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znModeratorthat we always seem to have issues with our OLinemen staying healthy? I hear Rob Haverston is on the PUP list. This issue has been a problem, no matter if the person is a free agent, or someone we drafted. I wonder who our strength and conditioning guy is? Who ever it is, the guy should be fired. this is real frustrating. We know he won’t be fired, because he is FOJF (Friends Of Jeff Fisher). Uggh.
It has nothing to do with the organization.
The problem has been there off and on (mostly on, rarely off) since 2007.
That’s several owners, GMs, coaches, trainers, and conditioning coaches ago.
The only thing those different regimes have in common is the uniform.
So if you want blame the uniform.
But like I said…this problem is FAR from new. it’s a decade old. And because management and the staff changed so often across that decade, the “find a person to blame” routine doesn’t work in this case.
…
znModeratorSo if you have Mike Pence basically being in charge of policy while Trump provides the bluster, you are looking at an agenda that wants to dismantle everything. They will lay assault on what’s left of unions, environmental protections, consumer protections, pensions, social security, public education, women’s rights, voting ID, overtime pay, the minimum wage for god’s sake, national parks, the Entire Wet Dream Agenda of the sociopathic corporatists. And then entrench it all permanently by making the Supreme Court a 7-2 majority of Thomases and Alitos.
Yeah I think a lot of the same things.
Sometimes, when yer facing the battle in Gettysburg, you gotta go, “okay let’s fix the Gettysburg situation.” It doesn’t help things at that point to go “but ideally shouldn’t we be marching on Richmond by now?” No…you’re in Gettysburg.
July 30, 2016 at 11:07 am in reply to: demands for ideological purity only come if you aren’t at risk #49757znModeratorbtw, as a side note:
I think Sanders doesn’t go nearly far enough. Not even close. So it kinda amuses me, and then it saddens me, that he’s taken so much abuse for proposing what once were mainstream Democratic ideas. As in, he’s just trying to take the party back to FDR and update it a bit for 2016. He’s talking about New Deal stuff, updated.
Nothing radical in anything he’s talking about, and nothing that can’t be done.
I’m waaay to Bernie’s left in my beliefs, especially when it comes to what ought to be done, the changes that ought to be made. It’s not even close. He is still intent on reforming capitalism. I see that as a waste of valuable time which would be better spent on repealing and replacing it with an economic system that has social justice already baked in.
So, again, going back to the discussion above . . . . the complaints of “white privilege” against Sanders and his supporters seem all the more absurd to me, as they relate to his proposals. Nothing he has asked for is beyond the pale. Nothing he talks about takes us outside of the actual realm of the possible. One might be able to make a case about “purity” if it weren’t for the fact that all of his proposals are “moderate” in comparison to countries like Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Frankly, I think the use of race — at least by some — is an effort to steer things away from even his all too modest reforms and back to the center-right status quo.
Yeah Sanders is what Chomsky said he was, a new deal type.
But I think steering away from race is a white straight male privilege move.
And to me unless it has equal parts race and gender in it along with class, it’s not even the left.
None of this is easy. It;s mangled tangled and bumpy. There will never be anyone who gets it all right. Dismissing race though is a mistake. In the USA you can’t think class without race being part of it. And once that is realized, then there’s a lot of challenging and conflict-laden ideas to work through. None of us will get it “right” either.
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July 30, 2016 at 10:38 am in reply to: demands for ideological purity only come if you aren’t at risk #49753znModeratorWell, not to get all third-grader on ya, but the editorial started the name calling.
;>)
So, I get your point. Mine is different. I see a stark case of the privileged playing Marie Antoinette while the poor and the oppressed are getting crushed. I see the “go slow and be pragmatic” approach as contributing mightily to their oppression. And, as mentioned, to me, it’s not even working as they say it’s intended to work. We’re going backward on most issues, not forward, even slowly.
I think, my old friend, you are just missing the point. And frankly I don’t care about the name-calling. I know where it;s coming from. It doesn’t bother me. And I am just as much a target of it as you are so I know we don’t have to take it badly. I don’t.
IMO people on the left like us are obligated to look at white male privilege and not get defensive about it. Just to be informed.
Then after taking it seriously we have to make the decisions we have to make.
