Kaepernick's New Producer: Let's Face It, Every Single Trump Voter is a Straight-Up Racist
She is absolutely not the only person on the racial left to say or think this.
It's a reflection of their own racism, and of the increasing influence and respectability of black racism on the left and in the Democratic Party.
Within recent years, the best evidence for the Republican claim that reverse racism is stronger and more dangerous in American politics than white racism has been the fury of the racist propaganda in the months just before scheduled congressional or presidential elections.
Showing posts with label identity politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label identity politics. Show all posts
Monday, July 20, 2020
Monday, June 29, 2020
More full of shit activists
Biden campaign says 36% of senior staff are people of color
Joe Biden’s campaign says a little more than a third of its senior staff are people of color, sharing staff diversity data after facing pressure to answer questions on the issue.
The campaign said that 36% of its senior staff are people of color, but did not disclose how much of its overall campaign staff are people of color.
The campaign also noted that women are in the majority of both the campaign’s senior staff and its full staff.
The candidate has faced warnings from activists that he must be careful not to take the Black community for granted.
Right.
They might stay home, or vote for the Great Fat Orange Klansman, if he doesn't watch it.
I had a feeling they might.
Black voters helped deliver him the nomination, and will be key to his White House hopes this fall.
They and just under half the whites who vote this time.
Two or three times as many as the blacks who will vote for him.
Joe Biden’s campaign says a little more than a third of its senior staff are people of color, sharing staff diversity data after facing pressure to answer questions on the issue.
The campaign said that 36% of its senior staff are people of color, but did not disclose how much of its overall campaign staff are people of color.
The campaign also noted that women are in the majority of both the campaign’s senior staff and its full staff.
The candidate has faced warnings from activists that he must be careful not to take the Black community for granted.
Right.
They might stay home, or vote for the Great Fat Orange Klansman, if he doesn't watch it.
I had a feeling they might.
Black voters helped deliver him the nomination, and will be key to his White House hopes this fall.
They and just under half the whites who vote this time.
Two or three times as many as the blacks who will vote for him.
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Haters gotta hate, and I don't mean J. K.
My granddaughters love her books, as did my late wife.
And the earlier movies, at least, were fun.
J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues
And the earlier movies, at least, were fun.
J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues
To think that only four hundred years ago people burned each other and each other's books for the wrong spin on substitutionary atonement, the wafer, or the incarnation.
Voltaire and the other sages of the Enlightenment taught Europe and America to call those people fanatics and to condemn them for their odium theologicum - their theological hate.
Rowling has been "much banned" in religious schools for the distinctive and contra-Christian mythology of her books.
She has now acquired a quite new set of enemies.
I am so out of touch I had to look up "trans man" to find it's female to male, either transgender (a matter of psychology and identification) or transsexual (a matter of reproductive organs).
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Red Guards in the UK try to take over higher education
Only fifth of UK universities have said they will 'decolonise' curriculum
And evident approval of these demands by The Guardian is part of why I never contributed money to The Guardian.
And evident approval of these demands by The Guardian is part of why I never contributed money to The Guardian.
The Guardian is too far left for me on race issues.
Well, identity issues in general, actually.
Didn't like their stand on the Elgin Marbles, either.
Didn't like their stand on the Elgin Marbles, either.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Biden should create his own Task Force of public health experts to give briefings on the virus, what's happening and what's wrong and what's needed
It's never too early to start up Radio Free Europe, is it?
The more Bozo tries to keep his public health people off stage the more chance Biden's own Task Force will have to steal the issue and the pulpit.
And all the better if Fauci and Birx jump ship, or at least publicly echo crucial points made by Biden's team.
Trump will keep them on only to keep them quiet, anyway.
They haven't been seen in public in nearly two weeks, says Chuck Todd.
But then Chuck just now said Montana is, among the lower 48, the state with largest land mass.
No doubt he meant area and somehow forgot both Texas and California.
But that's our source.
The more Bozo tries to keep his public health people off stage the more chance Biden's own Task Force will have to steal the issue and the pulpit.
And all the better if Fauci and Birx jump ship, or at least publicly echo crucial points made by Biden's team.
Trump will keep them on only to keep them quiet, anyway.
They haven't been seen in public in nearly two weeks, says Chuck Todd.
But then Chuck just now said Montana is, among the lower 48, the state with largest land mass.
No doubt he meant area and somehow forgot both Texas and California.
But that's our source.
Sure, the virus can't be the only issue.
But it needs to be the leading issue.
And for the sake of the Democrats self-presentation as the sane party looking out for all Americans their supporters must avoid seeming to see this as mostly a minorities victimization issue.
And for the sake of the Democrats self-presentation as the sane party looking out for all Americans their supporters must avoid seeming to see this as mostly a minorities victimization issue.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
The Times has given Ilhan Omar a pulpit
It Is Not Enough to Condemn Trump’s Racism
She writes in part,
The reasons for weaponizing division are not mysterious.
Racial fear prevents Americans from building community with one another — and community is the lifeblood of a functioning democratic society.
Perfectly true.
Throughout our history, racist language has been used to turn American against American in order to benefit the wealthy elite.
True, sort of, but not the whole truth.
That isn't why Democrats and their allies use it, for example.
Nor does it explain why Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of racism and exaggerate the threat of such racism as there is.
Later, she writes,
The only way to push back is to be unequivocal about our values.
It is not enough to condemn Mr. Trump’s racism.
