TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[Luther Blissett]

Bumping. I think people are sleeping on this, an important issue.

lol, the thread title??

[seemslikeadream]

this is not a fucking joke...

Atmospheric Scientist: Donald Trump & Mike Pence are a Climate Change Denial Dream Team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R5w9xLh3HI

While 2016 is on pace to become the warmest year on record, climate change has been largely ignored at the presidential and vice-presidential debates so far. We look at Donald Trump’s history of climate change denialism. He has called it a scam and a hoax. In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." We speak to Guardian journalist Oliver Milman and Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: States of emergencies have been declared in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as Hurricane Matthew barrels towards the Southeast coastline. More than 2 million people have been urged to evacuate their homes. Many climate scientists are saying climate change has intensified Hurricane Matthew because warmer ocean waters help create stronger hurricanes.

During last week’s first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, moderator Lester Holt did not ask about climate change, but it came up once during a brief exchange.

HILLARY CLINTON: Take clean energy. Some country is going to be the clean energy superpower of the 21st century. Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.

DONALD TRUMP: I did not. I did not.

HILLARY CLINTON: I think the science is real.

DONALD TRUMP: I do not say that.

HILLARY CLINTON: And I think it’s important—

DONALD TRUMP: I do not say that.

HILLARY CLINTON: —that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That’s Hillary Clinton speaking last week at the presidential debate. And she references Trump talking about climate change as a hoax, which he subsequently denied, a hoax, he said, designed by China to undermine the U.S. economy. You have said that—Michael Mann, that Trump is, quote, "a threat to the planet." So could you talk about the way that climate change has figured in this presidential election, and your comments on Trump?

MICHAEL MANN: Sure. It is unfortunate, as you folks have alluded to, that despite constituting perhaps the greatest challenge we face as a civilization—climate change—there has been no question about climate change thus far in the debates. So, we’re two down, two to go. We’ll see if it enters into the discussion in one of the subsequent debates. But it is literally the greatest challenge and threat facing human civilization. So, for the moderators to not ask a single question about climate change is indefensible, and it’s conspicuous.

It’s interesting, in that exchange, you heard Donald Trump say he didn’t say that. And it’s true: He didn’t say that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. He tweeted it. And that’s his primary mode of communication. And, in fact, he has tweeted at least a half-dozen times various climate change—you know, standard climate change denial talking points. The problem isn’t just Trump. You have, in his vice-presidential candidate, somebody who is also on record denying climate change. So it’s a climate change denial dream team—

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s—

MICHAEL MANN: —Mike Pence and Donald Trump. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Donald Trump appearing on Hugh Hewitt Show last year, when he was asked about global warming.

HUGH HEWITT: Do you believe that the temperature of the Earth is increasing? And what would you do, if you do believe that, vis-à-vis global climate change?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, I’m not a believer in global warming. I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And, you know, in the early—in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling. I don’t know if you know that or not. They thought the Earth was cooling. Now it’s global warming. And actually, we’ve had times where the weather wasn’t working out, so they changed it to "extreme weather," and they have all different names, you know, so that it fits the bill.

AMY GOODMAN: And in December, Donald Trump was asked a similar question by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News.

BILL O’REILLY: Do you believe in global warming, climate change? Do you think the world’s going to change for the worse because it’s getting warmer?

DONALD TRUMP: I think that there’ll be little change here. It’ll go up, it’ll get a little cooler, it’ll get a little warmer, like it always has for millions of years. It’ll get cooler, it’ll get warmer. It’s called weather. I do believe in clean—and I’ve received—a lot of people don’t know this: I’ve received many environmental awards, many, many environmental awards, for the work I do. And I believe strongly in clean water and clean air. But I don’t believe that what they say—I think it’s a big scam for a lot of people to make a lot of money.

AMY GOODMAN: "A big scam." And in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." Oliver Milman, as we go through these clips of the man who could be president, could be elected in just five weeks?

OLIVER MILMAN: Yeah, I mean, as Michael alluded to, this is really the defining issue of our age. In a rational world somewhere, the media and all politicians would be focusing on climate change as a top priority instead of seeing it as just some kind of niche kind of sideshow to what they should be talking about. I mean, as recently as 2008, you had two presidential candidates who accepted that climate change is real, and something needs to be done. Both accepted there needs to be kind of some kind of price on carbon—John McCain and Barack Obama. Since then, we’ve seen one side of politics, unfortunately, descend into climate denialism, to the extent that it’s called a hoax dreamed up by the Chinese, which is, you know—any other time, would be laughable. Somebody who’s purporting to be the most powerful person in the world, it’s quite worrying.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it is really something. You have Haiti canceling their election on Sunday indefinitely because of this storm. You have some who are saying that the peace deal in Colombia, that was just voted down by just a sliver, may well have been deeply affected by climate change because of the weather in Colombia that caused so many people not to go out and vote. How, Michael Mann, this affects global politics, not to mention refugees, the largest number of refugees we’ve seen since World War II, how climate change weighs into this, whether or not presidential candidates believe it, or whether or not leading TV personalities who are moderating these debates even raise it?

MICHAEL MANN: Yeah. And, you know, Neil deGrasse Tyson, a great science communicator, I think, has put it very well. He says the wonderful thing about science is that it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe it; it’s still true. And so, while politicians like Donald Trump can say they don’t believe in climate change, they’re not entitled to their own facts. And the facts are in. There’s very widespread consensus among the world scientists that climate change is real, it’s caused by human activity, it’s already causing lots of problems, it will cause far more problems if we don’t do anything about it.

And you allude to sort of the repercussions, the national security and conflict repercussions, of climate change. The Syrian uprising was fundamentally related to a drought. And it’s had implications worldwide for instability, political instability. As a growing global population, 7 billion, maybe reaching 9, possibly even 11 billion by later this century—you’ve got a growing global population competing for less food, less water and less land as a result of climate change. And that is—to use the term again, it’s a perfect storm of consequences for instability, for conflict. And it is for reasons like that, and the fact that many of the poorest nations, like Haiti, are feeling the worst impacts—they have the least adaptive capacity, the least resilience to deal with impacts like this—this is going to create—you know, climate change impacts are going to create mass migration from regions which are no longer livable. That means, once again, more people in the remaining areas competing for resources.

