re @325, “blf @324…”. What, no “elf”? Yer truly is a spam of the god.
(Obviously, I meant to type “spawn”, but Teh Tpoys offering has a certain amusing quality to it…)
What will it take to stop Donald Trump?:
Supporter of Cruz? Another deluded eejit, albeit he does seem to have a point here…
Better not call the shooter a “lone wolf.” Comments on Fox News demonstrate that the shooter has a lot of supporters.
News Corpse link
Daily Kos link
blf, for describing Trump, I like “Trumpster” for the association with “dumpster.” I also like your “Trum-prat.” “Deluded” comes to mind.
In other news, here are a few more indications that right-wingers like to promote violence:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/10/09/the-violent-repercussions-of-conservative-media/206080
A follow-up of sorts to @329, Donald Trump suffers his largest drop in polls after week of controversy:
Mother Jones posted an article that covers the current Planned Parenthood shooting and goes on to summarize most of the recent uptick in violence against PP clinics.
Details at the link.
Lynna@331, “for describing Trump…”, I assume you are referring to my@329 “teh trum-prat’s, well, insanity (I welcome a better term)”: I am searching for a term for teh trum-prat’s inane ideas / proposals / promises, such as “register Muslims”, building a well (using Mexico’s money!), and so on…
“Insane” is a perhaps derogatory shorthand for “mental illness”, and comparing known mentally ill people to teh trum-prat is derogatory. I have no idea if teh trum-prat is mentally ill or not, but he is a demagogue, liar, and seems to be far too unstable, unpredictable, and inhuman (not to mention inhumane and compassionless) to be considered viable for any post other than use as pea-poison. How to refer to such eejitoic foolish “ideas”…?
blf @334 — I’m also still looking for adjectives to describe Trump. Nothing seems to quite match the enormity of his Trumpness.
Maybe we need some old-fashioned adjectives to describe his ideas as well as his persona.
craven
goatish
rank
spongy
boil-brained
crook-pated
flap-mouthed
onion-eyed
canker-blossom
lewdster
lout
maggot-pie
ratsbane
Maybe Trump is simply poisonous.
Here are some more details about the Colorado shooter, Robert Lewis Dear.
Link
More bits and pieces concerning Robert Lewis Dear:
He was arrested on “peeping tom” charges twice.
His wife, Pam Dear, reported that he locked her out of their residence, and that he hit her. She did not file charges.
Dear had ongoing, various disputes with neighbors that culminated in threats of violence toward the neighbors.
Regarding the animal cruelty charges, apparently Dear shot a neighbor’s dog with a pellet gun.
Some descriptions of Trump culled from media sources:
freakshow
clown
proto-fascist
nakedly xenophobic
embodiment of the naked id of white supremacists
Spaulding Smails caricature of a spoiled rich kid
a ridiculous parody of a Nietzschean superman
Those last two are from Matt Taibbi
From Jon Stewart: Fuckface von Clownstick
From redstate.com: a homing missile locked on target
Donald Trump is like a character out of a Dickens novel, all pigeon-breasted bluster and impenetrable self-regard.
Some possibilities:
Mr Pumblechook in Great Expectations: “a large hard-breathing, middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked.”
John Podsnap in Our Mutual Friend: Dickens described him as standing very high in his own opinion, as dismissing all things foreign, and as “particularly well satisfied with most things, and above all other things, himself.” “Podsnappery” is an adjective we could use for Trump.
There’s Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist: Bumble preaches about christian morality, but has little compassion. Dickens describes his pompous nature, his greed, and his folly. Bumble is as proud of his hat as Trump is of his hair. Bumble is in love with power and is a sadist. Bumble does have a few moments during which the reader sees that he has a heart, but he never acts on any compassionate feelings that come fleetingly his way. Bumble the Beadle runs the workhouse. He is sure those he controls love him.
Senator Bernie Sanders and others have pointed out a connection to the violence at the Planned Parenthood clinic and the statements of Republican presidential candidates.
Politics USA link
Journalist Frederick Clarkson talks about the shooting at Planned Parenthood:
Summary of the shooting in Colorado, in cartoon form.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/28/1455025/-Yes-He-s-a-terrorist
There is always the master insulter, Mr Shakespeare, who left many insult generators scattered about the web. This one suggests:
a withered double villain
an unnecessary wench
a scurvy barbermonger
a rump-fed boy-queller
a whining cur
a greesy cacodemon
a detestable plague
an insolent rag
a spongy toad
an oderiferous noisemaker
a greedy puttock
an idle tortoise
a pernicious carbuncle
a fen sucked fool
a cruel ape
…and on and on and on. And on. And on…
Trump is a narcissist. Several other Republican presidential candidates claim that God told them to run (including several like Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal who are now out of the race). Trump doesn’t make that claim. His ego is what told him to run. Trump’s universe consists of two things, him and everything else, with everything else trailing far behind him in importance.
More arrogance and wishful thinking shown by The Donald. He scheduled a press conference to show as many as a hundred black evangelical ministers backed his campaign. They said NO!
Nerd @345, I don’t get why Trump would cancel that press conference with black ministers. Even if they don’t endorse him, such a press conference would serve Trump’s purpose, which is to have photos of him surrounded by black evangelicals.
Trump is usually all show and no substance anyway.
I see that Trump still plans to meet privately with some black pastors. It sounds like a snafu from which Trump will extract good PR. I am sure we can trust Trump’s account of the meeting after the fact … not. No press in the meeting? Trump can say whatever hyperbolic stuff comes to him.