I am btw part of the reasonable and pragmatic crowd. I don’t consider that incompatible in the least with being on the left. And I am not saying “go slow” to anything. Neither was the editorial. In fact there may be more Edmund Burke in me than you…I have always argued Burke can be dialectically reconfigured into a left Burke. And the left Burke in me says, us boys with abstract ideas are a positive menace. Go out and work with what’s real.
I don’t see anything about the “who to vote for” issue as having to do with “delaying progress.” Heck if we depended on presidents for progress we would never have gotten anything. Real progressive change is not top/down. So I don’t believe in hero presidents. I do however believe in menace presidents. I believe presidents and parties in power CAN do harm. So the urgency is, prevent the catastrophe. It won’t NOT be a catastrophe. And for those of us in the loving arms of white straight male privilege…it will be far less of one.
And btw those without white straight male privilege include the poor and THEY are always far more quickly crushed than we are.
You can’t separate race and class and gender. Not if you want to have a real discussion of the real problems.
And for the record I am never a purist about anything. I don’t believe in abstract ideals. I believe in practical action, just action in the name of left principles. Theories don;t interest me. To me theories always look like dogma. That’s just inescapable—it’s how I see things.
And part of that means seeing, and seeing in our case means actually seeing to what extent we actually really genuinely ARE protected by white straight male privilege.
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July 30, 2016 at 10:09 am in reply to: demands for ideological purity only come if you aren’t at risk #49749znModeratorAlso: I reject the frame that it’s supposedly easy for people of privilege to hold fast to their principles,
Oh as it happens I believe that one bit completely.
I see it on an everyday basis, too.
And of course privilege here means “white privilege.”
You look long and hard and close enough at white privilege, you can see—to quote Noah Cross from Chinatown—it’s “capable of ANYTHING.”
Well, perhaps a better way of putting this: It’s not at all easier for those who seek rapid change than the same privileged class who insist we must take baby steps, “or nothing ever gets done!!”
As in, people of privilege have it easier when it comes to either option, or any option, so it’s pretty ridiculous to go all “holier than thou” against the people who talk about the tremendous urgency involved. I just reject that the case is better for people of privilege who insist on the “sensible” and “reasonable” route, which takes decades, if it ever happens at all. And our history has been — at least since the 1970s — of one step forward, two or more steps back. So even on their own grounds, it’s not working.
But the point is, for a lot of us encased in white privilege, the CONSEQUENCES of certain kinds of things is far more immediate and unavoidable. White privilege means race not class and it translates out into being, mostly, straight white male privilege. If we can’t see how others who are outside of that might be more anxious about consequences, then, really, we’re not seeing anything. I have friends—for example, non-white lesbians I know at work—who know full well that they will lose things under Trump. It won’t be status quo for them. They can’t afford the luxury of unpragmatic purity. The actual result is I can’t debate this stuff with them. They are deeply mired in their own immediate interests and self-concern. In contrast if I wanted to, I could go home, unplug the tv, never read the news, and would suffer only minor differences. Not everyone has that luxury the way I do.
And btw on this issue, everyone “is holier than thou.” It’s that tricky an issue. This is one of those cases where telling someone else they’re being holier than thou IS being holier than thou.
So I get past the name-calling stage and just say to myself, what percentage of those fears (others fears) is real, and what does it mean to me that it’s real. How does thinking about that influence my decisions.
It’s all very real even if I would have written that editorial differently.
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July 30, 2016 at 9:40 am in reply to: demands for ideological purity only come if you aren’t at risk #49747znModeratorAlso: I reject the frame that it’s supposedly easy for people of privilege to hold fast to their principles,
Oh as it happens I believe that one bit completely.
I see it on an everyday basis, too.
And of course privilege here means “white privilege.”
You look long and hard and close enough at white privilege, you can see—to quote Noah Cross from Chinatown—it’s “capable of ANYTHING.”
znModeratorYou need to own it. You said communist is what you desire but not what was presented during the cold war. That is why I used it. Your memory is failing you
And that was just him.
BT is free to speak his mind but no one else espoused those views.
ZN, it’s far more accurate to just say “no one espoused those views.”