It’s a national security and conflict nightmare. And our armed forces, our national security community here in the U.S. has recognized climate change as the greatest threat we face in the years ahead. So while politicians like Donald Trump are denying it even exists, our defense community, our national security leaders recognize that this is actually the greatest threat that we face in the decades ahead, from a national security standpoint, because it means more conflict, and conflict leads to global chaos and instability.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Michael Mann, despite what you said about the scientific consensus and what the national security leaders in this country say, a report by a U.K.-based research group, which surveyed 20 countries, including China and India, found that the United States had more climate change deniers among their respondents than any other country. So what do you think accounts for that?

MICHAEL MANN: Well, you know, what are the countries where we have the most powerful and entrenched fossil fuel companies and corporations? The U.S., Australia. And that’s where we see the most rampant climate change denial. It’s not coincidental. Fossil fuel interests are doing exactly what tobacco interests did decades ago. They have manufactured a campaign of misinformation and disinformation to confuse the public and policymakers from acting. In the case of tobacco, we know that millions of people died because the tobacco industry hid the adverse health impacts of their product. With climate change, many more people will suffer and perish if we don’t act. In some ways, the campaign by fossil fuel interests to confuse the public about the reality and threat of climate change is an even greater crime against, you could say, humanity or the planet. It’s literally a crime against the planet.

And we need to make sure that they’re answerable for the disinformation campaign that they have run. They’ve set us back decades. If we had acted on this problem when ExxonMobil’s own internal documents from the 1970s revealed that they recognized—this is their own words—they recognized the impacts of climate change could be catastrophic. These are in their own internal documents from the 1970s. But what did ExxonMobil do in the subsequent decades? They spent tens of millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign to deny the reality of climate change.

We can’t allow that. We have to move on. We have to hold bad actors accountable, and we have to move on to the worthy debate, which is what we should be debating in Congress: how to solve this problem. What are the mechanisms to decrease our carbon emissions and to transition to renewable energy? There’s a worthy political debate between progressives and conservatives to be had about that topic, but there’s no worthy debate to be had about whether the threat exists. We have to get past that. Again, in November, we may have an opportunity to try to get past that by electing leaders who will act on climate.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, President Obama announced a threshold had been passed for the ratification of the Paris Agreement to combat climate change. He hailed it as an historic day for protecting the planet.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today, the world has officially crossed the threshold for the Paris Agreement to take effect. Today the world meets the moment. And if we follow through on the commitments that this Paris Agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet. ... The Paris Agreement alone will not solve the climate crisis. Even if we meet every target embodied in the agreement, we’ll only get to part of where we need to go. But make no mistake: This agreement will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: Oliver Milman, your final comment on the significance of this? And could a new president in the United States undo the Paris accord?

OLIVER MILMAN: Sure. So, you’ve got the biggest emitters in the world now have fully ratified the Paris deal, meaning they’ve committed to emissions cuts—so, U.S., China, India, so on, the U.K., European Union. In terms of the cuts, they need to be far more ambitious to get us to the—what the Paris accord sets out, which is a 2-degree Celsius limit on warming. And rapid transformation towards clean energy is required.

In terms of undoing it, Donald Trump has promised to do—to exit the U.S. from the Paris deal. That won’t be actually possible for the next four years, because the U.S. is locked in because of its ratification. But regardless of that, the emissions cuts need to be far steeper if the world is going to avoid the kind of dangerous climate change we’re seeing examples of through Hurricane Matthew and others.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Oliver Milman, thanks for being with us, of Guardian US. Michael Mann, Penn State, congratulations on your new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. Stay with us, folks.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "Too Hot to Handle" by Heatwave. Songwriter/producer Rod Temperton died last week at the age of 66. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

Donald Trump Is Setting a Time Bomb

His calls for racial voter intimidation on Election Day could explode in all our faces.

By Jamelle Bouie
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters during a campaign rally on October 4, 2016 in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Trump spoke in Arizona ahead of tonights vice-presidential debate.
Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters on Tuesday in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
Ralph Freso/Getty Images

Donald Trump spins so many tales—and goes after so many different groups and individuals—that it’s sometimes easy to miss his most invidious rhetoric. For months, the Republican presidential nominee has undermined confidence in our electoral system, warning his supporters that this election will be “rigged” and stolen through “voter fraud.”

Jamelle Bouie is Slate’s chief political correspondent.

Trump first told his supporters of this conspiracy theory at an Ohio rally in August and followed up the claim in an interview with Sean Hannity: “I’m telling you, Nov. 8, we’d better be careful because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.” This was in line with comments from his surrogates, like longtime adviser Roger Stone, who told Breitbart that Trump would begin to talk “constantly” about voter fraud. “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud.’ ” Stone continued: “‘If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.’” The implication is clear: If Trump loses, he should foment this “civil disobedience.” And he should start preparing his supporters for it now. He seems to be doing just that.

“The only way we can lose, in my opinion … is if cheating goes on,” said Trump during another August rally in Pennsylvania. In Wilmington, North Carolina—where more than a century earlier, white terrorists toppled a black-led city government in a violent insurrection—Trump warned his supporters that without strict voter identification laws, people would be “voting 15 times for Hillary.”

If that violence and intimidation strikes, it will be against the chief targets of Trump’s campaign: people of color.
These are rhetorical time bombs, statements that cast doubt on our democracy, planted with growing frequency as Trump tries to rationalize the fact that he’s losing. There’s a chance this is harmless, that Trump will resign himself to defeat if he loses to Hillary Clinton and bring his supporters with him—during the first presidential debate moderator Lester Holt asked him whether he would “accept the outcome [of the election] as the will of the voters,” and he said unequivocally “the answer is that if she wins I will absolutely support her.” But that was before he lashed out against the media for his poor performance, before the polls began to tilt back in Clinton’s favor. Now that he’s behind, Trump has returned to questioning the legitimacy of the election. More critically, the idea that he would respect the results of the election, full stop, ignores the hatred that’s come to characterize Trump’s campaign, the violence he’s condoned against protesters and other vocal opponents, the virulent prejudice he’s brought to mainstream politics, and the apocalypticism of his message, where he stands as the final hope for an embattled minority of resentful whites. These rhetorical time bombs, in other words, could be the catalyst for actual intimidation and violence, before and after Election Day. And if that violence and intimidation strikes, it will be against the chief targets of Trump’s campaign: people of color.