Regarding Ted Cruz’s recent lame attempts to distance himself and rightwing politicians in general from the shooting in Colorado, we should remember that Cruz was very happy to be endorsed by Troy Newman who does support killing abortionists.
Link to tedcruz.org
Think Progress link
Maddow Calls Out Ted Cruz For Embracing Radical Anti-Choice Activist
This is cross-posted on the “Utterly demented” thread.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association took Ted Cruz seriously. He tweeted: “CO shooter not a Republican, registered to vote as a female.”
Only Ted Cruz has, so far added “leftist” to the description of the shooter.
Link
Other right-wingers taking Ted Cruz seriously include: The Gateway Pundit, Young Conservatives and WorldNetDaily.
Cruz’s campaign spokesman cited a blog post on The Right Scoop.
Ted Cruz is also fighting on another fantasy front, the war on Christmas. To do so he is offering the world’s ugliest christmas sweater. You have to see it to believe it.
Right Wing Watch link
Fox News host Bill Hemmer pointed to snowfall in Alaska as a response to the climate change conference in Paris. To summarize, Hemmer basically said, “more snow than usual in Alaska, so global warning is not real, and/or global warming is not an important issue.”
And from Donald Trump, we have this in response to the climate change conference:
After he avoided the actual question posed about climate change, Scarborough asked him again what he would do. Trump then issued a few platitudes about clean air and “beautiful clean water” before segueing quickly into an account of all the environmental awards he has received.
Media Matters link
This is a followup to 345 (Nerd) and 346.
Oh, FFS. Donald Trump is now claiming that all of those black evangelical ministers were ready to endorse him until they were pressured not to by Black Lives Matter activists.
AP link
Ben Carson toured a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, and this is the conclusion he came up with:
Carson also noted that he did not see anything that reassured him that refugees were being properly screened to eliminate potential terrorists from those allowed to immigrate to other countries. “What I learned is that you’re going to get a different answer from everybody depending on what their slant is.”
In other words, Carson went to Jordan for a couple of days, confirmed all of his biases, and then came back to his comfortable home in the USA. The guy has a compassion deficit, and he obviously doesn’t understand the potential long-term effects of living in a refugee camp.
Carson also wants the U.S. government to get the heck out of the refugee-support program (which is internationally funded, or underfunded). He wants a citizen-driven “humanitarian drive” in the USA to raise money, and he wants to keep all of the refugees in “neighboring Arab countries.”
Yahoo News link
Ted Cruz indulged in some fear mongering about the Supreme Court:
Des Moines Register link
The most thorough, most definitive takedown of Carly Fiorina’s lies about Planned Parenthood.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/29/1455211/-Yes-CarLIE-FIBorina-we-are-singling-YOU-out
Donald Dump: how Trump the pottymouth triggered an artistic overload:
I still can’t believe anyone would want teh trum-prat’s head stuffed up… I mean, teh trum-prat’s head is stuffed so far up his own arse it’s recursive: The head is stuffed so far up his arse it’s come out of his mouth, circled around, and is stuffed up his arse again, coming out of the mouth again, repeat ad infinitum… The thing on his head is a recursion counter, it moves / rotates each time he achieves another level of stuffing head up…
blf @355, I guess all of that artwork mocking the Trumpster is one way of getting around the fact that the English language fails when we try to describe his awfulness, his assholiness.
In other news, Trump posted a video to his Instagram account that is a mashup of President Obama laughing with scenes from recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Such bad taste.
In good news, the state of Alabama is going to have to pay Planned Parenthood’s legal fees. [chortle] Justice.
Montgomery Advisor link
Donald Trump has now found two, (count them…there are two), Muslim-Americans in Jersey City who celebrated on 9/11. One of the two has since denounced terrorism. This hasn’t slowed Trump down one bit. He’s got proof! you see. Sheesh.
Link
State-sponsored xian terroriban in, where else, Texarse, Texas official threatens to sue aid group helping Syrian refugees relocate:
“Abundant evidence”? SHOW IT.
Ask the French for help you complete incompetents. They are accepting thousands per month, and that is despite a group of unrelated loonies running amuck in Paris a few weeks ago. You fecking eejits are so incompetent, scared, racist utter pieces of shite — and so are the voters who elected you — you cannot even handle 21. Twenty-fecking-one! No wonder Texarse voters are the laughing stock of the entire planet.
Wow. Ted Cruz must be angling for the title of Most Reality-Challenged GOP Douchebag (currently held by Dr. Ben Carson)-
Ted Cruz lashes out: “The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats:
The GOP and anti-choice assholes nearly had *more* blood on their hands-
Man arrested near hospital after he threatened to shoot surviving Planned Parenthood attack victim:
Ugh.
Trump being Trump:
More Trump being Trump: this is a followup to comment 346. About his meeting with 100 black ministers, Trump said, “It went longer only because of the love. It didn’t go longer for other reasons.”
Meanwhile, some who were actually in the meeting said the atmosphere was tense, that Trump listened and did not answer questions directly (his aides answered), and that only a few of the black ministers endorsed Trump for president after the meeting. According to the accounts of those who attended, some of the ministers were angry about Trump’s tweet of incorrect crime statistics. (see comment 257).
In other political news:
Bernie Sanders had an elective hernia operation, and he is fine. He will be back to work today.
