jerseyhoya wrote:After apologizing for being in the picture yesterday Northam is telling Virginia Dems he isn't in the picture and isn't resigning.

A public relations tour de force from the governor.

Deutsche Bank turned Trump down for loan in 2016

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that she believes that God put Donald Trump in the White House, CBN reported Wednesday.

An official line from the White House on President Trump’s complexion is that his skin color is the result of “good genes,” a senior administration official told The New York Times.

The official, who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity, added that the president applies a dab of powder to his skin before making appearances on television.

But the official said the powder is translucent and added that it is not a bronzer.

jerseyhoya wrote:The "I said I was in the picture because I initially confused it with the other time I wore blackface" defense is one you just have to tip your cap to.

You can come back from almost anything in public life, certainly when something is decades in the past. As we discussed recently in a related context, second chances are one of the most important things about a humane, moral society. That remains true if some get fourth and fifth chances and some get none. There are not a few examples of the most hardcare anti-abolitionists in the pre-Civil War era who were radicalized into the most diehard abolitionists during and after the war and became aggressive defenders of racial equality. People change and we should be open to their change if it seems genuine and productive.

But change requires … well, change. The missing part of the puzzle is that if Northam was the man who put together that page and appeared in those photos and later became the man he seemed to be until yesterday afternoon, he needed to make some public accounting of how and why that happened. That may not be necessary for a private person but it is for someone in elected office. That doesn’t need to be self-flagellation but it does require some explanation. By failing to do that he made possible the breach that occurred last night in which the faith millions of Virginians had placed in him was just broken and probably broken irretrievably.

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The country has one genuinely multi-racial political party, which is by nature an anti-racist party. It has another that is rooted in white identity politics. That no more means there are no racists or people with racist pasts in the Democratic party than it means every Republican is a racist. But the basic political configuration and dichotomy of US politics today is clear. Northam just isn’t in a position to lead a state still shaped by the history of the Confederacy, not as the candidate of Democratic voters.

pacino wrote:It was the mid 1980s, not 1780s

Fuck this guy