Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Iamwhomiam » Tue Oct 18, 2016 11:00 pm
by JackRiddler » Wed Oct 19, 2016 12:01 am
by 82_28 » Wed Oct 19, 2016 1:33 am
by 82_28 » Wed Oct 19, 2016 1:43 am
During a telephone interview with CNN”s Don Lemon, billionaire Mark Cuban was asked if he was surprised by all of the women who have come forward to accuse GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump of sexually assaulting them.
His answer: not at all.
“Have ever heard of anything like these women coming forward or him being untoward?” host Lemon asked him.
“Yes,” Cuban told the clearly surprised CNN host.
“You have?” Lemon asked.
“Yes, and I know one. “Cuban continued. “And it just didn’t happen recently. My friend reminded me and it was from 2000 and she, you know, I don’t expect her to come forward. I wouldn’t recommend she come forward. I know somebody else from two years ago that won’t come forward. So you know, it’s not anything that caught me by surprise.”
“So, again, this is you saying this, it’s not CNN’s reporting but tell us what you can since you know him,” Lemon pressed.
“That’s what I can tell you,” Cuban replied. “I can tell you my friend that was dating this one woman, you know, he just reminded me of the story they told me right after it happened and they put it all down in detail and obviously I remembered it. And then I had another person who contacted me after the race started and told me a story. I don’t want to go into it, it’s all all second- and third-hand, other than to say it’s factually true. i don’t have any doubts that what we’re hearing is true.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
by 8bitagent » Wed Oct 19, 2016 3:52 am
by seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 19, 2016 8:30 am
Adelson’s Newspapers on Trump: Everything is Fine
by Eli Clifton
The GOP establishment is scrambling for the lifeboats as Donald Trump’s campaign fails to engage in any meaningful corrective action following the release of a 2005 audio recording of the real estate magnate bragging about sexually assaulting women. The tape, alongside a stream of women coming forward to offer their own accounts of the GOP nominee’s unwanted sexual advances, has even led two “big money donors,” according to NBC News, to send emails asking for their money back. But Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, is moving full-steam ahead, writing big checks and mobilizing newspapers owned by his family to support Trump, even as the candidate careens toward a massive electoral defeat.
On September 12, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, each wrote $2.5 million checks to Future45, a pro-Trump super PAC, according to FEC filings. Eleven days later, the couple both made another set of $2.5 million donations, bringing the couples funding of the super PAC up to $10 million.
As news of the tape broke on October 7, journalists sought comment from the Adelsons but the couple kept their silence. Indeed, the Adelsons’ support came about as the candidate abandoned a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in favor of Sheldon Adelson’s position of a “binational state,” as one Trump aide told supporters.
Media Reframe
Trump’s demeaning statements about women and the airing of sexual assault allegations against the GOP nominee have had little impact on the Adelsons’ decision to throw their money behind his candidacy. In fact, newspapers owned by the Adelsons are actively pushing back against the women’s claims and seeking to frame Trump, despite dismal poll numbers, as a competitive candidate in the final weeks of the campaign.
Israel Hayom, the pro-Likud Israeli newspaper owned by Adelson’s family, attempted positive spin with the headline: “Trump scandals have minimal effect on his campaign, poll shows.”
The October 16 article, bylined by “Israel Hayom Staff,” claimed that “Trump has suffered minimal damage from the wave of scandals involving his treatment of women,” and focused exclusively on a Washington Post/ABC poll published on Sunday that showed Clinton holding a four-point lead over Trump. That was one of the most positive polls for Trump. Monday’s RealClearPolitics’ average of polls finds Clinton with a 6.4% lead.
Perhaps even more misleading was an Israel Hayom Sunday column by Boaz Bismuth that repeated Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric about a media conspiracy to destroy Trump’s candidacy and sinister secrets being withheld about Hillary Clinton. He wrote:
However, on Nov. 8, there will actually be a U.S. election featuring two candidates, one of them Trump, and the other, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who, according to reports, also has skeletons in her closet (perhaps even an entire cemetery, according to WikiLeaks.) But her problems, it seems, should be hidden. There is an ongoing concerted effort among American media outlets today to take down Trump.