Democrats are using the shooting in Colorado to push back against Trey Gowdy’s specious special investigation of Planned Parenthood. They’ve pushed back before, and now they are renewing the effort. Democrats want the committee dissolved. They have a good point. Multiple investigations at the state level have already absolved PP of any wrongdoing.
Darrell Issa endorsed Marco Rubio. That fits into our “the company they keep” category.
Surprise! The Planned Parenthood shooter has been proven to be NOT transgender. Link
Oh, dear, there’s even more proof that Trump was wrong about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11. Trump has comprehension problems, and he does not know how to vet his sources.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/12/01/3726932/trump-video-muslims-celebrating/
cross-posted from the “Utterly Demented” thread.
Ted Cruz goes a step further to show his true colors:
Link
Larry Wilmore covered the Planned Parenthood shooting.
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/01/larry_wilmores_gutsiest_moment_yet_pins_planned_parenthood_shooters_hate_squarely_on_fox_news/
Chris Christie said some stupid stuff this morning:
Link
Thirteen female Democratic senators endorsed Hillary Clinton today. The only one missing was Elizabeth Warren, who is not endorsing anyone, not yet anyway.
Another Republican official has expressed an opinion about the shooting in Colorado. That opinion is that the Planned Parenthood clinic is to blame.
Link
Another excerpt from the Facebook post:
Errors are in the original.
Another Republican elected official has weighed in on the Colorado shooting, and he finds the Planned Parenthood clinic and the gunman equally to blame.
Link
All of these public officials blaming the clinic are encouraging others to do what Robert Lewis Dear did. They may think they aren’t doing so, but they are.
Bernie Sanders showed everyone that he recovered well from his hernia surgery. Despite Donald Trump saying, “May he rest in peace,” about the surgery, Sanders was back on the Senate floor defending Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.
Link
Oh, horrors.
Photo at the link.
Link
These assholes upped their illegal activities after President Obama was elected.
Black Friday brought some dismal shopping news. A new record was set for background checks for gun-buying individuals. More than 185K individuals purchased, or set in motion a purchase of a gun.
That’s a 5% increase from last year.
Here’s some good news for President Obama, and for his immigration policies. The Supreme Court is backing him up … so far.
Think Progress link
This business of court decisions and appeals, and then more decisions, proceeds at such a glacial pace, and in such incremental steps that it drives me batty.
Republicans in the House of Congress just passed a bill they know President Obama will veto. They were forthright about their goal, they want all of the world leaders at the Climate Conference in Paris to know that they do not back President Obama’s agenda.
While our negotiators are still in meetings in Paris, these doofuses in the House are doing what they can to undermine the president.
Link
Rhetoric has consequences. Rightwing conspiracy theories that claim President Obama is a Muslim who secretly supports ISIS are having a very negative effect in Iraq.
Link
Washington Post link
OMG, they view videos like Donald Trump does.
It sounds to me like the U.S. is severely underestimating the PR problem it has here. People who think we do not need to push back against obviously bonkers conspiracy theories are wrong.
Not true. Some people in the west, including Republican presidential candidates do buy it, and they spread it.
Yes, some Republican candidates run for office just to raise their profile so that they can make money off, among other things, healthcare scams.
More details at the link.
Mother Jones link
This is a followup to comment 376 about right-wingers spreading the myth that President Obama supports ISIS.
Right Wing Watch link
Larry Wilmore did a great job of taking Trump to task. Wilmore covered the meeting with black pastors, Trump making fun of a disabled journalist, and Trump’s general tendency to lie.
Salon link. Scroll down for video.
@378:
Right-wingers are going pro-Russia and pro-Putin now? Boy, if you needed a sign of the end times….
@380, microraptor: of course they love him. He’s a strongman, viciously antigay, explicitly Christianish, and he’s bombing some brown people. What’s not to love? :sick:
What Fox News says about Donald Trump’s claim that thousands of Muslims in Jersey City celebrated on 9/11:
Yep, that’s Eric Bolling demonstrating that he and other right-wingers don’t care if The Dumpster lies.
Awfulness in Ohio:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/drew-hastings-hillsboro-war-whites
There’s an “active shooter” scenario in San Bernadino, California. There are reports of 20 victims. SWAT teams have responded.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/san-bernardino-shooting-multiple-victims
Today, Trump continued to defend his claim that thousands of Muslims celebrated when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11:
Link.
In a way, this is one of the scarier aspects of Trump’s presidential campaign, the proof that facts do not dissuade him from taking the wrong path. He depends on Twitter users and audiences at this rallies to tell him “the truth.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/latest-mass-shooting-unfolds-southern-california
Here’s some good news. The Florida state Supreme Court upheld the new congressional redistricting plan that is fairer than the old gerrymandered plan that had been put in place by Republicans.
The Fair Districts amendment bans drawing districts to favor a political party. Republicans are spitting mad. But, in truth, some Democrats will also face more of an uphill battle when it comes to reelection. There are very few “for sure” races for either party. At the end of the day, net wins for Democrats will probably be two seats as a result of the fairer districting.
In case anyone still needs it at this point, here is a summary of what the authorities know about Syed Rizwan Frook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, the shooters in the San Bernadino massacre.
The Grauniad is snarking again, Jeb Bush says Hillary Clinton is the worst candidate. Has he noticed the Republicans?:
Teh Moardah! says silly things, again, Rupert Murdoch condemns liberals for giving America an ‘identity crisis’:
Head meets desk, desk severely dented, and countless braincells are calling in sick.
Another head desk collision. The desk looses. The mildly deranged penguin wakes up.