To that point, Trump has gone beyond his attacks on the integrity of the ballot. Now, he wants his supporters to monitor the polls in places where, he says, “fraud” is likely. “You’ve gotta go out, and you’ve gotta get your friends, and you’ve gotta get everyone you know and you’ve gotta watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas,” said Trump at a recent rally. “I hear too many bad stories and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about. So go and vote and go check out areas, because a lot of bad things happen and we don’t wanna lose for that reason.”

What does Trump mean by “areas?” It’s simple: He means places where black people live and vote, a dog whistle calibrated to an audience of voters who have lived off of a decade of conspiracymongering, from breathless theorizing over the obscure New Black Panthers to hysteria over groups that register voters and bring them to the polls, such as ACORN. And in particular, Trump is speaking to the idea—propagated through conservative media—that Barack Obama stole the 2008 and 2012 elections by using fraud and other nefarious tactics in cities like Philadelphia.

The “evidence” for this is Obama’s high support in a handful of inner-city areas. In 2012, for instance, there were precincts in Philadelphia and Cleveland where Obama won as much as 100 percent of the vote. These predominantly black neighborhoods backed the president with overwhelming support, as they had in the previous race against John McCain. This wasn’t unusual. Given the size of the country, the number of voters, and the extent of residential and political segregation, these unanimous areas—in Philadelphia, 59 divisions of several hundred voters each—were inevitable. Indeed, it happens for Republicans too. In 2008, McCain won 80 percent or more of ballots cast in counties across the interior South, despite losing the general election by 7 percentage points. But this dynamic was more pronounced in hyper-segregated communities of black Americans, an electorate that—according to exit polls—backed Obama with average support of 94 percent in his two elections. Statistically, there was a decent chance that one nearly all-black precinct or another was going to vote unanimously for the president.

But to many conservatives, this was suspect. On his syndicated radio show, Hannity said that it was “mathematically impossible” that no one had voted for Mitt Romney in these areas and that therefore, it “means we’ve got cheating going on in our elections.” Hannity’s disbelief echoed across right-wing media, where outlets like Breitbart and Townhall ran with the claim that voter fraud skewed the results in cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland. When considered in the elaborate canon of right-wing media, where marginal groups like the New Black Panthers stood as a threat to the voting rights of white Americans, the message was clear: Black voters had broken the rules and stolen the election from Romney for a black president.

This wasn’t just a conspiracy conservatives could believe in; it was one they were primed for. The allegation that Obama “rigged” his election to the White House goes back to the 2008 race, when Republicans went on a crusade against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, an organizing group that worked to register voters and advocate for low-income families. A blitzkrieg of anti-ACORN rhetoric swept conservative media, driven by doctored and misleading videos from far-right provocateurs.

In the wake of the frenzy, 52 percent of Republicans believed the ludicrous claim that the group had “stolen the election” for Barack Obama, comparable to the 51 percent of GOP voters who said that Obama was born outside of the United States. Today, Trump’s rhetoric is having a similar effect. According to a recent poll from the Associated Press, 58 percent of his supporters believe there is voter fraud, and half say that they have “little to no confidence in the integrity of the vote count.” Whether he realizes it or not, Trump’s attack on the election process grows out of years of mainstream Republican behavior and rhetoric that revved an engine of paranoia and fear among conservative voters. In addition to its strict requirements for identification, for example, North Carolina’s GOP-backed (and unconstitutional) voting law expanded the reach and authority of poll observers, allowing them to challenge any voter without cause, as long as they themselves were registered residents of the county (instead of the precinct). The provision was a boon to outfits like True the Vote, an anti-voter fraud group that essentially works to intimidate would-be voters.

But this effort is also more than a tactic to try to ensure one side gets more votes than the other. The mania over voter fraud has everything to do with the election of Obama, America’s first black president, who won that contest—and re-election—on the power of his performance with people of color, and black voters in particular. In response, Republicans have begun a crusade against “fraud,” meaning anything that enhances access to the polls, and brings these voters to the voting booth. (Actual in-person voter fraud is infinitesimally rare.) It’s how we get the situation in North Carolina, where the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that those GOP lawmakers intentionally and illegally targeted black voters, searching for any measure under the sun that would limit their access to the polls. And it’s how we get the one in Wisconsin, which—according to a 2014 federal ruling (since superseded)—produced a “unique burden” that “disproportionately impacts black and Latino voters.”

Along with Trump himself, these measures represent and channel the rage of an angry plurality of white voters that sees Obama—and the cosmopolitan America he represents—as an existential threat to their perceived place in national life. This dynamic has a history in America. White backlash to black progress—from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement—is a potent part of our past, and whenever it strikes, black voters and black voting are always the first target.

On the eve of the 1868 presidential election, white vigilantes and Klansmen in the South terrorized newly enfranchised freedmen and killed black lawmakers, including state representatives in South Carolina and Arkansas. “In Camilla, Georgia,” writes historian Douglas Egerton in The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era, “Democrats opened fire on a Republican parade, killing or wounding twenty black marchers, and a black Georgia assemblyman was dragged from his home and nearly beaten to death.” In Louisiana, following the 1872 presidential election, “Republicans charged that more than two thousand supporters had been ‘killed, wounded, or otherwise injured’ in the final weeks leading up to [Ulysses S.] Grant’s reelection.” Authorities in one parish of the state stumbled upon the bodies of more than two dozen black Republicans. According to one account, survivors of the massacre were forced by Klansmen to march to the polls and cast a Democratic ballot.

Just as common as outright violence was intimidation at the voting booth. During New Jersey’s 1871 state and local elections, for example, mobs of white Democrats arrived at the polls in Camden to intimidate blacks out of casting ballots for Republican candidates. Some of this anger was pure partisanship, an effort to win by any means necessary. But the larger source was rage at the very idea of black voting, part of a broader belief that black Americans were illegitimate citizens: that they were ignorant, dependent, unworthy, and undeserving.

And so it continued through American history. In 1900, after taking North Carolina’s government back from a coalition of Populists and black Republicans using violence and intimidation, Democrats established Jim Crow, eliminating black voters from the state’s voter rolls. Sixty years later, racial reactionaries would fight a rear-guard action against the movement for voting rights, using violence, intimidation, and as much legal chicanery as they could muster. This didn’t just happen in the South.

