In the three-page-long statement posted online, the billionaire reality TV star reprinted the text in question from his now-infamous presidential announcement speech, which he says “is deliberately distorted by the media.”
“What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.,” he said in the statement.
Trump went on to say “many fabulous people come in from Mexico,” and also broadened his call for immediately securing the border by saying Mexican leaders are much more “cunning” when it comes to trade deals with the U.S. and that infectious disease is “pouring across the border.”
Lazy Caturday Reads: Everything Is Awful.
Posted: June 27, 2026 Filed under: just because | Tags: 250th Anniversary of Declaration of Independence, cat art, caturday, Confederate flag, DEI, Donald Trump, Great American State Fair, immigration and U.S. economy, Massachusetts, Matt McCarthy, North Carolina, Ohio, surrealism 4 CommentsGood Day!!
Surreal cat art by Matt McCarthy
Note: The surreal giant cats in today’s post are the work of Matt McCarthy.
As I was reading Dakinikat’s post yesterday, I realized how discouraged I have become lately. Everything is just awful. And it doesn’t help that my chronic sciatica has been acting up lately.
Rick Wilson was so right way back in Trump’s first term when he wrote his book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies.” We’re approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It should be a special time for the country, but Trump has taken over the anniversary and made it all about himself. We’ve had to watch him wreck the East Wing of the White House, pave over the rose garden, and hang ugly gold decorations all over the Oval Office. He destroyed the south lawn of the White House for a cage fight that was could only be seen with expensive tickets or on paid TV. On the Fourth of July Trump plans to mark the anniversary itself with a MAGA rally. I just want to cry.
Right now, Trump has something called the Great American State Fair going on. That link goes to a MAGA website. Trump wasn’t satisfied with a bipartisan celebration, so he set up his own organization, Freedom 250. Some commentary on the not-so-great fair:
Farrah Tomazin at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Empty ‘Great State Fair’ Exposed in Damning Photos.
The spectacle on the National Mall in Washington D.C. is ready to receive thousands of visitors. Instead, it is virtually deserted.
Not that there is much to see. Amid the sprawling stretches of open space, there is a 110-foot Freedom 250 ferris wheel and a tacky plywood “Triumph Arch” dominating the center of the grounds, a replica of the monument Trump wants to build near D.C.’s sacred Arlington Cemetery.
There are no corn dogs or funnel cakes. No roller coasters or merry go rounds. And by Friday morning, Pennsylvania became the latest of several Democratic states to declare it was not taking part.
The plan was to have representation from all 50 states. But some had opted out due to the high cost to taxpayers or not being able to secure any businesses to sponsor a booth. Others had chosen not to attend after the supposedly nonpartisan event suddenly seemed political, with Trump himself kicking off the fair with a MAGA rally earlier this week.
The Daily Beast was at the fair in the late afternoon and early evening, hoping to see a flood of people arrive after school and work.
As temperatures climbed, a clump of fairgoers waited under the hot DC sun for a ride on the Freedom 250 Ferris wheel—the festival’s marquee attraction —even as much of the surrounding fairgrounds remained conspicuously quiet.
Elsewhere, a jazz band played to an audience of about 10 people. (Don’t ask about the food: On its first full day, a power shortage hit the food pavilion, resulting in melted ice cream and concerns about spoiled goods.)
The most energetic vibe wasn’t at the Ferris wheel or the live rodeo; it was packed into an evangelical Christian tent, singing and dancing to a worship band, present despite some rather famous lines in the Constitution about church and state.
You can check out the photos at the link. I was going to put some in this post, but I decided to stick with cats, because at least they don’t make me feel sad and hopeless.
You can see more photos at The Atlantic in this piece (gift link) by Kelsey Ables, photos by Lawren Simmons: The Great American State Fair Isn’t Very Great.
The U.S. capital has been outfitted of late with visual trappings that many associate with authoritarianism, such as banners depicting Donald Trump’s face and featuring his slogans. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the president erected his own Potemkin village: the Great American State Fair, where almost nothing is what it pretends to be.
Stretching across a large swath of the National Mall, the fair has dozens of pavilions for 56 states and territories and numerous executive-branch departments, in addition to a Ferris wheel, a rodeo, and other displays from companies and organizations, many of them Trump-aligned. It’s advertised by Freedom 250, the White House–created group behind many semiquincentennial events, as a “world-class exposition and modern-day World’s Fair.”
By Matt McCarthy
For a president enamored with the gilded and the grand, the exterior of this fair is surprisingly austere. Trompe l’oeil sheets cover slapdash structures lining both sides of the Mall with an illustration of architecture that is supposed to be beaux arts but is so stripped down that it makes the nearby brutalist buildings look practically baroque. A boxy model of Trump’s proposed triumphal arch in the center of the Mall appears as if it could have been designed in Minecraft and ordered from CVS for same-day pickup.
Perhaps because of this aesthetic of illusions, the earnest state pride evident in some of the pavilions turns out to feel especially delightful. Consider: the Science Museum Oklahoma’s president going on about how hers is “the most surprising state you’ll ever experience,” or the Ohioan dispensing with midwestern cheer state-shaped tattoos and tokens for free Frosties through the end of the year. Here and there, the big, proud personalities of the states shine through (see: Idaho’s potato-sack dress). Together, they nearly instill an appreciation for this eclectic batch of states that have united into a country. But like any sense of patriotism these days, it’s complicated just as quickly. Right as I was about to crack open a bag of potato chips from Michigan, with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” stuck in my head from a karaoke video game in the West Virginia booth, I wandered into the State Department pavilion, where I was offered a paper replica of the limited-edition Trump passport.
In a certain sense, the Great American State Fair bottles the central tension of federalism: a push and pull between irrepressible state personalities and the federal government. But it’s also not that academic. Put simply, the president is bringing down the mood.
Boy, you can say that again. “The president is bringing down the mood.” He ruins everything.
None of the New England States contributed to the exhibits, but a few individuals showed up. From The Boston Globe: We checked out Trump’s Great American State Fair. It is, and isn’t, what you’d think.
Down the lush green grass of the National Mall, past the 110-foot Ferris wheel and the scaled-down reproduction of President Trump’s proposed Triumphal Arch, the Massachusetts booth at the Great American State Fair was essentially a do-it-yourself project.
Its singular attraction? Maple syrup.
That was one of the oddities of the 16-day extravaganza, which began on Thursday, to mark the nation’s 250th birthday. Perhaps fittingly for America in 2026, it opened with a mix of the wholesome, the partisan, and the just plain bizarre.
The fair is a production of Freedom 250, the organization launched by Trump last year to give the type of MAGA-spin on the semiquincentennial festivities — think the White House UFC fight — that the bipartisan,congressionally created America 250 organization would not.