The mildly deranged penguin did not get out of the way before I spewed all over the remains of the desk with such force I drilled (vomitblasted?) a hole through the floor into the room below. She is now complaining that not only is this rapidly-added new addition to the lair cold, dark, and smelly, it has no undigested cheese.
Meanwhile, the brain has shut down compl……
…
blf @390, Marco Rubio gave a speech in which he echoed Murdoch. In fact, blaming President Obama for the shooting in San Bernadino is a meme that is making rapid headway on all the rightwing media I checked this morning. [sigh]
In other news, Hillary Clinton racked up another endorsement:
Clinton news includes her call for a federal investigation of the Chicago police force:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clinton-faces-criminal-justice-test-chicago
How Trump speaks to the audience at a Jewish summit:
Stereotypes.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-jewish-summit
This sounds like a step in the right direction: military roles in U.S. forces will all be open to women.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/12/03/3727977/combat-roles/
George Zimmerman, still a classy act … not. He has segued from shooting unarmed black teenagers to posting nude photos of his ex-girlfriends.
Zimmerman’s tweets also included: “She’ll sleep with anyone.”
That was not the only naked photo of a woman that Zimmerman posted.
Link
Bad news on the Islamophobia front:
Think Progress link
Lynna @ 394
Would this revenge porn stuff finally end Zimmerman’s impunity? I’m not sure if getting some jail time would teach him that you can’t get away with bad behavior and killing people forever, but the best case scenario would be that he would realize he isn’t untouchable by law.
Ice Swimmer, #396
Well, so far his offenses have been against a black person and women. He’s still good.
Ice Swimmer @396, it would certainly be easier to put Zimmerman in jail for revenge porn than for shooting an unarmed black teenager.
As for whether or not jail time would affect Zimmerman’s world view, I doubt it. He has demonstrated that he has a solid set of rightwing ideas. He even did a bit of quasi-political stumping for gun rights, and some anti-Muslim stuff for a gun store that put up “No Muslims Allowed” signs. He is through and through a misogynistic, racist, bigoted, violence-prone doofus.
Realizing that, as you say, he isn’t untouchable by the law, might slow him down a little. We can but hope. It’s more likely that jail time will push him even further into anti-all-women mode.
Saad, I didn’t want to laugh at 397, but I did. So true. So fucking true.
In other bizarre news, Ben Carson spoke at the Republican Jewish Coalition forum (same one where Trump spoke, see comment 392). Carson appeared to read a Wiki article about Israel. He mispronounced “Hamas” as “hummus” several times. And then there was this:
ABC New link
Ah, the debunked Star of David story. Carson told the entire effing conspiracy theory with no clue that he was spouting nonsense. And this was not the first time. He tells that story a lot. You would think that, with his excellent Wikipedia skills, he would have figured out that his story is bullshit.
Here’s the debunking, in case you are interested.
Regarding Trump’s having given a speech consisting of nothing but an unfortunate string of stereotypes about Jews (comment 392), he has lots of company. Other Republican candidates are doing the same thing.
Maddow Blog link
I can see these guys are trying. They are trying to be nice about the whole Jewish thing, but it is obvious that they have bought into a lot rightwing nonsense about Jews.
Republican elected officials are not going to budge an inch on gun control, not a millimeter, not a nanometer.
NY Times link
The shooters in San Bernadino were not on any watch lists, but the idea that we cannot even take the steps necessary to prevent those on watch lists from purchasing guns and explosives just blows my mind (let’s hope not literally).
About an hour after the vote to keep people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns failed, the Senate vote on expanding background checks also failed.
Here’s some good news (“liberal propaganda” if you are a Republican):
Link
Here are the results from the latest CNN poll:
1. Donald Trump: 36% (up from 27% in a CNN poll conducted in mid-October)
2. Ted Cruz: 16% (up from 4%)
3. Ben Carson: 14% (down from 22%)
4. Marco Rubio: 12% (up from 8%)
Yes, the Trumpster was right. His poll numbers go up with every mass shooting.
52% of Republican voters now see Trump as the most electable candidate on the Republican side. Maybe this is, in part, a condemnation of the entire GOP field. They’re all bad.
Walmart flexed its muscles and pressured a town in California to defeat a bill increasing the minimum wage.
Link
Let’s see, what have I got here? I’m still tallying the number of dumb moves by Senate and House Republicans in the last two days.
1. They voted to repeal Obamacare … again.
2. They voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
3. They voted to let people on the FBI’s consolidated terrorist watch list buy guns and explosives.
4. The said they wanted to address mental health issues instead of gun control, so they voted against increasing mental health care too. Say, what?
Yes, that’s right, an amendment to improve mental health (and to improve substance abuse treatment and prevention) was voted down 57 to 47, with the Republicans defeating it.
Here’s a “War on Christmas” type piece in the San Francisco Chronicle by a local journalist/columnist. It’s a thinly-veiled bagging on atheists and carping on the local East Bay Atheist group who have been fighting a cross-in-a-public-park battle for a while.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Atheists-couch-objections-to-public-cross-in-6674023.php
It’s beginning to look like the family of San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan hired a bunch of rightwing lawyers who are inordinately fond of conspiracy theories:
The lawyers are Mohammad Abuershaid and David Chesley.
Talking Points Memo link
You have all probably heard this already, but I’ll post it anyway. The female shooter in the San Bernardino massacre, Tashfeen Malik, pledged her allegiance to an Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before taking part in the shooting.