WV and I share the same basic non-school school, as far as political philosophy goes. We’re both eclectic and non-orthodox, but “libertarian socialist” is a pretty good catchall descriptor. Left-libertarian, left-anarchist, etc. etc.
“Communism,” in its true sense — at least as I see it — is just one possible road it might take. One possible “logical progression” after libertarian socialism comes into being. And it’s quite literally the opposite of the Soviet perversion of the word, or the Chinese one. It’s the opposite of totalitarianism. It’s the apotheosis of true democracy, as second nature, in my view. The absence of the state and all classes. Obviously, that means no ruling class, either.
Bnw was basically just red-baiting. He doesn’t believe it’s possible to see “communism” the way I do. Hell, he doesn’t believe anyone can see Obama as “conservative,” which I do as well.
Bottom line: No one here espouses the views bnw suggests with that angry old right-wing slur.
Okay.
znModeratorZN,
You deleted your “okay” post.
;>)
That was just an accident believe me.
July 30, 2016 at 8:07 am in reply to: demands for ideological purity only come if you aren’t at risk #49737znModeratorObviously, not written by a Bernie supporter.
I’m tempted to do a point by point bashing of that article,
but I’m just done with the Bernie vs Hillary vs Jill issue.
It just aint fun anymore, for me.w
vYeah it was an editorial of a type and tone I generally just scoff at. But still it’s a time for all sorts of views.
But why ain’t The Debate fun no more. Honestly asking out of curiosity.
——————–
Too much heat, not enough humor,
for me.w
vWell. Let’s begin again. Honestly. So this time, I will enter the debate as a monkish devotee of JFK’s go to the moon speech.
So. How come you don’t want to go to the moon. Of course it will be hard, that’s why we’re doing it.
July 30, 2016 at 7:40 am in reply to: demands for ideological purity only come if you aren’t at risk #49734znModeratorObviously, not written by a Bernie supporter.
I’m tempted to do a point by point bashing of that article,
but I’m just done with the Bernie vs Hillary vs Jill issue.
It just aint fun anymore, for me.w
vYeah it was an editorial of a type and tone I generally just scoff at. But still it’s a time for all sorts of views.
But why ain’t The Debate fun no more. Honestly asking out of curiosity.
znModeratoruranium, eh?
That’s adorable, Sissy Man.
If and when you grow a pair,
try an antimatter sandwich.You have obviously never tried it yourself, or you would know.
Flatulence.
Just sayin.
.
znModerator#Rams had a mandatory team meeting this morning. According to sources, it doesn't appear Tre Mason showed up
— Vincent Bonsignore (@DailyNewsVinny) July 29, 2016
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FYI on #Rams Tre Mason: what makes situation more complicated is inability of team to communicate with him 1/2
— Vincent Bonsignore (@DailyNewsVinny) July 29, 2016
===
2/2 so while there is little #Rams expectation at this point Mason will show up, it wouldn't be a complete shock if he did.
— Vincent Bonsignore (@DailyNewsVinny) July 29, 2016
znModeratorThis is the type of hyperbole that turns good people off. Good people who can actually make a change for the betterment of people who have little. No one -not even Trump or Hillary-is “against” the poor. No one believes these people represent a threat. There is no “WAR” against people who are poor. When people hear these “magical” words they automatically tune out. Of course there are policies and even laws that adversely impact those who have little. There always have been. And we need to elect those who will actively help those in need. But there is no “war” against the poor. Neither Hillaryh nor Trump have any ill will toward those less fortunate. “War against the poor” language does more harm than good because it takes a very serious issue and turns it into nonsense.
That seems less like a critique, w, then just a slam. First I don’t see it as hyperbole. It’s basically a summary slogan line for a position, and you don’t seem to address the position. So yes you’re right–no one takes it literally. In terms of the actual intent, when you don’t over-literalize the line itself, yes there are actual positions referred to, and they go to the heart of a great deal of actual politics. What Hillary and Trump have in varying degrees (with Trump far worse) is policies that disenfranchise people, harm people economically, and build an economic climate that heavily favors the more well off (unless you haven’t heard about the effect that economic inequality has on people). It’s reflected in health care, labor policies, and so on. All you addressed was the slogan which you unaccountably took as literal, and did not address the policies.