We must affirmatively confront racist policies — whether the caging of immigrant children at the border or the banning of Muslim immigrants . . .
Have Muslim immigrants been banned?
. . . or the allowing of segregation in public housing.
Is that allowed?
She continues,
The consequences of this fight will not just be felt here at home but around the world.
From the look of things, true, but not very much.
Right-wing nationalism in Hungary, Russia, France, Britain and elsewhere is on the march in ways not seen in decades.
America has been a beacon of democratic ideals for the world.
If we succumb to the fever of right-wing nationalism, it will have consequences far beyond our borders.
Have we not already succumbed?
What more does she fear by way of succumbing?
And what consequences beyond our borders?
Today, democracy is under attack once again.
Where? Not in America, really.
It’s time to respond with the kind of conviction that has made America great before.
By doing what, does she think, besides electing Democrats, I wonder.
She writes in part,
The reasons for weaponizing division are not mysterious.
Racial fear prevents Americans from building community with one another — and community is the lifeblood of a functioning democratic society.
Perfectly true.
Throughout our history, racist language has been used to turn American against American in order to benefit the wealthy elite.
True, sort of, but not the whole truth.
That isn't why Democrats and their allies use it, for example.
Nor does it explain why Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of racism and exaggerate the threat of such racism as there is.
Later, she writes,
The only way to push back is to be unequivocal about our values.
It is not enough to condemn Mr. Trump’s racism.
We must affirmatively confront racist policies — whether the caging of immigrant children at the border or the banning of Muslim immigrants . . .
Have Muslim immigrants been banned?
. . . or the allowing of segregation in public housing.
Is that allowed?
She continues,
The consequences of this fight will not just be felt here at home but around the world.
From the look of things, true, but not very much.
Right-wing nationalism in Hungary, Russia, France, Britain and elsewhere is on the march in ways not seen in decades.
America has been a beacon of democratic ideals for the world.
If we succumb to the fever of right-wing nationalism, it will have consequences far beyond our borders.
Have we not already succumbed?
What more does she fear by way of succumbing?
And what consequences beyond our borders?
Today, democracy is under attack once again.
Where? Not in America, really.
It’s time to respond with the kind of conviction that has made America great before.
By doing what, does she think, besides electing Democrats, I wonder.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Certain to be labeled racist within seconds. Or Islamophobe. Or both.
Already fleeing in terror, they are.
Illinois GOP group shares meme depicting minority Dem congresswomen as 'the jihad squad'
Two top Illinois GOP officials are condemning a meme recently posted to the Facebook page of the Illinois Republican County Chairmen's Association that depicted four minority congresswomen as being "THE JIHAD SQUAD."
The image, which has since been taken down from the group's page, is modeled after an action movie poster and edited to include the four lawmakers' faces on the bodies of various characters.
The women in the photo are Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
The image includes the words "THE JIHAD SQUAD" below the names along with the words "POLITICAL JIHAD IS THEIR GAME" and "IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH THEIR SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY, YOU'RE RACIST."
Illinois GOP group shares meme depicting minority Dem congresswomen as 'the jihad squad'
Two top Illinois GOP officials are condemning a meme recently posted to the Facebook page of the Illinois Republican County Chairmen's Association that depicted four minority congresswomen as being "THE JIHAD SQUAD."
The image, which has since been taken down from the group's page, is modeled after an action movie poster and edited to include the four lawmakers' faces on the bodies of various characters.
The women in the photo are Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
The image includes the words "THE JIHAD SQUAD" below the names along with the words "POLITICAL JIHAD IS THEIR GAME" and "IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH THEIR SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY, YOU'RE RACIST."
Qui bono?
Dem media clearly think, and have for a long time, that screaming at US women and minorities, "Danger! Danger! Bad white people are coming! And bad white men!" works for them at the polls, and has since the last decades of the last century.
But Trump thinks shouting "Hey white people! And white men! Everybody hates you and is out to get you!" works for him and for the GOP.
He is by no means alone among GOPsters to think that, or to have thought that for some decades.
Sometimes both sides take it into their heads to scream that way and only that way, at the top of their lungs, for weeks at a time.
The rest of us just have to wait for it to blow over.
And hope the cities don't burst into flames in the meantime.
Or the right wing loonies don't start out on spree killings.
But Trump thinks shouting "Hey white people! And white men! Everybody hates you and is out to get you!" works for him and for the GOP.
He is by no means alone among GOPsters to think that, or to have thought that for some decades.
Sometimes both sides take it into their heads to scream that way and only that way, at the top of their lungs, for weeks at a time.
The rest of us just have to wait for it to blow over.
And hope the cities don't burst into flames in the meantime.
Or the right wing loonies don't start out on spree killings.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
The author of the article didn't bother to explain what that even means, or why (or exactly to whom) it matters
But he did make clear it's an endorsement of the most absurd imaginable layer of PC.
My guess is this actually costs her votes, the better known it becomes.
'She/hers': In progressive move, 3 presidential hopefuls add pronouns to their bios
Truly, this year it looks like the Dems are headed straight for a re-run of the McGovern campaign.
And it's by no means just the pols.
Think of all those Times articles using feminine pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric men who have decided they are "really" women because . . . well, because.
It's now liberal/PC dogma.
People's actual sex is irrelevant.
They get to tell us what pronouns to use to refer to them, and we have to obey or we're wicked and evil bigots, the most cruel of narrow-minded blah, blah, blah.
