- by NoahOh how I wish one could make Republican World vanish just by no longer writing about it. But, it persists like a horrible virus, bent on running its course while infecting the body politic with vile fevers and chills, and America ponders those “Did this come from my body” moments. Do we survive the ill effects of Republican World, or, do we succumb?
The Confederacy of Racists-by NoahThere’s been a lot said in the media about the Confederate flag this year. The topic boiled to the surface as soon as Dylann Roof went into Charleston, South Carolina’s historic Emanuel A.M.E. church and sat down to pray with the parishioners before killing 9 of them and wounding others on June 17th.
-by NoahTo put it most simply, what the Republican establishment and their corporate media lackies don’t like about Herr Donald Trump the most is that he has so blatantly, so clearly, revealed the Republican Party for exactly what it is.At the start of 2015, the media folks were all excited about the 2016 Presidential election being a Clinton vs. a Bush race. How’s that for imagination?
Wednesday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin, a case challenging the right of state universities to use race-based affirmative action in their admissions policies. The most right-wing of the Justices, Antonin Scalia-- who will be 80 in March and has increasingly been having episodes of senility-- launched into a racist rant that was more in line with certain thinking back in the 1930s when he was growing up.
Rachel Maddow with the context for the shooting discussed below, plus updatesby Gaius PubliusShort and the opposite of sweet, but with two points to make. First is a news point, per the headline. Five people were shot at a Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Minneapolis. Police are looking for several white suspects, likely white supremacists.The story via Adam Johnson at Alternet:
The Republican side of the story is that a big-- very big-- scary black man in a #BlackLivesMatter t-shirt came to a Trump rally in Birmingham looking for trouble and interrupted Trump's address by shouting "Black Lives Matter." Besides, they didn't lynch him so what's all the fuss? After all, what's a little shoving, punching and kicking between neighbors? Mob violence in Alabama, after all, is as American as sweet potato pie-- or at least in their version of what's American. The non-Republican side is simpler: a mob of white racists ganged up on a black man and beat him up...
Say NO to the anti-refugee assholes of both partiesReality is more difficult for Republicans than for normal people. Not all Republicans, but many Republicans-- the ones whose minds have been damaged by Hate Talk Radio hosts and by Fox News. And that's a lot of Republicans.
Last month, People For the American Way ran Donald Trump ads on Spanish language radio in northern Virginia to help progressive Democrat Jeremy McPike win a crucial state Senate seat. It worked; McPike beat right-wing sociopath, Manassas Mayor Harry “Hal” Parrish II.
Tuesday night had some special significance for Asian-Americans. Philadelphians didn't just elect their first Asian-American woman to the City Council, they gave public education advocate Helen Gym the highest vote of the 7 at-large victors. I expect that in a few years she will be on the national stage.
Will Trump's racist approach inadvertently save Michael Bennet's Senate seat?The Republican Party brand is now so damaged among key electoral groups-- you can start with rapidly growing/rapidly registering-to-vote Hispanic-Americans and high-propensity Asian-American voters-- that not only is it likely that whoever emerges as the party's nominee will be unable to cobble together a winning coalition in 2016 but it's likely that more and more Senate seats will fall outside