Bismuth also sought to cast suspicions on the women’s claims based on the timing. He wrote:
Trump’s major problem is, of course, the fact that the claims from women are surfacing now, immediately following the release of the tape from 11 years ago. The timing is perfect, even if Clinton’s supporters claim that it is entirely coincidental.
Stateside, the Las Vegas Review Journal, which Adelson bought last year and sought to conceal his ownership, rushed to Trump’s defense in an October 10 editorial. The Review Journal’s editorial board argued that it was hypocritical of Hillary Clinton to even mention Trump’s audio recording in light of Bill Clinton’s checkered past with women. They wrote:
Do not mistake: Donald Trump deserves the harsh condemnation he has endured in response to the video released days ago on which he is heard bragging about how his wealth enables him to take sexual advantage of women. Voters can judge the issue for themselves. But it’s also worth noting that if every private comment is to be resurrected for public scrutiny, no human can ever be safe from the preening mob’s hollow shame and scorn.
And for Hillary Clinton to even broach the subject is the height of hypocrisy, arrogance and deceit.
Three days later, the paper published another editorial, this one attempting to shift the focus away from the recording of Trump bragging about groping women and towards WikiLeaks’ disclosures of Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta’s, hacked emails. The editorial concluded:
How do we know where Hillary Clinton’s private positions end and where her public positions begin? Given her penchant for prevarication, what should voters believe? What “private” positions will she eagerly jettison to curry favor with special interests? What “public” positions does she have no intention of honoring and are simply voter chum designed to attract support?
It all comes back to the same issue: Can anybody believe anything Hillary Clinton says about anything?
Against the Current
The Review Journal’s steady flow of pro-Trump editorials wouldn’t be so unusual if other major regional newspapers supported Trump’s presidential campaign. But they aren’t. USA Today, which never endorses candidates in the presidential race, declared Trump “unfit for the presidency,” and the Dallas Morning News, which hasn’t endorsed a Democrat for the presidency since before World War II, endorsed Clinton, saying “There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton.”
Adelson’s media properties—alongside Breitbart, which is partially owned by the Trump-supporting Mercer family—appear increasingly out of step with public opinion and are falling back on conspiracy theories about the Clintons. They are also dredging up decades-old sex scandals about Hillary Clinton’s husband and selective interpretations of polls to frame Trump as a desirable, or even competitive, candidate.
The Mercers and the Adelson are putting more than their millions behind Trump. They’re increasingly responsible for the only positive media attention for the Trump campaign as the election draws to a close and the candidate’s serial mistreatment of women sends his poll numbers into a death spiral.
http://lobelog.com/adelsons-newspapers- ... g-is-fine/
by seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 19, 2016 11:10 am
'Wall' of Taco Trucks to Line Up at Trump's Las Vegas Hotel in Protest
by BRIAN LATIMER
Photo of taco trucks parked in Las Vegas, drawing in potential eligible voters to register people to vote.
The threat of taco Trucks taking on every corner is coming close to being true in Las Vegas before the third presidential debate — where opponents of GOP nominee Donald Trump plan to create a "wall" of them in front of the Trump International Las Vegas hotel Wednesday.
"We did not come up with the idea for the wall, Donald Trump came up with building the wall," said Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the Culinary Workers Union 226 in Las Vegas. "We want to show him that walls don't divide us, and rather what he has done is uniting us. And when I say 'us,' I mean it as in every group that Trump has vilified: Muslims, women, immigrants and workers. We are all coming together to make sure that Donald Trump never becomes president."
Trump has pledged to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and to force Mexico to pay for it if elected president, one of his proposals that has riled many Latino Americans.
PlayWATCH: Latino Trump supporter warns of 'taco trucks' Facebook Twitter Google PlusEmbed
WATCH: Latino Trump supporter warns of 'taco trucks' 0:39
Taco trucks became part of the 2016 election after a Trump supporter warned in an interview with MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid that the expansion of the Latino culture in the U.S. would lead to "taco trucks on every corner." The comment drew backlash but also was mocked by Trump opponents and taco lovers who said they'd welcome taco trucks on every corner.
Nevada's influential Culinary Workers Union, which has worked throughout the election cycle to register voters, partnered with a coalition of local, state-level and national organizations to coordinate voter registration efforts throughout Las Vegas Tuesday — the state's voter registration deadline.
Volunteers and patrons lining up for the taco truck voter registration drive in Nevada.
Volunteers and patrons lining up for the taco truck voter registration drive in Nevada. Pili Tobar
Over 50 volunteers and 35 taco trucks are parked throughout Las Vegas drawing in potential eligible voters, according to Kevin McAlister, spokesperson for American Bridge. The bilingual effort aims to register as many Latino voters in the state before the deadline passes.
The union also is staging the line of taco trucks to draw attention to labor disputes it has with Trump.
"While we will have taco trucks, the reason we are out there is for the last year now Trump has illegally refused to bargain with workers who won a union election at his hotel," Cancela said. "The biggest message we have sent to him is he needs to come to the negotiation table."
Pili Tobar, the communications director of Latino Victory Project, said volunteers and patrons of the taco trucks are energized for the election.
"Having these taco trucks around, having music playing and at the same time registering people to vote — and obviously people here want to vote against Donald Trump — there is a celebration of culture happening," Tobar said. "It is a really interesting mix of emotions, and people are excited and having fun with it."
"Latino Victory works with partners throughout the country to empower the Latino community, and Nevada is one of our top targets," Tobar continued.
Over a dozen groups coordinated efforts Tuesday and Wednesday to register voters and build the wall: American Bridge, America's Voice, Battle Born Progress, Center for Community Change Action, Forward, For Our Future, iAmerica Action, Latino Victory Project, Next Gen Climate Nevada, the Nevada State AFL-CIO, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action Fund, Planned Parenthood Votes, Mi Familia Vota, Move On, and She Wins We Win.
Separately, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has been urging taco truck vendors to register Latinos to vote and coordinating media coverage when they do so.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/wall ... st-n668486
by Iamwhomiam » Wed Oct 19, 2016 11:26 am
The raging asshole semi-credibly portrayed on this site as a secret Clinton ally, Donald Trump, has done an invaluable service to the cause of election manipulation and fraud by diverting attention to the classic right-wing racist narrative of black people being over-counted.
by JackRiddler » Wed Oct 19, 2016 7:31 pm
Iamwhomiam » Wed Oct 19, 2016 10:26 am wrote:The raging asshole semi-credibly portrayed on this site as a secret Clinton ally, Donald Trump, has done an invaluable service to the cause of election manipulation and fraud by diverting attention to the classic right-wing racist narrative of black people being over-counted.
Here, I've corrected your error.
The raging asshole semi-credibly portrayed on this site as a secret Clinton ally, Donald Trump, has done an invaluable service to the cause of election manipulation and fraud by diverting attention to the classic right-wing racist narrative of black people being counted.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 19, 2016 10:44 pm
A short history of white people rigging elections
If Trump supporters really loved law and order, they wouldn’t be going around calling the election “rigged.”
Updated by Dara Lind dara@vox.com Oct 19, 2016, 9:20a
A cartoon from Harper’s in 1876, showing a bayonet (representing the federal government) impaling a snake labeled with “Ku Klux Klan” and “White League,” two white-supremacist groups engaging in terrorism and election violence. Thomas Nast via Getty
Three weeks before Election Day, a major party presidential candidate is openly questioning the legitimacy of the results, saying there’s a conspiracy to steal the election from him. And it’s not clear he or his supporters will go gently.
One member of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s inner circle, Roger Stone, has “predicted” (which is to say, encouraged) “widespread civil disobedience” if Trump loses the election — a situation that he once described, somewhat nonsensically, as a “bloodbath” without violence. Another ally, Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County — a sworn law enforcement officer himself — has adopted the slogan, “It’s pitchforks and torches time.”
Some followers are openly plotting to engage in voter intimidation on Election Day (saying they won’t do anything illegal but that they’ll get “right up behind” suspicious-looking voters — which, in fact, would be illegal). Others are openly endorsing the idea of a coup.