Yes american economic policies, unlike many countries (which are actually doing better than we are), do in fact strip power, rights, and opportunities from the disadvantaged and less well off. It seems to me to deny that is just to deny a significant reality.
And try to steer clear of antagonistic language like “childish nonsense” for positions you dont’ personally agree with. It goes against the spirit of the rules.
.
znModeratorU.S. Economy Would Be ‘Diminished’ Under Trump’s Economic Plan, New Analysis Says
Report marks the first attempt at quantifying economic benefits and costs across Trump’s proposalsA new analysis concludes Donald Trump’s economic proposals, taken at face value, could produce a prolonged recession and heavy job losses that would fall hardest on low- and middle-income workers.
The Moody’s Analytics report, which a person close to the Trump campaign strongly disputed, is the first that attempts to quantify the cumulative economic benefits and costs of Mr. Trump’s proposals on taxes, trade, immigration and spending. It determines that full adoption of those policies would sharply reduce economic output during his first term and reduce employment by 3.5 million jobs.
Under almost any scenario, the report says, “the U.S. economy will be more isolated and diminished.”
The Moody’s analysis outlines scenarios that show more muted effects on the economy, assuming that Mr. Trump’s proposals are slimmed down, either voluntarily or as a result of legislative negotiations. Under the latter model, Moody’s assumes the tax cuts are whittled down sharply and that a trade war with China and Mexico is averted. The result is slower economic growth but not a recession.
The Moody’s analysis says Mr. Trump’s spending and tax-cut commitments, which include increases in veterans’ and border security funding but no changes in entitlement programs, would require massive spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget to avoid $1 trillion deficits.
“There is a gulf between what he says he wants on taxes and spending and what it will take to make the budget arithmetic work,” said Mr. Zandi.
Mr. Trump’s tax plan would lower tax rates across the board and limit some deductions. The Tax Policy Center, a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, said the plan would cut federal revenues by $9.5 trillion, while the Tax Foundation, a think tank that favors lower taxes, said the plan would cost $10 trillion over a decade, even after assuming higher economic growth.
The report singles out trade and immigration policies as the most detrimental to the economy in the short run because they could sharply boost labor and goods prices at a time when there’s less slack in the labor market. “It is a massive supply shock to the economy that’s very pernicious, and the Fed doesn’t know how to respond to that,” said Mr. Zandi.
Moody’s concludes that those price pressures would force the central bank to raise interest rates at a faster-than-desired pace, contributing to a recession in 2018 that could produce a 25% drop in the S&P 500.
The adviser close to the Trump campaign said any analysis oversold the costs of Mr. Trump’s trade and immigration policies by failing to account for how substandard enforcement of trade rules and border controls have depressed wages for U.S. workers.
On trade, Mr. Trump has said he would use the threat of a 45% tariff on goods from China and 35% on non-oil imports from Mexico as a negotiating tool in seeking better trade and currency terms. Moody’s calculates that tariffs on imports from Mexico and China could increase goods import prices by 15%, raising overall consumer prices by 3%—all before factoring in the costs of retaliation against U.S. exporters.
The Moody’s economists warn that those tariffs would raise uncertainty for businesses, reducing American exports while corroding growth. While higher tariffs would quickly lead importers to move production to other countries, this would take time and also raise costs for businesses.
Separate projections made earlier this year by Peter Petri of Brandeis University found that Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs would widen the U.S. trade deficit for goods by around $275 billion, or an 37% increase above last year’s level.
On immigration, Moody’s estimates that a crackdown on illegal immigration through forced deportations would reduce slack in the labor force but also leave more positions unfilled, particularly in industries such as agriculture where native-born workers have been reluctant to seek work even at modestly higher wages. Labor shortages in those industries could prompt job losses in upstream and downstream industries and also boost inflation as labor costs run higher, the report said.
znModeratorHere’s What Moody’s Says Hillary Clinton’s Policies Would Do To the Economy
by Claire Zillman
Here’s What Moody’s Says Hillary Clinton’s Policies Would Do To the Economy
Last month, the analytics arm of credit ratings agency Moody’s released a report on what the U.S. economy would look like under a Donald Trump administration. Its assessment wasn’t pretty. Lead author Mark Zandi concluded that Trump’s policies would lead to a “more isolated and diminished” economy that would “suffer meaningfully.”