Link
Additional link
What do terrorist organizations think of gun laws in the USA:
Think Progress link
First Dog on the Moon in The Grauniad on the USAnnihilate!Annihilate!Annihilate!’s guns, Afraid of guns? Buy more guns! The circle of life in America (cartoon): “The first female president of the USA might actually get something done about gun control. Unless Donald Trump wins, then everyone really will need a gun”.
blf, I think I might be on Donald Trump’s list of people to deport.
Some gun owners are not going along with the latest NRA-backed stupidity when it comes to gun laws:
Link
And that’s from Nevada, home of Cliven Bundy.
Hillary Clinton picked up another labor endorsement, this time from North America’s Building Trades. The organization said it would campaign for Clinton.
In other news, Donald Trump said that he will release his medical records soon. He claims they “will show perfection.” No news on his mental health records.
Reporters enter San Bernardino terrorists’ apartment, rifle through papers, photos, other evidence
What!? Yes, it happened. I watched this unfold on TV. Stranger than strange if you ask me. Here’s the baby’s bed. Here are the baby’s toys. Here are a bunch of photos scattered around in the bathroom, some of which may or may not be photos of the wife. Here is a scrum of reporters and cameramen pushing and shoving.
Yes, Ted Cruz continues to keep it classy … not.
Link
San Bernardino Truthers are out in force on rightwing media.
Link
This is a followup to comment 416.
Another example of rightwing conspiracy theories affecting analysis of the shooting in San Bernardino. This time from an elected official:
Link
Faux News update:
That’s Andrea Tantaros of Fox News spinning news about the shooting in San Bernardino so hard that she turned it into an abortion.
This is a followup to comment 412.
So, yeah, this is more like what we have come to expect from Nevada’s elected officials: entire families (except the babies) packing iron. Even Grandma has an automatic weapon.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michele-fiore-gun-christmas-card
The photo is scary and hilarious at the same time. Fiore claims, “We’re just your ordinary American family.”
Lynna@412: I think I might be on Donald Trump’s list of people to deport.
That surprises me. Teh trum-prat’s list is rather exclusive, hard to get onto. He says so himself. Whilst the exact criteria for getting on the list is not known, several categories are known: Mexican. Muslim. Looks like a Mexican. Moar Muslims. And them Latinos. All the rest of the Muslims. And Jews. Pea-likers. Pea-haters. Peas. Any Muslims missed. Blacks. Spanish-speakers. People who have traveled aboard. People from aboard. Anyone who does not own sufficient guns to equip a brigade. People who do not stomp about in jackboots shouting “Hail Prat!” Jackboot stomping shouters not wearing Trump™©® jackboots. Anyone smarter than teh trump-prat on a scale where teh trump-prat’s intelligent is rated minus infinity. Everyone teh trump-prat can’t fire. Everyone the trum-prat can fire. Unionists. Scientists. People who can speak in coherent sentences. Literate people. People who don’t spake “American”. Females. Disabled people. Teh Gay. Polar bears. Anyone who ever associates “green” with anything other than the trum-prat’s money. People who don’t get out of paying taxes. Climatologists. Gollum. Smeagol. Everyone in Mexico. Rocks. Sentient beings. Robots. Lumps of putty. Pottery. Every who isn’t teh trum-prat. Atoms.
It’s a very exclusive list. Practically no-one qualifies. Except those who, of course, must qualify.
blf @420, The Trum-prat will have trouble deporting Gollum. Gollum is sneaky and slippery.
And invisible, until Frodo stole “Precious”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel succeeded in convincing lawmakers to vote to join the coalition of nations fighting ISIS.
According to NPR, Germany will send six Tornado jets, one naval frigate and about 1,200 soldiers to fight ISIS in Syria. France had directly asked for assistance.
Mr Bilbo “stole” Precious.
Too bad there was just the one right floating around in the “who owns it?” category. I know there are other rings of power, but I think I want the one Frodo had.
Since Gollum fell into the fiery pit of Mount Doom, I guess no one gets the ring. Nor do we get to hang out with slippery, sneaky Gollum in order to learn tricksy ways to avoid The Trumpster. We’re going to have to find our own way out of this.
In other news, Ben Carson said some amazingly arrogant stuff about his presidential candidacy … and then he ended on some unintentionally funny stuff.
Oh, this is going to hurt Marco Rubio. President Obama is canceling millions more in student loans that were swindled by one of Rubio’s favorite donors, Corinthian Colleges. Obama had cancelled some loans before. More justice is coming soon.
Link
The state of Iowa held a Youth Caucus on November 20th. Middle and high school students voted for a Democratic candidate for president. Bernie Sanders got 53% of the vote; Martin O’Malley got 24%; and Hillary Clinton came up with only 15%.
Now, most of these kids can’t really vote. They’re not old enough, but it is still interesting to see young people in Iowa so gloriously out of step with their conservative elders.
Ben Carson won the Republican side of the ticket. I still maintain that Carson was momentarily popular because he was less bombastic, though no less clueless, than The Trumpster. There are no good choices on the GOP side.
Des Moines Register link
Totally forgot The Hobbit in claiming Frodo stole the ring. It’s somewhere in my book collection. Mea culpa.
In other news, the New York Times has a first page editorial calling for more gun control measures:
http://my.xfinity.com/articles/news-national/20151205/US–Times-Page.One.Editorial/
Nerd, thanks for the link. I really like that NY Times article. Not too long, and it gets right to the point.
For the first time since 1920, The New York Times put an editorial on page 1. Here’s another link for the same article.