My guess is this actually costs her votes, the better known it becomes.
'She/hers': In progressive move, 3 presidential hopefuls add pronouns to their bios
Truly, this year it looks like the Dems are headed straight for a re-run of the McGovern campaign.
And it's by no means just the pols.
Think of all those Times articles using feminine pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric men who have decided they are "really" women because . . . well, because.
It's now liberal/PC dogma.
People's actual sex is irrelevant.
They get to tell us what pronouns to use to refer to them, and we have to obey or we're wicked and evil bigots, the most cruel of narrow-minded blah, blah, blah.
Hammering home the key point: 2018 was a huge victory for center-left Democrats, not for Squaddies
Frank Bruni
If Trump has his way, this campaign will be a bogus referendum on a bastard definition of patriotism.
It will be a race-obsessed and racist jubilee.
Don’t play along.
But, you say, his racism must be called out.
A demagogue must be branded as such.
Not to condemn incipient fascism is to play midwife to the real thing.
That’s a virtuous take, but is there really any reason to believe that it’s the recipe for Trump’s demise?
We used all those words in 2016 — racist, demagogue, fascist — and he won.
Voters saw indelible examples of this same behavior, and he won.
Check out the Times, the Guardian, and every Dem site in the known universe.
They're doing it again.
Race-baiting the GOP, 24/7.
Again.
How Democrats Defeat Donald Trump
Stop hypothesizing about Democratic voters’ political priorities and policy appetites and look at the actual evidence of where Americans really are.
That’s the 2018 midterms.
It may have minted young progressive superstars like the congresswomen in the squad, but they aren’t especially popular beyond their progressive fan clubs.
More important, their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020.
The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.
Other first-term House candidates’ bids did offer such lessons, so look harder at that crew.
Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York — these four defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier.
None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
They touted more restrained agendas.
And they didn’t talk that much about Trump.
They knew they didn’t need to.
For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.
Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care.
Both lost.
While first-time candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Justice Democrats or Our Revolution certainly won House elections last year, not one flipped a seat.
The party did pick up 40 seats overall — just not with the most progressive candidates.
. . . .
Polling has shown that when voters are told that Medicare for all would mean an end to private insurance or an increase in taxes, support for it drops below 40 percent.
And according to a Politico/Morning Consult survey published a few days ago, 51 percent of voters support the sweeping raids by ICE that the president trumpets, while just 35 percent oppose them.
That suggests that anything that smacks of open borders — which is how President Barack Obama’s secretary for homeland security, Jeh Johnson, described Democratic presidential candidates’ positions in a recent op-ed essay in The Washington Post — puts those candidates at odds with public opinion.
. . . .
Nancy Pelosi knows this.
It’s why she hasn’t been talking up the Green New Deal, single-payer insurance or impeachment, and the suggestion that this makes her some squishy centrist pushover — some musty relic from a timid era — is bunk.
She has her eyes on the most meaningful prize, one she pursued successfully in the midterms: Democratic victory.
And she can see that in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published a little over a week ago, just 21 percent of registered voters said that there was enough evidence for Congress to begin impeachment hearings.
. . . .
I wonder what would happen if the Democratic nominee simply refused to talk about Trump.
No responding to whatever stupid nickname he comes up with.
No sweeping denunciation of some deed of his that any sensible American already knows is wrong.
Just the articulation of better solutions to America’s problems.
Trump would go mad with the lack of attention.
And maybe then, thank heaven, he’d go away.
If Trump has his way, this campaign will be a bogus referendum on a bastard definition of patriotism.
It will be a race-obsessed and racist jubilee.
Don’t play along.
But, you say, his racism must be called out.
A demagogue must be branded as such.
Not to condemn incipient fascism is to play midwife to the real thing.
That’s a virtuous take, but is there really any reason to believe that it’s the recipe for Trump’s demise?
We used all those words in 2016 — racist, demagogue, fascist — and he won.
Voters saw indelible examples of this same behavior, and he won.
Check out the Times, the Guardian, and every Dem site in the known universe.
They're doing it again.
Race-baiting the GOP, 24/7.
Again.
How Democrats Defeat Donald Trump
Stop hypothesizing about Democratic voters’ political priorities and policy appetites and look at the actual evidence of where Americans really are.
That’s the 2018 midterms.
It may have minted young progressive superstars like the congresswomen in the squad, but they aren’t especially popular beyond their progressive fan clubs.
More important, their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020.
The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.
Other first-term House candidates’ bids did offer such lessons, so look harder at that crew.
Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York — these four defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier.
None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
They touted more restrained agendas.
And they didn’t talk that much about Trump.
They knew they didn’t need to.
For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.
Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care.
Both lost.
While first-time candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Justice Democrats or Our Revolution certainly won House elections last year, not one flipped a seat.
The party did pick up 40 seats overall — just not with the most progressive candidates.
. . . .
Polling has shown that when voters are told that Medicare for all would mean an end to private insurance or an increase in taxes, support for it drops below 40 percent.
And according to a Politico/Morning Consult survey published a few days ago, 51 percent of voters support the sweeping raids by ICE that the president trumpets, while just 35 percent oppose them.
That suggests that anything that smacks of open borders — which is how President Barack Obama’s secretary for homeland security, Jeh Johnson, described Democratic presidential candidates’ positions in a recent op-ed essay in The Washington Post — puts those candidates at odds with public opinion.
. . . .