“From 1960 to 1964 [future Chief Justice William] Rehnquist directed ‘ballot security operations’ for the Maricopa County Republican Party in Phoenix, known as ‘Operation Eagle Eye,’ which was designed to challenge the eligibility of Democratic voters at the polls,” writes journalist Ari Berman in Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. “Civil rights activists with the NAACP in Arizona testified that Rehnquist had personally administered literacy tests to black and Hispanic voters at Democratic precincts in Phoenix, questioning their qualifications by asking them to read portions of the Constitution.”

If we are living in the midst of another white backlash—and Trump’s ethno-nationalist campaign for the White House suggests that we are—then it’s only fitting that we’ve seen a new push against full access at the ballot box, spearheaded by a political party enthralled to a recalcitrant movement of white revanchists. Likewise, it’s fitting that its symbol and head, Trump, is now channeling a sesqui-century of racial reaction.

The difference between now and the past is that these new racial reactionaries are losing. For all their rage and anger, they are far short of a majority. Their primal scream isn’t enough to close the electoral gap. Donald Trump is on track to lose this presidential race, shut down by a strong—if somewhat silent—majority of blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and young people, along with liberal and moderate whites.

Top Comment

Just taking about 20 minutes to scan through the 2012 voting records in my county (in Texas), I found three precincts with no votes for Obama and another three with only a single vote for Obama. More...


Still, Trump’s anti-democratic conspiracymongering is unprecedented in modern elections. And we can begin to guess at the consequences of this rhetoric. Angry people, stirred by demagoguery and convinced they’ve been robbed of their rightful power, are a real threat to the already-frayed fabric of our democracy. Donald Trump thinks the election is rigged. He says we need to watch “areas.” Despite what he said at the debate, he’s also said that, should he lose, he doesn’t know that he will concede: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.” And if he doesn’t? If he loses and pushes his base to reject the outcome? Then we could see protests, we could see mobs—we could even see violence, all directed against the people supposedly stealing the election. It wouldn’t be the first time.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... n_day.html

How Trump used Hurricane Sandy to fuel Obama birther conspiracy
By KYLE CHENEY 10/06/16 11:15 AM EDT Updated 10/06/16 11:54 AM EDT

Donald Trump has so far avoided seeking any overt political advantage as monstrous Hurricane Matthew bears down on Florida, instead offering his prayers to residents in the swing state and advising them in a tweet Wednesday to “please be careful.”
But the Donald Trump of 2012 — then a vocal supporter of Mitt Romney for president — wasn’t so restrained.
Story Continued Below
As superstorm Sandy pummeled northern New Jersey and parts of New York City just a week before Election Day, Trump’s immediate instinct was to lament that the disaster appeared to be a political win for President Barack Obama and exploit it to further his birther conspiracies.
“Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars,” Trump tweeted on the morning of Oct. 30, less than a day after the storm devastated the region.
Just minutes later, he reiterated a call for Obama to produce his college records and passport application — part of his quest to undermine Obama’s legitimacy as president: “Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama's favorite charity until 12PM on Thursday.”
Trump had made the $5 million offer a week earlier, suggesting that it would end “questions” about Obama’s past. It came more than a year after Obama released his long-form birth certificate following Trump’s multi-year campaign questioning Obama’s citizenship. In seeking Obama’s college records, Trump mused that the college records might list a different place of birth.
Later in the same afternoon, Trump tweeted once again: “The polls & momentum are trending towards @MittRomney. Don't let the hurricane change your thinking!” And by the next day, Halloween, Trump seemed defeated: “I'm concerned about the hurricane & that people will vote for Obama because he's ‘bravely standing in water.’” He followed that up later in the afternoon: “Obama is now standing in a puddle acting like a President--give me a break.”
161005_hurricane_ap_1160.jpg
2016
Clinton, Trump brace for Hurricane Matthew
By KYLE CHENEY and STEVEN SHEPARD
Trump did offer some solace for Sandy victims, acknowledging praise he received for keeping his Trump Tower atrium open. “Thanks for all the nice words on my keeping the Trump Tower atrium accessible to stranded victims of #Sandy. My honor,” he wrote. He described sheltering “hundreds of people” and providing free coffee and food. On the fourth day after the storm, Trump tweeted that he was sending out bottled water to Long Island and Staten Island.
But his social media response to the storm was largely political. He even saw an advantage for Romney in what he described as post-storm “rioting.”
“Could be the hurricane helps @MittRomney--people are rioting in the streets over gasoline,” he said.
After Obama won the election, Trump attributed it to positive feelings about his leadership during Sandy recovery. “Polls show that the hurricane had a huge positive effect for Obama on his win- isn't that ridiculous?” he wondered.
But by Thanksgiving week, Trump’s tone had softened. “Remember victims of Hurricane Sandy during Thanksgiving. Many will not be celebrating the holiday in comfort. Their lives are in turmoil!”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/t ... z4MKzlGEyE

[Luther Blissett]

Philadelphia is mentioned a lot in that article about racial voter intimidation. It wouldn't be any surprise to anyone who's ever been here that some districts go 0% republican.

If there truly are going to be any kind of armed ultra-right election monitors shipped in from conservative areas, you better believe I will be counter-protesting. Polling place paramilitaries are the one element of this election cycle that I've been imagining since visiting the Holocaust Museum last winter.

[seemslikeadream]

Paul Ryan Is Planning a Revolution, and It Starts in January
By Ed Kilgore

Paul Ryan’s got a surprise in store for those who think Republicans cannot enact their agenda next year even if Trump wins. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
One of the by-products of all the talk this year about divisions within the Republican Party has been the illusion that, if given control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, the GOP would not be able to get much done — specifically, passing laws that many liberals find scary or disconcerting. Combined with the illusion that the filibuster would give Senate Democrats a veto over anything egregious, the Republicans-in-disarray meme has lulled a lot of Democrats, and the media, into a drowsy inability to understand how close we are to a right-wing legislative revolution if Donald Trump becomes president and Republicans hang on to Congress.