The event, Trump’s brainchild, assigns each of the 56 US states and territories a booth among more than 150 exhibits that “showcase the very best of America.” He kicked it off with a rally Wednesday night. And as people began visiting the Greco-Roman-style pavilions, the sprawling exposition reflected America’s Tilt-A-Whirl politics as it celebrates a milestone anniversary.
Despite the region’s pivotal role in the American Revolution, New England was largely a fair draft-dodger. Five of the six state governments declined to participate in what Democrats dismissed as a Trump-centric carnival. Nationwide, a few other states also skipped it.
After Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey balked at the price tag — she estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund it — a 72-year-old Trump supporter from Greenfield, Mass., took matters into her own hands.
“I was upset about it,” the woman, who declined to give her name out of fear of political repercussions, told the Globe as she manned the Massachusetts booth Thursday morning. “Why have an empty spot when they come in? They see nobody, nothing.”
Instead, they saw maple syrup.
It might not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Massachusetts, but the state has more than 300 producers, so she reached out to some near her town. Winston’s Sugar House in Shelburne Falls answered the call, donating tiny bottles.
As fairgoers started trickling in Thursday morning, the bottles were arranged on two tables along with brochures about the state’s maple syrup industry and otherother Massachusetts pamphlets in front of the unique backdrop the fair organizers created for every state and territory.
Within minutes, the bottles started disappearing as fairgoers grabbed for the freebies.
But at least Massachusetts had a display — a fact many visitors noted. A few doors down, empty chairs, potted plants, and collage-style backdrops were all that greeted visitors eager to see the offerings of Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, or Connecticut.
Kevin M. Levin writes at Substack: Of Course a Confederate Flag Showed Up at the Great American State Fair.
Nobody who has been paying attention to the Trump administration’s handling of America’s 250th anniversary should be surprised that a Confederate flag turned up at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall. It was discovered at the North Carolina booth and in its own small way tells you everything you need to know about this whole production.
By Matt McCarthy
The controversy erupted after footage circulated showing the North Carolina exhibit featuring altered versions of the state flag with the Confederate battle emblem superimposed over the design. Governor Josh Stein’s office condemned the display, calling it a misrepresentation of North Carolina and demanding that organizers remove it.
The flag was pulled. Problem solved, in the narrowest possible sense.
But the details here matter. North Carolina’s official state flag has never included the Confederate battle symbol in any version of its design. Not in 1861, not in 1885, not ever.
Whoever put together that video display didn’t just stumble into Lost Cause territory by accident. They had to go out of their way to attach a symbol that the state itself had never chosen to fly.
As historian Stephen Jackson noted, unlike former flags from Georgia and Mississippi, the official flag of North Carolina has never incorporated the Confederate battle flag in its design. The alteration wasn’t heritage. It was invention.
Corporate sponsor Mt. Olive Pickle Company withdrew from the exhibit after learning about the display, saying the company stands on values of human dignity, opportunity, and freedom.
They’d better watch out. Trump doesn’t like anything that smacks of “DEI.” Remember, it’s white people who discriminated against in Trump world. A bit more:
The episode is a concentrated version of the sloppiness that has defined this event from the start. At least ten states declined to send official delegations. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s office was explicit about why her state withdrew, citing the cost of participating and growing concerns that the event was shaping up to be a more partisan affair than originally presented.
When you’re trying to celebrate the birth of the nation and you can’t get half the nation’s states to show up, something has gone wrong at the planning stage.
By Matt McCarthy
The fair itself has drawn criticism for its cheap and shoddy appearance. The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott offered this review:
America’s 250th might have been celebrated with a genuine festival of state fairs, or a 21st century version of the national and international expositions of art and science that were popular in the 19th century. The Trump administration could have let the Smithsonian stage a giant festival of American folkways, music, dance, art, craft and food. It could have defaulted to something like a theme park, which would at least have produced a seamless illusionism and a facsimile of the same folkways that are absent in the Trump show.
And it might have given the states the time, funding and freedom to create their own pavilions, representative of the magnificent diversity of this country’s architecture and design. Instead, everything is stuffed into a fake agora with Doric columns and arched niches painted onto cheap theatrical flats, which look like someone scaled up the photo murals found in a tatty Greek diner that sells gyros, moussaka and heart-bomb platters of pastitsio.
Growing up in Atlantic City in the 1980s, I watched Donald Trump build his casinos into monuments of gaudy spectacle, none more so than the Taj Mahal. The man has always had a gift for making expensive things look tacky and tacky things look expensive, sometimes simultaneously.
Read the rest at the link.
Dakinikat wrote yesterday about the horrible Supreme Court decision to allow Trump to end temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians in the US. This is a disaster for these immigrants and for the economy. It will expose as many as a million asylum-seekers to arrest and deportation. Most of these people have established homes, jobs, and lives here; and if they are sent back home, they could even be killed.
NBC News on Wednesday: Supreme Court allows Trump to remove protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for the Trump administration to remove legal protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the United States, meaning they could be subject to deportation.
The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, ruled in favor of the administration, which asked to continue with its plan to strip Temporary Protected Status from about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
The ruling could also boost the administration’s efforts to remove similar protections from people from other countries as part of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy.
Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Samuel Alito said that judges overstepped their authority in second-guessing the administration’s decisions. The court also rejected a claim that the decision to remove protections for Haitians was discriminatory.
By Matt McCarthy
The law in question “expressly restricts” courts from reviewing determinations made by the Department of Homeland Security on whether to terminate or extend TPS protections, he added.
As for the claims of discrimination against Haitians, Alito said the statements cited by plaintiffs were not “overtly racial” and were “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
In dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan accused the majority of soft-pedaling Trump’s comments about Haitians.
“The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” she wrote.
Kagan extensively quoted Trump himself, including his 2018 statement that Haiti is a “shithole country” and comments he made during the 2024 election baselessly claiming that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets.
Without protected status, affected people are subject to deportation via the normal legal process. But they can seek other avenues to remain in the U.S. by, for example, claiming asylum.
This is going to cause serious problems here in Massachusetts, where many Haitian immigrants have settled and hold important jobs. And they are vitally important to the economy. A recent study found that Massachusetts needs 60,000 new immigrants every year to “sustain the work force.”
The Boston Globe: Supreme Court ruling could leave thousands in Massachusetts vulnerable to ICE arrests.
Thousands of immigrants in Massachusetts will likely be at risk of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement following a Supreme Court ruling that paves the way for the Trump administration to revoke the legal status of approximately 330,000 Haitians and Syrians across the country.
“A lot of people are going to be in an extremely vulnerable position as a result of this,” said Kerry Doyle, a former legal adviser for ICE under the Biden administration who now practices immigration law in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts politicians and activists this week promised to fight to pass federal legislation extending the TPS program, and legal advocates said they would work to help those who lose their status find ways through the immigration court system to remain here legally.
