LA Times does a nice job trashing Trump. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/edito...402-story.html

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...-pennsylvania/

Anecdotal for sure but being racist doesn't mean someone hates absolutely every other ethnicity in every instance. "he's one of the good ones" is a cliche for a reason. Also as Salon(?) has put it a racist won't mind a black firefighter when his house is burning.

I hope these people ****ing die.


Moreno was sitting at a table with his boss, Rocky Payton, the factory’s general manager, and Amy Saum, the human resources manager. All said they had voted for Trump, and all were bewildered that he wanted to cut funds that channel people into good manufacturing jobs.

“There’s a lot of wasteful spending, so cut other places,” Moreno said.

Payton suggested that if the government wants to cut budgets, it should target “Obama phones”...

You would think so. However, I would point out that even though the 2008 and the 2012 elections were between black and white candidates, in many ways the 2016 election was even more about race. Perhaps if a candidate is able to articulate a strong positive economic vision that you believe in, a person can vote for a racial minority candidate even if they hold racial resentment. However, once that election becomes ABOUT race/racial identity/racial resentment, that totally changes the calculus.

Right, exactly. A lot of good people, nice people, great neighbors, are racist and it doesn't make them dirt. In fact, America programs people to be racist every day with its media and the viewpoints it amplifies and doesn't amplify. Without proper deprogramming, the default for anyone growing up in America is to resent racial minorities--including people that belong to those racial minorities. They get the same programming we all do.

to be fair thats the case with literally everything

there were WW2 nazis who baked cookies for their neighbours and loved animals

there are pedophiles who raised money for charities

great fathers who beat their wifes

humans are complex, and its not necessarily just an environment thing.

Some good people do horrible things and vice versa

Right and I think this concept is very familiar to those of us who enjoy TV/literature. I mean it's basically hammered into every single episode of The Sopranos for example. But to many people, it does seem to be a foreign and difficult concept. Otherwise why it is so hard for people to admit when they've taken a racist position or supported, say, a politician for racist reasons? That would be like admitting they are a serial killer, in their own mind.

So when we say "Trump supporters were racist or had racial resentment" they hear "Trump supporters are Hitler and they want to reenact slavery." There's a huge disconnect when talking about the issue and that's one of the reason these conversations between left and right don't seem to be making any progress right now.

People that are just hostile to all black people are relatively uncommon. What rustles your "racial resentment" types isn't black people existing, it's any encroachment on white American hegemony, be that a suggestion that white people in general enjoy certain privileges in America, or be that ethnic groups daring to act culturally different. These kind of people will wax lyrical about how there's a war on Christians or whatever, but any similar complaints from black people - how they feel unfairly targeted by police - and these guys get OUTRAGED. They're just fine with black people, as long as none of them ever commit any crimes, or complain, or speak out of turn. If they do any of that they're just the worst.

Obama has no culturally black affectations, he BOOTSTRAPPED and he's well spoken, so the racial resentment types were fine with it. They didn't like it when he talked about Black Lives Mattering, but he's a good enough speaker that he could ride the line.

Goddammit I hate Mitch McConnell.

Yeah he needs to go back to his home in the Galápagos Islands.

Can anyone explain to me a simple version of the "don't filibuster this SCt nominee, it's better to wait for the next one" argument, cause I must be missing something.

Not often discussed is that the GOP may well not have 50 votes to go nuclear. See, when you've lost the popular vote in the last 6/7 of elections, maybe a bit of humility is due with respect to your ability to "own" the court for the next 25 years.

Mayhaps Trump gets one nominee and whatever sentient thing that is not Hillary who wins in 2020 gets 4 appointments who all are transgender gay-married atheists who fluently speak a foreign language. Perhaps ole Mitch's bite is no worse than Trump's, despite all the barking.

I think we're going to hear a lot from the GOP about "protecting the norms of the Senate," which is another way of saying best not always to open Pandora's box, or at least an understanding that there is often an equal and opposite reaction.