On Wednesday, Paul Ryan gave Washington a wake-up call. Reportedly angry that Beltway types were yawning at his plans for 2017 on the grounds that the usual gridlock would stop anything major from happening, the House Speaker held a presser to explain how he could cram a generation’s worth of legislation into a budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered, as Politico’s Ben Weyl reports:

Ryan peeled back the curtain on his strategy at a news conference after a reporter suggested he would struggle to implement his ambitious agenda next year. After all, it was noted, Republicans are certain to lack the 60 votes needed in the Senate to break Democratic filibusters on legislation. So Ryan gave a minitutorial on congressional rules and the bazooka in his pocket for the assembled reporters.
“This is our plan for 2017,” Ryan said, waving a copy of his “Better Way” policy agenda. “Much of this you can do through budget reconciliation.” He explained that key pieces are “fiscal in nature,” meaning they can be moved quickly through a budget maneuver that requires a simple majority in the Senate and House. “This is our game plan for 2017,” Ryan said again to the seemingly unconvinced press.
It’s unclear why the press is “seemingly unconvinced” that the budget reconciliation process is indeed a “bazooka in his pocket.” It’s been around as a device to package and speed through Congress vast policy changes since Ronald Reagan and his allies used it in 1981 to rewrite the tax code and enact far-reaching budget cuts and program changes. Republicans had the same revolutionary plans for its use four years ago if Mitt Romney had won and the GOP held on to the Senate. And they conducted a dry run at the very beginning of this year by enacting a sweeping reconciliation bill that nobody paid much attention to because they knew Obama would veto it. President Trump would not.

One major reason congressional Republicans conducted this dry run was to set a precedent that reconciliation could be used for seemingly non-budget items like repealing key elements of the Affordable Care Act (notably the individual mandate and purchasing subsidies). The GOP-appointed Senate parliamentarian, ostensibly the traffic cop whose job it is to stop non-germane riders, waved it on through. Democrats can whine about it, but if the GOP wins the trifecta in November, they will not be able to do a thing. So a future reconciliation bill would not only cripple Obamacare and strip millions of Americans of health coverage obtained via the exchanges, but also kill the Medicaid expansion and throw millions more out of coverage. Indeed, there is zero reason to think it would not include turning the original Medicaid program into a block grant to the states (probably along with the food-stamp program), as both Trump and congressional Republicans have proposed, while implementing Ryan’s own controversial plan to voucherize Medicare.

Those are just a few nasty features we can expect on the spending side of the budget. On the tax side, the only problem Republicans will face is cutting a deal with Trump on the relatively few differences between their tax schemes and his.

Trump and House Republicans have proposed different tax plans, but they are largely in sync on major principles. Both would cut the top tax rate for individuals to 33 percent from the current 39.6 percent. The corporate rate would drop to 15 percent under Trump’s plan and 20 percent under the House GOP plan, from 35 percent today. Both plans also would drain federal coffers of several trillion dollars and give the biggest boost to the wealthy. By the end of the decade, the richest 1 percent would have accumulated 99.6 percent of the benefits of the House GOP plan, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Think there’s some chance Trump won’t play ball? I don’t. One of the advantages of using reconciliation is that the entire toxic ball of reactionary legislation can be whipped through Congress and placed on Trump’s desk while he’s still looking for the washroom keys. He may still maintain big differences with congressional Republicans on matters like trade policy and immigration policy and NATO. But he’s given us no reason whatsoever to think he’d pause before rubber-stamping a bill that kills Obamacare and gets rid of all that “welfare” crap his supporters hate — while giving people like himself a historic tax cut billed as a job-generator.

Ryan may have conducted his explainer yesterday in order to get the word out to wavering Republican opinion-leaders that even though there are risks in placing Trump in the Oval Office, there’s a huge payoff as well that he can point to with considerable specificity. But it should be a warning to Democrats as well, and something that with imagination and persistence they can convey to those critical progressives who are meh about voting for Hillary Clinton and don’t think the identity of the president much matters. Even if you think Clinton is a centrist sellout or a Wall Street puppet, she’s not going to sign legislation throwing tens of millions of people out of their health coverage, abolishing inheritance taxes and giving top earners still more tax benefits, shredding the safety net, killing Planned Parenthood funding, and so on through Ryan’s whole abominable list of reactionary delights. If Democrats think a scenario so complicated that it’s lulled the press to sleep cannot be explained to regular voters, maybe they should break out the hand puppets. There is no more urgent and galvanizing message available to them.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... nuary.html

[JackRiddler]

Luther, yes.

But I don't think it will require that. The gut reaction to Trump outside his large minority of supporters is the most powerful force for Clinton, the fixing in this case is just fixings to the main course.

.

Trump won his nomination above board, Clinton had to steal hers. Things have not been going better for Clinton since. If she wins, it will be by exploiting as many undemocratic means as possible. Just like in the primaries, nothing will be left to chance... Letting alone the 'gut reaction' many, many Americans have against Clinton.

So what? "His" nomination with 12 or 13 million votes, less than Clinton (probably cheated to get) and not much more than Sanders really got. Totally meaningless. This is the other 100 million getting to vote now.

So this nomination thing or the passion of the WWF crowds turning out for Trump does not really change the overall demographics, the relative national sizes of these two parties, the fact that there is an open exodus of Republican politicians sabotaging Trump, or the fact that outside our sophisticated circles (read that semi-ironically) and outside the party loyalists, to the majority, Clinton is indeed a hated harridan of the establishment, which makes her a lot like another 3000 politicians who nevertheless keep winning elections, while Trump, correctly, is viewed as a total scam artist, a leader of morons, and a racist, fascist narcissist. He started his campaign by moves that won him one passionate demographic and alienated even larger ones beyond repair.

This is good. It's good. Americans really are not this stupid. It actually takes the more sophisticated scam, promising civilized things and then delivering barbarism, to fool a majority. They don't want the unadulterated, correctly labeled barbarism. You, maybe.

.

[Iamwhomiam]

Bumping. I think people are sleeping on this, an important issue.

[dada]

Donald Trump's New Tagline Echoes a Nazi Slogan


by anne hilt
September 25, 2016 12:25 PM

Ivanka Trump Claimed Her Former Husband Kept a Book Containing the Collected Speeches of Hitler in a Cabinet by His Bed
Recently, Donald Trump’s speeches have begun to include the phrase, “one people, under one God, saluting one flag.” The use of this phrase is not accidental or one of his off-teleprompter moments; he has used it at Values Voter Summit, and on the campaign trail at stops including Philadelphia, near Des Moines, Iowa, and Asheville, N.C.

