;)
The Commentariat -- October 28, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Ernesto Londoño & Shasta Darlington of the New York Times: "Brazil on Sunday became the latest country to drift toward the far right, electing a strident populist as president in the nation's most radical political change since democracy was restored more than 30 years ago. The new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has exalted the country's military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive into exile his political opponents. He won by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in Brazil -- a country whiplashed by rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil -- and by presenting himself as the alternative." Mrs. McCrabbie: So the majority of Brazilian voters have learned nothing from their own history nor from the U.S.'s bad example. I take no comfort in knowing others are as dumb as our fellow citizens.
Campbell Robertson, et al., of the New York Times: "Authorities on Sunday identified the 11 victims of a shooting rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue in which a man armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and three handguns shot into a morning worship service in the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in the United States in decades. The dead included eight men and three women. The oldest victim, Rose Mallinger of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, was 97. Two brothers, David and Cecil Rosenthal, ages 54 and 59, were the youngest. A husband and wife, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, ages 84 and 86, of Wilkinsburg, Pa., were also among the dead. Mayor Bill Peduto called the attack the 'darkest day of Pittsburgh's history' but vowed that the city would move forward." ...
... ** Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "How does one even begin to explain to one's children what it means that the president denounces violence and division as he foments both, on an hourly basis? Perhaps we can look to Florida for a tip. Last week the state's gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum said that because Neo-Nazis and white supremacists were supporting and campaigning for and contributing to his opponent Ron DeSantis, perhaps it was time to stop talking about causation entirely. 'I'm not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist,' he said. 'I'm simply saying the racists believe he's a racist.' The formulation is useful because it reframes a pointless debate about what leaders' dog whistles really mean into a debate about what their followers end up believing. If what is said no longer matters, we can perhaps still evaluate what is heard." ...
... Roey Hadar of ABC News: "In the wake of a shooting massacre at a synagogue and a mail-bomb campaign against prominent critics of ... Donald Trump, a former Homeland Security chief said the U.S. currently has a 'toxic' political environment in which 'deranged' people 'feel it's their place' to bring about change. Jeh Johnson, who was Homeland Security Secretary under President Barack Obama, told 'This Week' Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday..., 'We live now in a very, very toxic environment that includes an incivility in our political discourse among our leaders. The attack yesterday and the attempted pipe bombings over the course of last week should be a wake-up call to all Americans to demand change, and change has to start at the top,' he said.... 'Our president has the largest microphone; he has the largest bullhorn,' the former Homeland Security secretary said. '... Americans should demand that their leaders insist on change, a more civil discourse, and a more civil environment generally.'" ...
... Julia Ioffe, in a Washington Post op-ed: "When Trump called himself a nationalist in Houston last week, the alt-right knew exactly what he meant. One alt-right commenter was elated because nationalism 'is inherently connected to race.' Another wrote that he was 'literally shaking' with glee.... The president did not tell a deranged man to send pipe bombs to the people he regularly lambastes on Twitter and lampoons in his rallies.... Trump didn't cause another deranged man to tweet that the caravan of refugees moving toward America's southern border (the one Trump has complained about endlessly) is paid for by the Jews before he shot up a synagogue.... But this definition of culpability is too narrow, too legalistic -- and ultimately too dishonest. The pipe-bomb makers and synagogue shooters and racists who mowed a woman down in Charlottesville were never even looking for Trump's explicit blessing, because they knew the president had allowed bigots like them to go about their business, secure in the knowledge that, like [Boris] Nemtsov's killers, they don't really bother the president, at least not too much. His role is just to set the tone. Their role is to do the rest." ...
Felicia Sonmez & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Sunday lashed out at billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer, ridiculing him as a 'stumbling lunatic' days after Steyer was targeted by one of more than a dozen pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of the president. Trump's tweet came shortly after Steyer accused the president and the Republican Party of creating an atmosphere of 'political violence' in an interview on CNN's 'State of the Union.' 'Just watched Wacky Tom Steyer, who I have not seen in action before, be interviewed by @jaketapper,' Trump said in the tweet. 'He comes off as a crazed & stumbling lunatic who should be running out of money pretty soon. As bad as their field is, if he is running for President, the Dems will eat him alive!'... 'It is unthinkable that in the midst of the horrible political violence our president would resort to name-calling instead of repairing the damage to the fabric of our country,' Steyer [responded]." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Let's apply Dahlia Lithwick's Gillum Rule here. Will Trump's followers perceive that Trump is condoning violence against Steyer by belittling him just after a Trump follower sent Steyer a bomb? Why, yes. Yes, they will. Trump does not only want voter to be afraid of caravans of Middle Eastern terrorists on their way to invade the U.S. at the Rio Grande; he also wants every political foe to be afraid to walk out his door or open his mouth. Trump may not know how to close an umbrella or wipe his ass, but he sure knows how to fearmonger.
... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) deleted a tweet that had warned that three wealthy Jewish Democrats are 'buying' the midterm elections for their party, a posting that appeared after liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros ― one of his targets ― had been sent a pipe bomb. The McCarthy tweet -- which also named former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and California businessman Tom Steyer -- was taken down three days before a gunman killed 11 people Saturday in an anti-Semitic attack at ... a Pittsburgh synagogue." "We cannot allow Soros, Steyer and Bloomberg to buy this election," McCarthy tweeted. Mrs. McC: Cesar Sayoc also tried to send Steyer a pipe bomb.
Peter Wade of Rolling Stone: "Republican gubernatorial candidate and current Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp incorrectly canceled some 340,000 voter registrations, according to a recent investigation. Although Kemp claimed the voters left the state of Georgia or moved to another country, they hadn't, Greg Palast, who filed suit against Kemp, wrote in Truthout. According to John Lenser, who is CEO of CohereOne and who led a review of the list of purged voters for Palast, '340,000 of those voters remained at their original address. They should have never been removed from the voter registration rolls.' Palast only obtained the list after he filed suit against Kemp.... Kemp used a tactic Palast calls 'Purge by Postcard' to remove eligible voters from the rolls. Kemp sent a postcard that could have easily been mistaken for spam to voters who did not vote in the prior election. If a voter did not return the postcard, Kemp purged their registration without informing the voters it was happening. Thanks to a June 2018 Supreme Court ruling that reversed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, this practice is now legal.... It is too late for [these individuals] to register for the upcoming midterm elections...." ...
... Mrs. McC: BTW, that Supreme Court ruling ws 5-4. Sam Alito wrote the majority opinion; Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent. Please don't tell me that the right-wing Supremes aren't purposely suppressing the vote. And they know full well that they are disproportionately suppressing the votes of people who vote Democratic & tend (a) to be more "occasional" voters, i.e., voters who often vote only in presidential elections, and (b) more often change domiciles. While voter state suppression laws can be reversed when Democrats gain control of state governments, the most effective solution would be an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing citizens the franchise.
*****
Who will condemn Trump's flirtation with alt-Right neo-Nazis now? Jared Kushner? Sheldon Adelson? Bibi Netanyahu? Nahhhh! -- Comment posted by a New York Times Reader re: Synagogue Slaughter. Thanks to Aunt Hattie. ...
... Another Horrible Hate Crime. Campbell Robertson, et al., of the New York Times: "Armed with an assault rifle and at least three handguns, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning, killing at least 11 people and wounding six others, city officials said.... The suspect, identified by law enforcement officials as Robert D. Bowers, 46, surrendered to the police after barricading himself inside a third-floor office of the synagogue, the Tree of Life Congregation in eastern Pittsburgh. Four police officers were among the wounded, the authorities said. 'It's a very horrific crime scene, said Wendell D. Hissrich, Pittsburgh's public safety director, adding that federal authorities were investigating the mass shooting as a hate crime.... Before it was deleted Saturday morning, a social media account believed to belong to [Bowers] was filled with anti-Jewish slurs and references to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. In January, an account under his name was created on Gab, a social network that bills itself as a free speech haven. The app, which grew out of claims of anti-conservative bias by Facebook and Twitter, is a popular gathering place for alt-right activists and white nationalists whose views are unwelcome on other social media platforms. Early members included the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website." (This is an update to a story linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast: "The man accused of murdering at least 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning was a neo-Nazi who posted online about killing Jews -- and raged at Donald Trump for being insufficiently anti-Semitic.... [Robert] Bowers was ... among a set of neo-Nazis who criticized President Donald Trump for being, as they saw it, not biased enough toward Jews. 'Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,' Bowers wrote on Gab. 'There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation.' Bowers also bashed Trump for being insufficiently supportive of the white supremacists of the deadly Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally and of the Proud Boys, a violent alt-right gang." --s ...
