Open Thread For August 16, 2017
Trump Gives Major Boost To White Nationalists. He just lit a powder keg. Please, Republicans, remove this threat to our nation.
Serial Grifters’ House Up For Sheriff Sale. Yes we’re talking Charles and Velda Jones Potter.
Baltimore Removes Confederate Monuments Overnight. Celebratory crowd and police shared the moment.
Rethugs Dismiss Hearings Requests For Hearings On White Nationalism And Domestic Terrorism. Watch what they do, not what they say. They’re still Rethugs.
How Thuggish Trump Stole Virginia’s Best Winery. Yes, it’s in Charlottesville. Must-read piece from 2015. Mafia tactics: Nice winery ya’ got here, wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.
What Happened When LBJ’s Aides Thought He Was Becoming Unhinged. Bottom line: There’s not much they could do.
Get This: Bills That Would Make It Legal To Mow Down Protestors. So-called ‘Motorist Immunity’ legislation. Backed by, wait for it, police unions.
What do you want to talk about?
If an elected government wants to remove a statue, then that’s how it should be. The moral high ground is irrelevant really… We are nation of, “laws and not men”, and so forth.
….And if people want to protest that removal, that’s within their rights as well. It’s also the right of other people to protest the protest of that removal and so on, as long as the rule of law is followed.
At least we’re not Nazis.
“The moral high ground is irrelevant really… We are nation of, “laws and not men”, and so forth.”
This principle is more honored in the breach than the observance.
“This principle is more honored in the breach than the observance.”
In some cases, yes, especially when it involves freedom (Harriet Tubman comes to mind), but anarchy is always just around the corner.
Will we have gangs of people running around toppling any statue that they don’t like, now?
Yes, I believe we will.
You are speaking from a place of ignorance. Statues of secessionists have no place in the United States. Our current problems stem from a failure to understand this.
I say you are ignorant because you clearly have little understanding of the history of race relations before, during and after the Civil War. Here, read this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-battle-for-memory-started-immediately
The argument best summarized as “where does it end” is stupid. It ends with enemies of the United States. I know sometimes people like to apply pseudo philosophical ideas and deep conjecture about political freedoms. That’s fun talk. But the Confederacy was an armed belligerent against our country. Nazi Germany also.
So when you see the Stars and Bars or the Swastika just remember how many Americans were slaughtered to crush these enemies.
If you really can’t sort this out I have zero fucks to give you.
“Our current problems stem from a failure to understand this.”
Clear and accurate.
Like I said in my first comment. If the town or city councils in these places want the statues out, then they are out. The people have spoken at that point.
Sorry, but they’re out whether you like it or not. Well, not really sorry, either.
I want to make a further point here about the conservative respect for the “rule of law.”
A jury in South Carolina watched a video of police officer Michael Slager gun down a middle-aged black man who was running away from a traffic stop because he had a bench warrant out against him. Officer Slager fired multiple shots, killing Scott. The jury would not convict Slager.
The same thing happened in Minnesota, where Philando Castile was shot by a police officer who escaped conviction.
These cases, and countless others like them, amount to jury nullification. The same thing was common throughout the US in the antebellum period whenever whites were charged with crimes against blacks.
This is why many African-Americans refer to it as the American “Just Us” system.
So, will all due respect, FBH, fuck you and your rule of law.
Trump’s business councils decide to disband. Trump Announces That HE Decided to end them:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/business/trumps-council-ceos.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
They were lining up to announce they were quitting before he “disbanded” them.
Could it finally be the beginning of the end? I don’t see how GOP electeds can continue to split the difference here.
The KKK has an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 members, minus Al Gore’s dad and Robert Byrd…. Hardly the influential part of the Republican base that elected Trump, as the narrative would have you believe.
I just read on Delawareonline the story about the Potters. I have a few things that are not clear to me.
1. If the house is as messed up as they claim then why are they still living in it.
2. He claims that SCA Const. Should pay him $390,000 for damages, but he never mention that at any of the court hearings. Also this is a serious matter and he should of hired a better lawyer instead of Sam Guy. Now he is going to waste the court time and take the case to the Supream Court. Looks like the cards coming out. I am happy that man is finally getting his money he waited long enough to. Now maybe people will think twice before they Vote for these 2 people, because they are all about lining there own pockets.
As of 5:30 pm Wednesday, not a single R leader, not a single one, has come out and criticized Trump by name.
Meanwhile Black on Black shootings are at record highs.
“The KKK has an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 members,”
That we know of.
“minus Al Gore’s dad and Robert Byrd…”
Both dead. But here we go with the lamest game in the conservative book, “racists used to be Democrats.” Do you realize what an intellectual cripple that makes you look like? Apparently not, as all conservatives do it without understanding that only a mental defective would consider it valid.
“Hardly the influential part of the Republican base that elected Trump,”
You’re proving my point about your mental defects. Had you said “not enough people,” you’d have been right. But those people are very, very “influential,” as you can tell because you yourself repeat many of their racist arguments. So there’s that.
“as the narrative would have you believe.”
If someone as clueless as you realizes it’s a narrative, what makes you think the rest of us don’t realize that this “narrative” of which you speak is just that?
In short, you’re a typical Dunning-Kruger sufferer: You are neither as smart as you think you are nor as smart as us.
And Kline on humans stupidity continues apace.
You’re a pussy, Kline. A flat-out coward.
Hey, alby, just joking about the Al Gore’s dad thing, but anyway, it seems as though my days of commenting on political blogs has come to an abrupt end.
My opinions have always been mine, and mine only.
P.S. Anybody feel free to use the “fightingbluehen” name, as it identifies with the whole blue state thing better anyway.
Here’s the story of another guy whose opinions are nobody’s but his own:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/2017/08/15/vermonter-who-carried-torch-charlottesville-makes-no-apology/571214001/
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-hacking-ukraine-witness-651674?amp=1
Motherfuckers.
(Tom Kline is a coward & a racist.)
“Statues of secessionists have no place in the United States.”
As if this was not clear enough already, we should not be erecting monuments that honor traitors.
The nation was right to forgive those who fought against our nation, but to honor them as if they did something honorable, diminishes all those who died defending the nation. The confederacy belongs in a museum, not in our hearts and minds. Why that is not evident to every American is unfathomable.
Stonewall Jackson’s great great grandsons petition the Richmond government to remove the monument to their great great grandfather.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/stonewall_jackson_s_grandsons_the_monuments_must_go.html
“While we are not ashamed of our great great grandfather, we are ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We are ashamed of the monument.
In fact, instead of lauding Jackson’s violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall’s sister—our great, great, grand-aunt—Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.”
When will white on white violence end?
Why don’t we have statues of German generals in the public square? They were part of history and there are German Americans who are related to them
Charlottesville has brought forth a geyser of false equivalency.
First and foremost, there are many, many historical figures who have no statues in public squares. There is a vast difference between remembering historical figures and honoring them with statues, and anyone who even pretends not to understand that difference deserves pity, contempt or both.
Second, the notion that the many Founding Fathers who were slave-owners should be removed from public honors is one worthy of debate, but again, anyone who even pretends to not understand the difference between owning slaves and fighting a war to preserve slavery is stupid, contemptuous or both.
I must admit I’m growing more worried by the day. I used to think conservatives were playing stupid. I’m beginning to realize they’re not faking it.
And, as has been pointed out, these statues were erected as symbols of racial defiance. Most were either built after the Supreme Court’s Plessy v Ferguson decision that ruled ‘separate but equal’ as the law of the land, or after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
These statues in no way are beautiful monuments to history, they are middle fingers in the public squares.
I’ve been looking for the info that correlates the dates
Forget about the removal of statues. Can we at least outlaw realtor billboards with pictures of the unattractive agents? they are a blight on our national history
Mouse, Here’s a link with the a map. Scroll down for the map. You’ll see clearly what was going on.
The serial grifter Potters….the gift that keeps on giving…
or maybe taking from the public! When will the voters throw these bums out?