CNNVerified account
‏@CNN
Trump at National Guard conference: “We will be one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.

The use of the phrase “under one God,” excludes anyone who is Hindu, atheist, agnostic. It also likely leaves out anyone who believes in a God that isn’t the same one envisioned by right-wing Christians in America, such as affirming Christian denominations and Muslims. It darkly hints at discrimination against anyone who sees God a bit differently. But the religious subtext isn’t the worst part of this phrase.

The worst part is that Trump’s campaign appears to have deliberately borrowed language used by the Nazi Party in Germany.

“Ein Volk, Ein Reich. Ein Führer!” roughly translates as “One people. One Nation. One Leader!” and was effectively the national motto of Germany between 1935 and 1945. It appeared in countless posters, radio broadcasts, and speeches. This was an adaptation of an earlier German slogan which even more closely resembles the one used by Trump: “Ein Reich. Ein Volk. Ein Gott.) (One nation. One people. One God)

It would be easier to attribute to pure chance if it were not for an allegation made by the New York City billionaire's ex-wife in a 1990 Vanity Fair interview. Ivanka claimed that Trump kept a book containing the collected speeches of Hitler (My New Order) in a cabinet by his bed and read them from time to time. Thus, it seems somewhat dubious that Trump would be unaware of the historical context of the phrase he has been using in his speeches recently.

It also is not the first time the Trump campaign has used material from Neo-Nazi and White Nationalist sources. In February, Trump repeatedly re-tweeted messages from the Twitter account “WhiteGenocide.” In July, Trump re-tweeted a picture of Clinton over a pile of cash with a six-pointed star that was originally posted on an anti-Semitic website by a Twitter account that had posted a number of anti-Semitic memes before. The chairman of the American Nazi party has enthusiastically endorsed Trump, calling his candidacy a “real opportunity for the movement.”

Trump also made some thinly veiled comments about Jews being “negotiators” and all about money in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in December 2015.

Trump’s son, Donald Jr., has also made a series of remarks related to white nationalism. Media Matters noted he has:

posted an image celebrating “Pepe the Frog, a symbol that has been co-opted by white supremacists and nationalists.”

said during a radio interview that the media would be “warming up the gas chamber” if Trump lied like Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has.

retweeted anti-Semitic writer Kevin MacDonald, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “the neo-Nazi movement's favorite academic.”

gave an interview to white nationalist radio host James Edwards, during which Edwards and Trump Jr. complained about “political correctness.”

Posted a meme comparing refugees to poison skittles, a dog whistle dating back to the Nazis.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight noted that the GOP’s Jewish donors are abandoning Trump, likely as a result of this Nazi-style rhetoric and strong support from White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and their media outlets.

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.co ... azi_slogan

This isn't something that just goes away after the election. The cult of personality around a tweeting idiot who openly signals to Nazis, I mean.

I'm not pointing this out as 'a reason to vote for Clinton.' I'm saying it's probably a good idea for everyone to give some serious thought about who and what they align themselves with. If you can't find it in yourself to stand up against racism and sexism, and say, 'this bullshit stops at me,' that's one thing, but please don't give it your tacit support.

You know, like when I see people say, 'I'm fond of meschievous trolls, I find trolls entertaining,' I think, "These people must know the sick things that go on behind the trolling. Don't they see that troll culture is cover for some of the most depraved, perverse shit."

And it isn't all for the shock value. The lowest and most disgusting racist and sexist memes and bile don't leave the message boards. The trolls who 'do it for teh lulz' are running cover for pure hate.

So whether it's willful ignorance, or the regular plain old kind, people are turning a blind eye to some really dark shit. I think some of you have seen what I'm talking about.

Maybe you think these things can be separated. I don't. I have to speak up, make it clear that I stand against it unequivocally, draw the line. Part of my strategy is trying to stir hearts and change minds. It's not about nazis or trolls here, it's about you and me.

[lyrimal]

So what? "His" nomination with 12 or 13 million votes, less than Clinton (probably cheated to get) and not much more than Sanders really got. Totally meaningless. This is the other 100 million getting to vote now.

.

You believe it "totally meaningless" Donald Trump has ran, by far, the more democratic campaign?

[Iamwhomiam]

You believe it "totally meaningless" Donald Trump has ran, by far, the more democratic campaign?

Let's get one thing straight - Donald Trump is not and has not been in control of his campaign, not ever.

It's laughable to so falsely claim he's run his campaign democratically; perhaps you might want to fact check this with Bush, or Rubio or Cruz or any of the Conservatives or Republicans who will be casting their vote this year for the best Republican candidate in the race, Hillary Clinton, and not for Trump.

[lyrimal]

You believe it "totally meaningless" Donald Trump has ran, by far, the more democratic campaign?

Let's get one thing straight - Donald Trump is not and has not been in control of his campaign, not ever.

It's laughable to so falsely claim he's run his campaign democratically; perhaps you might want to fact check this with Bush, or Rubio or Cruz or any of the Conservatives or Republicans who will be casting their vote this year for the best Republican candidate in the race, Hillary Clinton, and not for Trump.

You got me on semantics, good one! His name is on the door, so it was not unfair of me to state as I did. Nice attempted obfuscation though.

My point remains. Of the two campaigns, one is clearly more associated with electoral fraud than the other among the general populace, and deservedly so. Pretending differently is inciting ignorance.

[Iamwhomiam]

You believe it "totally meaningless" Donald Trump has ran, by far, the more democratic campaign?

Let's get one thing straight - Donald Trump is not and has not been in control of his campaign, not ever.

It's laughable to so falsely claim he's run his campaign democratically; perhaps you might want to fact check this with Bush, or Rubio or Cruz or any of the Conservatives or Republicans who will be casting their vote this year for the best Republican candidate in the race, Hillary Clinton, and not for Trump.

You got me on semantics, good one! His name is on the door, so it was not unfair of me to state as I did. Nice attempted obfuscation though.

My point remains. Of the two campaigns, one is clearly more associated with electoral fraud than the other among the general populace, and deservedly so. Pretending differently is inciting ignorance.