Then again, the modern GOP has not exactly excelled at the marshmallow test.

This is exactly why it's so important to them to "own the court" for the years to come. Without the court to tilt voter suppression and gerrymandering laws in their favor, they would be in huge trouble electorally. They don't intend on winning the popular vote any time soon.

Authorities Reportedly Detaining and Killing Gay Men in Chechnya
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...g_gay_men.html
I bolded the last part because this is what it's about when governments spew "alternative facts" or in other words lies and complete nonsense. They know you know it's a lie--it's just a justification or excuse for what they're about to do next.

It's amusing seeing the press ask "will the GOP use the nuclear option" as if there is a shred of ****ing doubt. These are the most deplorable people among the deplorables. They have shown over and over again they don't care one bit about political norms, decency, respect or fairness. They care about winning, period.

Them using the nuclear option is a bigger lock than Sklansky posting some idiotic defence of it itt immediately after.

These people would snap rip up the constitution if it moved their retro agenda one inch closer to fruition.

A lot of people say it's mathematically impossible, but this is something the far right is trying to do. If you listen to right wing talk radio they talk about it quite often, and they are organizing activists on the state and local level towards this:

Koch Brothers Bankroll Move to Rewrite the Constitution
http://billmoyers.com/story/kochs-to...-constitution/

Just to confirm, when the Democrats and Reid went nuclear in 2013, for the lower court judicial nominees, that had nothing to do with political norms, decency, respect or fairness and was totally not deplorable.

But when the GOP does it, it totally is.

Haven't you realized by now, both parties are deplorable. Was McConnell deplorable for holding up Garland's vote. Absolutely.

But honestly, a supermajority being needed in the Senate to pass a law or a confirmation isn't in the Constitution. It's just a ****ing rule that Senators made up so they didn't have to make tough votes.

"Oh drat, we don't have 60 votes so we can't vote on all that extreme (right or left) legislation that our vocal constituents are begging for. Just don't have the 60 votes. Time to move on."

In our lifetimes the legislation filibuster will go down in flames too. As an aside, for many liberals in this forum here, it's probably the only way to get some of the signature Democratic platforms passed as well. Medicare for All? 50 votes is going to be much easier than 60.

Just a thought.

Context matters. Democrats went through a prolonged period where the GOP just ****ing shut down every ****ing nominee no matter what and was blocking huge tracks of nominees. There was attempts at negotiating but the GOP did what it did for the last six years of obama presidency, just say no to anything and everything. Here, the GOP has made zero attempts at negotiating with democrats either and if they don't support the nominee won't bother with that process, they won't attempt to find anyone else, it will just be nope done and over with. There is a perfectly valid argument that dems were correct to use the lower court nuclear option in 2013 and the gop totally incorrect to use it in 2017.

The sad part is that the dems didn't use the nuclear option in 2016. Given the events today, they should have. But they tried to do the right thing and the GOP ****ed them again.

Dems lost the Senate in 2014. I'm sure if Reid controlled the Senate in 2016 he would have Nuclear'd Garland through. Absolutely. With good reason.

Because Congress was blocking judicial appointments en masse. They were blocking regular appointments (not even Supreme Court) for no other reason than to pack the court with vacancies and hopefully rush judges into that vacuum of positions after a Presidential win in 2016. Congress wasn't playing by the norms and they pretty much forced Reid's hand. How does it make him deplorable to change the rules so that government could continue to at least function?

Oh by the way I'm totally fine with Republicans "going nuclear" and changing the rules at this point. But we have to be honest about how we got to this point. Republicans took advantage of Democrats wanting to stand by and honor institutions and norms, and leveraged that against them as a weakness. In doing so, they have pushed and transforms our norms and institutions so that they look VERY different now than they did twenty years ago.

I guess O'Reilly needs to hit Cosby like number of accusers before being dragged in front of a judge.