... David Ingram of NBC News: "Researchers who study social media say they are seeing an increase in anti-Semitic posts from far-right users of Instagram and Twitter, and that the services aren't doing enough about it. Separate researchers who were independently looking at the two social networks said that attacks on Jewish people had spiked on both services ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, similar to a rise in harassment that occurred before the 2016 presidential election. Many but not all of the posts mention billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, the researchers said. Soros is frequently the subject of unfounded conspiracy theories and his home was among the targets this week in a series of attempted bombings." ...
... Michael Kunzelman of the AP: "Far-right extremists have ramped up an intimidating wave of anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates and others ahead of next month's U.S. midterm elections, according to a report released Friday by a Jewish civil rights group. 'Prior to the election of ... Donald Trump, anti-Semitic harassment and attacks were rare and unexpected, even for Jewish Americans who were prominently situated in the public eye. Following his election, anti-Semitism has become normalized and harassment is a daily occurrence,' the report says." ...
... Alexandra Schwartz of the New Yorker: "Since the 2016 Presidential campaign, anti-Semitic vitriol has exploded on the Internet. Anti-Semitism has burrowed into the American mainstream in a way not seen since the late nineteen-thirties and early nineteen-forties, when it also fused easily with conservative isolationist fervor and racism." ...
... Howard Fineman, in a New York Times op-ed: "I grew up in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue. My parents taught Sunday school there. I learned to read Hebrew (sort of) there. I was a bar mitzvah there.... The mass murder at Tree of Life has shaken my perhaps naïve faith in this country, one that I began developing as a boy growing up in Pittsburgh.... I was taught in Squirrel Hill that we were in the one country that was an exception to the history of the human race in general and the Jews in particular. Founded on Enlightenment principles of individuality, freedom, tolerance and justice, the United States was the only place besides Israel where Jews could live at one with their nation, unburdened by fear or confusion about identity.... Without diminishing anyone else's suffering and death, it's a sad fact that the Jews often are the canaries in the coal mine of social and political collapse. So, what does the bloodshed in the Tree of Life mean?It is a sign that hatred of The Other is poisoning our public life." ...
... Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker: "On Wednesday afternoon, a man named Gregory Bush allegedly shot and killed two African-American customers at a Kroger's supermarket in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, reportedly saying afterward, 'whites don't kill whites.' Ten to fifteen minutes before, he had tried the predominantly black First Baptist Church, where he spent several minutes rattling the locked doors... The massacres in Pittsburgh and Jeffersontown -- and the pipe bombs sent to a dozen Democratic leaders this week, allegedly by the Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc -- share some obvious common causes. They are the toxic politics of the President, and the racist, nationalist fervor that has been inflamed by his rise, and the success and the militancy of the gun lobby, which for decades has refused to acknowledge the obvious: that one way to have fewer killings is to make it harder for Americans to possess guns. Each of these is a national crisis on its own." ...
... Amber Jamieson of BuzzFeed News: "In his first televised comments on Saturday's deadly mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue..., Donald Trump appeared to place some blame on officials at the house of worship for not having stronger security. 'This is a case where if they had an armed guard inside, they might have been able to stop him immediately,' Trump told reporters. 'They didn't. And he was able to do things that unfortunately he shouldn't have been able to do.'... When asked if his administration needed to reexamine gun regulations, Trump said gun regulation 'has little to do with it.'" Mrs. McC: According to the New York Times report linked above, one of the guns the shooter had was "an AR-15-style assault rifle." ...
... Seung Min Kim, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Saturday strongly condemned the deadly mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue as 'pure evil' and anti-Semitic, and then, without skipping a beat, slipped into campaign mode with attacks on trade deals, a discourse on palm trees and a dig at a potential 2020 rival. Just over a week before midterm elections, the president traveled to Indiana for a convention speech and later a political rally in Illinois, though he joked about canceling both events because of a 'bad hair day.'... After pleading for peace and harmony, Trump seemingly couldn't resist reverting to his favorite political insults. He criticized the trade deals of past presidents and boasted about his actions on ethanol. Trum attacked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her claim to Native American heritage...." ...