“We will continue to use every tool, every legal tool to protect and defend the immigrant communities in Massachusetts and across the Greater Boston area,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, at a demonstration outside the State House Thursday.
For those affected by the decision, however, the immediate situation looked grim. Geralde Gabeau, the executive director of the Mattapan-based Immigrant Family Services Institute, perhaps the most prominent group serving Haitians in Massachusetts, was somber when she spoke to advocates and reporters at the State House. She recounted a story from a local teacher whose student asked if she would take the child home in case their parents were deported.
“This is not acceptable,” Gabeau said. “We have seen a lot of bad, terrible news coming from the Supreme Court. This is going too far.”
By Matt McCarthy
Remember Springfield, Ohio, the town where JD Vance claimed immigrants were eating cats and dogs? The town had deliberately invited Haitian immigrant to come there to live and work. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is not happy.
WBNS10: DeWine calls policy to remove Springfield’s Haitian immigrants a ‘mistake’ after SCOTUS ruling.
The governor said changing the immigration status of Haitian immigrants under TPS is not in the best interest of the United States or Ohio.
Gov. Mike DeWine, an outspoken supporter of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, called the policy to remove them a mistake after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end legal protection for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria.
The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
DeWine said Thursday’s ruling means that the over 10,000 Haitians legally living in Ohio, mostly in the Springfield area, will now be in the country illegally. They will be subjected to immediate deportation. He added that it will now be illegal to employ them.
“The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse. The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions. And, the economy is in shambles,” DeWine said.
In his statement, DeWine pointed to the federal government’s own advisory against traveling to Haiti.
“Our Federal Aviation Administration prohibits U.S. carriers from flying there because of the danger to planes of being shot at by the gangs,” DeWine said. “But, more importantly, changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.”
Read more at the link. Trump and his handpicked justices are ruining our country.
One more disturbing story from NBC News: Pete Buttigieg targeted by ‘false report’ to authorities involving his 4-year-old twins.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday that he and his family in Michigan were targeted by a “false report” to state authorities claiming he was a danger to his 4-year-old twins.
By Matt McCarthy
Michigan State Police confirmed in a statement that they had received an anonymous report regarding Buttigieg. State police and Child Protective Services then responded and “determined the report was false,” the statement said.
Buttigieg, a Cabinet official in the Biden administration and a potential 2028 presidential candidate, wrote in a Substack post that a police officer and Child Protective Services worker appeared at his home “a few days ago” following an allegation that had been made against him involving his children.
He said his children were removed from the home he shares with his husband, Chasten, before the twins went through separate forensic interviews the next morning. Buttigieg said he was then interviewed as part of the investigation.
During that interview, Buttigieg said, an officer told him that an anonymous caller had reported him to CPS, with the caller saying “that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”
Buttigieg said he told the officer he had never been to the town in Alabama.
“Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor,” Buttigieg wrote. “Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.”
Buttigieg said he was apart from his children for 24 hours.
That is horrible. I can’t believe those poor kids had to go through forensic interviews.
Sorry this post is so depressing, but that’s the state of our country today. If you have something positive to share, please do so in the comment thread. I’d be very grateful.
Lazy Caturday Reads: Bookstore Cats (And News)
Posted: November 17, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bookstore cats, California wildfires, Camp fire, CIA, Confederate flag, Fethullah Gulen, Jamal Khashoggi, new civil war, Saudi Arabia, White supremacists 33 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
California is burning and we have no national leadership. The current death toll from the Camp Fire in Northern California stands at 71, with more than 1,000 missing. Trump is going to California, not to help or comfort, but to educate politicians and firefighters about what they did and are doing wrong. Politico:
Trump said he will be meeting Saturday with Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and emergency workers across the state.
“I want to be with the firefighters and the FEMA first responders,” Trump said, anticipating that he would likely be returning to the White House at 4 a.m. Sunday morning, “or something like that.”
The president also hinted at some potentially confrontational discussions he might engage in Saturday with California’s elected leaders, including on the state’s forest management efforts.
“I’ve been saying that for a long time this could have been a lot different situation, but the one thing is that everybody now knows that this is what we have to be doing, and there’s no question about it,” Trump said. “It should have been done many years ago, but i think everybody’s on the right side. It’s a big issue.”
Yesterday Trump explained his theory to Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
So is Trump bringing a rake with him?
Read About the Wildfires
Reuters: Teams search for 1,000 missing in California’s deadliest wildfire.
PARADISE, Calif., Nov 17 (Reuters) – Forensic recovery teams searched for more victims in the charred wreckage of the northern California town of Paradise on Saturday as the number of people listed as missing in the state’s deadliest wildfire topped 1,000.
Remains of at least 71 people have been recovered in and around the small Sierra foothills town 175 miles (280 km) north of San Francisco. It was home to nearly 27,000 residents before it was largely incinerated by the blaze on the night of Nov. 8.
Adams Avenue Book Store in San Diego, CA, Bartleby
The disaster already ranks among the deadliest U.S. wildfires since the turn of the last century. Eighty-seven people perished in the Big Burn firestorm that swept the Northern Rockies in August of 1910. Minnesota’s Cloquet Fire in October of 1918 killed 450 people.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has blamed the recent spate of fires on forest mismanagement, was due to visit the fire zones on Saturday to meet displaced residents. Governor Jerry Brown and Governor-elect Gavin Newsom planned to join Trump on his tour.
Authorities attribute the high death toll from the blaze – dubbed “Camp Fire” – partly to the speed with which flames raced through the town with little advance warning, driven by howling winds and fueled by drought-desiccated scrub and trees.
More than a week later, firefighters have managed to carve containment lines around 45 percent of the blaze’s perimeter. The fire covered 142,000 acres (57,000 hectares), fire officials said.
Besides the toll on human life, property losses from the blaze make it the most destructive in California history, posing the additional challenge of providing long-term shelter for many thousands of displaced residents.
The BBC has a timeline of the destruction of Paradise, CA: California wildfires: The day Paradise burned down. Here’s the introduction:
“Heavenly father, please help us.”
Sitting in the back seat of the car her husband was driving, Brynn Parrott Chatfield’s entire field of vision was filled with flames as she prayed.
Only the thin strip of road in front of them remained unburned.
Shades of orange, white, purple and pink burst out on both sides, hundreds of small fires all burning at the same time, low on the ground and up and over the trees.
“Please, help us to be safe.”
A wave of embers rose up from the surface of the road and struck their front windscreen. Brynn’s husband Jeremy drove calmly on down the middle of the road; no-one would be coming towards them into the fire.
“I’m thankful for Jeremy and his willingness to be brave…”
By now, no road was visible, and only a dense orange cloud could be seen in front of the car. Then suddenly, it cleared, and the fires seemed to scatter.
Clear skies opened up, the last embers bounced off the windscreen and the fire was finally behind them.
As a helicopter flew overhead, carrying water to try and douse the flames, Jeremy and Brynn knew they had made it out alive.
Soon after, almost nothing would remain of their hometown, Paradise, and the fire they fled in north-east California would become the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s history.
This is the story of how the fire spread.
More reads on the California disaster:
The Guardian: California’s DIY firefighters battle alone as the richest hire private teams.
The New York Times: As Inmates, They Fight California’s Fires. As Ex-Convicts, Their Firefighting Prospects Wilt.
The New York Times: Air Quality in California: Devastating Fires Lead to a New Danger.
The Los Angeles Times: California fire: If you stay, you’re dead. How a Paradise nursing home evacuated.
The New York Times: Everyone Is Talking About the California Wildfires. Read These Books on How to Fight Them.
Trump Is Fueling White Supremacist Extremism
David Neiwert at The Washington Post: Right-wing extremists are already threatening violence over a Democratic House. The introduction:
Seeking a more lenient sentence for Patrick Eugene Stein’s plot to murder hundreds of Somali immigrants in a small Kansas town, Stein’s attorneys turned to a novel strategy: They blamed the inspiration for his actions on Donald Trump.
“The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote.
Stein and his two cohorts planned their attack to take place the day after the November 2016 election. Anticipating a Hillary Clinton victory, the three Kansans wanted to make a violent first strike against her presidency by setting off a set of Timothy McVeigh-style truck bombs at a Muslim immigrant community in Garden City, then gunning down survivors as they fled.
The plot had been exposed, and the men arrested, a few weeks before they intended to carry it out. It took place amid a national environment in which far-right militiamen had been vowing a violent resistance to a potential Clinton administration. That resistance was, at least temporarily, mooted by Trump’s victory.
But those same rumblings can now be heard from the very same far-right factions, likewise threatening violence, in response to this month’s takeover of the House of Representatives by Democrats. There is legitimate reason for concern that right-wing terrorist violence will continue and perhaps increase — and that extremists could soon begin targeting politicians in office, especially if Trump singles them out for scorn.
Read the Rest at the WaPo. Neiwert is the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.
Lucian K. Truscott IV at Raw Story: Donald Trump isn’t our president — he is the Jefferson Davis of a new red state confederacy in a slow-motion civil war.
In 1861, they were cadets from the Citadel Military Academy in South Carolina. On January 9, of that year, they were manning an artillery battery on Morris Island, an uninhabited island in Charleston Harbor when they fired on the United States steamship Star of the West, which was attempting to resupply the American garrison at Fort Sumter. The shots they fired that day, along with the bombardment of the fort by the Confederate States Army beginning on April 12 of that year, are generally considered by historians to be the first shots fired in what became the American Civil War.
In 2017, they were members of the so-called “alt-right” — white supremacists, neo-nazis, neo-confederates, white nationalists, and neo-fascists who were in Charlottesville for the so-called “Unite the Right” rally. On the night of August 11, 2017, as many as 200 of them marched carrying burning torches through the campus of the University of Virginia chanting white supremacist slogans such as “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” When they reached the statue of Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, they clashed with a group of students who had surrounded the statue. The alt-right demonstrators swung and threw their torches and used pepper spray against the counter-protestors, injuring several.
The next day, the alt-right demonstrators marched through Charlottesville carrying Confederate and Nazi flags chanting “white lives matter,” “Jewish media is going down,” and “make America great again.” Many demonstrators were armed, some with semi-automatic assault-style rifles. They clashed again with counter-protestors, and at 1:45 p.m., a white supremacist demonstrator identified as James Alex Fields Jr. drove his 2010 Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protestors, injuring 19 and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
She was not the first to die in the new civil war. Already dead were black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina; a native of India in Olathe, Kansas; an Army lieutenant in College Park, Maryland; and many others.
But the death of Heather Heyer would become a focus of the violence and killing in the new civil war, because President Trump would put it there.
More at Raw Story (originally pubABlished at Salon).
More to Explore:
The Washington Post: Confederate pride and prejudice. Some white Northerners see a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism.
HuffPost: D.C.’s Neo-Nazi Brothers Were Hiding In Plain Sight.
ABC Action News Tampa: 39 suspected gang members charged in major drug, gun trafficking investigation in Pasco.
Jackson Free Press: Hyde-Smith Accepts $2,700 Donation from Notorious White Supremacist.
Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince
Yesterday someone leaked the news that CIA has concluded that MBS ordered the murder of Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi last month in Turkey. The New York Times reports:
Bücherdorf Mühlbeck, Germany
The Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials.
The C.I.A. made the assessment based on the crown prince’s control of Saudi Arabia, which is such that the killing would not have taken place without his approval, and has buttressed its conclusion with two sets of crucial communications: intercepts of the crown prince’s calls in the days before the killing, and calls by the kill team to a senior aide to the crown prince.
The C.I.A. has believed for weeks that Prince Mohammed was culpable in Mr. Khashoggi’s killing but had been hesitant to definitively conclude that he directly ordered it. The agency has passed that assessment on to lawmakers and Trump administration officials.
The change in C.I.A. thinking came as new information emerged, officials said. The evidence included an intercept showing a member of the kill team calling an aide to Prince Mohammed and saying “tell your boss” that the mission was accomplished. Officials cautioned, however, that the new information is not direct evidence linking Prince Mohammed to the assassination, which was carried out in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Undoubtedly the leak was motivated by Trump’s defense of MBS and his suggestion that another long-time U.S. resident Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen should be handed over to Turkey most likely to be tortured and killed.
In the unending swirl of shocking statements and decisions by the Trump administration, the latest scoop by NBC News could easily get lost. But it is nonetheless jaw dropping to hear reports that the administration may be thinking about surrendering to Turkish demands to extradite a long-time U.S. resident for the sake of placating Turkey and protecting Saudi Arabia in the wake of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder.
According to four people interviewed by NBC, the White House has instructed the Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to find a way to remove Fethullah Gulen, a former ally-turned-foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan claims Gulen was the mastermind behind a failed coupagainst him in 2016. The elderly Gulen has lived in rural Pennsylvania for close to 20 years. He is a green card holder, or permanent resident of the U.S., and he adamantly denies Turkey’s accusations. But Trump presumably hopes that if he turns Gulen over to Turkey, Erdogan will return the favor by easing his campaign against Saudi Arabia, an important American ally that has been under intense scrutiny following the Khashoggi killing.
U.S. authorities have already reviewed Turkey’s two-year-old extradition request and found it without merit. But Trump, in an effort to help Saudi Arabia diffuse the Khashoggi crisis, is weighing whether or not to both sacrifice a man and make a mockery of the extradition system.
