They never should have been put up in the first place, except maybe I could live with it on civil war battlefields. But the behavior of those defending them makes me want to rip them all down. Thaddeus Steven's and Charles Sumner were right.

pacino wrote:

The President's Moral Failure: Only One Side Is to Blame Chris Cillizza, CNN

How's he finally going to score that date with Ivanka with a headline like that!?!

TenuredVulture wrote:

JUburton wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Early Alabama results coming in show Moore (American is as bad as the USSR because gay marriage) with 41%. On the D side, Jones has a big lead over nobody Kennedy. (really, fuck the Kennedys. The best thing JFK did in office was get shot.)

well the fact that they're not remotely related aside, this is a hot fuckin take.

Kennedy is a terrible candidate, regardless of his race. And he's getting crushed so far. And Dems (and everybody else) need to stop thinking about Kennedy as a good President, because he pretty much sucked.

Oh I know. Hell, he may have gotten impeached by the end of his term. Should have been Robert in the oval, probably.

Strange v Moore is going to be a hell of a race

wonder what Brooks voters do

Trump holding Klan...errr, I mean campaign rally in AZ tuesday

Texas ended their special session before their stupid bathroom bill was voted on:

The 30-day special session actually ended on day 29, as the chambers left early, unable to agree on an Abbott-backed property tax bill.

For the governor, it was an unceremonious and deflating finish to a special legislative session that only he had the power to order. In addition to not getting a much-watched property tax proposal, other measures he championed fizzled, including taxpayer-funded vouchers that let students attend private schools.

Abbott faces his first re-election test in 2018. He has no credible challenger yet and the money to likely outspend anyone, but in dragging lawmakers back to work in July after a bruising regular session, he sought to punch back at criticism that he had grown disengaged and politically vulnerable.

Democrats mocked the special session as a monthlong political ad for GOP primary voters, and even among some Republicans there was little appetite to return to work.


The first collapse of the so-called “bathroom bill” in May laid bare an escalating feud in Texas between ascendant social conservatives and moderate Republicans, and the mutual distrust only seemed to deepen over summer.

Lots of other super conservative social ideas were passed:

Abbott ended up getting half his ambitious 20-item agenda to the finish line. The list of achievements included the must-pass "sunset" bills that will keep some state agencies from closing as well as proposals to crack down on mail-in ballot fraud, extend the life of maternal mortality task force, reform the municipal annexation process, limit local ordinance regulating trees and impose new restrictions on abortion.

Texas' rape insurance law

federal court also ruled two Texas congressional districts violate the Voting Rights Act

This month the federal marketplace started requiring more than a written attestation that a qualifying event necessitated special enrollment outside the usual enrollment period. More people will likely be denied coverage as a result of this change.

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:It's up and tweeting against Amazon again

In reaction to this Washington Post editorial titled "The nation can only weep."

Pretty cool that he and the GOP have normalized this sort of corruption, the president attacking (somewhat but not really) related corporate entities in reaction to news coverage.

Doll Is Mine wrote:If you get a chance, make sure you watch the interview Joy Reid just did with Rev Traci Blackmon. I'm sure it will be posted online at some point.

This one?
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump ... 5515075632

When did being against fascism become a bad thing?

If a president is not allowed to openly promote a company why is it OK for him to trash one? Didn't the ethics guys step in earlier in the year when T tried to promote Ivanka's clothing line (or something)?

JFK banged Marilyn Monroe. That makes him great in the eyes of many.

YouGov poll stemming from Charlottseville:

Does Trump personally...

Support white nationalism: 31%
Oppose it: 22%
Doesn't have strong opinion: 24%
Note sure: 24%

Party divide:

47% of Dems think Trump personally supports white nationalism
28% of independents
8% of Republicans

Also Trump's overall job approval rating in this entirely post-Charlottesville poll is 34%, with 46% disapproving

40% of people think 'yes, there is a lot of discrimination' against white people. 60% Rs do. Also a 10 point male/female divide on the idea. Midwest region has the highest percentage of people who think this.