... Here are Trump's full remarks about his bad hair day, via Jason le Miere of Newsweek. ...
... More Lies. Ros Krasny of Bloomberg: "President Donald Trump justified going ahead with a campaign rally, hours after 11 people were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue, by erroneously saying the New York Stock Exchange reopened the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.... In fact, with Manhattan in lockdown after the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers, the NYSE and the Nasdaq exchanges were closed until Monday, September 17, the longest shutdown since 1933. When markets reopened, U.S. stocks suffered several days of steep losses. Trump made comments earlier Saturday, during a speech in Indianapolis, on the general theme that he wouldn't let the perpetrator of the synagogue shooting dictate his schedule." [Open in private window] --s ...
I remember when we had the attack in Manhattan, we opened the stock exchange the next day. People were shocked. -- Donald Trump, remarks at National FFA Organization Convention, Indianapolis, Saturday
I remembered Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy, he headed up the New York Stock Exchange on September 11th, and the New York Stock Exchange was open the following day.... But he got that exchange open. We can't make these sick, demented, evil people important. -- Trump, remarks at a campaign rally in Murphysboro, Ill., Saturday
Remember the teams, the Yankees, George Steinbrenner. He said we have got to play, even if nobody comes, nobody shows up, we have got to play. -- Trump, a few minutes later
While Trump remembered 'Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy,' as reopening the exchange, it was actually Dick Grasso, at the time chief executive of the NYSE. Grasso appeared on Fox News just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 11, to recall the reopening. Dick Russell was a senator from Georgia, known as a fierce defender of segregation. Trump also implied that baseball did not pause for the attacks but started playing games as soon as possible. But the games were canceled that night -- and then for the rest of the week. Professional baseball also did not start up again until six days later, on Sept. 17. The whole baseball season was pushed back a week.There are many reasons the president might have wanted to have continued with a campaign rally. But conjuring up a phony story about the stock exchanges and baseball after the Sept. 11 attacks is not a valid one. We can possibly understand one mistake, but not that it was repeated hours later. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
... Juan Cole: "At Charlottesville last year, Neo-Nazis celebrating Trump's advent in the White House chanted 'You will not replace us/ Jews will not replace us!'... Trump called these wretched Nazis who hate Jews 'very fine people.' White nationalists and their sympathizers comprise perhaps eleven million of the US population. But if you count their sympathizers, the number rises to 20 mn.... Although he has not himself deployed specifically anti-Semitic themes..., some proportion of the people to whom he appeals with these latter memes are also rabid bigots toward Jewish Americans.... There was a time when decent people in the GOP would decline to accept the support of the white nationalists, feeling that this movement is so odious that it should remain in the political shadows. The Republican Party needs explicitly to return to that standard, including Trump." --s ...
... Eli Stokels & Noah Bierman of the Los Angeles Times: "[Friday presented] yet another moment of mixed messages and missed opportunities for leadership from a president who, in times of national crisis, has repeatedly delivered the expected 'presidential' performance only briefly and from a script, before returning to his familiar political attacks. In this case, moreover, the attacks were the very sort that had critics charging that his provocative rhetoric -- including the harsh jibes at [George] Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others -- were what goaded the would-be bomber to target them.... Aides also refused to say whether Trump had been briefed on the arrest before or after his 10:19 a.m. tweet in which he suggested doubts about the attempted bombs.... Trump's inability to sustain a unifying message in the midst of national trauma -- in this case potential assassinations of two former presidents, former Cabinet officials and several members of Congress -- sets him apart from all predecessors, according to Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.... Trump did not call any of the Democrats who were the intended targets, as past presidents likely would have." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Maureen Dowd: "The president has ... put a tremendous effort into the sulfurous stew of lies, racially charged rhetoric and scaremongering that he has been serving up as an election closer. He has been inspired to new depths of delusion, tweeting that 'Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.' He has been twinning the words 'caravan' and 'Kavanaugh in a mellifluous poem to white male hegemony. Whites should be afraid of the migrant caravan traveling from Central America, especially since 'unknown Middle Easterners' were hidden in its midst, an alternative fact that he cheerfully acknowledged was based on nothing. The word 'Kavanaugh' is meant to evoke the fear that aggrieved women will hurtle out of the past to tear down men from their rightful perches of privilege.... Republican ... [always act from] the same shameless playbook, replicated since Richard Nixon launched his racist Southern Strategy.... The only difference -- and it is a shocking one -- is that Donald Trump cuts out the middleman. He handles the dirty work himself -- and revels in it. In the old days, presidents let their hatchet men stir up the racist skulduggery behind the scenes. So when Republican lawmakers complain about Trump's white nationalist rhetoric, what they are really saying is that they prefer a more subtle racism." ...