On Friday it was Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s turn to get the Moody’s treatment and her economic proposals faired much better.
After assessing her policies on taxes and government spending, foreign immigration, and the federal minimum wage, Moody’s concluded that a President Hillary Clinton would oversee a “somewhat stronger U.S. economy.”
Near-term growth would benefit from her spending plans and her proposal for much stronger foreign immigration. “Increased government spending, particularly more infrastructure investment financed primarily by higher taxes on the well-to-do, acts as an economic stimulant.”
The report praised Clinton’s plan to increased spending on infrastructure, which Trump has also said he would do.
One particularly difference between the two candidates: Clinton has pushed for paid family leave. The report also says that would lift labor participation, and more government spending on early childhood and college education “would raise the educational attainment of workers.”
But her proposals are not without costs. The higher tax rates she proposes, the report says, would reduce the incentives to save, invest, and work. Her policies would also help the low- and middle-class since their tax bill would remain largely the same and they will benefit from increased government assistance. High-income households, meanwhile, will pay much more in taxes under a Clinton White House.
Moody’s assessment of Trump said that under his proposals the U.S. economy would “avoid a recession…but growth comes to a near standstill early in [his] term.” Long-term economic growth would slow and the trade deficit would rise. At the time of the report’s publication in June, the Trump campaign disputed the assessment and took issue with its conclusion that proposed tax cuts would hamper the economy.
It should be noted that Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, is a registered Democrat and has donated to Clinton. Nonetheless, in 2008 he served as an advisor to presidential candidate Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona.
What’s more, it’s important to keep in mind that Trump and Clinton’s proposals are just that, and that their implementation depends largely on how much support they could drum up in Congress as president.
znModeratorIs Donald Trump Racist? Here’s What the Record Shows
Is Donald Trump Racist? Here’s What the Record Shows
The latest controversy is not a surprise to those who have followed his career.
Is Donald Trump racist? That question has hung over the presumptive Republican nominee for president as he has called Mexicans “rapists” and proposed a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Lately, though, the question has taken on more urgency as Trump has repeatedly publicly attacked the judge who presides over Trump University class-action lawsuits. Calling the American-born Gonzalo Curiel a “Mexican,” he said Curiel was therefore biased against him, and he added to the flurry of objections by suggesting that a Muslim judge might also be incapable of hearing a lawsuit involving any Trump entity.In between these remarks he managed to offend by singling out a black man at one of his rallies, calling him “my African American” as if the fellow’s presence proved Trump was on the right side of the race issue.
For the long followers of Trump’s career, however, none of these incendiary remarks are especially surprising. Trump has a long record as a provocateur on matters of race and ethnicity.
It starts in 1973, when the United States Department of Justice went to court with a discrimination complaint against the Trump family business, which rented apartments across Brooklyn and Queens. Coming from the administration of Richard Nixon, who was hardly a civil rights agitator, the complaint was based on an investigation that found four different Trump employees confirming that applicants for leases were screened by race. One rental agent said Trump’s father had told him not to rent to blacks and that he actually wanted to reduce the number of African Americans in his buildings. Three doormen said they had been instructed to deflect blacks who came to Trump buildings to apply for apartments.
Though just 26 years old at the time, Donald Trump was already president of the Trump Organization. Rather than work with the government to bring the company into compliance with the law, as the New York apartment king Sam LeFrak had done, Trump retained one of the most notorious lawyers in the country, Roy Cohn, and commence an all-out legal war. Cohn, who had been Joe McCarthy’s chief inquisitor during the senator’s witch hunt for communists in the government, filed a $410 million lawsuit against the federal government and smeared the justice department attorneys with terms such as “storm troopers” and “Gestapo.” Trump complained in the press of “reverse discrimination” and alleged a “nationwide drive” to force landlords to “rent to welfare recipients.”
In the early 1970s, “African American” and “welfare” were used interchangeably and it was a well-established hallmark of dog-whistle politics, which allowed speakers to appeal to racist beliefs without using openly racist terms. More whites used welfare assistance than blacks, but welfare was regarded by some as a special benefit for minorities. In 1980 the coded language that matched welfare with undeserving minorities was revealed as Ronald Reagan spoke of “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks.”