The 'strongly approve' is at 19% and is strongest amongst white Rpeublicans making 100k or more and living in the Midwest.

What gets me the worst about this is how it's normalizing the racists and really making them free to speak up. I was reading an article this morning about former Eagle Dimitri Patterson being arrested for trying to flee family court and injuring two officers. The second comment was "take down another statue, in sure it will stop this TYPE of behavior" this is posted on Facebook and the guy has a picture of himself holding his his kid, both wearing Mickey ears. How is that acceptable? How can anyone even think posting that as a public comment on a news story is okay? And yet it's upvoted/liked. Sure you can make an angry face or comment back at it, but is it worth getting doxxed to do something like that? Not to me, and with a president that won't denounce it how does anyone really have a chance.

pacino wrote:several people on my FB are VERY UPSET about confederate statues being removed.

Bye Felicia

I've been lukewarm about the monument removal movement until now. I fell more into the same camp as Mayor Stoney here in Richmond--provide context (although I made exceptions for certain statues such as the Jefferson Davis statute on Monument Avenue here in Richmond, which is just so brazenly Confederate porn). Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in Virginia, where I was surrounded by Civil War history and immersed myself in history books from a young age. I even grew up next door to a history professor who specialized in the Antebellum South.

But the Charlottesville City Council member who first raised the question of removing the Lee statue was on the NYT "Daily" podcast on Tuesday. I thought she made an excellent point, which was that statues aren't how we teach history--we do that through books, newspapers, museums, the internet, movies/documentaries, etc. Statues are intended to honor people and proclaim a society's key values.

I'd honestly never thought of it that way, and it took me wholly off the bit of fence-sitting I was still doing regarding Confederate statues and firmly into the "remove" camp. She's absolutely right. We don't need a statue glorifying Robert E. Lee in cities where he never lived, or Jefferson Davis at all. (The question is more complicated when you're talking about a place like Lexington, Virginia, where Stonewall Jackson lived and taught at VMI, and Lee lived out the remainder of his life running a now-excellent small university and is buried.) At the end of the day, these men were traitors to the United States who fought to preserve an evil institution. Was the situation more complex than that? Hell yes it was, but complexity isn't conveyed in a statute, and 98% of those people defending the statues don't know a damn thing about Civil War history.

And it is not complex in the slightest that most of these statues were erected between 1920 and 1960, at the height of the KKK and Jim Crow.

pacino wrote:YouGov poll stemming from Charlottseville:

Party divide:

47% of Dems think Trump personally supports white nationalism
28% of independents
8% of Republicans

I find this difficult to believe. White nationalists think he supports them and it sure seems like more than 8% of the Republican Party is comprised of white nationalists.

Trump's lawyer

@MichaelCohen212

As the son of a holocaust survivor, I have no tolerance for #racism. Just because I support @POTUS @realDonaldTrump doesn't make me a racist

(and adds 8 pictures of himself with black people)

Hope Hicks to be named new communications director

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:Hope Hicks to be named new communications director

Don't think we can take that hit on Defense.

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:Trump's lawyer

@MichaelCohen212

As the son of a holocaust survivor, I have no tolerance for #racism. Just because I support @POTUS @realDonaldTrump doesn't make me a racist

(and adds 8 pictures of himself with black people)

Got some bad news for you, Michael.

The off-topic board on the Virginia Tech message board I visit is brutal. There are mostly some great, level headed progressives. However, there are a few that soak up everything Soros and Obama is communist and on and on. One recently shared a story about that murder in West Chester where the one awful man with a long history of violence killed his neighbor. The story immediately starts with the descriptor that the murderer is a well-known anti-Trump. Confirmation that Obama started the race war. You just can't even reason with people who latch on to lies to confirm their terrible beliefs. It is so incredibly disheartening.

Speaking of chester county, here is a cool screen shot.


Bunny Welsh is our sheriff!