Nancy Pelosi knows this.
It’s why she hasn’t been talking up the Green New Deal, single-payer insurance or impeachment, and the suggestion that this makes her some squishy centrist pushover — some musty relic from a timid era — is bunk.
She has her eyes on the most meaningful prize, one she pursued successfully in the midterms: Democratic victory.
And she can see that in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published a little over a week ago, just 21 percent of registered voters said that there was enough evidence for Congress to begin impeachment hearings.
. . . .
I wonder what would happen if the Democratic nominee simply refused to talk about Trump.
No responding to whatever stupid nickname he comes up with.
No sweeping denunciation of some deed of his that any sensible American already knows is wrong.
Just the articulation of better solutions to America’s problems.
Trump would go mad with the lack of attention.
And maybe then, thank heaven, he’d go away.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Wrong-footing white people. Again. Of course.
"White privilege" is about wrong-footing white people. Again.
It's a way to put white people in the wrong. Again.
It's a way to blame white people for not suffering the indignities, whatever they are, of minority status.
It's a way to blame them, not for what they do, but for what they don't suffer.
And we always need more and new and better ways to blame white people.
And that's racism, folks.
The racism of non-whites and the orthodox American left, from mainstream liberals onward.
Harping on it is almost as popular in liberal venues as screaming denunciations of Donald Trump's racism.
Though not quite, I admit.
I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
Not a day goes by without repeated and vicious attacks on white people of one sort or another, lots of them, echoing across the left wing noise machine, all over America.
It's a way to put white people in the wrong. Again.
It's a way to blame white people for not suffering the indignities, whatever they are, of minority status.
It's a way to blame them, not for what they do, but for what they don't suffer.
And we always need more and new and better ways to blame white people.
And that's racism, folks.
The racism of non-whites and the orthodox American left, from mainstream liberals onward.
Harping on it is almost as popular in liberal venues as screaming denunciations of Donald Trump's racism.
Though not quite, I admit.
I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
Not a day goes by without repeated and vicious attacks on white people of one sort or another, lots of them, echoing across the left wing noise machine, all over America.
Six days and nights of relentless attacks on the president charging racism
CNN and MSNBC online and on TV, The New York Times, The Guardian, and each and every last Democrat blog and news outlet, all have been roasting Trump with unrelenting charges of racism.
Apparently, not a lot else happening worthy of our attention.
And all of this in response to a series of Tweets lobbing pretty well-deserved attacks on the Gang of Four (the soi-disant Squad), charging them all with hatred of America and telling them all to "go back where you came from".
All but one are US born, but he either didn't realize or couldn't resist.
Not one word in the tweets was racist, though the dog-whistle was rather piercing ("What? You brown girls can't actually be real Americans, can you? You're kidding, right?").
Well, the racial joke, I suppose.
Is every racial joke racist? Is every Jewish joke predicated on anti-Semitism? Is every Polish joke somehow anti-Polish?
So hellish has been the fury of the left wing noise machine that, while only one or two GOPsters have endorsed these charges, the rest have been silent.
Not a lot of GOP support out there for the Duce, on this one.
Apparently, not a lot else happening worthy of our attention.
And all of this in response to a series of Tweets lobbing pretty well-deserved attacks on the Gang of Four (the soi-disant Squad), charging them all with hatred of America and telling them all to "go back where you came from".
All but one are US born, but he either didn't realize or couldn't resist.
Not one word in the tweets was racist, though the dog-whistle was rather piercing ("What? You brown girls can't actually be real Americans, can you? You're kidding, right?").
Well, the racial joke, I suppose.
Is every racial joke racist? Is every Jewish joke predicated on anti-Semitism? Is every Polish joke somehow anti-Polish?
So hellish has been the fury of the left wing noise machine that, while only one or two GOPsters have endorsed these charges, the rest have been silent.
Not a lot of GOP support out there for the Duce, on this one.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Everybody but white people . . . .
is allowed to be a racist and espouse racist theories of this, that, and the other thing.
Indigenism, for instance.
'Stolen lands': dozens arrested as Hawaiians protest $1.4bn telescope
Indigenism, for instance.
'Stolen lands': dozens arrested as Hawaiians protest $1.4bn telescope
Monday, July 15, 2019
Joe B's idea for expanded Ocare
NOT Medicare for All.
This will probably strengthen his already strong grip on the segment of Democratic primary voters who rejected Bernie and Bernie-ism last time.
If his health holds up he may over time become the one and only standard bearer for the Dem moderates (like me) even as the further left continues divided between their original daddy, Bernie, and the scattering of alternatives more appealing to the oh-no-not-another-old-white-guy crowd.
Joe Biden rolls out expanded Affordable Care Act health plan
Former Vice President Joe Biden has released a plan his campaign said would make the Affordable Care Act easier to navigate with more choices for Americans.
The plan would expand upon the Affordable Care Act passed under the Obama-Biden administration and provide a public option for patients to buy into, rather than a "Medicare-for-all" system that several of Biden's 2020 rivals advocate for -- a contrast Biden has already started to draw on the campaign trail.
"We should not be starting from scratch. We should be building from what we have.
"There is no time to wait. And I that's why I think, what I'm proposing -- and we can do it -- is to keep Obamacare, restore the cuts that have been made, and add a public option," Biden said during an event in Dover, New Hampshire, on Friday.
"If they like their employer-based insurance, you get to keep it. The fact of the matter is, all the other proposals make you -- you lose it. Period."
This will probably strengthen his already strong grip on the segment of Democratic primary voters who rejected Bernie and Bernie-ism last time.
If his health holds up he may over time become the one and only standard bearer for the Dem moderates (like me) even as the further left continues divided between their original daddy, Bernie, and the scattering of alternatives more appealing to the oh-no-not-another-old-white-guy crowd.
Joe Biden rolls out expanded Affordable Care Act health plan
Former Vice President Joe Biden has released a plan his campaign said would make the Affordable Care Act easier to navigate with more choices for Americans.
The plan would expand upon the Affordable Care Act passed under the Obama-Biden administration and provide a public option for patients to buy into, rather than a "Medicare-for-all" system that several of Biden's 2020 rivals advocate for -- a contrast Biden has already started to draw on the campaign trail.
"We should not be starting from scratch. We should be building from what we have.
"There is no time to wait. And I that's why I think, what I'm proposing -- and we can do it -- is to keep Obamacare, restore the cuts that have been made, and add a public option," Biden said during an event in Dover, New Hampshire, on Friday.
"If they like their employer-based insurance, you get to keep it. The fact of the matter is, all the other proposals make you -- you lose it. Period."
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Dale Peck's suppressed piece on Mayor Pete
My Mayor Pete Problem
His problem is that Pete is way too centrist (he refuses to reject capitalism, for instance) and not bursting into flames.
That seems to be about it.
Oh, and the tone is snarky and pissy and, uh, fagotty.
So (1) why did anybody want to force TNR to take this down from their website and (2) why did they do it?
Mary Pete and I are just not the same kind of gay.
(For those of you wondering about “Mary Pete”: a couple of months ago I asked Facebook what the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom was, and this was the answer at which we collectively arrived.)
. . . .
Mary Pete and I have a lot in common, but at a certain point we came to a fork in the road and I took the one less traveled and he took the one that was freshly paved and bordered by flowers and white picket fences and every house had a hybrid in the driveway and some solar panels on the ceiling, but discrete ones, nothing garish, nothing that would interfere with the traditional look of the neighborhood or the resale value of your home.
By which I mean: Mary Pete is a neoliberal and a Jeffersonian meritocrat, which is to say he’s just another unrepentant or at least unexamined beneficiary of white male privilege who believes (just as Jay Inslee believes he’s done more for women’s reproductive rights than Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar) that he can make life better for all those people who are not like him, not because he knows anything about their lives but because he’s smart and nice and well-meaning, and when smart nice well-meaning people run things everything works out for the best.
That’s just, you know, logical.
It’s like, science.
Like Kirsten Gillibrand, he believes in “healthy capitalism,” which is a bit like saying you believe in “healthy cancer”: Yeah, you can (usually) treat it, but wouldn’t you rather be cured?
Most of what I dislike about Mary Pete was expressed in this Current Affairs article, which does a good job of using his own words (mostly from, ugh, Shortest Way Home, his memoir pretending to manifesto) to damn him.
Shortest Way Home conjures a young Harvard student who thinks the word “edgy” is sufficient to describe both proto-Dumpster fascist Lyndon LaRouche and Noam Chomsky.
His description of Harvard Square takes in those actors who belong to the school; the homeless people who live there are invisible to him, or, even worse, not worth mentioning.
He seems perfectly content to dismiss left-wing student activists as “social justice warriors” despite the fact that this phrase is paradigmatic in right-wing discourse.
He speaks fondly of his time at McKinsey, a company regularly described as one of the most evil corporations in the world.
He joined the military long after 9/11 could sort-of-but-not-really be invoked to justify the U.S. propensity to go to other countries and kill lots of people.
By 2007 it was no longer possible to pretend that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were anything other than failed, murderous exercises in empire-building and/or revenge, but despite the fact that these were the only places he was likely to serve he signed up anyway.
And though he loves to talk about the notes he left his family in case he didn’t come back, by all accounts his chances of seeing combat were as low as they could be—but boy, he sure got a lot of cute pictures in uniform out of it!
And so on and on.
Just as a lot of blacks thought O wasn't black enough, alienated enough, angry enough, or radical enough - pretty much that he should've been more like, and publicly more like, Rev. Jeremiah Wright - there is no doubt a lot of gays see Mayor Pete as way, way too tame.
So, that fact needs to be suppressed?
And the reaction of the lame-stream press was pretty weird in its own way.
NBC News:
New Republic magazine pulls down homophobic op-ed about Pete Buttigieg by an openly gay literary critic
Homophobic?
The New Republic has retracted a vulgar and homophobic op-ed about Pete Buttigieg by openly gay literary critic Dale Peck.
The magazine had published the piece, titled “My Mayor Pete Problem,” on its website on Friday.
In the piece, Peck described Buttigieg as “the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom,” and he referred to the presidential candidate as “Mary Pete” throughout the column.
Peck argued that because Buttigieg waited until his early 30s to come out as gay, he would be too preoccupied with sex and drugs to be an effective president.
The piece also crudely speculated about intimate details of Buttigieg’s personal life.
Almost immediately, social media erupted in widespread condemnation.
. . . .
Hours later the op-ed was taken down and replaced by an editor’s note saying: “Dale Peck’s post ‘My Mayor Pete Problem’ has been removed from the site, in response to criticism of the piece’s inappropriate and invasive content.
We regret its publication.”
The New Republic's editor, Chris Lehmann, added separately in a statement, "The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive."