More Stories to Check Out
The Washington Post: Trump says he’ll speak with CIA about Khashoggi killing.
Politico: Trump hails Saudis as ‘spectacular ally’ in wake of CIA Khashoggi reports.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread.
Thursday Reads: The Confederate Flag, The GOP Clown Car, and Other News
Posted: July 9, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Confederate flag, Donald Trump, GOP Clown Car, Jeb Bush, Jim Webb, Mary Cassatt, Reince Priebus, South Carolina 56 Comments
Young Lady Reading, by Mary Cassatt
Good Morning!!
The Confederate Flag Debate in South Carolina
The South Carolina House has voted to remove the Confederate flag from the state capital grounds, according to The Charlotte Observer. The bill will now go to Governor Nikki Haley. Once she has signed it, I hope the flag will be taken down immediately.
The Confederate flag will leave the South Carolina State House grounds after five decades this week after the House overwhelmingly approved a bill to remove the Civil War icon early Thursday morning.
The House voted 94-20 to banish the flag from the Capitol after more than 12 hours of debate over the historic measure.
The bill now heads to Gov. Nikki Haley for her signature. Haley started the call for removing the flag in the days after nine African-Americans were shot and killed in a historic Charleston church last month.
Nurse reading to a little girl, Mary Cassatt
“It is a new day in South Carolina, a day we can all be proud of, a day that truly brings us all together as we continue to heal, as one people and one state,” Haley said in a Facebook post.
If Haley signs the bill Thursday, the flag could be taken down Friday.
A two-thirds majority vote in the House was needed for final passage, a requirement of the the 2000 law that took the flag off the State House dome and put it next to the Confederate Soldier Monument on the north side of the Capitol.
The House gave final approval to the final two readings of the bill within minutes of each other at 1 a.m. Thursday. The Senate approved removing the flag on Tuesday.
Republicans fought tooth and nail, but
The House did not change the Senate bill after spending much of Wednesday considering amendments from Republicans who insisted on finding another way to honor the Confederate dead if the controversial banner was removed from the State House grounds.
More than 25 amendments were voted down or rejected before they came for a vote.
Auguste reading to her daughter, Mary Cassatt
In a sudden shift, Jim Webb, who is supposedly running for president as a Democrat, “says Confederate flag was ‘long due’ to come down in South Carolina.” From the Washington Post:
Democratic presidential contender Jim Webb, a former senator from Virginia, sought Thursday to clarify his views on the Confederate battle flag, saying it has “long been due to come down” from the capitol grounds in South Carolina.
Webb’s position was more opaque in a Facebook posting last month in which he called for respecting “the complicated history of the Civil War” at a time when emotions were running high following the shootings at an historic African American church in Charleston, S.C.
During an appearance Thursday on “CBS This Morning” — billed as Webb’s first interview since declaring as a long-shot presidential candidate last week — he spoke approvingly of the South Carolina legislature’s overnight vote to take the flag down.
“It assumed a lot of unfortunate racist and divisionist overtones during the civil rights era,” Webb said.
I don’t see how the flag could have been more racist or divisive in the 1960s that it was 100 years earlier when it represented the fight to preserve slavery and secession.
Speaking again of the “very complex history of the Civil War itself,” Webb cited a statistic that only 5 percent of whites in the South owned slaves and that four slave states remained in the union during the Civil War.
“If you were a young person being called to duty during that period, this was a very complicated decision to make, and we should remember that,” Webb said.
Whatever. These days, only 1% of the population wants to turn everyone else into serfs, and they have quite a bit of power to control the public dialogue.
The GOP Clown Car
Francoise in a round backed chair, reading, Mary Cassatt
The powers that be in the Republican Party are struggling to get fake presidential candidate Donald Trump under control, and they are doing a very poor job of it.
NBC News reports: GOP Chief Reince Priebus Calls Donald Trump to Tell Him to ‘Tone It Down.’
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called presidential candidate Donald Trump and asked him to pull back his rhetoric on immigration, a source familiar with the conversation told NBC News on Wednesday.
The source, who asked not to be identified, said Priebus made the request to “tone it down” during an almost hour-long conversation covering a wide range of issues when he returned an earlier call from Trump.
Trump disputed that account on Twitter, saying that Priebus said during the call that he was “doing well.”
Hahahahahahahahaha!!! They’re going to need someone a lot more powerful than Priebus to get Trump to STFU.
According to The Washington Post: GOP leaders fear damage to party’s image as Donald Trump doubles down.
The head of the Republican National Committee, responding to demands from increasingly worried party leaders, spent nearly an hour Wednesday on the phone with Donald Trump, urging the presidential candidate to tone down his inflammatory comments about immigration that have infuriated a key election constituency.
The call from Chairman Reince Priebus, described by donors and consultants briefed on the conversation and confirmed by the RNC, underscores the extent to which Trump has gone from an embarrassment to a cause for serious alarm among top Republicans in Washington and nationwide.
But there is little they can do about the mogul and reality-television star, who draws sustenance from controversy and attention. And some fear that, with assistance from Democrats, Trump could become the face of the GOP.
Rather than backing down from his comments about illegal immigrants — whom he characterized as rapists and killers, among other things — Trump has amplified his remarks at every opportunity, including in a round of interviews Wednesday.
He insisted to NBC News that he has “nothing to apologize for” in his repeated remarks about Mexicans. But he also predicted that, if he secures the GOP nomination, “I’ll win the Latino vote.”
OMG! ROFLMAF! The Republican Party’s “image” is already shot to hell. I’m not sure even keeping Trump in the Clown Car can make it much worse.
Mrs. Duffee Reading on Striped Sofa, Mary Cassatt
Dana Millbank: Donald Trump is the monster the GOP created.
It has been amusing to watch the brands — the PGA, NBC, Macy’s, NASCAR, Univision, Serta — flee Donald Trump after his xenophobic remarks. Who even knew The Donald had a line of mattresses featuring Cool Action Dual Effects Gel Memory Foam?
But there is one entity that can’t dump Trump, no matter how hard it tries: the GOP. The Republican Party can’t dump Trump because Trump is the Republican Party.
One big Republican donor this week floated to the Associated Press the idea of having candidates boycott debates if the tycoon is onstage. Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham and other candidates have lined up to say, as Rick Perry put it, that “Donald Trump does not represent the Republican Party.”
But actually, he does represent the party’s views. He’s just more up front about them than the rest of the mealy mouthed GOP candidates.
But Trump has merely held up a mirror to the GOP. The man, long experience has shown, believes in nothing other than himself. He has, conveniently, selected the precise basket of issues that Republicans want to hear about — or at least a significant proportion of Republican primary voters. He may be saying things more colorfully than others when he talks about Mexico sending rapists across the border, but his views show that, far from being an outlier, he is hitting all the erogenous zones of the GOP electorate.
