In the above exchange from a panel discussion on minority outreach at CPAC titled, “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” (so not kidding), Scott Terry, 30, from North Carolina, shared his views on white supremacy and the ingratitude of once-enslaved people toward their former masters with the facilitator of the panel, Karl C. Smith, a member of the Frederick Douglass Republican club.
Scalia at the inauguration wearing his wife’s hatDuring a hearing on the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia, who was last seen in public at Pres. Obama’s inauguration wearing one of his wife’s hats, unmasked himself as a reliable ally to the neo-Confederate movement sweeping the nation.
When confronted with the fact that the Senate had reauthorized the Act unanimously in 2006, at a time when Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress, Scalia opined that members of Congress — presumably including neo-Confederates in the Senate — voted for the reauthorization because they were intimidated by political correctness. Therefore, Scalia suggested, it was proper and fitting for right wingers on the Court to over-rule them:
“I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement,” Scalia said. “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes … This is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now.”
The conservative justices seemed to have the votes to strike the provision down.
There were audible gasps in the court when Scalia made this clearly racist statement from the bench. It is breathtaking that Scalia would suggest that voting is an entitlement, not a right, and that a unanimous vote in the Senate — which happen about as frequently as men wear women’s hat at official functions — is a dangerous thing that requires Supreme Court action.
Reacting to Scalia’s ugly comment, Michael Moore spoke for millions when he tweeted, “Memo to Tarantino prop dept: Please send one of those poorly sewn hoods from Django to Justice Scalia. Make sure it matches his robes.”
Just make sure the hood fits over Scalia’s wife’s hat.
On CNN last night, John Sununu, George H.W. Bush’s disgraced former chief of staff, interjected another racist insult into the presidential campaign yesterday by asserting that George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, put allegiance to his race ahead of his professional and political judgment when he endorsed Pres. Obama:
Sununu:And frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.
Morgan: What reason would that be?
Sununu: Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.
Earlier this month, Sununu described the president as lazy and unintelligent.
Ezra Klein at the Washington Post Wonkblog published the chart above. It explains why Romney is leading President Obama by a whopping 7 percentage points in the current Gallup daily tracking poll. Klein also says it suggests that Obama could well win decisively in the Electoral College but lose just as decisively in the popular vote — a much more lopsided (not to mention legitimate) version of what happened in 2000, when George W. Bush was awarded Florida’s Electoral College votes by Republicans on the Supreme Court, while Al Gore won the popular ballot by over 500,000 votes.
(It also happened in 1876, when Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won in the Electoral College but lost to his Democratic opponent, Samuel Tilden, by 300,000 votes; and in 1888, when Republican Benjamin Harrison won in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Democrat Grover Cleveland, by about 100,000 votes.)
Klein does not go there, but what screams out about this breakout is that the United States’ first African-American president is ahead by what might be called a “normal” majority — an average of 4.6 percentage points — in every region of the country, except for the states of the Old Confederacy, where he is behind by an insurmountable 22 points.
Pat Buchanan, the Republican establishment’s most stalwart neo-Confederate, was fired by MSNBC after years of making veiled racist remarks on the network most liberals watch, so Mitt Romney sent his campaign co-chair John Sununu, the disgraced White House chief of staff in the Bush I administration, onto the network’s air yesterday to to hurl coded racist epithets at Pres. Obama.
In an interview with Andrea Mitchell, Sununu, speaking on Mitt Romney’s behalf, described the president as “lazy,” a pervasive racist stereotype that has its origins in America’s slave-holding past. When Mitchell offered Sununu a chance to walk back the accusation, Sununu doubled down. “Yes,” Sununu said. “He didn’t want to prepare for this debate. He’s lazy and disengaged.”
Later, on Fox News, his party’s official politibureau channel, Sununu insulted the president with another pervasive racist stereotype — that he is unintelligent. On Fox, Sununu predicted that the president will not be able to improve his debate performances because, “When you’re not that bright you can’t get better prepared.” The Fox News host let Sununu’s insult stand, of course.
Update: The RNC released a statement saying that two “attendees,” not just one, were expelled from the convention. The statement reads, “Yesterday two attendees exhibited deplorable behavior. Their conduct was inexcusable and unacceptable. This kind of behavior will not be tolerated.” No information has been released about the identity of the two attendees, including whether they were delegates and, if so, from which state or states.