Trump’s countersuit in the fair housing case brought against his company was dismissed by a judge who considered it a “waste of paper.” The Trump organization eventually accommodated the feds, agreeing to a protocol intended to address the mistakes of the past.
For two years Trump would be required to supply weekly lists of vacancies to the Urban League’s Open Housing Center. When vacancies opened up in buildings where fewer than 10 percent of the tenants were black or Hispanic, the center would then have three days to submit applications from minority clients who wanted those apartments. If qualified, they were to get preference by agreeing to advertise vacancies in newspapers that served the black community. Trump was also required to advertise vacancies in press outlets serving minority communities.
Although he wound up complying with federal regulators on his rental policies, Trump had successfully staked out his position on race. He was on the side of those whites who resented civil rights laws intended to redress racism.
In 1989, he told Bryant Gumbel in an interview, “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market…if I was starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I really do believe they have the actual advantage today. “ In fact, all the serious studies refuted that. However his statement did serve as a kind of shout-out to those who were ignorant about the racial dynamics in the U.S. economy.
Earlier in that same year Trump helped fan the flames of racial resentment when black and Latino teens were arrested in the infamous “Central Park jogger” attack. Trump alone chose to pay for $85,000 worth of full-page newspaper ads trumpeting, in capital letters, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” In the text Trump objected to then-Mayor Ed Koch’s plea for peace: Mayor Koch stated that “hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so.”
As Trump and other New Yorkers indulged in hate and rancor, the five accused were subjected to intense interrogation, most without their parents present, and gave false confessions. After years in prison, they were exonerated by DNA evidence. A book and a documentary film on the case showed how fear and race played substantial roles in the wrongful convictions but Trump, who fanned the flames, remained steadfast in his views. When the men received compensation for their imprisonment, Trump denounced the payments and smeared the men by saying, “These young men do not exactly have the past of angels.”
Next in the Trump record on race came a 1991 book by John O’Donnell, who had been president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. O’Donnell quoted Trump saying,“ Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes… Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else…Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that’s guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”
O’Donnell’s report was shocking, but Trump did not contest it at the time. In 1997 he was interviewed for Playboy by author Mark Bowden and he confirmed that the O’Donnell book was “probably true.”
Two years later, when he was seeking the reform party nomination for president, Trump changed his tune. “I’ve never said anything like that,” he told Tim Russert on Meet The Press.
The flip-flop that saw Trump affirm John O’Donnell’s reporting and then deny it, must be weighed against Trump’s clear tendency to see things in racial terms and then say what he thinks.
A telling moment arose during a 1993 Congressional committee hearing on gambling casino operated by Indian tribes. Trump, who considered the tribes competitors, offered a flourish of insensitivity during his testimony when he said, “They don’t look like Indians to me and they don’t look like Indians to Indians.”
Trump also said that tribal gaming operators were somehow tied to organized crime and a scandal was about to erupt. “In the 19 years I have been on this committee, I have never seen such irresponsible remarks,” Rep. George Miller (D., Calif.) shouted back to Trump. (Decades later, the industry is still waiting for the scandal that Trump predicted.)
“Least racist person on earth”
In his businesses, which are private entities not subject to affirmative action policies, Trump did not establish an impressive record for diversity in the executive suite. He has spoken often about providing employment to minority workers, but in 2015 The New Yorker quoted a former Trump casino worker who said that in the 1980s black employees were hidden from view when Trump and his wife Ivana were around.
No black or Hispanic executive has ever played a prominent public role in the Trump business organization. However the foundation run by Eric Trump includes one African American vice president, Lynn Patton, who is described on the foundation website as “senior assistant” to Donald Trump’s three older adult children.
Last year Trump defended himself against complaints about his attitudes by claiming that he’s the “least racist person on earth.” Except for Patton, the Trump team has not presented to the press the name of a single key executive who is either Hispanic or African American.
