US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3412

On March 21 2016 00:45 frazzle wrote:

Right. So David Duke has renounced white nationalism? That is news to me.

You guys always need to bend the context so grotesquely to make your points. Any cursory search shows Byrd renounced his KKK ties long ago and changed his views while still, like most old men of that time, making a gaffe here and there. But you NEED him to have died a KKK goon to create a counter narrative to the Southern Strategy. And of course there's that.

Everyone who bothers to learn anything of American politics in the Civil Rights and Nixon Era learns of the Southern Strategy when all the racists who resented the Democrat push behind the Civil Rights movement were courted by the Republican party. But you NEED to keep trying to associate the Democratic party with it's links to the KKK from 50 years ago plus, when you know full well the Republican party enthusiastically embraced their supporters beginning with the Goldwater presidential campaign as a cynical effort to remain electorally viable. Meanwhile your likely nominee for president quite obviously circumlocutes the whole David Duke endorsement refusing to repudiate it because he knows he probably needs the racist vote to get elected. He just needs to figure out how to work the dogwhistle.

On March 21 2016 08:10 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Byrd was a KKK recruiter in his 20s and 30s so while it's cute you think he changed his views i believe if you're that deep in racism you always hold those views.A KKK recruiter for fucks sake!

As for the rest recall LBJ saying "We will have these ni**ers voting democratic for the next 200 years"? The opening of borders, immigration act 1965? Democrats like to portray themselves as "allies" of African Americans but in reality they have made their economic situation worse by bringing in tens of millions of low skilled migrants who compete for work.

On March 21 2016 10:23 frazzle wrote:

Welll there's what the voices in your head tell you, and then there's the record.

NAACP MOURNS THE PASSING OF U.S. SENATOR ROBERT BYRD

So yeah, Hilary Clinton going to Byrd's funeral is no counter to Trump dancing around the topic of an unrepentant white supremacist endorsing him just so that Trump can avoid alienating the racist vote.

On March 21 2016 10:34 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

How bizarre for the NAACP to claim that Byrd was a supporter of the civil rights act when he was the main opponent and spoke for 14 hours in an attempt to filibuster the vote for which already had enough yes votes to pass.Naturally he voted no so personally i would not say he was a supporter.

Anyway here's the Sanders supporter who protested in KKK gear at the Trump rally in his own words, looks like he wasn't injured.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBHoyzysWIk

READING, N.Y. — They came here to get arrested.

Nearly 60 protesters blocked the driveway of a storage plant for natural gas on March 7. Its owners want to expand the facility, which the opponents say would endanger nearby Seneca Lake. But their concerns were global, as well.

“There’s a climate emergency happening,” one of the protesters, Coby Schultz, said. “It’s a life-or-death struggle.”

The demonstration here was part of a wave of actions across the nation that combines traditional not-in-my-backyard protests against fossil-fuel projects with an overarching concern about climate change.

Activists have been energized by successes on several fronts, including the decision last week by President Obama to block offshore drilling along the Atlantic Seaboard; his decision in November to reject the Keystone XL pipeline; and the Paris climate agreement.

Bound together through social media, networks of far-flung activists are opposing virtually all new oil, gas and coal infrastructure projects — a process that has been called “Keystone-ization.”

As the climate evangelist Bill McKibben put it in a Twitter post after Paris negotiators agreed on a goal of limiting global temperature increases: “We’re damn well going to hold them to it. Every pipeline, every mine.”

Regulators almost always approve such projects, though often with modifications, said Donald F. Santa Jr., chief executive of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. Still, the protests are having some impact. The engineering consultants Black and Veatch recently published a report that said the most significant barrier to building new pipeline capacity was “delay from opposition groups.”

Activists regularly protest at the headquarters of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, but there have also been sizable protests in places like St. Paul and across the Northeast.

In Portland, Ore., where protesters conducted a “kayaktivist” blockade in July to keep Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs from leaving port, the City Council passed a resolution opposing the expansion of facilities for the storage and transportation of fossil fuels.

