Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I don't know, it's kind of punk rock, right? Nihilism and all that? Right? "Get pissed. Destroy." Although the whole Thames bonfire thing is more glam than punk. I guess I have not spent a lot of time evaluating the moral implications of his actions. I've just been so terribly worried about Kanye.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

He says based on his decades of hands-on work within the party...

One can't help but notice how much progress the Ds made in removing the racists among them (mostly by those people by flipping to R, but always greater awareness).

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It sounds terminal. Kim's been sleeping next to his bed. I hope if the end does come, it comes gently, with St. Peter greeting him warmly, before taking him to meet himself.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

To illustrate the point you go on to make, I had forgotten about most of that. I think pretty much all non-issues, but as you say perception on one side...

Sounds like a colossally bad idea to me.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Not sure how much I like her, but I don't dislike her. She can her options wide open, but there is not a chance that she will be able to get Democrats to give her another shot.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I put a baby Yeezus figurine in our nativity display in his honor.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I've done more work in that finite arena than you could ever imagine.

Few have driven more poorly chosen tunes (anyone want to hear "Mountain Jam" or "Black Angel's Death Song"?), attempted to dance less effectively, or run out for various supplies at odd hours to keep things moving. If you count the tireless hook-up efforts, received poorly by various female guests over my career, and perhaps regrettably by many others ("Why is there a half eaten sandwich in your bed sheets?"), I'm eligible for some form of award.

There was a day Hank would knock this out with two words, "Robert Byrd," and then declare, "346 to 0."

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I think the idea of colorblindness in civil rights cases is remarkably obtuse. I can't recall or figure out from the report SEC Chick linked to why it was that people within DOJ were up in arms about it, but as best as I can surmise, it's a faux issue designed to delegitimize ordinary civil rights enforcement by stigmatizing it as unfair. As TM points out, it's not like there's a stream of potential civil rights cases with white victims flowing into DOJ -- as far as I can tell, there was one, in Mississippi, and DOJ brought the case. Instead, it seems to have been ginned up as a complaint by disgruntled staffers to bitch about the Obama appointees. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the Civil Rights Division exists because society is -- systematically -- not colorblind. Recall too that in the Bush years, a Republican White House politicized DOJ, and the Civil Rights Division in particular, in the most literal way, by instructing that hiring decisions pass over Democrats.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

That's a real classy statement. Unlike that "Frankincense and Myrrh Digger" holiday tribute on the radio. Have some decency! The man isn't even gone yet.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Sorry. Please read my prior post as:

Oh dear. You got the brutal part, but not the honest part. You're just making shit up about what (unidentified) motivates the "Party Apparatus." If you want to make shit up, go for it, but don't pretend you're being honest.

I know you delight in saying this shit, but it's just as mind-bendingly simplistic and wrong as it ever was. There clearly are people of both parties who are motivated by principle. You can call it ideology if you like. (It's not to say that there is no self-interest involved, because that would be just as stupid as saying that's all that's involved.) For example, since we are talking about civil rights, there are lots of people who have made great personal sacrifices because they believed in civil rights. Some of them became elected officials, Democrats even, and ended up in the "Party Apparatus." Some of those may have abandoned their principles, but some -- and pay attention here, because this is the surprising bit that will shatter your easy cynicism -- some of them have not. Some people actually believe in equality -- for example, that everyone should have the right to vote.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

There was a day Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, but history keeps telling us to get off her corner, ho.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'd agree as to equality. But I've a justifiably jaundiced view of their sudden embrace of felons' rights. Granted, Rand Paul, Corey Booker, and even Santorum kicked open that door. But who walked through most prominently? Terry McAulliffe. One of the most political of political sorts to have ever trodden the earth. And a close ally of the Clintons from back in the days when they were "tough on superpredators" and cutting welfare reform deals with Newt.

I hear your point. And you know I'm fond of rhetorical hyperbole, which is often the only way one can rail against something as distasteful as I find politics. And that McAulliffe is an unquestionable scumbag does not so paint all others behind felons' voting restoration. (I myself strongly support it.) It's just worth noting, felons are an attractive voting bloc to be utilized, and they are assumed to favor one party a lot more than another. And anything McAulliffe does I assume to be unethical, self-enriching, devious, and possibly if not probably criminal.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It is superunfortunate that the question of whether black people should get to vote has become politicized, in part because one must make common cause with the Terry McAuliffe's of the world, and also because black people should get to vote.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

There was a day the Yankees didn't get in bed with the likes of a Sessions. The ghost of Nelson Rockefeller is going visit Trump this holiday, and it will not be nice.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Trump will point out to the ghost that Rockefeller never made it to the White House.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm not considering black or white voting. I'm just considering felons. Statistically, I guess more are probably black. But I don't think the issue was initially raised as a matter of race, so much as a matter of letting a guy who's done his time have his rights back. At least that's how Booker and Paul initially pushed it.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

"If you do not mend your ways, you sir will die on the desk in the Oval Office, pants around your ankles, above a near suffocating intern!" (sounds of chains here)

"How do you know that?"

"I know! I... Knoooooooooooowwwww!!!" (Exit specter.)

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You "guess" more are "probably" black. Before you think you can separate the issue of "black or white voting" and the issue of felon voting, maybe you should stop guessing and spend the 6 or 7 seconds it takes to find this on Wikipedia:

"According to the BJS non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the prison and jail population in 2009, while non-Hispanic whites were 34.2%, and Hispanics (of any race) 20.6%. The incarceration rate of black males was over six times higher than that of white males, with a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 US residents."

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This is the most encouraging political news I've seen since the election.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

ACA is a big reason facefuck is our next president. Like I told you, it fucked most people's health care. The Dems have no grounding on the issue. They meant well, I know, but they fucked up. no offense.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Ah, the snapshot approach to life. It's so convenient when you wish to couch your argument in terms most favorable to your outlook on life. It must be nice to so easily be able to throw away the reasons why blacks are disproportionately targeted when it comes to incarceration. It must also be nice to ignore which states have the harshest restrictions (well, hello, South) and which have no restrictions on felons' (or inmates') voting rights (hello, overwhelmingly white ones).

http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2014/02/26/felon-voting/

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

yes, Robert Byrd is indeed a great rebuttal to how the Dems have moved away from racism in the last two decades. I mean, he was even alive for part of that time.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

So perhaps Jeff Sessions is not as bad as I feared. I had forgotten his involvement in reforming drug crime sentencing:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-raci...ons-1480465010

And from the files of Hey, GWB wasn't all bad! (and thank goodness we didn't have President Gore) Khalid Sheik Mohammed, in his own words:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.ac15e58edbd7

“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize . . . we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Unfortunately, his involvement was to intervene to make sure that a disparity remained rather than eliminated entirely:

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

(1) I posted something about Medicare, not the ACA.

(2) Your second sentence is wrong.

(3) I agree that the Democrats fucked up the politics of healthcare. To put it simply, and this goes beyond healthcare, I think Obama stopped investing in the political struggle, focused on governing, and thought that good results would speak for themselves. Either they didn't, or they did (the Dems picked up House and Senate seats in the last election) but HRC was a bad candidate.

(4) With regard to the ACA, people don't distinguish very well between what is happening in the healthcare market generally and what the government is doing. So they hold things like price increases against the ACA, even though prices would have gone up anyway.

(5) Because of (4), once Trump and the GOP start messing with the ACA, the Pottery Barn rule will apply, and people will blame them for the mess that is our healthcare system.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You keep telling me what people like and don't like, seemingly forgetting I was the one who predicted the election and the states that would flip.

I do agree that the fact the Cadillac tax will not kick in saved the Dems 50 house seats and 10 senate seats.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Your irony meter's off today. Slap yourself crisply on the forehead.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Sorry. Not everything I think is first considered through a prism of race.

I was talking about the issue of felons generally. Now that you've brought it to race and how restrictions keep down the black vote, yes, I agree - that's obviously true.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

"Yeah, we'll give 30 million people, many of whom don't have two nickles to rub together, HC coverage. Don't worry about the math. We've got that..."

It didn't work as expected? Do tell...

(Nevermind it was just a door opener for introduction of a single payer system, which was pie-in-the-sky thinking even if Hillary had won as anticipated.)