Anti-immigrant? Against Common Core education standards? For repealing Obamacare? Against same-sex marriage? Antiabortion? Anti-tax? Anti-China? Virulent in questioning President Obama’s legitimacy? Check, check, check, check, check, check, check and check.
Mary Cassatt, The Reader
More good stuff at the link. BTW, Trump is topping all other GOP candidates in the South Carolina PPP poll. What does that tell you?
PPP’s newest North Carolina poll finds that Donald Trump’s momentum just keeps on building. He’s the top choice of Republican primary voters in the state, getting 16% to 12% for Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 9% for Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, 7% for Rand Paul, 6% for Ted Cruz, 5% for Chris Christie, 4% for Carly Fiorina, 2% for Rick Perry, 1% each for Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Santorum, and less than 1% each for John Kasich and George Pataki.
Trump’s favorability rating in North Carolina is 55/32, much higher than we were finding in national polls prior to his entry into the race. Trump’s really caught fire with voters on the far right- 66% of ‘very conservative’ voters see him favorably to only 24% with a negative view of him. Trump is polling particularly well with younger voters (29%) and men (20%).
Another racist homophobe has the highest favorability rating in SC–Mike Huckabee at 65/19.
Another popular Clown Car passenger, Jeb Bush, has put his foot in his mouth once again. In an interview with New Hampshire’s ultra-conservative Manchester Union Leader, Bush recommended that “people should work longer hours.”
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Wednesday that in order to grow the economy “people should work longer hours” — a comment that the Bush campaign argues was a reference to underemployed part-time workers but which Democrats are already using to attack him….
He was answering a question about his plans for tax reform and responded:
“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours” and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.”
Already the Democratic National Committee has pounced, releasing a statement that calls his remarks “easily one of the most out-of-touch comments we’ve heard so far this cycle,” adding that Bush would not fight for the middle class as president.
Read about Bush’s “clarification” at the Washington Post.
Mrs. Cassatt reading to her grandchildren, Mary Cassatt
More News (links only)
Newsweek: Real Vampires Exist, and They Need Counseling Too.
Reuters, via Raw Story: Same-sex couples to get federal marriage benefits: attorney general.
Raw Story: All GOP presidential hopefuls decline speaking invite to America’s largest annual gathering of Latino.
Talking Points Memo: Matthews Blasts Cruz: SCOTUS ‘Seized’ 2000 Election, ‘You Did Not Complain’ (VIDEO).
Gawker: Garbage Joke News Website Fools Presidential Hopeful Martin O’Malley
Washington Post: Thomas Piketty accuses Germany of forgetting history as it lectures Greece.
Tech Times: Exxon Documents Hint That Oil Companies Have Known About Climate Change Since 1981.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: July 7, 2015 Filed under: 2016 elections, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Bill Cosby, Confederate flag, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Lee Bright, same-sex marriage 24 Comments
L’Estaque, by Andre Derain
Good Morning!!
I think my poison oak outbreak is improving a bit. The rash is still spreading and it’s still very itchy, but it’s a little better than it was. At least it doesn’t feel like my skin is on fire. I stopped taking the powerful antihistamine/anesthetic the doctor gave me and went back to Benedryl. I’m still very groggy this morning, but I think if I can put up with the itching and avoid taking more Benedryl, my brain fog should clear up by this afternoon.
I can’t really focus enough to do any serious reading, so this will just be a link dump of recent news stories.
I wish Donald Trump would just go away, but he’s determined to completely embarrass himself first.
TPM reports: Trump Lashes Out At Critics, Makes Incendiary New Claims About Mexico.
A Cup of Tea, Andre Derain
Read the entire creepy statement at the link. A little more from Business Insider: Donald Trump just released an epic statement raging against Mexican immigrants and ‘disease.’
“The largest suppliers of heroin, cocaine and other illicit drugs are Mexican cartels that arrange to have Mexican immigrants trying to cross the borders and smuggle in the drugs. The Border Patrol knows this,” Trump wrote. “Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border. The United States has become a dumping ground for Mexico and, in fact, for many other parts of the world.”
Shortly before releasing his statement, Trump gave an interview to Business Insider where he described the idea that the Mexican government is deliberately “pushing the bad ones” to the US as the one element of his position on immigration that hasn’t gotten enough attention….
Trump also argued the Mexican government “not our friend” and is taking advantage of the US on “bad trade deals.”
“The Mexican Government wants an open border as long as it’s a ONE WAY open border into the United States. Not only are they killing us at the border, but they are killing us on trade … and the country of Mexico is making billions of dollars in doing so,” he wrote. “I have great respect for Mexico and love their people and their peoples’ great spirit. The problem is, however, that their leaders are far smarter, more cunning, and better negotiators than ours. To the citizens of the United States, who I will represent far better than anyone else as President, the Mexican government is not our friend…and why should they be when the relationship is totally one sided in their favor on both illegal immigration and trade.”
Trump concluded by taking shots at some of the businesses who have severed ties with him.
“I have lost a lot during this Presidential run defending the people of the United States. I have always heard that it is very hard for a successful person to run for President. Macy’s, NBC, Serta and NASCAR have all taken the weak and very sad position of being politically correct even though they are wrong in terms of what is good for our country,” Trump wrote.
A man reading a newspaper, Andre Derain
According to Business Insider, Republican donors are getting increasingly nervous about Trump: One GOP donor wants to block Donald Trump from the debate stage.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Worried about “Republican-on-Republican violence,” top party donors are taking action, with one firing off a letter calling for more civility and another seeking to block businessman Donald Trump from the debate stage altogether.
Foster Friess, a Wyoming-based investor and one of the party’s top 20 donors in the last presidential contest, issued a letter to 16 White House prospects and the Republican National Committee late last week calling for candidates to stay on the “civility reservation.”
“Our candidates will benefit if they all submit to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, ‘Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican,'” Friess wrote in a letter sent to Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.
In the dispatch, Friess cites the backing of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts. “Would you join the effort to inspire a more civil way of making their points?” Friess wrote. “If they drift off the ‘civility reservation,’ let’s all immediately communicate that to them.”
Good luck with that.
Speaking of creepy people, Bill Cosby is back in the news.
The AP reports: Cosby said he got drugs to give women for sex.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Bill Cosby testified in 2005 that he got Quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with, and he admitted giving the sedative to at least one woman and “other people,” according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
The AP had gone to court to compel the release of the documents; Cosby’s lawyers had objected on the grounds that it would embarrass their client.
The 77-year-old comedian was testifying under oath in a lawsuit filed by a former Temple University employee. He testified he gave her three half-pills of Benadryl.