End the Gun Epidemic in America.
Ben Carson said some stupid stuff about the shooting in San Bernardino.
Link
Holy crap!
Link
I’m cheering for these Democratic Senators.
Link
The Dems with the right stuff:
Ed Markey, (D-MA)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Chris Coons (D-DE)
Al Franken (D-MN)
Brian Schatz (D-HI)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Tom Udall (D-NM)
Ben Cardin (D-NM)
The mildly deranged penguin says a specially constructed diving capsule made of multiple layers of British Industrial Cheddar worked quite well, albeit determining when and where to put it was a bit difficult since Dr Tolkien was not very precise when Gollum and his Precious would do the famous high dive. The One Ring would be quickly destroyed so the timing had to be near perfect. Too late, no ring. Too early, lots of molten Gollum (very hard to clean off your feathers, she says).
Point out to teh trum-prat that it’s Mt Doom, not Mt Trump. After he buys
MordorTrumpLand™©®, claim a War of Slavery battle was fought in the very depths of Mt Trump©™® itself, and invite him to unveil the commemorative Battle of Trump®™© Memorial in Mt Trump©™® at Trump®©™’s TrumpLand™©®…blf @433. Ha! Many chuckles there, especially in the last paragraph. Remember when Trump fell for a fake veteran organization’s hype and gave a speech for them? He’s ripe to fall for the Mount Trump scenario.
Journalist Frank Vyan Walton added to our descriptive adjectives for The Trumpster:
Link
Bernie Sanders posted his corporate tax reform plan yesterday. One result of the Sander’s plan is $1 trillion in funds the government should spend on infrastructure, according to Bernie.
A few details:
Link
In Kansas, DCF personnel did everything they could to prevent LGBT people from adopting or fostering children.
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article48108120.html
“We need a strong psych and medical case against them,” was one of the statements in emails sent between DCF officials.
Secretary Clinton calls out Jerry Falwell Jr of Liberty “University” for his recent shoot-moolsins-on-sight idiocy, Clinton condemns Liberty University head’s call to ‘end those Muslims’:
Falwell Jr.’s .25 caliber pistol would have been almost useless against two people spraying bullets from automatic rifles. It may have worked to cause the shooters to focus on him as opposed to other citizens.
Here’s a nice summary of Ted Cruz’s policy positions:
Link
Link 2
George Monbiot, who knows his stuff, has finally gotten fed up with all the chemtrails nonsense, The contrails conspiracy is not only garbage, it’s letting aviation off the hook too:
Dr Dunning, meet Dr Kruger…
Mr Monbiot does some more snarking of the kooky chemspiracy sites, “if hardly anyone reads your website, it only goes to prove how important you are: why else would the authorities go to such lengths to limit your followers?”
Bugger! Today was the first round of voting for French regions (there will be a second round of voting in the regions where there is no majority in about a week’s time), and on a low-ish turnout, Le Pen’s French Nazis (FN) are reported by exit polls as having c.30%, higher than either of the two main parties. In at least two regions, including the one I live in, they are polling at c.40% !
Just to make clear how much of a disaster this could be, France 24 (which is in English) reports:
Teh le prat, sounds a feck like teh trum-prat (albeit more articulate).
Is it just me, or does the entire chemtrail conspiracy theory sound like it was stolen from a Silver Age Superman comic book?
The chemtrail conspiracy theory reminds me of the old John Bircher fluoride-in-our-water conspiracy. They all sound like comic book plots.
In other news, Indiana Governor Mike Pence is pressuring the Catholic Church to refuse to help Syrian refugees being resettled in Indiana.
Link
Erick Erickson of RedState.com, an über conservative guy, hated the gun control editorial on the front page of the NY Times so much that he grabbed his gun and shot at the editorial.
If you disagree with NY Times’s editors you grab your gun?
Link
The chemtrail kooks also remind me of the John Bricher “precious bodily fluids” kooks.
The neat thing about the chemtrail kookiness is it’s near-perfect: No-one knows Who is doing it, Why they are doing it, just What it is doing, or precisely How it is being accomplished. And it is an easily-observed natural phenomenon. Hence, chemtails doesn’t suffer from the fluoridation kooks’s problem, which is that fluoridation is deliberate, and hence you can find out (quite easily) the Who, Why, What, and How. Or from the flying saucer (“UFO”) kooks’s problem, where there is nothing widely observed.
Gun control Cartoon
Meanwhile, Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore says she will fly to Paris and shoot Syrian refugees. Link. See comment 419 for Fiore’s christmas card, which PZ also recently noted.
More from Michele Fiore:
Pens are mighty weapons…
(That editorial was on today’s (Monday’s) front page of the International New York Times (formerly the IHT).)
I wonder if she is aware France has quite strict gun laws. And is currently in a so-called “State of Emergency”, which unfortunately allows the
policegoons to do nasty things legally, like not bother with warrants and, I think, suspend Habeas Corpus.Lynna, #447
Michele Fiore:
Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace.
Oh, Faux News, you have crossed the line … again. A guest on Fox News called President Obama, “Such a total pussy, it’s amazing.” They aired that.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ralph-peters-fox-news-obama
US supreme court rejects challenge to Chicago suburb’s assault weapons ban:
Um, Ok, so if their reasoned legal opinion is restrictions / bans are just a matter how many people supposedly use or own something, then what, precisely, is the cutoff (threshold): When it is possible to restrict or ban the use or ownership? When there is only one million, ten thousand, two, none at all, …?
blf @ 452, I’m with you. The reasoning offered by Scalia and Thomas makes no sense.