The irony, of course, is that this is the candidate who claims to be running on a platform of “law and order.” And his followers are the ones loudly cheering Blue Lives Matter at rallies, while characterizing the Black Lives Matter movement as “hateful” (in the words of Clarke, who is himself black). They’re less concerned about whether police are too quick to use force against black residents than about whether criticizing police practices emboldens criminals to take out cops.
Trump’s most devoted fans — the people currently voicing existential doubts about the legitimacy of American government — are the same ones who, in other contexts, are loudly proclaiming their faith in American values. They’re the ones attacking Colin Kaepernick as unpatriotic for refusing to stand during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and systemic racism.
In the context of the national debate over race and policing in America — a debate that’s partly a political fight and partly a culture war — Trumpists believe that American law and American institutions demand loyalty and obedience above all, that it is un-American to question their authority or their behavior.
But in the context of the 2016 presidential election, they don’t see any obligation to respect American institutions — they treat the electoral system with at least as much suspicion and preemptive disrespect as Black Lives Matter activists treat the police force.
The bottom line, it appears, is that the “law and order” patriots don’t actually think legitimacy is inherent in American laws and government. It’s dependent on whether white people want to see it as legitimate or not.
When government acts in accordance with their desires — when it helps them, and especially acts against nonwhites — “rule of law” and “law and order” become universal values, and nonwhites are being justifiably punished for violating them. But when government acts to protect nonwhite Americans, it’s seen as a reason to question the legitimacy of the government itself.
It’s not really about law. It’s about power. And in America, that power has historically been white supremacy.
The most ubiquitous voter fraud in US history was an attempt to disenfranchise black Americans
Let’s be clear: Rigged elections have happened in American history.
They’re incredibly rare, and in fact near impossible, in 2016, which makes bringing up fears of a “rigged election” this year a boogeyman at best and dangerous at worst. But at times in America, they’ve been quite common.
But the people who’ve most often rigged elections aren’t liberal elites acting in cahoots with nonwhite shock troops — they’re white supremacists trying to maintain white power in the face of a diverse electorate.
The time and place in American history during which elections, at least in the federal government, were most likely to be contested wasn’t that of the urban political machine of, say, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (associated with the modern Democratic Party). It was after the Civil War, in the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction South.
And it was the 19th-century Democrats — the conservative, post-Confederate, anti-Reconstruction and anti-black party — most often doing the rigging, and the integrated, pro–black advancement Republican Party (a generation after Lincoln) most often calling them out.
Before the Civil War, an average of only three congressional elections were challenged each cycle; after 1900, the average was four (and there were more seats in Congress to challenge). Between 1861 and 1899, though, an average of 15 congressional elections were challenged every cycle; on a few occasions, 10 percent of all members of Congress faced formal challenges.
Elections in the South were disproportionately likely to be challenged, especially after 1877 (when federal troops pulled out of the last of the Southern states, signaling the end of Reconstruction and allowing white Southerners to retake the reins of local political power). In particular, congressional districts with a large black population were the most likely to see the results of their elections challenged — usually because of accusations of widespread voter intimidation and fraud.
When House elections got challenged, it generally wasn’t because the losing candidate accused black voters of engaging in the fraud and intimidation. Usually an election got challenged because the candidate who lost the official vote for a House seat argued that black voters were being systematically disenfranchised by white Democrats, both by outright voter fraud on Election Day and by campaigns of intimidation that dissuaded Republicans (especially black Republicans) from even making it to the polls. And often, a congressional panel including both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the election had been rigged.
An 1867 illustration from Harper's shows black men exercising their right to vote in the South (with a suspicious-looking election official in the background). Hulton Archive via Getty
As Republican Sen. Timothy Howe of Wisconsin put it in 1875, “They could cheat Republicans in three ways: First, by receiving Democratic votes from illegal voters; second, by refusing Republican votes from legal voters; third, by allowing turbulence and tumult to deter Republicans from offering their votes. That they did cheat by each of those methods has been testified not only by scores but by thousands of voters.”
Put that way, it sounds like simple hard-nosed politics: Of course a party would want to maximize its own votes and minimize the other side’s. In practice, of course, the Democrats were running on a platform of explicit white supremacy, and the elections that got rigged were the ones in which black people were most likely to be voting.