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Dude, this is just fucking pathetic. You might as well have said I played the race card. It's a lazy and stupid way to exit an argument.

If you want to talk about incarceration and the laws that restrict the voting of the current and formerly incarcerated, then you should know a little bit more about who is being incarcerated and why, and you should think about why there are laws restricting their ability to vote. Having that context leads you to the truth about the racial reasons behind that reality. You're implying that I look at everything to find racism first and then proceed from there. That's bullshit and it makes you look fucking petty.

I have not brought it to race. I have given you the numbers behind who is actually being incarcerated. And I have pointed out where the laws are the most restrictive, which has lead you to think about why.

Don't be a dick.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

How can a state law that limits the right to vote in a national election differ state to state? I took con law pass/fail but that just seems to violate something.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Why? California and NY are both quite restrictive, yet very liberal. Are the state houses not?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Did we not just agree on what people like and don't like?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You would think. Obviously there are federal laws which set floors on voting requirements, but apparently Article I of the Constitution is determinative, and it is settled law that states oversee federal elections (unless the majority of the Supreme Court leans right and the election rides on the decision).

I'm not sure what your definition of "quite restrictive" is. In NY and CA, inmates and parolees cannot vote. Given the total population in each state, the number of disenfranchised (98,000 and 223,000, respectively) is low when compared to states in which inmates, parolees, probationers, and ex-felons cannot vote.

Florida: 1.69 million disenfranchised
Mississippi: 218,000 disenfranchised
Alabama: 286,000 disenfranchised
etc.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I try to follow this advice every day but I'm never quite sure I get it right. Remember how funky The Meters were back in the day? Sure you do. Those spare arrangements buoyed by crazily funky second line drumming? Well, here's a little secret. I got some more for ya. If this drumming does not set off the funk sensors in your head, I suspect your idea of a fashion statement is a douche-y red baseball hat bearing an ironic saying paired with a red tie. The Daily Dose is "Soul Machine":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqyPAH4zqcY

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

One of us actually worked in criminal defense. State and fed, rich white collar clients and minority lower level crimes. Have you ever heard me say the criminal justice system wasn't racist? It's as fair as your wallet is deep. If you're rich, whether you're black or white, you'll get a deal. But if you're black, you need to be a good bit more affluent than if you're white. If you're poor, you're fucked no matter your race, but you're fucked a whole lot more if you're black.

So then, you might ask, why did I say "probably" most felons barred from voting are black? Because I didn't feel like looking it up, no matter how much I know that stat. I'm uncomfortable saying most felons are black for reasons I don't understand, but perhaps stem from self-loathing at a system in which I work. Or maybe I'm just stupidly avoiding being impolitic in an assumption.

Maybe I'd uncomfortable being comfortable casually stating a certain portion of society is wrongly and unfairly jailed like crazy.

No it's not. I never said you find racism and back it up later. I accused you of seeing things through a prism of race primarily. This shades the debate into a discussion of race where I think class matters just as much. If you think the GOP is aiming at blacks because of their race, you've got it half right. The other non-or-less-bigoted and much more effective element of the GOP is aiming to disenfranchise blacks for the simple reason that they vote Democratic. That part of the GOP is engaged in all out war on the poor. Blacks are just collateral damage.

If we make discussions of voting rights exclusively or predominantly about racism, the nastiest cabals withing the GOP win. They want that fight. The debate has to be about class and inequality first and foremost.

Think about this... It isn't because anyone in the GOP strategy apparatus gives a damn about the color of anyone's skin. They'd love to grab the black vote. But as long as blacks are perceived to be stalwart Democratic voters, the GOP will seek ways to keep them from voting.

I didn't mean to come off as one. But I'm seriously tired of hearing racism and sexism offered as the first explanation of so much since the election of this guy. Most of these things are so much more complicated than that.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It's like McCarran Ferguson on a monster dose of steroids. The States have total control. And in the Commonwealths (VA, PA... some other shitholes), the counties really have control.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You cannot talk about criminal justice without considering race. It is primary. On purpose.

It doesn't, and if you think it does, you really need to study your history. Hey, there's a documentary about it you could check out.

Which isn't to say that poor white people can't get fucked by the system too, but that's a side effect of a system designed to incarcerate black people.