Deep in the Conejo Valley, Steven Showers has put up a very tall neon sign in his front yard that flashes “Romney’s Racist Heart Dotcom. Save the GOP.” Showers tells the Ventura County Star that he is Republican and Christian and that, upon Mitt Romney’s apparent nomination for the presidency, he “was stunned to find out that the Mormon religion is a white supremacist, anti-black, racist ideology.” He launched the Romneys Racist Heart website (which warns that “You Are About to Read About the Most Gigantic Fraud Ever Perpetrated Upon the GOP in U.S. Political History”) and spent most of August designing and building the 120-pound billboard, which required a crane to mount.
The sign itself is ten feet tall and sits on a four-foot concrete foundation. The lights went on on Thursday and the first complaint came into Ventura County on Friday (Showers says he didn’t check to see whether the sign might be violating any codes). According to the LA Times, “On Friday, a Ventura County code inspector dropped by and left a notice that the monument was a violation of zoning laws.”
Meanwhile, you can buy your own smaller version for just $800. And a rep for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints points out to the Star that the religion let black people join the priesthood starting in 1978.
I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.
– Republican Party presidential frontrunner and infamous bigot Rick Santorum speaking to a presumably all-white audience in Iowa, ignoring the fact that the percentage of black, white and Hispanic families on welfare is roughly the same: 33.3 percent of the families are black, 31.2 percent are white and 28.8 percent are Hispanic.
Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario has created a litmus test —
Yield, and rename it Lake America, at Donald Trump’s behest,
Like Google and Apple, which already capitulated,
Changing the name just like Dear Leader stipulated,
But there’s one defiant holdout — the original mapping site, Mapquest.
“They’ve invested heavily in AI labs. They’ve invested heavily in data centers. So, the first family has a financial stake in this industry, and as a result, the president of the United States is compromised.”
— “Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) on Monday said President Trump will likely not heed calls from technology leaders to implement guardrails on the development of artificial intelligence because of his family’s investments in the industry,” NewsNation reports.
“Young Americans today have never witnessed Congress authorize a war, they’ve never seen a U.S. administration balance its books, they’ve never watched a well-funded and empowered state department operate, and they see only mistrust between allies. They assume the situation is normal. It is not. … The real cost of forgetting the pre-9/11 world is not a country that has changed, but one that no longer knows it could be different.”
“We’re working through some political issues in Israel. I think we agree with them on the end state. They just have a crazy election, and that makes them a little irrational in certain regards.”
— Jared Kushner, quoted by CBS News, on the lack of progress in Gaza.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
“Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and other structures at bases across the Middle East, and caused about $184 million worth of damage at U.S. diplomatic facilities, according to a Pentagon watchdog report,” the Washington Post reports. “The inspector general’s report to Congress on Operation Epic Fury — the Trump administration’s name for the war with Iran — also details the extent of U.S. munitions shortages, in the first comprehensive public accounting of the war, which is now in its seventh month.”
Half (50%) of U.S. adults say they are either very concerned (23%) or somewhat concerned (27%) about the possibility that AI will cause the end of humanity, a new YouGov survey finds. Another 39% of Americans say they’re not very concerned (21%) or not at all concerned (17%) about an AI apocalypse, while 11% aren’t sure.
A majority of Americans ages 55 and up and a majority of Republicans of all ages support the use of Flock technologies in their communities, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from August 28 to 31. Split by age, party, education level and gender, no other demographic group had a majority of support for the cameras. Among age groups, younger Americans were the least likely to support Flock, with only 21% of respondents aged 18 to 34 in favor of the technology.
About one-third (31%) of Americans strongly or somewhat approve of how the U.S. Supreme Court is handling its job, according to the latest Economist/YouGov Survey, while 53% disapprove. Almost all Democrats disapprove of the Supreme Court’s job handling (12% approve and 79% disapprove), while most Republicans approve (63% vs. 26%). Republicans who say they’re MAGA supporters overwhelmingly approve of the Supreme Court’s job handling (73% vs. 19%), while non-MAGA Republicans are more closely divided (49% vs. 36%).
On CNN last night, John Sununu, George H.W. Bush’s disgraced former chief of staff, interjected another racist insult into the presidential campaign yesterday by asserting that George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, put allegiance to his race ahead of his professional and political judgment when he endorsed Pres. Obama:
