I "watched" the racist shindig scrolling between Bluesky and Twitter. Called my dad at halftime of the Forty Niners game and told him it was apparently the most racist event at Madison Square Garden since George Wallace was there in 1968.
OT... Although I've cancelled WaPo and the sub finally expired, I see they're still up to last minute election monkeyshines with a bullshit leading headline that goes against Bezos' claim that they just report and don't slant the news:
Harris’s brother-in-law is an adviser and a corporate insider, raising concerns about potential conflicts
On leave as Uber’s chief legal officer, Tony West plays a pivotal role in the Harris campaign.
I so hope the 20K+ cancelled subscriptions and staff turnover kills WaPo as a serious paper. Won't happen but it would be nice.
Spot on, Stephen. The evidence from early voting numbers (more Dems than repubs) and from undecided voters (breaking for Harris), is looking like that is what is happening, and that's before the Klan bake. I have felt good about Harris' chances ever since Biden sacrificed his ambition for the nation and democracy, stepped aside and endorsed Harris, but I feel even better about them now, and hope that this will help other Dems in close races.
It’s a sad statement on the modern GOP: the party’s racism is so deeply entrenched, so endlessly sprawling, that even artificial intelligence buckles under the task of cataloging it all.
Mayor Pete is a wonk guy so his response doesn’t surprise me, but he needs to pivot to the same shock and anger he would feel if someone attacked gay marriage and adoption. Speaking of which, the campaign against Senator Tammy Baldwin is now 99% anti-trans and anti-gay, with attacks on her partner (“girlfriend” in the ads) by name. Also, Trump officially started his campaign by attacking Milwaukee, the site of his convention. He really doesn’t like cities with a lot of Black citizens.
I said this over at Wonkette, but the people who say “We need to stop being offended by every little thing” are people who are pissed off for being called out on offensive behavior because they think they should be allowed to be as offensive as they want and the rest of us just have to put up with it.
Exactly. When JD Vance said this on tv, the crowd behind him cheered. They all had one thing in common: they were hateful red hats. And to quote something Stephen put in this article. Republicans lost their shit over the Tim Walz “white guy tacos” comment. Either they’re hypocrites or they were manufacturing false outrage and didn’t really care he said it.
Just playing devil's advocate, but maybe it's a two-pronged approach? Kamala just pointed out that Trump's a fascist like one or two days before the MSG MAGANazi rally. Admittedly, it takes some of the weight from that to have Buttigieg digress from that message, but maybe he has his playbook to follow.
Buttgieg is an Indiana Democrat. They are hard wired to downplay acts of racism. Acknowledging it worries Democrats like him that they’ll chase off white voters by acknowledging some white people engage in foul behavior , so they downplay it. Exhibit A: Evan Bayh
After this spectacular self-own, I really have to wonder if the Trump campaign is pulling a Andy Kaufman performance piece... they can't be doing this deliberately.
What's that? Don Jr. picked Hinchliffe for the rally lineup? Oh, that makes sense now.
Someone at Wonkette suggested that trump is teeing up for an insanity defense. Could be, but I doubt that trump is intelligent and strategic enough to do it deliberately. This is who he is, and who he has always been.
I like Mayor Pete a lot, but I agree that he is making a mistake if he thinks the messaging has to be all economy and policy* all the time. I am perfectly happy if some of Harris’ surrogates, and Buttigieg is a great one, want to focus on the positive and eschew the negative messaging themselves, but I disagree that the people who are focusing on the fact that Trump is absolute evil personified are doing it wrong.
We need to hit him with everything we got and keep hitting him until he goes down, and stays down.
PS, I’ve known a fair number of Puerto Ricans, let’s just say, in my experience, I would rather sandpaper a wildcat’s ass than disrespect any one of them. Trump has pissed in his Post Toasties.
*We have been doing this all along and it hasn’t seemed to move the needle at all.
Problem is, projection works both ways. Just as venal, vicious greedy people find it impossible to imagine anyone could behave differently, fundamentally decent people like Pete find it difficult to imagine those who possess no redeeming qualities or motives whatsoever.
I think Secretary Buttigieg's defense is good but he's aiming at the wrong targets. Something like "He wants you diatracted from his tax cuts for billionaires and the loss of civil rights so.that when his friends like Senator Rick Scott disavow the racism (and we should note not the antisemitism) you don't ask the Senator what about the policies that actively hurt the people you now claim to defend."
"Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez released a less than glowing review: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”"
I want to point out to this quisling that yes, yes it does because he was a speaker on your stage behind your lectern with your campaign sign. Also it definitely does because he was reading most of this from teleprompter. And your execrable, Nazi campaign even vetoed a misogynistic 'joke' from his set. But the rest was okay.
I'm especially tired of these quislings. I want to say to them...each of them caping for this mantoddler. When he has comedians making the yuk-yuk jokes about Black people carving watermelons, or calling Latinos promiscuous or calling Puerto Ricans garbage? He means YOU too. No matter how much you think "you're one of the good ones" or "you were here the right way" or "I'm not like those refugees, I was born here?"
When Herr Miller is up on that dais saying "America is for Americans Only," he doesn't mean YOU.
The analogy about the bully reminds me of a story Dan Savage told about he and his father. When Bush Deux was running for office he said many anti-gay things and courted the anti-gay vote. Savage's dad told him Bush just said that to get votes. Savage replied "What if he was punching me in the face to get votes? I'm still getting punched in the face, whatever the reason."
The strawman arguement of people saying things "just to get votes" is non-sensical. It doesn't matter why they said it.
As the brilliant Maya Angelou said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
Ever notice that every single time some asshole makes an offensive racist or misogynist remark (they often go hand in hand), or tells an offensive racist "joke", their first defense is ALWAYS to blame the listener who hears the words for their real meaning, "It's just a joke, lighten up why don't you?"
When my kids were little, they would insult each other and, if we called them out, they always said, “It’s just a joke.” Not surprised that the Trump campaign functions at the level of a bratty five year old.
Only liberals have to lighten up. If you make a joke aimed at a conservative sacred cow, you're being offensive and insulting to hard working Americans. And don't you dare call them deplorables or you'll bring on a decade of diner safaris to find out what "real Americans" think of your elitist jibes.
This is also why rightwingers in general are free to absolutely shit on entire states, territories and cities if they happen to vote for Democrats. There's no endless columns about how they have to reach out to Californians or New Yorkers or Puerto Ricans. They don't care that they have supporters in those places.
I'm not sure how much this will hurt Trump--on the one hand, he can say he had no idea what remarks the "comedian" was going to say, and while Trump does not have it in him to personally condemn the remarks he can probably do one of those "non-disavowals" to give talking heads the chance to pretend he had nothing to do with them. And Trump himself has said far worse, about immigrants having "bad genes" and "poisoning out blood" without getting this much uproar. On the other hand, as Stephen says this is happening in the last week of the campaign and news reminding people of the racism that Trump seems to bring everywhere with him is not doing much for his message to swing voters.
I do like that Vance found a way to be dickish even here. Wouldn't have been hard for him to say "those were unfortunate and awful remarks, the comedian was trying to be funny but that was terrible, we disavow that" but he had to go in with the "lighten up, be less sensitive, at least those of you on the Left, if you say anything mean about rural white people I will of course shit myself in anger". I think Republicans don't appreciate how valuable Mike Pence was at sanewashing Trump.
That's because Vance is the same kind of racist 4chan troll and he cosigns it. I mean speaker after speaker was awful, as was President Klan Robe himself. The Z-lister Hinchcliffe got most of the heat for now because of how flagrantly racist it was, but there's a TON of horrors in this rally yet.
Herr Miller's speech should put the fear of God in people. "America for Americans only" is going to have a VERY bad outcome.
Rudy Giuliani was in fine form working the All Arabs Are Animals angle. He didn't say, "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out." He didn't have to, since the audience already knew the punchline.
I "watched" the racist shindig scrolling between Bluesky and Twitter. Called my dad at halftime of the Forty Niners game and told him it was apparently the most racist event at Madison Square Garden since George Wallace was there in 1968.
Bravo. Stephen. This is exactly right.
OT... Although I've cancelled WaPo and the sub finally expired, I see they're still up to last minute election monkeyshines with a bullshit leading headline that goes against Bezos' claim that they just report and don't slant the news:
Harris’s brother-in-law is an adviser and a corporate insider, raising concerns about potential conflicts
On leave as Uber’s chief legal officer, Tony West plays a pivotal role in the Harris campaign.
I so hope the 20K+ cancelled subscriptions and staff turnover kills WaPo as a serious paper. Won't happen but it would be nice.