They're trying to keep black people from voting. It does not absolve them that they are doing it to get elected and advance their agenda.

This is bullshit. They win if we ignore the fact that they are trying to prevent black people from voting, because they will successfully keep black people from voting.

They'd love to as long as they don't have to do anything about the oppression of black people to win it, and as long as it wouldn't cost them their base among white rural voters.

Both of those things are impossible.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Your ability to slide left, right, back, and forth away from the point is astounding.

While I appreciate what you wrote above, none of it really addresses the point. Your comfort levels are irrelevant. There are actual historical reasons why voter suppression is designed the way it is designed. Your inclination to argue that the suppression of the black vote is really just about them voting Democrat is either willfully uninformed or purposefully lazy. You cloak your arguments in this general theme of complete detachment you love so much, but the simple fact is, detached or not you cannot have a discussion about voter suppression without recognizing how we got here, whether it's:

• the latest suppression tools, requiring voter ID and cutting access to early voting
• the Supreme Court's ridiculous decision to destroy the VRA (which required historically racist states to preclear changes in voting laws), which resulted in laws being passed immediately in TX, MS, NC, FL, VA, SD, IA, and IN
• the removal of the right to vote from the current and formerly incarcerated and the facts behind that (which are that this country incarcerates blacks and Hispanics at extremely disproportionate levels)
• the historical and plentiful efforts to keep blacks from voting since winning suffrage (grandfather clauses that said former slaves couldn't vote, poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.)

Oversimplifying the issue by saying, "Republicans suppress black votes because they tend to be overwhelmingly Democrat," is exactly why they are so successful at enacting these laws. Everyone on this board knows it's not that simple. There are many reasons why all of these localities suppress the black vote and they range from pure racism (blacks are inferior and shouldn't get to vote) to classism (blacks who are poor will vote for things in my county that benefit them when I would prefer municipal, county, state, and federal money go to shit for me) to pure politics (blacks vote Democrat and I'm a Republican). Your intentional focus on just one of those things intentionally overlooks the history of voter suppression and ignores the fact that voting is how anyone in this country is able to have a voice, be represented, and be granted societal resources.

You should be. That's the point. We should all feel uncomfortable about that and a society that would disenfranchise people based on the color of their skin. I want you to feel that discomfort whenever you get the urge to remove the historical context of why things are the way they are in favor of reducing efforts like voter suppression to: Republicans just trying to beat Democrats in the political game.

See above. Especially the part where you say, "If you're poor, you're fucked no matter your race, but you're fucked a whole lot more if you're black."

This is absolute bullshit. Pure and unadulterated.

The preclearance requirement of the VRA required states which historically suppressed the black vote to submit any change to their voting laws for approval. When the Supreme Court destroyed it, those states (and others) immediately enacted laws that overwhelmingly affect black voters. I am not making the discussion about racism. It is about racism. Even if I gave you the benefit of the doubt and agreed that the impetus behind voter suppression laws was purely political, the effect is that such laws overwhelmingly target black voters. That's institutional racism.

And here is where I think you and so many others get caught up. It doesn't fucking matter whether a law, regulation, court decision, departmental practice, trend, whatever was not designed to be racist in a dark room by a bunch of white people thinking about how they can screw black people. What matters is that it does.

And this is the most naïve thing you've said yet.

Think about what you just said. Black voters are not perceived to be stalwart Democratic voters. They are because of the actions Republican politicians who attempt to curtail rights for blacks at every fucking turn. They are because Republicans at best turn a blind eye to and at worst are the proponents of police brutality, disparate treatment, discrimination in education, housing, finance, and the justice system, etc. Sure, Republicans would love to grab the black vote. But they cannot because their appeal to their base is that they will to continue to screw blacks as much as they can. Talking about voter suppression--one such tool they use to implement that screwing--like it is being implemented without regard to the color of the skin of the people being purposefully suppressed is the very definition of insanity.

If that's what you're hearing, you are not listening.

If you vote for David Duke because he said he would magically get your job back and you ignore everything else, you may not be racist, but you sure as hell are okay with racism. And the fact that so many people are okay with putting a racist, misogynist, xenophobic, piece of shit at the helm of this country says a lot about the people who put him there.

TM