In other news, it is time for white supremacists to party:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/12/07/3728111/this-week-is-the-superbowl-for-americas-leading-white-rights-activist/
Here’s a short summary of President Obama’s speech to the nation yesterday:
Link
And here are some reactions from the right:
Donald Trump tweeted: “Is that all there is? We need a new President – FAST!”
Jeb Bush: “This is the war of our time. It should not be business as usual. We need a war-time Commander-in-Chief who is ready to lead this country and the free world to victory.”
Ted Cruz: “If I am elected President, I will direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS. And I will shut down the broken immigration system that is letting jihadists into our country. Nothing President Obama said tonight will assist in either case.”
Marco Rubio: “I think not only did the president not make things better tonight; I fear he may have made things worse in the minds of many Americans. Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims?”
In comment 454, I left out Rush Limbaugh:
Link
We don’t need no Lambugger…
Lynna!
Leave our minds alone.
─────────────────────
The Grauniad’s Ben Jennings on the San Bernardino shootings — cartoon.
This surprises me, country-of-origin labeling is quite common here (I assume it’s required (EU, maybe?), and here in France, at least, restaurants often(?) also do it), Mexico and Canada can impose $1bn in tariffs on US for meat labels, WTO rules: “The World Trade Organization said US law of putting country of origin on packaged meats discriminates against North American trade partners”.
blf @456, you linked to an article about Stonehenge. Did I miss something?
Ted Cruz has been getting trolled for years by former college roommate & famous screenwriter
Some funny, and some telling details.
Lynna@458, I told ya not to dump Lambugger’s farts in my mind…
(Shakes head. Something small falls out, squeals, and zooms off…)
Try again, Ben Jennings on the San Bernardino shootings — cartoon.
Donald Trump’s latest bullshit: Muslim immigration to the US should be banned.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/07/donald-trump-calls-for-banning-muslims-from-entering-u-s/?_r=0
blf @460, Thanks. Good cartoon. Scary, and correct.
The Trumpster (461) is just happy to demonstrate his cluelessness and bigotry in public.
Here are some more rightwing responses to The NY Times running a gun control editorial on its front page:
The Trumpster won’t like this. Workers at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas voted a resounding “Yes!” to unionizing. They will be represented by the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and the Bartenders Union Local 165. The workers had to fight for their rights.
http://www.thenation.com/article/no-surprise-trump-is-a-union-buster-at-his-own-hotel/
Another Faux News personality went off the rails and indulged in profanity in reference to President Obama. (See comment 451 for the “pussy” insult.)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/stacey-dash-obama-give-a-sh-t
The “We’d just whip out our guns and stop them!” thing is silly in general, but coming from Trump, who is 69, it’s even sillier. We’re apparently supposed to believe he has better reaction times than the typical mass shooter, who is 30 or 40 years younger than he is.
Ted Cruz told yet another lie:
Think Progress link
If you direct your browser to jebbush.com, you are redirected to donaldjtrump.com. That’s kind of funny and awful at the same time.
Mother Jones link
San Bernardino Truthers are doubling down.
WTF?
Right Wing Watch link
These doofuses are pumping up the urgency in their false messaging. They are going to increase the number of unstable people who decide to try to assassinate President Obama … and there are way too many of those already. Totally irresponsible.
American white supremacist (who wants to shoot toddlers) Donald Trump calls for a total ban on any Muslims entering the United States.
This is a followup to timgueguen @461: The poll that Trump cited was chartered by Frank Gaffney, an infamous Islamophobe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/07/donald-trumps-call-to-ban-muslims-from-coming-to-the-u-s-has-a-very-bad-poll-at-its-center/
The poll is shoddy. Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy is recognized as an anti-Muslim extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law center. Details at the link.
Oops, didn’t realize you had already posted that news, timgueguen.
Elizabeth Warren likes Hillary Clinton’s proposals for Regulating Wall Street.
Salon link
Trump wants to end all entry by Muslim people into the US, because for some inexplicable reason “they hate America”. Then reminds that as Preznit he’d waterboard Muslims regularly, bomb the families of Daesh members, and if there were any collateral damage, no biggie.
Inexplicable indeed, why some Muslim people might hate the US. Just mystifying.
And since ISIS wants a them vs. us attitude on the part of those they wish to control, he plays a stupid tool for ISIS.
His understanding of how to defeat religious zealots needs some work.
Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US would even apply to Americans:
(Emphasis added)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/07/donald-trump-ban-all-muslims-entering-us-san-bernardino-shooting
The message to American Muslims is clear. How long before he doubles down and proposes internment camps?
Trump is starting to back down just a little bit this morning. He said that his proposed ban does not apply to Muslim American citizens traveling abroad, but “we have to be vigilant.” He also said that the ban does not apply to Muslim Americans serving in the military overseas, “but we have to be vigilant.”
In all the interviews he did this morning, Trump and his spokespeople referred again to the shoddy, Frank Gaffney sponsored poll. See comment 470. More proof that Trump does not know how to vet his sources. What a fool he is to take those poll numbers as facts.
I think this unworkable, unconstitutional proposal is Trump’s way of dominating the news cycle.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/trump-calls-for-block-of-muslims-entering-us-581854787784
Maddow did a great job of covering all of Trump’s anti-Muslim pronouncements.