Satire? Of what? How?
His problem is that Pete is way too centrist (he refuses to reject capitalism, for instance) and not bursting into flames.
That seems to be about it.
Oh, and the tone is snarky and pissy and, uh, fagotty.
So (1) why did anybody want to force TNR to take this down from their website and (2) why did they do it?
Mary Pete and I are just not the same kind of gay.
(For those of you wondering about “Mary Pete”: a couple of months ago I asked Facebook what the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom was, and this was the answer at which we collectively arrived.)
. . . .
Mary Pete and I have a lot in common, but at a certain point we came to a fork in the road and I took the one less traveled and he took the one that was freshly paved and bordered by flowers and white picket fences and every house had a hybrid in the driveway and some solar panels on the ceiling, but discrete ones, nothing garish, nothing that would interfere with the traditional look of the neighborhood or the resale value of your home.
By which I mean: Mary Pete is a neoliberal and a Jeffersonian meritocrat, which is to say he’s just another unrepentant or at least unexamined beneficiary of white male privilege who believes (just as Jay Inslee believes he’s done more for women’s reproductive rights than Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar) that he can make life better for all those people who are not like him, not because he knows anything about their lives but because he’s smart and nice and well-meaning, and when smart nice well-meaning people run things everything works out for the best.
That’s just, you know, logical.
It’s like, science.
Like Kirsten Gillibrand, he believes in “healthy capitalism,” which is a bit like saying you believe in “healthy cancer”: Yeah, you can (usually) treat it, but wouldn’t you rather be cured?
Most of what I dislike about Mary Pete was expressed in this Current Affairs article, which does a good job of using his own words (mostly from, ugh, Shortest Way Home, his memoir pretending to manifesto) to damn him.
Shortest Way Home conjures a young Harvard student who thinks the word “edgy” is sufficient to describe both proto-Dumpster fascist Lyndon LaRouche and Noam Chomsky.
His description of Harvard Square takes in those actors who belong to the school; the homeless people who live there are invisible to him, or, even worse, not worth mentioning.
He seems perfectly content to dismiss left-wing student activists as “social justice warriors” despite the fact that this phrase is paradigmatic in right-wing discourse.
He speaks fondly of his time at McKinsey, a company regularly described as one of the most evil corporations in the world.
He joined the military long after 9/11 could sort-of-but-not-really be invoked to justify the U.S. propensity to go to other countries and kill lots of people.
By 2007 it was no longer possible to pretend that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were anything other than failed, murderous exercises in empire-building and/or revenge, but despite the fact that these were the only places he was likely to serve he signed up anyway.
And though he loves to talk about the notes he left his family in case he didn’t come back, by all accounts his chances of seeing combat were as low as they could be—but boy, he sure got a lot of cute pictures in uniform out of it!
Every move is simultaneously cynical and morally oblivious.
. . . .
Like Obama, Buttigieg seems always to be saying that the United States is the only place where someone like him could’ve succeeded, and that he wants everyone to enjoy the same peculiarly American successes that he’s had.
But unlike Obama (whose naïveté was at least partly a pose), Buttigieg’s biography belies the idea that his success was either hard won or particularly unlikely.
He’s lived the life of a comfortably middle-class white male, but he acts as if it’s his natural gifts (by which he means his intelligence and his ability to speak seven languages and play the piano, although they’re actually his whiteness and maleness and financial security) that have raised him above from the rabble.
. . . .
Free education?
Why, that’s unfair to the working class! They’ll end up paying for the education of all those millions and millions of billionaires’ children! What are we, czarist Russia?
And so on and on.
Just as a lot of blacks thought O wasn't black enough, alienated enough, angry enough, or radical enough - pretty much that he should've been more like, and publicly more like, Rev. Jeremiah Wright - there is no doubt a lot of gays see Mayor Pete as way, way too tame.
So, that fact needs to be suppressed?
And the reaction of the lame-stream press was pretty weird in its own way.
NBC News:
New Republic magazine pulls down homophobic op-ed about Pete Buttigieg by an openly gay literary critic
Homophobic?
The New Republic has retracted a vulgar and homophobic op-ed about Pete Buttigieg by openly gay literary critic Dale Peck.
The magazine had published the piece, titled “My Mayor Pete Problem,” on its website on Friday.
In the piece, Peck described Buttigieg as “the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom,” and he referred to the presidential candidate as “Mary Pete” throughout the column.
Peck argued that because Buttigieg waited until his early 30s to come out as gay, he would be too preoccupied with sex and drugs to be an effective president.
The piece also crudely speculated about intimate details of Buttigieg’s personal life.
Almost immediately, social media erupted in widespread condemnation.
. . . .
Hours later the op-ed was taken down and replaced by an editor’s note saying: “Dale Peck’s post ‘My Mayor Pete Problem’ has been removed from the site, in response to criticism of the piece’s inappropriate and invasive content.
We regret its publication.”
The New Republic's editor, Chris Lehmann, added separately in a statement, "The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive."
Satire? Of what? How?
The only Dem who agrees with me and with most Democrats and most Americans?
Bernie Sanders Fires Back at Joe Biden Over Medicare for All Claims
I think this is worth a Pinocchio.
Biden said Saturday that his proposal for a public option would cost about $750 billion over 10 years, according to CNN.
He is the only Democratic front-runner that opposes a single-payer health plan enrolling all Americans in a Medicare-like program.