Hardly obfuscation, lyrimal. Trump is incapable of disguising his repulsive behaviour. Plainly ignorant is your lack of understanding of the Republican Party's efforts to limit minority participation by denying them their voting rights.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/13/voting-restrictions-2010-election

And for those complaining about those of us who follow our conscience and participate in our flawed as it is democracy by voting, every election held has always been about choosing the lesser evil - and always will be, until it this democracy is extinguished.

[lyrimal]

Republicans disenfranchise voters. Republicans disenfranchise Trump. So what. At least when Republicans disenfranchise voters, there is audible outcry.

You are deliberately avoiding the gorilla that was the Democrat primaries, state after state, and what promises to continue into the general election. Elevating Hillary over Trump requires ignoring what she's done/continues to do to democracy, among many other things. If she wins, democracy is extinguished.

[seemslikeadream]

what the hell did she do to this democracy that the Kennedy assassination hadn't already done?

it's all been kinda a game since then..don't ya think?

Donald Trump Is Setting a Time Bomb

His calls for racial voter intimidation on Election Day could explode in all our faces.

By Jamelle Bouie
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters during a campaign rally on October 4, 2016 in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Trump spoke in Arizona ahead of tonights vice-presidential debate.
Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters on Tuesday in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
Ralph Freso/Getty Images

Donald Trump spins so many tales—and goes after so many different groups and individuals—that it’s sometimes easy to miss his most invidious rhetoric. For months, the Republican presidential nominee has undermined confidence in our electoral system, warning his supporters that this election will be “rigged” and stolen through “voter fraud.”


Trump first told his supporters of this conspiracy theory at an Ohio rally in August and followed up the claim in an interview with Sean Hannity: “I’m telling you, Nov. 8, we’d better be careful because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.” This was in line with comments from his surrogates, like longtime adviser Roger Stone, who told Breitbart that Trump would begin to talk “constantly” about voter fraud. “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud.’ ” Stone continued: “‘If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.’” The implication is clear: If Trump loses, he should foment this “civil disobedience.” And he should start preparing his supporters for it now. He seems to be doing just that.

“The only way we can lose, in my opinion … is if cheating goes on,” said Trump during another August rally in Pennsylvania. In Wilmington, North Carolina—where more than a century earlier, white terrorists toppled a black-led city government in a violent insurrection—Trump warned his supporters that without strict voter identification laws, people would be “voting 15 times for Hillary.”

If that violence and intimidation strikes, it will be against the chief targets of Trump’s campaign: people of color.
These are rhetorical time bombs, statements that cast doubt on our democracy, planted with growing frequency as Trump tries to rationalize the fact that he’s losing. There’s a chance this is harmless, that Trump will resign himself to defeat if he loses to Hillary Clinton and bring his supporters with him—during the first presidential debate moderator Lester Holt asked him whether he would “accept the outcome [of the election] as the will of the voters,” and he said unequivocally “the answer is that if she wins I will absolutely support her.” But that was before he lashed out against the media for his poor performance, before the polls began to tilt back in Clinton’s favor. Now that he’s behind, Trump has returned to questioning the legitimacy of the election. More critically, the idea that he would respect the results of the election, full stop, ignores the hatred that’s come to characterize Trump’s campaign, the violence he’s condoned against protesters and other vocal opponents, the virulent prejudice he’s brought to mainstream politics, and the apocalypticism of his message, where he stands as the final hope for an embattled minority of resentful whites. These rhetorical time bombs, in other words, could be the catalyst for actual intimidation and violence, before and after Election Day. And if that violence and intimidation strikes, it will be against the chief targets of Trump’s campaign: people of color.

To that point, Trump has gone beyond his attacks on the integrity of the ballot. Now, he wants his supporters to monitor the polls in places where, he says, “fraud” is likely. “You’ve gotta go out, and you’ve gotta get your friends, and you’ve gotta get everyone you know and you’ve gotta watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas,” said Trump at a recent rally. “I hear too many bad stories and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about. So go and vote and go check out areas, because a lot of bad things happen and we don’t wanna lose for that reason.”

What does Trump mean by “areas?” It’s simple: He means places where black people live and vote, a dog whistle calibrated to an audience of voters who have lived off of a decade of conspiracymongering, from breathless theorizing over the obscure New Black Panthers to hysteria over groups that register voters and bring them to the polls, such as ACORN. And in particular, Trump is speaking to the idea—propagated through conservative media—that Barack Obama stole the 2008 and 2012 elections by using fraud and other nefarious tactics in cities like Philadelphia.

The “evidence” for this is Obama’s high support in a handful of inner-city areas. In 2012, for instance, there were precincts in Philadelphia and Cleveland where Obama won as much as 100 percent of the vote. These predominantly black neighborhoods backed the president with overwhelming support, as they had in the previous race against John McCain. This wasn’t unusual. Given the size of the country, the number of voters, and the extent of residential and political segregation, these unanimous areas—in Philadelphia, 59 divisions of several hundred voters each—were inevitable. Indeed, it happens for Republicans too. In 2008, McCain won 80 percent or more of ballots cast in counties across the interior South, despite losing the general election by 7 percentage points. But this dynamic was more pronounced in hyper-segregated communities of black Americans, an electorate that—according to exit polls—backed Obama with average support of 94 percent in his two elections. Statistically, there was a decent chance that one nearly all-black precinct or another was going to vote unanimously for the president.

But to many conservatives, this was suspect. On his syndicated radio show, Hannity said that it was “mathematically impossible” that no one had voted for Mitt Romney in these areas and that therefore, it “means we’ve got cheating going on in our elections.” Hannity’s disbelief echoed across right-wing media, where outlets like Breitbart and Townhall ran with the claim that voter fraud skewed the results in cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland. When considered in the elaborate canon of right-wing media, where marginal groups like the New Black Panthers stood as a threat to the voting rights of white Americans, the message was clear: Black voters had broken the rules and stolen the election from Romney for a black president.

This wasn’t just a conspiracy conservatives could believe in; it was one they were primed for. The allegation that Obama “rigged” his election to the White House goes back to the 2008 race, when Republicans went on a crusade against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, an organizing group that worked to register voters and advocate for low-income families. A blitzkrieg of anti-ACORN rhetoric swept conservative media, driven by doctored and misleading videos from far-right provocateurs.