From Bernie Sanders:
From Hillary Clinton:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-message-helps-isis-recruitment–engel-581858371774
Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about why Donald Trump’s proposal to block all Muslims from entering the United States is irresponsible in terms of national security, and how Trump’s message will be received around the world.
The video is 6:35 minutes long.
More silliness from The Trumpster:
Good luck on that whole “closing that internet up” plan.
Here are the kind of people who support Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals:
A severed pig’s head was found on the doorstep of a mosque in Philadelphia. A midwestern Somali restaurant was set on fire, and it was defaced with Nazi symbols. Is this what Trump wants?
Philly News link
Talking Points Memo link
Trump:
Why does he speak like that? I think if you remove all the duplicate phrases and sentences from his speeches, they could be posted as tweets.
Lynna, #482
Well, that’s scary as hell. Donald Trump making America great again.
What I find interesting about this analysis in The Grauniad are the quoted comments from the usual suspects (emboldening mine), Donald Trump’s plan to bar Muslims may be an outlandish policy too far:
At least one of those people quoted above is a notorious liar and probable war-criminal, but even with that very important caveat, several shots may have just been fired across teh trum-prat’s bow. Big Caliber shots, and it is possible the maneuvering has begun to unleash the Kraken. And torpedoes.
JK Rowling on Donald Trump: ‘Voldemort was nowhere as bad’:
Frank Gaffney is praising Trump. See comments 470 and 476 for some of the backstory.
Right Wing Watch link
More on that deeply flawed poll
In other words, that poll is junk, garbage. And Donald Trump swallowed it whole.
Moggie @475:
I think you mean ghettos, not internment camps.
More reports detailing the ways in which White Nationalist media backs Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals.
There are a lot of other examples of white nationalists calling Muslims “monkeys,” “apes,” or “animals.” Trump himself called the San Bernardino shooters “animals.” This reprehensible rhetoric is going down the wrong road. I’m appalled.
blf @484:
Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Plenty of evangelicals have called for religious tests for things like running for office before. I seriously doubt that this is going to get him into trouble with anyone who doesn’t already hate him.
microraptor@489, Yes, it could indeed be wishful thinking. I myself have no opinion on whether or not it is (other than I hope it isn’t!), but two points occur to me:
(1) As far as I am aware, to-date only the extreme nutters, the various hate-groups et al (see Lynna’s comments) have supported teh trum-prat’s latest racist delusional comments (plus a collection of internet users / trolls). None of the other Klowns in the Kandidate Kar have done so (as far as I know), and as per @484, several rather surprising individuals have also pointedly not done so.
(2) There is a difference between a religious test for office (your valid counter-example) and banning an entire religion. The claim in the @484 excerpted analysis is “banning a religion” is unconstitutional (which it is) and that is going too far. The Constitution is a holy document to the quoted people, and Thou Shall Not disobey their reading of it.
Of course, one thing that matters is how teh trum-prat’s followers react. Which is, at the moment, an unknown. In about two months time one of the most important checks will happen: The primaries, etc., begin. After the new orbit starts is when previous elections experience shows people begin to look seriously at the Klowns. At the moment, as frustrating as it is, it is mostly the fanatics and loonies running around, and the nomination rarely(?) reflects the previous year’s polls.
Huh, the background did disappear.
Anyway:
I don’t know. They might treat the Constitution as a holy document, but just like their other holy book, they’re pretty good at interpreting it however they want. And a lot of Conservatives love to shout about how the Founding Fathers intended for the US to be a Christian Nation.
Having now insulted and alienated everyone in the Americas (South and North), teh trum-prat is moving on to, ah, London? Specifically, the London police (the “Met”). And the police in Paris as well. Both forces certainly have their problems, but this isn’t one of them, Met blasts Donald Trump for ‘London police in fear’ claim:
That could be useful (if teh trum-prat would listen). For instance, the police do not routinely carry guns (and as far as I know, most officers neither want to nor are trained to, carry guns).
Faux made a similar claim some time about (around the time of the Charlie Hebro mass murder), and got their arse handled to them by the French. Come to think of it, faux made a similar claim about someplace in the UK (wasn’t London, but I don’t recall where), and got their arse handled to them in very small pieces by the PM. The UK’s PM is useless, and that was probably the most useful, and perhaps the only obviously correct thing he’s ever done.
blf, thanks for the roundup of responses from London and Paris to Trump’s sewage stew.
In a related comment, Paul Ryan denounced Trump’s plan to ban Muslims, but then said he would vote for Trump if Trump were the nominee of the Republican party. Link
More responses to The Trumpster’s anti-Muslim proposals:
Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary, said:
From one of Trump’s billionaire supporters:
Ted Cruz flies his weasel flag:
Regarding Trump’s anti-Muslim comments, George Takei, who was placed in a Japanese internment camp as a child, said: “America disgraced again.”
Funding for the government of the USA runs out on Friday. Getting a deal wrapped up looks unlikely.
Republicans are holding out for things like campaign finance reform that will do away with spending limits the Republican National Committee now faces; weakening financial regulations for Wall Street; tougher regulations for visa waivers; repealing some food safety regulations; lifting bans on U.S. crude oil exports, etc.
Summary here.
Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody loves Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals.
Link
Okay, so this is how christian right-wingers in the USA are getting around the obvious hypocrisy of supporting “religious freedom” while proposing to strip Muslims of religious freedom: Islam is not a religion. Yes, that’s their argument. I’ve seen it several times today, including from Ann Coulter.
Here’s an example from the American Family Association:
Link
This is a followup to comment 499:
Link