Tactics included folding multiple ballots inside a single Democratic ballot, so that a voter could stuff the ballot box without noticing, and diluted the will of the actual black citizens trying to vote (the overwhelming majority of whom supported Republicans, since white Democrats often didn’t even want black people joining their party). And when white officials simply refused to allow black citizens to register to vote, they never even got a chance to find out which party they’d vote for anyway.
The problem with contesting elections, though, is that it was much easier for the congressional panel to know when people had been turned away from the polls, or when holes had been drilled in ballot boxes, than it was for them to know when people had simply been scared out of trying to vote at all.
Because while the current strain of “law and order” politics sees vigilante justice as a tool to protect the integrity of elections, in the 19th century, electoral violence — and even murder — was straightforwardly accepted as a way to keep black citizens from voting, and potentially tipping the election against white supremacist candidates.
America’s ugly and near-forgotten history of widespread electoral violence
During the era of the rigged election, voting was a dangerous act. It could be lethal.
This chart compiles reports of violence against black citizens (and white Republicans) filed by the South Carolina Freedmen’s Bureau in the first three years of Reconstruction. But the pattern it shows — that violence intensified around elections — would be true nearly anywhere in the South, and at any time during and immediately after Reconstruction.
There are many ways to use violence to intimidate voters. There was the physical blocking of polling places by armed groups, as happened in several precincts in a contested South Carolina election in 1880. There was beating of black voters in the weeks before the election in an attempt to scare them out of trying to vote, as was ubiquitous (for example) in Louisiana. There were assassinations of local Republican politicians — black and white alike — as happened in Alabama in 1875.
Often, the violence was conducted by organized clubs like the Knights of the White Camellia — designed not to engage in wanton racial terrorism, like the Ku Klux Klan, but specifically to suppress the Republican vote. “Old men and young men, married and single, even the boys have engaged in what is called ‘the great work of redeeming the country,’” one South Carolina newspaper wrote in 1876.
screencap terrorism video
Joe Posner/Vox
Sometimes intimidation worked. When up to 200 black Louisianans were killed in the “Opelousas massacre” of September 1868 (at the end of a chain of events that started with the beating of a white teacher for registering black voters), Ulysses S. Grant’s reelection campaign pulled out of Louisiana and Georgia entirely.
Sometimes it didn’t, and the results were bloody. When black Americans mobilized to vote en masse in Eufaula, Alabama, in 1874, white terrorists shot into the unarmed crowd, killing seven people and wounding dozens.
Even winning an election didn’t guarantee safety from violence. Local elections in Louisiana in 1872 were so contested and fraud-riddled that black residents of Colfax had to station themselves outside the courthouse to protect the Republican county judge and sheriff from being forcibly unseated by their Democratic opponents. Eventually, a white insurgent group of 300 took the whole courthouse by force, and 100 black citizens were killed.
This is the core truth of Reconstruction violence: It wasn’t just against the black vote but against the state. It was a declaration that the governments in which black people voted were illegitimate — justifying them being replaced by force (as in Colfax or in the Louisiana legislature). Often, it meant that particular elected officials were targeted — state actors threatened in the service of restoring legitimate government.
The Eufaula massacre of 1874 was followed by the murder by a white mob of the son of a local judge — who was a “scalawag,” a Southerner who took part in the Reconstruction government. The judge fled the state. (The mob also burned a ballot box.) In Mississippi in that same year, white militants drove a county sheriff out of the state in advance of the election, then murdered, among others, a black state legislator.)
These acts of white violence were usually minimized at the time: death counts deflated, communities waved off as “stable” when an act of intimidation worked.
This history is important to recognize that voter fraud and electoral violence are a part of American history. And traditionally, they have usually both been on the same side: the same people intimidating nonwhite Americans out of casting a ballot were those who engaged in fraud to make sure the “right” person won.
Nonwhite Americans are the ones who are accused of criminality and wanting to disrupt the peace
Even as all this violence against black Americans exercising their newly established right to vote was going on, white supremacists were laying the groundwork for the modern idea of black criminality — saying that the real threat to democracy and social order was black lawlessness.