I imagine the 200,000 number has increased, but you can always kick Amazon Prime to the curb. Anything found on Amazon can be found elsewhere.
?? Yes, and —?
𝑯𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓, 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒎𝒑’𝒔 𝑺𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝑲𝒍𝒂𝒏 𝒃𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓. 𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝒂 𝒈𝒂𝒇𝒇𝒆 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒂 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒖𝒓𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆. 𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝒖𝒑 𝒕𝒐 𝒗𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌, 𝒕𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏.
Spot on, Stephen. The evidence from early voting numbers (more Dems than repubs) and from undecided voters (breaking for Harris), is looking like that is what is happening, and that's before the Klan bake. I have felt good about Harris' chances ever since Biden sacrificed his ambition for the nation and democracy, stepped aside and endorsed Harris, but I feel even better about them now, and hope that this will help other Dems in close races.
*The GOP’s Racism Broke AI*
It’s a sad statement on the modern GOP: the party’s racism is so deeply entrenched, so endlessly sprawling, that even artificial intelligence buckles under the task of cataloging it all.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-150895632?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Mayor Pete is a wonk guy so his response doesn’t surprise me, but he needs to pivot to the same shock and anger he would feel if someone attacked gay marriage and adoption. Speaking of which, the campaign against Senator Tammy Baldwin is now 99% anti-trans and anti-gay, with attacks on her partner (“girlfriend” in the ads) by name. Also, Trump officially started his campaign by attacking Milwaukee, the site of his convention. He really doesn’t like cities with a lot of Black citizens.
I said this over at Wonkette, but the people who say “We need to stop being offended by every little thing” are people who are pissed off for being called out on offensive behavior because they think they should be allowed to be as offensive as they want and the rest of us just have to put up with it.
Exactly. When JD Vance said this on tv, the crowd behind him cheered. They all had one thing in common: they were hateful red hats. And to quote something Stephen put in this article. Republicans lost their shit over the Tim Walz “white guy tacos” comment. Either they’re hypocrites or they were manufacturing false outrage and didn’t really care he said it.
“Either they’re hypocrites or they were manufacturing false outrage and didn’t really care he said it.”
Why-not-both dot gif
Just playing devil's advocate, but maybe it's a two-pronged approach? Kamala just pointed out that Trump's a fascist like one or two days before the MSG MAGANazi rally. Admittedly, it takes some of the weight from that to have Buttigieg digress from that message, but maybe he has his playbook to follow.
He could just keep taking about the economy without suggesting MAGA bigotry is a distraction
Buttgieg is an Indiana Democrat. They are hard wired to downplay acts of racism. Acknowledging it worries Democrats like him that they’ll chase off white voters by acknowledging some white people engage in foul behavior , so they downplay it. Exhibit A: Evan Bayh
True.
After this spectacular self-own, I really have to wonder if the Trump campaign is pulling a Andy Kaufman performance piece... they can't be doing this deliberately.
What's that? Don Jr. picked Hinchliffe for the rally lineup? Oh, that makes sense now.
Someone at Wonkette suggested that trump is teeing up for an insanity defense. Could be, but I doubt that trump is intelligent and strategic enough to do it deliberately. This is who he is, and who he has always been.
I like Mayor Pete a lot, but I agree that he is making a mistake if he thinks the messaging has to be all economy and policy* all the time. I am perfectly happy if some of Harris’ surrogates, and Buttigieg is a great one, want to focus on the positive and eschew the negative messaging themselves, but I disagree that the people who are focusing on the fact that Trump is absolute evil personified are doing it wrong.
We need to hit him with everything we got and keep hitting him until he goes down, and stays down.
PS, I’ve known a fair number of Puerto Ricans, let’s just say, in my experience, I would rather sandpaper a wildcat’s ass than disrespect any one of them. Trump has pissed in his Post Toasties.
*We have been doing this all along and it hasn’t seemed to move the needle at all.
Hopefully that’s Geraldo, Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, JayLo and several hundred thousand Puerto Rican voters in swing states as well.
Oh wow I read about Geraldo Rivera being particularly upset by this. And of course this flagrantly racist rally got several entertainers super pissed.
Problem is, projection works both ways. Just as venal, vicious greedy people find it impossible to imagine anyone could behave differently, fundamentally decent people like Pete find it difficult to imagine those who possess no redeeming qualities or motives whatsoever.