That last is a lie, if the Times is right.
As of June 23, 8 of the Dems supported M for A.
12 supported some sort of public option, including Mayor Pete, Casto, and Joe B.
3 did not respond to the Times' question.
A new survey of the Democratic candidates by The New York Times finds that many of them prefer less sweeping changes than the Medicare for All Act, the single-payer bill introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and supported by Senator Elizabeth Warren and several other presidential hopefuls.
A majority of candidates in the survey — including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the leader in early polls — said they would rather add a “public option” in the health care system that would compete with private plans.
The public option was once considered too far-reaching — champions of the idea in Congress could not muster quite enough support to include it in the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
But it is now seen as a more moderate alternative to Mr. Sanders’s plan, which would all but eliminate private health insurance and enroll everyone in a government-run program.
Even some candidates who back the single-payer approach of Medicare for All told The Times they would also be willing to support a choice between some kind of public option and private insurance, an acknowledgment that many Americans like their private coverage and want the choice to keep it.
. . . .
The findings underscore that the Democratic field, like the electorate, has not moved en masse to left-wing positions on health care.
While Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren are among the most full-throated supporters of major change, influencing the conversation with their provocative ideas, many other candidates say they are inclined to try to broaden options for health care rather than wholly replace the current system of coverage with a strictly government-run one.
“We don’t need to blow up our current health care system to provide everyone with high-quality, affordable care,” Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado wrote, explaining his preference for a public option.
Thing is, Joe B is leaving not much room for other moderates.
Why choose an unknown, if you are a moderate, when a superstar is on the ticket?
Things are a little different for the, uh, immoderate voters.
Because so many of them are identitarians who really, really don't want to vote for an old white guy, Sanders doesn't have the same effect on them that Biden has on moderate voters.
For each of Sanders and Biden, the second choice most popular among their voters is the other old white guy.
That might be a dash of identity politics getting in there, but I think it's name recognition and maybe just a preference for experience.
I think this is worth a Pinocchio.
Biden said Saturday that his proposal for a public option would cost about $750 billion over 10 years, according to CNN.
He is the only Democratic front-runner that opposes a single-payer health plan enrolling all Americans in a Medicare-like program.
That last is a lie, if the Times is right.
As of June 23, 8 of the Dems supported M for A.
12 supported some sort of public option, including Mayor Pete, Casto, and Joe B.
3 did not respond to the Times' question.
A new survey of the Democratic candidates by The New York Times finds that many of them prefer less sweeping changes than the Medicare for All Act, the single-payer bill introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and supported by Senator Elizabeth Warren and several other presidential hopefuls.
A majority of candidates in the survey — including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the leader in early polls — said they would rather add a “public option” in the health care system that would compete with private plans.
The public option was once considered too far-reaching — champions of the idea in Congress could not muster quite enough support to include it in the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
But it is now seen as a more moderate alternative to Mr. Sanders’s plan, which would all but eliminate private health insurance and enroll everyone in a government-run program.
Even some candidates who back the single-payer approach of Medicare for All told The Times they would also be willing to support a choice between some kind of public option and private insurance, an acknowledgment that many Americans like their private coverage and want the choice to keep it.
. . . .
The findings underscore that the Democratic field, like the electorate, has not moved en masse to left-wing positions on health care.
While Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren are among the most full-throated supporters of major change, influencing the conversation with their provocative ideas, many other candidates say they are inclined to try to broaden options for health care rather than wholly replace the current system of coverage with a strictly government-run one.
“We don’t need to blow up our current health care system to provide everyone with high-quality, affordable care,” Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado wrote, explaining his preference for a public option.
Thing is, Joe B is leaving not much room for other moderates.
Why choose an unknown, if you are a moderate, when a superstar is on the ticket?
Things are a little different for the, uh, immoderate voters.
Because so many of them are identitarians who really, really don't want to vote for an old white guy, Sanders doesn't have the same effect on them that Biden has on moderate voters.
For each of Sanders and Biden, the second choice most popular among their voters is the other old white guy.
That might be a dash of identity politics getting in there, but I think it's name recognition and maybe just a preference for experience.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
People have been saying it for years
Women playing men's sports is of interest disproportionately to lesbians, and not that much to anyone, women included.
Lesbians as players more than as fans, but really both.
Part of why women athletes are paid less than their male counterparts is that the fan base isn't anywhere near as large.
And it's a good reason.
Men mostly want to watch men.
As do women.
Androgyny Is Now Fashionable in the W.N.B.A.
They are looking like the lesbians they are and for so long pretended not to be.
PS.
Women in the police, women in the fire department, women in the military, especially women in combat arms.
We always knew it but for the longest time nobody was allowed to say so.
Well, men weren't allowed to say so.
Still aren't, really.
Maybe Trump will say it for us and get a bump up to 43% from his current ceiling of 41.
(And yet.)
Lesbians as players more than as fans, but really both.
Part of why women athletes are paid less than their male counterparts is that the fan base isn't anywhere near as large.
And it's a good reason.
Men mostly want to watch men.
As do women.
Androgyny Is Now Fashionable in the W.N.B.A.
They are looking like the lesbians they are and for so long pretended not to be.
PS.
Women in the police, women in the fire department, women in the military, especially women in combat arms.
We always knew it but for the longest time nobody was allowed to say so.
Well, men weren't allowed to say so.
Still aren't, really.
Maybe Trump will say it for us and get a bump up to 43% from his current ceiling of 41.