... Danielle Pacquette, et al., of the Washington Post: "As far back as 2002, lawyer Ronald Lowy recalled, the windows of [Cesar] Sayoc's white Dodge Ram van were covered in stickers of Native American regalia. Though Sayoc was Filipino and Italian, he claimed to be a proud member of the Seminole tribe, Lowy said. The lie was one of many Sayoc would spread about himself over the years. He falsely claimed to have worked as a Chippendales dancer, and he was once charged with fraud for modifying his driver's license to make it appear he was younger, said Lowy, who represented him in the case.... '[Sayoc] had no interest in politics, was always at the night clubs, the gyms, wherever he thought he could meet people, impress people. And along came the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who welcomed all extremists, all outsiders, all outliers, and he felt that somebody was finally talking to him,' Lowy said." ...
... Amanda Arnold of New York: "After authorities released [Cesar] Sayoc's name, Rochelle Ritchie, a political commentator and former congressional press secretary, tweeted that she had tried to report an account under that name earlier this month, after it sent her threatening messages and menacing images after one of her appearances on Fox News. In the same tweet, she attached the response she got from Twitter on October 11, which reads, 'There was no violation of the Twitter Rules against abusive behavior.'... One of the tweets read, 'We have nice silent Air boat ride for u here on our land Everglades Swamp We will see you 4 sure. Hug your loved ones real close every time you leave you home.'... Another ... included ... images of alligators and a half-consumed human body.... Friday evening, following backlash, Ritchie tweeted a screenshot of a message she received from Twitter, asking her to 'disregard [their] last reply as it was sent in error.'"
Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "Militia groups and far-right activists are gearing up to head to the Mexican border to try to stop a migrant caravan from entering the United States, as conservatives and the far-right escalate their warnings about the supposed dangers it poses. Earlier this week, the U.S. Border Patrol warned landowners in Texas that they could expect 'possible armed civilians' on their property because of the news about the caravan." --s
** "Stepping Off the Internet." Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed News: "... the dichotomy between an online world and 'real life' is (and has always been) a false one. The hatred, trolling, harassment, and conspiracy theorizing of the internet's underbelly cannot be dismissed as empty, nihilistic performance. It may be a game, but it's a game with consequences. And it's spilling into the physical world with greater, more alarming frequency.... [Cesar Sayoc's] van is, according to Kate Starbird, a researcher studying online conspiracies and misinformation at the University of Washington, an interesting metaphor 'showing memetic warfare transcending the digital and moving into the physical world.'... The phenomenon is not fully platform-dependent. Online communities have helped turn information warfare into a tribal game.... And while there's a meaningful difference between the Pizzagate conspiracy and the anti-Semitic rage of the alleged Pittsburgh gunman, the reasons they transcend the internet are familiar: community and empowerment. It comes as little surprise then that the final social media post from the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter declared that he was taking his online hatred into the physical world. 'I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in,' he wrote just hours before his massacre."
Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "Increasingly, the president's almost daily attacks [on the news media] seem to be delivering the desired effect, despite the many examples of powerful reporting on his presidency. By one measure, a CBS News poll over the summer, 91 percent of 'strong Trump supporters' trust him to provide accurate information; 11 percent said the same about the news media.... And with the president settling on 'Fear and Falsehoods' as an election strategy, as The Washington Post put it last week, the political information system is awash in more misleading or flatly wrong assertions than reporters can keep up with.... How long will it take the news media come up with a more effective way to counter the litany of baseless claims washing through the news cycle? At this rate, a solution may come sometime in Mr. Trump's third term."
Mehdi Masan of The Intercept has compiled a list of other documented Trump-inspired violent acts to definitively refute the 'one crazy guy' theory. --s
Election 2018
Minnesota. Zaid Jilani of The Intercept: "Minnesota Republican attorney general candidate Doug Wardlow was the author of a controversial, partisan blog while he was a clerk at the Minnesota Supreme Court, The Intercept has learned. Wardlow was previously suspected of authoring the anonymous blog but has declined to comment.... His authorship of the blog is a critical election issue, as a key question in the race is whether each candidate can play the role of the state's top cop in a nonpartisan manner. Many have doubted that Wardlow could do so. At a private fundraiser earlier this year, Wardlow boasted that he would 'fire 42 Democratic attorneys right off the bat and get Republican attorneys in there.'... Wardlow is locked in a tight race with Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison for the state attorney general job.... Authoring these blog posts while serving as a clerk may have run afoul of professional ethics norms." --s
Tennessee. Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Black voters in Tennessee cast their ballots and held a celebration of their right to vote at a block party outside of Nashville on Saturday, just two days after a major victory assured their access to the polls.... On Thursday, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins ordered the Shelby County Election Commission to allow people with incomplete voter registration applications -- including missing addresses or illegible handwriting -- to fix any problems and cast their ballots on Election Day.... [The ruling] will allow some 1,000 people who may not have been able to otherwise to vote on November 6.... The state of Tennessee is ranked 49th in the country in voter participation." --s
Texas. Asher Stockler of Vox: "Republicans in Texas generally rely on independents and moderate Democrats to maintain their significant hold over state politics. In the Senate race, however, independent voters prefer [Beto] O'Rourke to [Lyin' Ted] Cruz by 12 points, which suggests the grassroots enthusiasm that has rallied local progressives around O'Rourke may be spreading beyond the Democratic base." --s
Sex & Politics. Justin Lehmiller of Politico: "According to the largest and most comprehensive survey of sexual fantasies ever conducted in the United States, it would appear that there are also political differences in our private sexual fantasies.... While self-identified Republicans and self-identified Democrats reported fantasizing with the same average frequency -- several times per week --.... Republicans were more likely than Democrats to fantasize about a range of activities that involve sex outside of marriage. Think things like infidelity, orgies and partner swapping ... more fantasies with voyeuristic themes, including visiting strip clubs and practicing something known as 'cuckolding,' which involves watching one's partner have sex with someone else. By contrast, self-identified Democrats were more likely ... to fantasize about almost the entire spectrum of BDSM activities, from bondage to spanking to dominance-submission play. The largest Democrat-Republican divide on the BDSM spectrum was in masochism, which involves deriving pleasure from the experience of pain." --s
Way Beyond the Beltway
Simon Tisdall of the Guardian: "Angela Merkel's political obituary has been written many times since last year's bruising federal election, when her centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) slumped to 33% of the vote.... If today's state election in Hesse goes as expected, it will be seen as another crushing, possibly fatal, rebuff for Germany's chancellor.... The end of the Merkel era could have dire implications for the future cohesiveness of Europe and the EU. The timing could hardly be worse, as political fragmentation and polarisation reach epidemic proportions.... If it continues unchecked, this process of internal political fragmentation ... could become an existential upheaval that permanently changes the face of Europe. External threats, from Russia in the east to Trump's America in the west, add to the sense of looming crisis."--s
Reuters: "Brazil's leftist presidential candidate Fernando Haddad has narrowed the lead of his rightwing rival Jair Bolsonaro ahead of Sunday's election runoff [in] a survey that gave him 46% compared with Bolsonaro's 54%. However, Haddad's prospects of overhauling Bolsonaro were dented when he failed to win the crucial endorsement of former center-left candidate Ciro Gomes on Saturday. Gomes, a former governor of the north-east Ceará state, is influential in Brazil's poorest region." --s ...
... Amy Smith of Vox: "Brazilian media are reporting that Brazilian police have been staging raids, at times without warrants, in universities across the country this week. In these raids, police have been questioning professors and confiscating materials belonging to students and professors. The raids are part a supposed attempt to stop illegal electoral advertising. Brazilian election law prohibits electoral publicity in public spaces.... For those worrying about Brazilian democracy, these raids are some of the most troubling signs yet of the problems the country faces. They indicate the extremes of Brazilian political polarization: Anti-fascist and pro-democracy speech is now interpreted as illegal advertising in favor of one candidate (Fernando Haddad) and against another (Jair Bolsonaro)." --s
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Reader Comments (6)
There have been 47,000 gun incidents in the U.S. in 2018 so far: Here's a map that shows the influx.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/there-have-been-47220-gun-incidents-in-the-us-in-2018-and-here-they-all-are-on-one-map-2018-10-27
Sometime back when America "was great" and Kennedy was president, there were riots, shootings, and despicable slams against Kennedy accusing him of being a Communist, a fascist, a dunce, etc.Also at about this time Redbook came out with an article that recorded the impressions of European children about Americans:
Question: What are Americans like?
"The average American is, of course, a Texan. He eats lots of breakfast and gets fat so he has to go on a diet becauase he likes to look skinny. He calls everyone ‘sweetheart’ and is bad to colored people. If he doesn’t like who is president, he usually shoots him."
As funny as this may seem, these children’s impressions weren’t so off the mark for a particular segment of our population. Congressman James Wright later recalled that Kennedy had "asked many of us questions as to why we thought this foment was going on in an attempt to understand its genesis." The general conclusion, in Wright’s words, was that the real culprit was "the steady drum-beat of ultra right-wing propaganda with which the citizenry is constantly besieged."
So what's changed? We know the biggest one––the fact that we have a president* that actually mirrors those that are responsible for the "besiegness" ––even Nixon's black heart was kept hidden––but this guy is front and center on stage every day showing off his asininity. I keep remembering his smirk the day after the bomber was arrested when someone in the crowd he was addressing yelled–-"Soros! Kill him!" And this latest shooting was because Trump wasn't MORE vociferous about anti-semitism?
And we come full circle...
"Bowers was ... among a set of neo-Nazis who criticized President Donald Trump for being, as they saw it, not biased enough toward Jews. 'Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,'"
Drumpf's inner circle, especially Bannon, Stone, and KKK Miller, are a cerebral appendage of the online Neo-Nazi Trump base. They know exactly how to tap into their feelings because they share the same life blood. Bannon literally ran THE Neo-Nazi flagship until he was supposedly "purged" by the Mercers after the media spotlight got too bright on their white power skin.
I don't think it's a coincidence therefore that Drumpf recently came out as a "nationalist" to the teevee cameras. Based on the latest primal screams of KKK Bowers, his major grump with Drumpf was he was too "globalist" and not a "nationalist", which would otherwise seal the deal in their hate-hate relationship. Then Drumpf, right on cue and out of the blue, unprovoked, declares himself to be a "nationalist". I'm thinking Bannon was whispering some pillow talk into his ear, with the Chinese and the Russians listening too, that in order to activate the foot soldiers for the midterms, he needed to declare his fidelity to the Neo-Nazi movement unequivocally.
And so Drumpf sighed, smiled, hugged his pillow tight, and dreamed about being on teevee again, imagining how he'll tone his voice just right so the truly deplorables will go wild...
Pittsburgh Cartoonist References ‘'Kristallnacht' In Synagogue Shooting
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-cartoon_us_5bd5c2cee4b0d38b58848446
Mister-My-Jewish-Son-In-Law has long been blowing into his dog whistle. John Stewart recalls the time Trump tried “to let people know I’m a Jew”.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
If Jon Stewart is so above it all & legit, why did he change his name from Jonathan Leibowitz? He should be proud of his heritage!
12:37 PM - May 3, 2013
In truth, Stewart disassociated himself from his father, legally replacing his birth surname with his middle name.
“Little Adam Schiff” “Little Jon Stewart”, et al. Not endearments. A carryover, me thinks, from the French “Le Petit Juif” (our “funny bone”). When bumped, one cries out like “A Little Jew”.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/2/13499036/jon-stewart-trump-feud
@Aunt Hattie: Excellent point. Must be why Trump thinks "Crying Chuck Schumer" is such an apt sobriquet. BTW, what was it Chuck teared up over? Trump's "mean-spirited & un-American" Muslim ban. That is, Trump thinks caring about desperate refugees is something worth deriding forever.
BTW, Trump called them "fake tears" at the time. I thought Chuck was sincere. And good for him.