Greg Yost, a math teacher in North Carolina who works with the group NC PowerForward, said the activists emboldened one another.

“When we pick up the ball and run with it here in North Carolina, we’re well aware of what’s going on in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island,” he said. “The fight we’re doing here, it bears on what happens elsewhere — we’re all in this together, we feel like.”

On March 21 2016 08:10 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Byrd was a KKK recruiter in his 20s and 30s so while it's cute you think he changed his views i believe if you're that deep in racism you always hold those views.A KKK recruiter for fucks sake!

As for the rest recall LBJ saying "We will have these ni**ers voting democratic for the next 200 years"? The opening of borders, immigration act 1965? Democrats like to portray themselves as "allies" of African Americans but in reality they have made their economic situation worse by bringing in tens of millions of low skilled migrants who compete for work.

On March 21 2016 15:49 Falling wrote:

Do you believe people can change? Like really and truly change? Because I do. I know nothing about this Byrd fellow and have no horse in this race, but I do believe people can change... even the most stubborn racist. But am I wrong in thinking you believe people become programmed and at some point are incapable of change? Because from that short article, it seems that his actions were radically different in the end from the beginning. Don't you suppose people going to his funeral were looking at the end of his life? Or do we discount every change of heart and forever hold their toes to the fire for actions and beliefs they entirely disavow.

On March 21 2016 20:54 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

No.I think if you hold those views so strongly when you are young you will always hold onto them.

I don't believe Michael Richards apology was sincere either for what it's worth if you want another example.

They are some of the most conservative members on Capitol Hill, a group of lawmakers whose opposition to and tenuous relationship with former House Speaker John Boehner is often cited as the reason Boehner finally turned in his speaker's gavel.

From one perspective, the Freedom Caucus – with its rabble-rousing, no-compromising brand of conservatism–could be seen as opening the door for Donald Trump's rise. The few dozen Freedom Caucus members in the House wrote the book on opposing the establishment, on everything from the debt ceiling to funding bills. One of their members, Dave Brat (R-VA) stunned the political world in 2014 when he took out a sitting Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary. This month, the Freedom Caucus voted against supporting their own party's budget plan, putting House Speaker Paul Ryan, a former budget committee chairman, in a bind.

The Freedom Caucus' own rhetoric, including its promises to repeal Obamacare (even though Obama is in office), has fueled some of the anger and resentment against Washington that Trump has benefited from. But while the Freedom Caucus and Trump both love raging against the so-called Washington establishment, there are a lot of Freedom Caucus members who wish they could put Trump back in the bottle.

Members of the Freedom Caucus share concerns that Trump's past positions on key issues like abortion and the Second Amendment cast doubt on Trump's conservative bonafides. Many members in the caucus have thrown their support to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) whose hardline tactics they have often adopted.

But, it is not just Trump's positions alarming members of the Freedom Caucus. It is Trump's cult of personality and tendency to follow his own rules that have them unsure of how to stop him now.

"A lot of us are really nervous. We feel Obama's a tyrant. A lot of people are worried about trading their tyrant for our tyrant," Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) told TPM in an interview in the Capitol last week. "He might play it like Obama with a pen and a phone, and go it alone and even if it is policies that we like, if he does them in an unconstitutional way, we are bound to fight him and that could be a real problem."

Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), admits she has no idea what Trump actually believes. She calls his past "sketchy" and cites his donations to Democrats as a red flag even if his claims are true that he gave money to advance his own business interests. Yet, Lummis said her biggest problem with Trump is his attitude.

"Would I like him to act more presidential right now in terms of the way he talks about issues? Absolutely," Lummis told TPM.

Trump has said, “I can be more presidential than anybody, if I want to be."

"My request to Donald Trump is want to. Want to really bad," Lummis said.

Still, members of the Freedom Caucus, like the Republican Party at large, are puzzled by how to handle Trump. On the one hand, they fear he threatens the conservative movement with his squishiness. On the other hand, many of their own supporters are backing him.