Cosby settled that sexual-abuse lawsuit for undisclosed terms in 2006. His lawyers in the Philadelphia case did not immediately return phone calls Monday.
Cosby has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct, including allegations by many that he drugged and raped them in incidents dating back more than four decades. Cosby, 77, has never been criminally charged, and most of the accusations are barred by statutes of limitations.
Portrait of a woman, Andre Derain
From NBC News: Judge Explains Why He Unsealed Bill Cosby Court Documents.
A federal judge said one of the reasons he unsealed court documents in which Bill Cosby admits he gave a woman drugs before sex is because of the disconnect between the comedian’s upright public persona and the serious allegations against him.
“The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct is a matter as to which the AP — and by extension the public — has a significant interest,” Judge Eduardo Robreno wrote in a memorandum Monday. The documents were released after a request from The Associated Press.
Cosby said in a 2005 legal deposition that he had obtained prescriptions of a powerful sedative to give to women with whom he wanted to have sex, according to the documents. His testimony was part of a civil suit involving a woman who accused him of drugging her and sexually assaulting her.
The actor was not charged in connection with these claims and the case was dismissed in 2006.
His lawyers had fought the documents’ release, saying it would be “terribly embarrassing.” Last month, Cosby’s lawyers and lawyers for the AP argued over whether Cosby was a public figure entitled to a lesser degree of privacy.
Robreno wrote Monday that the case “is not about the Defendant’s status as a public person by virtue of the exercise of his trade as a televised or comedic personality. Rather, Defendant has donned the mantle of public moralist and mounted the proverbial electronic or print soap box to volunteer his views on, among other things, childrearing, family life, education, and crime.”
Crazy GOPers
Yesterday, a GOP state senator in South Carolina flipped out during the debate over removing the Confederate flag from the state house grounds, according to Raw Story.
The Dance, Andre Derain
South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright (R) began debate about removing the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds on Monday with a passionate plea for lawmakers to focus on same-sex marriage instead.
As the senators prepared to debate a measure that would remove the flag, Bright took to the floor to point out that President Barack Obama sang “Amazing Grace” at the funeral for nine black church members in Charleston and then later that night the White House was illuminated in rainbow colors to celebrate a Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.
“I watch the White House be lit up in the abomination colors!” Bright said. “It is time for the church to rise up…. Romans chapter 1 is clear, the Bible is clear. This nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and they are under assault by men in black robes who were not elected by you.”
Bright argued that lawmakers should be protecting county clerks from the “tyranny” of having to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples instead of debating the Confederate flag.
“Our governor called us in to deal with the flag that sits out front, let’s deal with the national sin that we face today!” he exclaimed. “We talk about abortion but this gay marriage thing, I believe will be one nation gone under like President Reagan said. If we’re not one nation under God, we’ll be one nation gone under.
Read the rest of Bright’s rant at Raw Story.
A couple of stories on the Democratic nomination race…
National Journal: Here’s the Real Reason Hillary Clinton Has a Lock on the Democratic Nomination.
Hillary Clinton is a near-lock for the Democratic nomination for many reasons, but among the most significant is that her challengers have minimal appeal to the party’s base of African-American voters….
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the challenger with the most momentum, represents a state that’s 95 percent white, where Asian-Americans and multi-racial voters outnumber blacks. He’s focused most of his campaign message on income inequality, constraining Wall Street excess, and campaign finance reform, while avoiding discussions on race relations, urban policing, or gun control. Only 25 percent of non-white Democratic voters said they’d even consider backing the senator’s presidential bid, according to last month’s NBC/Wall Street Journal survey.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, despite representing a state where nearly half of Democratic voters are black, has been unable to make inroads with his onetime political base. In fact, he drew some jeers when he returned to Baltimore in the wake of violent rioting that tore apart the city. As mayor, his tough-on-crime measures were popular with Maryland voters, but the no-tolerance approach alienated many African-American voters in the state’s largest city. Even some of his base-pleasing accomplishments as governor—such as his early support for gay marriage—hold limited appeal with black voters. In a recent speech, he awkwardly compared his experience as a “minority white candidate” for mayor to the broader African-American experience.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s other rival is more conservative than the entire Republican presidential field when it comes to the Confederate flag. Former Sen. Jim Webb, who was the Democrats’ Senate majority-maker less than a decade ago, now finds himself badly out of step with his party on civil rights issues. On Facebook, he called for “mutual respect” when considering the Confederate flag in a way that “respects the complicated history of the Civil War.” He will struggle to make inroads with minorities, given how out of step he is with an increasingly progressive Democratic base.
Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire may show Clinton with less-than-commanding leads over Sanders and everyone else, but take those results with a grain of salt; they don’t mean much going forward. Iowa and New Hampshire have among the most homogeneous Democratic electorates in the country, demographically disconnected from the party’s base in most other states.
The Trees, Andre Derain
At Vox, Jonathan Allen admits that reporters still follow the Clinton Rules: Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media’s 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary.
The Clinton rules are driven by reporters’ and editors’ desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family’s political empire. At least in that way, Republicans and the media have a common interest.
I understand these dynamics well, having co-written a book that demonstrated how Bill and Hillary Clinton used Hillary’s time at State to build the family political operation and set up for their fourth presidential campaign. That is to say, I’ve done a lot of research about the Clintons’ relationship with the media, and experienced it firsthand. As an author, I felt that I owed it to myself and the reader to report, investigate, and write with the same mix of curiosity, skepticism, rigor, and compassion that I would use with any other subject. I wanted to sell books, of course. But the easier way to do that — proven over time — is to write as though the Clintons are the purest form of evil. The same holds for daily reporting. Want to drive traffic to a website? Write something nasty about a Clinton, particularly Hillary.
Read Allen’s take on the Clinton Rules at the link.
Finally, from Slate’s Jamelle Bouie: Why Bernie Sanders Is the Left’s Ron Paul.
In just a few months, Sanders has moved from the periphery of American politics to the mainstream, as the most visible and popular alternative to Clinton, vastly outpacing former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, who recently announced his candidacy. But visibility isn’t viability, and there’s almost no chance Sanders will become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, even ifhe sustains his momentum into next year.
Despite the polls and the voting, presidential primaries aren’t popularity contests. Instead, they’re closer to negotiations, where interests and individuals work to choose a leader and representative for the entire group. That person has to appeal to everyone, from ideological factions and political power centers to wealthy donors and ordinary voters and activists. The candidate also has to show that he or she can do the work of a national campaign, from winning debates to raising money.
Clinton has done this. She came close to winning the 2008 nomination and spent the next seven years—right up to the present—building her stature in Democratic politics. A moderate liberal committed to most of Barack Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda, she’s acceptable to almost everyone in the party—in a national poll of the Democratic field from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, she has a whopping 75 percent of the vote.