The Colfax massacre was commemorated as the “Colfax riot.” Before the massacre, white newspapers had spread lies about black atrocities; after the massacre, a commemorative plaque on the site celebrated the “end of carpetbag misrule.”
This cartoon is a white Democrat’s look at the 1872 election in Louisiana: black Americans as slavish accessories to a monarchical (therefore illegitimate) federal government.
This cartoon is a white Democrat’s look at the 1872 election in Louisiana: black Americans as slavish accessories to a monarchical (therefore illegitimate) federal government. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty
“White backlash to black progress — from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement — is a potent part of our past,” Jamelle Bouie wrote earlier this month. “And whenever it strikes, black voters and black voting are always the first target.” Because in the eyes of whites, black Americans simply weren’t capable of carrying the weight of democracy. White supremacists justified their violations of the rule of law by implying that black Americans simply, innately, didn’t care about law or order at all.
Democrats and their newspapers weren’t usually concerned about white attacks on black Republicans. But when a black Democrat was beaten by a group of black Republicans in 1876, newspapers reacted in alarm — an act of 19th-century concern trolling that foreshadowed current debates about “black-on-black crime” and the modern idea that nonwhite Democrats are simply a slavish mob.
White crime was seen as the result of social circumstance (a consequence of poverty, or an immigrant trait that someone should be given the chance to assimilate out of), and black crime was accepted as the cause of other black social problems. That paradigm is still pretty widespread.
It’s the reason the Black Lives Matter movement is so often accused (falsely) of not caring about black-on-black crime. It’s also the reason that, in any individual case of an officer killing a black American, suspicion tends to fall on the victim — and any evidence of a criminal act (like mere drug possession or use) is treated as a justification for the death.
Often, criticizing the police is seen as a threat to public safety; this is the heart of the “war on cops” narrative. It’s a threat to public order to reject the legitimate authority of government institutions. At least when it’s not white people doing it.
Who are the actual vigilantes in contemporary America?
To state the obvious, American race relations have changed in the past 150 years. In particular, they’re not just white and black. But the same dynamic — of a hyped nonwhite threat versus an ignored white threat — has shaped understanding of Latinos, and particularly immigrants, in America.
In theory, the entire debate over immigration (which is often reduced to unauthorized immigration) is about the “rule of law.” Opponents of comprehensive immigration reform say it would undermine the rule of law to allow people who lived in the US without authorization to become legal residents or citizens.
A huge part of anti-immigrant anxiety is fear of immigrant criminality. Donald Trump rose to prominence by characterizing unauthorized immigrants as violent criminals and appearing at campaign rallies with people whose children were murdered by unauthorized immigrants. At his convention over the summer, his speaker lineup included a roster of victims, or relatives of victims, of crimes committed by immigrants. Immigrants are seen as a threat to both personal safety and public safety: a “Trojan horse” waiting to happen, people who don’t respect “our laws.”
If it were that simple, it would be straightforward: a defense of American institutions against people who have shown a willingness to ignore them. But anti-immigrant rhetoric isn’t pro-government. To the contrary. At best, it sees government as unwilling to protect the rule of law; at worst, it assumes the government is actively colluding to undermine it.
Volunteers with the Minuteman Project, 2005.
Volunteers with the Minuteman Project, 2005. Scott Olson/Getty
In fact, the 21st-century anti-immigrant movement had its own vigilante movement: the Minuteman Project, in which volunteers sat at the US/Mexican border, often armed, attempting to catch unauthorized border crossers. (One woman associated with the Minuteman movement, Shawna Forde, is currently on death row, after being convicted of invading the home of a Latino family and murdering the father and 9-year-old daughter. According to prosecutors, she planned to rob the family and use the money to fund her organization, Minuteman American Defense.)
The rule of law doesn’t mean a faith in legal institutions. It means the assumption that institutions will use law as a tool against appropriate people. And just as it did in the 19th century, these dynamics are never more obvious than during election season.
In 2008, when two members of the New Black Panther Party — one of whom was a registered election monitor — stood outside a Philadelphia polling place, gaining coverage prominently on Fox News, uproar was so serious that the Obama administration was attacked for not pursuing a formal civil rights inquiry into the suppression of white votes.