In the wake of the frenzy, 52 percent of Republicans believed the ludicrous claim that the group had “stolen the election” for Barack Obama, comparable to the 51 percent of GOP voters who said that Obama was born outside of the United States. Today, Trump’s rhetoric is having a similar effect. According to a recent poll from the Associated Press, 58 percent of his supporters believe there is voter fraud, and half say that they have “little to no confidence in the integrity of the vote count.” Whether he realizes it or not, Trump’s attack on the election process grows out of years of mainstream Republican behavior and rhetoric that revved an engine of paranoia and fear among conservative voters. In addition to its strict requirements for identification, for example, North Carolina’s GOP-backed (and unconstitutional) voting law expanded the reach and authority of poll observers, allowing them to challenge any voter without cause, as long as they themselves were registered residents of the county (instead of the precinct). The provision was a boon to outfits like True the Vote, an anti-voter fraud group that essentially works to intimidate would-be voters.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... n_day.html

But this effort is also more than a tactic to try to ensure one side gets more votes than the other. The mania over voter fraud has everything to do with the election of Obama, America’s first black president, who won that contest—and re-election—on the power of his performance with people of color, and black voters in particular. In response, Republicans have begun a crusade against “fraud,” meaning anything that enhances access to the polls, and brings these voters to the voting booth. (Actual in-person voter fraud is infinitesimally rare.) It’s how we get the situation in North Carolina, where the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that those GOP lawmakers intentionally and illegally targeted black voters, searching for any measure under the sun that would limit their access to the polls. And it’s how we get the one in Wisconsin, which—according to a 2014 federal ruling (since superseded)—produced a “unique burden” that “disproportionately impacts black and Latino voters.”

Along with Trump himself, these measures represent and channel the rage of an angry plurality of white voters that sees Obama—and the cosmopolitan America he represents—as an existential threat to their perceived place in national life. This dynamic has a history in America. White backlash to black progress—from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement—is a potent part of our past, and whenever it strikes, black voters and black voting are always the first target.

On the eve of the 1868 presidential election, white vigilantes and Klansmen in the South terrorized newly enfranchised freedmen and killed black lawmakers, including state representatives in South Carolina and Arkansas. “In Camilla, Georgia,” writes historian Douglas Egerton in The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era, “Democrats opened fire on a Republican parade, killing or wounding twenty black marchers, and a black Georgia assemblyman was dragged from his home and nearly beaten to death.” In Louisiana, following the 1872 presidential election, “Republicans charged that more than two thousand supporters had been ‘killed, wounded, or otherwise injured’ in the final weeks leading up to [Ulysses S.] Grant’s reelection.” Authorities in one parish of the state stumbled upon the bodies of more than two dozen black Republicans. According to one account, survivors of the massacre were forced by Klansmen to march to the polls and cast a Democratic ballot.

Just as common as outright violence was intimidation at the voting booth. During New Jersey’s 1871 state and local elections, for example, mobs of white Democrats arrived at the polls in Camden to intimidate blacks out of casting ballots for Republican candidates. Some of this anger was pure partisanship, an effort to win by any means necessary. But the larger source was rage at the very idea of black voting, part of a broader belief that black Americans were illegitimate citizens: that they were ignorant, dependent, unworthy, and undeserving.

And so it continued through American history. In 1900, after taking North Carolina’s government back from a coalition of Populists and black Republicans using violence and intimidation, Democrats established Jim Crow, eliminating black voters from the state’s voter rolls. Sixty years later, racial reactionaries would fight a rear-guard action against the movement for voting rights, using violence, intimidation, and as much legal chicanery as they could muster. This didn’t just happen in the South.

“From 1960 to 1964 [future Chief Justice William] Rehnquist directed ‘ballot security operations’ for the Maricopa County Republican Party in Phoenix, known as ‘Operation Eagle Eye,’ which was designed to challenge the eligibility of Democratic voters at the polls,” writes journalist Ari Berman in Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. “Civil rights activists with the NAACP in Arizona testified that Rehnquist had personally administered literacy tests to black and Hispanic voters at Democratic precincts in Phoenix, questioning their qualifications by asking them to read portions of the Constitution.”

If we are living in the midst of another white backlash—and Trump’s ethno-nationalist campaign for the White House suggests that we are—then it’s only fitting that we’ve seen a new push against full access at the ballot box, spearheaded by a political party enthralled to a recalcitrant movement of white revanchists. Likewise, it’s fitting that its symbol and head, Trump, is now channeling a sesqui-century of racial reaction.

The difference between now and the past is that these new racial reactionaries are losing. For all their rage and anger, they are far short of a majority. Their primal scream isn’t enough to close the electoral gap. Donald Trump is on track to lose this presidential race, shut down by a strong—if somewhat silent—majority of blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and young people, along with liberal and moderate whites.


Still, Trump’s anti-democratic conspiracymongering is unprecedented in modern elections. And we can begin to guess at the consequences of this rhetoric. Angry people, stirred by demagoguery and convinced they’ve been robbed of their rightful power, are a real threat to the already-frayed fabric of our democracy. Donald Trump thinks the election is rigged. He says we need to watch “areas.” Despite what he said at the debate, he’s also said that, should he lose, he doesn’t know that he will concede: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.” And if he doesn’t? If he loses and pushes his base to reject the outcome? Then we could see protests, we could see mobs—we could even see violence, all directed against the people supposedly stealing the election. It wouldn’t be the first time.

[seemslikeadream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F00X0SB99vY

[JackRiddler]

Yes, lyrimal, in the openly racist shitshow that the Republican party has been for 50+ years, Trump got the majority of the voters participating in the 2016 primaries, amounting to I think 13 million, and he did do fairly according to the rules of the racist shitshow that the Republican party is. Notwithstanding the invaluable assist of literally billions in free media willingly granted to his act by the corporate overlords. And yes, in one month, almost all of these 13 million idiots who voted for him already will enthusiastically vote again for the WWF and reality TV star and fake billionaire scam artist -- along with 120 million other people. And after the landslide against the Kayfabe Hitler, inevitable based on the demographics in which Trump won the nomination by appealing to a racist shit-show and thus alienating tens of millions of others who do not accept that this is what a "lesser evil" should look like, you and yours will have the opportunity to claim it was all Democrat vote fraud what stole it from the noble Trump. This has already been prepared as the excuse, just as Clinton has already set up her insurance plan (it's all the left's fault if she somehow loses).

.