Which brings us back to Bernie. Sanders is a fascinating candidate with a vital, underrepresented message in American politics. But the same qualities that make him unique—relative independence from the Democratic Party, a foundational critique of American politics—make him unsuited for a major party nomination, much less the Democratic one. The more moderate and conservative parts of the Democratic coalition won’t support a left-wing candidate like Sanders, and the more strategic voters—party stalwarts like black Americans—will be skeptical that Sanders could win the White House, even if they agree with his ideas and policies.
Read the whole thing at the link.
So . . . . what else is happening? Please let us know in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday.
Tuesday Reads: The Republican Party’s Mess
Posted: June 23, 2015 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Civil Rights era, Civil War, Confederate flag, Racism, South Carolina, Tea Party 69 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m sure you’ll recognize the image at the top of this post. The photo was taken at a Tea Party rally in Washington, DC, a couple of years ago. I’ve included other similar photos in this post. Don’t tell me the people holding these flags don’t understand that it is a symbol of racial hatred.
Since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, we have seen shocking overt racism on display by right wing Republicans, and so called “mainstream” Republican elected officials have done nothing to stop it. The simple truth is that the Tea Party is a racist hate group that was formed in reaction to the election of a black president.
As a consequence of Republican officials’ refusal to call the Tea Party what it is, we have seen extreme right wing candidates like Ted Cruz elected to high office and stupid and hateful people like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann treated seriously by the media. It’s a national disgrace, and we should begin to hold Republicans responsible for it.
Nikki Haley was elected governor of South Carolina in 2010 as a Tea Party candidate, although she has since fallen out of favor with the group. Yesterday Haley made a cowardly, mealy-mouthed public statement calling for removal of the Confederate flag from the state house grounds, and yet today she is being celebrated in the media for her “courage.” Here’s part of it:
For many people in our state the flag stands for traditions that are noble. Traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry.
The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag. In no way does he reflect the people of our state who respect, and in many ways, revere it.
Those South Carolinians view the flag as a symbol of respect, integrity and duty. They also see it as a memorial. A way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during time of conflict. That is not hate, nor is it racism.
At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. As a state, we can survive and indeed we can thrive as we have done whilst still being home to both of those viewpoints. We do not need to declare a winner and a loser here.
We respect freedom of expression. And that for those who wish to show their respect for the flag on their private property, no one will stand in your way.
But the statehouse is different. And the events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way….
One hundred and fifty years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come. There will be some in our state who see this as a sad moment. I respect that. But know this, for good and for bad, whether it is on the statehouse grounds or in a museum the flag will always be a part of the soil in South Carolina. But this is a moment in which we can say that that flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state.
It is South Carolina’s historic moment, and this will be South Carolina’s decision. To those outside of our state, the flag may be nothing more than a symbol of the worst of America’s past. That is not what it is to many South Carolinians. The state house belongs to all of us. Their voices will be heard, and their role in this debate will be respected….
But we are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer. The fact that people are choosing to use it as a sign of hate is something that we cannot stand. The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to move it from the capitol grounds.
Why couldn’t Haley just admit that the flag on the her state house grounds is a symbol of resistance to integration and to legal recognition that African Americans should have equal rights; and that decades after the changes brought about by Civil Rights Movement they are still not treated equally by many, including police officers? By the way, maybe she should also consider opposing the efforts of Republicans in South Carolina to prevent African Americans from voting.
Last night I watch Rachel Maddow’s show for the first time in months, and I’m very glad I did. Maddow presented a detailed history of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the group whose website inspired Dylann Roof to murder nine African Americans at a prayer group meeting at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC last week. The Council of Conservative Citizens grew directly out of the White Citizens Councils that fought to maintain racial segregation in Southern cities in the 1950s and 1960s. From Wikipedia:
The Citizens’ Councils (also referred to as White Citizens’ Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South. The first was formed on July 11, 1954 After 1956, it was known as the Citizens’ Councils of America. With about 60,000 members across the United States, mostly in the South, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of schools, but they also supported segregation of public facilities during the 1950s and 1960s. Members used severe intimidation tactics including economic boycotts, firing people from jobs, propaganda, and occasionally violence against civil-rights activists.
By the 1970s, following passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s and enforcement of constitutional rights by the federal government, the influence of the Councils had waned considerably. The successor organization to the White Citizens’ Councils is the Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.
Maddow pointed out that in 2010, Haley Barbour was quickly eliminated from the race for the GOP nomination when he publicly praised the White Citizen Council in his home city of Yazoo, Mississippi. Maddow also interviewed SC Rep. James Clyburn about the history of the Confederate flag that still flies on the SC state house grounds. He explained that that flag was a Virginia flag flown by Robert E. Lee and that it has nothing to do with South Carolina history. It was put up over the SC state house in 1962 as a direct response to the battle for civil rights for African Americans.
Why couldn’t Nikki Haley simply admit that in her statement? Frankly, the Republican Party has allowed itself to become the party of racism and hatred; and it’s time for decent Republicans to face up to that and and deal with it honestly.
Here’s what Melissa McEwan wrote about Haley’s statement:
She couldn’t even be bothered to say that the thing is a racist symbol. Which has nonetheless not stopped members of her party from celebrating her courage.
The thing is, it’s not really “brave” to take down a flag that never should have been flying in the first place.
I see what Haley is doing as approximately as “brave” as when I clean up cat vomit. You’re supposed to clean up gross messes in your home….
let’s not pretend that it’s a Great Leadership moment, when it took 150 years of fluttering insult, and nine deaths in the last week at the hands of one of the many white people to embrace that contemptible symbol of white supremacy, to pull it off the flagpole.
I completely agree. As I wrote in a comment yesterday, the Confederate flag is a symbol of hate and fear that should be in the same category as the Nazi swastika and the “n” word. Why should people be allowed to fly it on their own property? Why should more intelligent and sensitive neighbors or even people driving by have to see it?
It’s way past time for Republicans to stop beating around the bush and clean up the disgusting mess in their party, and it’s time for all Americans to recognize that racism in any form is evil.
Here’s a more serious discussion of the meaning of the Confederate flag by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:
This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had a “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.
Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.
This examination should begin in South Carolina, the site of our present and past catastrophe. South Carolina was the first state to secede, two months after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It was in South Carolina that the Civil War began, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. The state’s casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:
…A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
In citing slavery, South Carolina was less an outlier than a leader, setting the tone for other states, including Mississippi…
Please go read the whole thing at the link.
Republicans are now arguing that Democrats are responsible for the confederate flag symbolism and for the South’s history of racism. It’s true that Dixiecrats fought to maintain segregation, but most of those old guys switched to the Republican Party back in the Civil Rights era. The Republicans own the mess now, and they need to get busy cleaning it up.
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