There will almost certainly be people with guns standing outside heavily nonwhite polling places on Election Day. Many of them think of the New Black Panther Party (or Black Lives Matter more broadly) as a threat to democracy, and themselves as its defenders.
The only difference is the race of the threatened.
Who is America for?
When people both champion “law and order” as a slogan and undermine it by challenging the legitimacy of institutions in practice, the underlying constant is racial resentment. But David Duke aside, most of them don’t see themselves as engaging in a race war.
Their understanding of the world — their “deep story” — is that government, and American social elites, is in collusion with nonwhite voters to disenfranchise whites. It’s a 21st-century iteration of Reconstruction politics, when post-Confederates and Southern Democrats felt the federal government was trying to force racial equality on them and undermine their way of life.
It’s a zero-sum view of government: the idea that a government has to pick winners and losers, and the progress of one group has to come at the expense of another.
In theory, nothing could be further from the way American government and society are supposed to work. American national identity is grounded in principles like the rule of law, more than in any particular idea of what kinds of people are American. In theory, American government exists to make sure that universal rights are universally distributed.
In practice, though, America has picked winners and losers all the time. (It’s just that white Americans have nearly always been the chosen winners.) It’s been extremely bad at doing the things it promised in its founding documents to do. This is, as much as anything, the fundamental story of American history: the conflict between its ideals of universalism and a reality that falls short.
Two men during a march after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.
Two men during a march after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty
Americans — each American — get to decide which they believe in more. They can choose to believe that America’s universal ideals are worth striving for, and try to expand their practical reach. (Indeed, this is how most of the major social movements of American history have worked, by challenging American elites to live up to their ideals.)
Or they can choose to believe that patronage is the way of the world: that government can’t help everyone and that the most important thing is to make sure they and their group are the ones getting help.
In essence, each American gets to decide whether she thinks American ideals — things like the rule of law and the legitimacy of elections — ought to be trusted in all cases, or whether their legitimacy is dependent on which side wins.
by Iamwhomiam » Wed Oct 19, 2016 10:58 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 19, 2016 11:55 pm
While You Were Watching The Debate, Trump Just Launched Trump TV
“If you’re tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast.”
posted on Oct. 19, 2016, at 8:47 p.m.
Charlie Warzel
BuzzFeed News Reporter
In the minutes before the third and final Presidential debate, Donald Trump went live on Facebook in what may have been the inaugural broadcast of a forthcoming Trump News Network.
A little after 8:30 P.M., Trump’s official Facebook page posted the link to the live video, offering up an alternative to the mainstream broadcast. The message: “If you’re tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast. Starts at 8:30 EST/5:30 PST — you won’t want to miss it. Enjoy!”
The broadcast quickly ballooned to around 200,000 concurrent viewers but quickly fell off to around 120,000. As of the middle of the debate, the feed was holding steady at around 170,000, trailing only the ABC News debate feed on the platform.
The livestream featured punditry from retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and in place of commercials, the feed was interspersed with pro-Trump ads and a special message from Ivanka Trump. Looking more like public access than a glitzy cable news offering, the broadcast moved slowly between guests with at least one or two hot mic off moments where the hosts discussed where the next segment was headed. There were also hints of some surprise programming after the debate ends.
While this isn’t Trump’s first livestream event — the campaign went live before the second debate during Trump’s press conference with Juanita Broaddrick and the Bill Clinton sexual assault accusers — but it appears to be the first attempt at some original programming and analysis. The streaming infrastructure looks to be provided by Ride Side Broadcasting, a conservative video streaming network based out of Auburn, Alabama.
The livestream comes on the heels of news this week that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was in the early phases of shopping a Trump TV network. This morning, in response to post-election Trump TV rumors, Trump campaign CEO, Steve Bannon hedged, telling CNN only that “Trump is an entrepreneur.”
As for a potential channel name? Plenty of options have been bandied about but judging by Trump’s own page, Trump TV might be a safe bet.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/ ... .hrwvnJokO
by 8bitagent » Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:09 am
by JackRiddler » Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:09 am
by bks » Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:42 am
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