(And yet.)
Sunday, June 9, 2019
AM Joy and Joe Biden
Too white, too old, too male, and too centrist (read: too happy with capitalism per se and not an early or enthusiastic supporter of the AOC/Bernie agenda; too close to Obama's and Hillary's positions on these matters, in fact).
The consistent line of the further left is that worries about electability favoring more centrist, white, male candidates like Mayor Pete, Joe B, and Beto are a trap and Republican Lite always loses to the real thing.
Cum grano salis, I think.
So being further left or more centrist, as the left now define it and really have defined it for years, is a question of not only class politics but what we generally call identity politics, the fruit and further pursuit of the civil rights, sexual, and cultural revolutions, rolled into one.
Hence the talk of reparations, of quotas for women, and the opposition toward not just Joe, Pete, and Beto but even Bernie based openly and squarely on race, sex, age, and, as it turns out, sexual orientation.
Recall how Pete in early days got a pass for much of his centrism because he is gay, and his stories of how he realized that and adjusted to it and is living it evoked great sympathy and admiration.
The consistent line of the further left is that worries about electability favoring more centrist, white, male candidates like Mayor Pete, Joe B, and Beto are a trap and Republican Lite always loses to the real thing.
Cum grano salis, I think.
So being further left or more centrist, as the left now define it and really have defined it for years, is a question of not only class politics but what we generally call identity politics, the fruit and further pursuit of the civil rights, sexual, and cultural revolutions, rolled into one.
Hence the talk of reparations, of quotas for women, and the opposition toward not just Joe, Pete, and Beto but even Bernie based openly and squarely on race, sex, age, and, as it turns out, sexual orientation.
Recall how Pete in early days got a pass for much of his centrism because he is gay, and his stories of how he realized that and adjusted to it and is living it evoked great sympathy and admiration.
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Democrats' ideology police have been hammering Joe Biden
Joe Biden Had A Very Bad Week
They already don't like him because he's an OLD, WHITE, MAN.
And they already don't like him because he's not exactly consumed with enthusiasm for the AOC/Bernie agenda, and not at all the guy to renounce capitalism in favor of socialism, even under pressure.
But he did bend on the Green New Deal and he cravenly and without a shred of credibility folded completely on the Hyde Amendment, gaining nothing but a respite in hostile criticism FROM DEMOCRATS.
Faux Democrats and outright non- and anti-Democrats of the further left have joined arms with the most radical of baby-killing feminists and anointed themselves the ideology police of the Democratic Party, and have largely gotten away with it.
They already don't like him because he's an OLD, WHITE, MAN.
And they already don't like him because he's not exactly consumed with enthusiasm for the AOC/Bernie agenda, and not at all the guy to renounce capitalism in favor of socialism, even under pressure.
But he did bend on the Green New Deal and he cravenly and without a shred of credibility folded completely on the Hyde Amendment, gaining nothing but a respite in hostile criticism FROM DEMOCRATS.
Faux Democrats and outright non- and anti-Democrats of the further left have joined arms with the most radical of baby-killing feminists and anointed themselves the ideology police of the Democratic Party, and have largely gotten away with it.
Monday, June 3, 2019
"Genocide" now seems in Canada to mean "hate crime".
And yet, has it been shown these killings were all of them even that?
No, on second thought it looks like it just means the killers are assumed to have picked for victims women whose murderers, they think, the authorities won't try very hard to find and properly punish.
And that's actually bullshit, too.
There is only one reason these killings are being labeled genocide: the victims are Indians.
And the label is only conditional.
If and when the identity of a killer is learned, the label will be removed if, and only if, the killer is not white.
Or maybe if, and only if, the killer is an Indian.
Either way, at bottom, this is just indigenist victim bullshit and white man bashing.
Canadian Inquiry Calls Killings of Indigenous Women Genocide
Paul Tuccaro, a member the Mikisew Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, said he hoped the report would hold accountable any police officers who failed the women.
Mr. Tuccaro’s younger sister Amber, 20, disappeared in August 2010, he said.
The mother of a 14-month-old son, she vanished after hitching a ride.
Her remains were found in a farmer’s field, and a killer has never been found.
Mr. Tuccaro said it was accurate to call the killings a genocide.
“Whoever is doing what they’re doing, they think they can kill all these women, and nothing will come of it because they’re just ‘Indians,’” he said.
No, on second thought it looks like it just means the killers are assumed to have picked for victims women whose murderers, they think, the authorities won't try very hard to find and properly punish.
And that's actually bullshit, too.
There is only one reason these killings are being labeled genocide: the victims are Indians.
And the label is only conditional.
If and when the identity of a killer is learned, the label will be removed if, and only if, the killer is not white.
Or maybe if, and only if, the killer is an Indian.
Either way, at bottom, this is just indigenist victim bullshit and white man bashing.
Canadian Inquiry Calls Killings of Indigenous Women Genocide
Paul Tuccaro, a member the Mikisew Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, said he hoped the report would hold accountable any police officers who failed the women.
Mr. Tuccaro’s younger sister Amber, 20, disappeared in August 2010, he said.
The mother of a 14-month-old son, she vanished after hitching a ride.
Her remains were found in a farmer’s field, and a killer has never been found.
Mr. Tuccaro said it was accurate to call the killings a genocide.
“Whoever is doing what they’re doing, they think they can kill all these women, and nothing will come of it because they’re just ‘Indians,’” he said.
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