I think Secretary Buttigieg's defense is good but he's aiming at the wrong targets. Something like "He wants you diatracted from his tax cuts for billionaires and the loss of civil rights so.that when his friends like Senator Rick Scott disavow the racism (and we should note not the antisemitism) you don't ask the Senator what about the policies that actively hurt the people you now claim to defend."
Great article again, SER.
"Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez released a less than glowing review: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”"
I want to point out to this quisling that yes, yes it does because he was a speaker on your stage behind your lectern with your campaign sign. Also it definitely does because he was reading most of this from teleprompter. And your execrable, Nazi campaign even vetoed a misogynistic 'joke' from his set. But the rest was okay.
I'm especially tired of these quislings. I want to say to them...each of them caping for this mantoddler. When he has comedians making the yuk-yuk jokes about Black people carving watermelons, or calling Latinos promiscuous or calling Puerto Ricans garbage? He means YOU too. No matter how much you think "you're one of the good ones" or "you were here the right way" or "I'm not like those refugees, I was born here?"
When Herr Miller is up on that dais saying "America is for Americans Only," he doesn't mean YOU.
Your calling him "President Klan Robe" has never been more apt!
I got it from SER, who is one of the best writers on this platform.
Truth!
The analogy about the bully reminds me of a story Dan Savage told about he and his father. When Bush Deux was running for office he said many anti-gay things and courted the anti-gay vote. Savage's dad told him Bush just said that to get votes. Savage replied "What if he was punching me in the face to get votes? I'm still getting punched in the face, whatever the reason."
The strawman arguement of people saying things "just to get votes" is non-sensical. It doesn't matter why they said it.
As the brilliant Maya Angelou said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
Ever notice that every single time some asshole makes an offensive racist or misogynist remark (they often go hand in hand), or tells an offensive racist "joke", their first defense is ALWAYS to blame the listener who hears the words for their real meaning, "It's just a joke, lighten up why don't you?"
When my kids were little, they would insult each other and, if we called them out, they always said, “It’s just a joke.” Not surprised that the Trump campaign functions at the level of a bratty five year old.
For my friends, everything
For my enemies, nothing
The Schrödinger's Asshole strategy!
Only liberals have to lighten up. If you make a joke aimed at a conservative sacred cow, you're being offensive and insulting to hard working Americans. And don't you dare call them deplorables or you'll bring on a decade of diner safaris to find out what "real Americans" think of your elitist jibes.
Gods help us and preserve from interminable Cletus Safaris.
This is also why rightwingers in general are free to absolutely shit on entire states, territories and cities if they happen to vote for Democrats. There's no endless columns about how they have to reach out to Californians or New Yorkers or Puerto Ricans. They don't care that they have supporters in those places.
We haven't accepted that in kindergarten for a couple of decades. No reason to accept it from adults who wish to lead.
I'm not sure how much this will hurt Trump--on the one hand, he can say he had no idea what remarks the "comedian" was going to say, and while Trump does not have it in him to personally condemn the remarks he can probably do one of those "non-disavowals" to give talking heads the chance to pretend he had nothing to do with them. And Trump himself has said far worse, about immigrants having "bad genes" and "poisoning out blood" without getting this much uproar. On the other hand, as Stephen says this is happening in the last week of the campaign and news reminding people of the racism that Trump seems to bring everywhere with him is not doing much for his message to swing voters.
I do like that Vance found a way to be dickish even here. Wouldn't have been hard for him to say "those were unfortunate and awful remarks, the comedian was trying to be funny but that was terrible, we disavow that" but he had to go in with the "lighten up, be less sensitive, at least those of you on the Left, if you say anything mean about rural white people I will of course shit myself in anger". I think Republicans don't appreciate how valuable Mike Pence was at sanewashing Trump.
That's because Vance is the same kind of racist 4chan troll and he cosigns it. I mean speaker after speaker was awful, as was President Klan Robe himself. The Z-lister Hinchcliffe got most of the heat for now because of how flagrantly racist it was, but there's a TON of horrors in this rally yet.
Herr Miller's speech should put the fear of God in people. "America for Americans only" is going to have a VERY bad outcome.
Rudy Giuliani was in fine form working the All Arabs Are Animals angle. He didn't say, "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out." He didn't have to, since the audience already knew the punchline.