Trump did manage to avoid race-related controversies for more than a decade—between the mid-1990s and 2010. Then, in 2011, Trump seized upon the conspiracy theory that suggested that Barack Obama was not an American citizen. This so-called “birther” idea had been discredited as false, and it was widely seen as a racially charged insult and had been abandoned by other leading Republicans including Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama and Rep. Roy Blount of Missouri.
Trump took up the cause with relish. He also delivered innuendo about the president’s academic record and admission to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, implying that he was academically unworthy but benefitted from affirmative action.
Which brings us to the current presidential campaign and a candidate who is being criticized by leaders of his own party for the racial tone of his remarks on the stump and in press interviews. Trump said his statements about Judge Curiel have been “misconstrued.”
Whether he’s mocking Chinese businesspeople with broken English, contorting his body to make fun of a disabled reporter, or calling out to “my African American,” again and again, Trump has provoked anxiety and played to racial divisions. Earlier this week, Joe Scarborough, a lifelong Republican and host of the Morning Joe TV show called Trump’s remarks about Judge Curiel “completely racist.” He didn’t pass the same judgment on the man himself, but from what I see, the record would support him if he did.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-examples_us_56d47177e4b03260bf777e83
In fact, discrimination against black people has been a pattern in his career
Workers at Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, have accused him of racism over the years. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino $200,000 in 1992 because managers would remove African-American card dealers at the request of a certain big-spending gambler. A state appeals court upheld the fine.
The first-person account of at least one black Trump casino employee in Atlantic City suggests the racist practices were consistent with Trump’s personal behavior toward black workers.
“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, told the New Yorker for a September article. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”
Trump disparaged his black casino employees as “lazy” in vividly bigoted terms, according to a 1991 book by John O’Donnell, a former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.
“And isn’t it funny. I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” O’Donnell recalled Trump saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
“I think the guy is lazy,” Trump said of a black employee, according to O’Donnell. “And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Trump has also faced charges of reneging on commitments to hire black people. In 1996, 20 African Americans in Indiana sued Trump for failing to honor a promise to hire mostly minority workers for a riverboat casino on Lake Michigan.
He refused to condemn the white supremacists who are campaigning for him
Three times in a row on Feb. 28, Trump sidestepped opportunities to renounce white nationalist and former KKK leader David Duke, who told his radio audience last week that voting for any candidate other than Trump is “really treason to your heritage.”
When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if he would condemn Duke and say he didn’t want a vote from him or any other white supremacists, Trump claimed that he didn’t know anything about white supremacists or about Duke himself. When Tapper pressed him twice more, Trump said he couldn’t condemn a group he hadn’t yet researched.
By Feb. 29, Trump was saying that in fact he does disavow Duke, and that the only reason he didn’t do so on CNN was because of a “lousy earpiece.” Video of the exchange, however, shows Trump responding quickly to Tapper’s questions with no apparent difficulty in hearing.
It’s preposterous to think that Trump doesn’t know about white supremacist groups or their sometimes violent support of him. Reports of neo-Nazi groups rallying around Trump go back as far as August.
His white supremacist fan club includes the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace.
A leader of the Virginia KKK who is backing Trump told a local TV reporter earlier this month, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.”
And most recently, the Trump campaign announced that one of its California primary delegates was William Johnson, chair of the white nationalist American Freedom Party. The Trump campaign subsequently said his inclusion was a mistake, and Johnson withdrew his name at their request.
znModeratorYou need to own it. You said communist is what you desire but not what was presented during the cold war. That is why I used it. Your memory is failing you
And that was just him.
BT is free to speak his mind but no one else espoused those views.
You seem to refer to all other posters as supporting those views.
znModeratorI’d just as soon my salt didn’t contain uranium.
It’s that kind of namby-pamby “I’m better than the next guy” snobbery that has made such a mess of the modern world.
Look, Bambi, you’ll eat your trace uranium with dinner along with the rest of us, and like it.
It’s the 21st century. Nobody whines about “uranium in their food” anymore.
…
znModeratorWow look at all the fear mongering in this thread!
Partisan spin. You go along with the policies we reject so you’re fine with them. But don’t try to convince anyone you have “a truth.” Everyone knows better, and everyone will see it as your spin. You’re fine with the policies and turn a blind eye to the racism, so naturally you don’t accept the criticism. But that will have no impact. We dislike the policies and the racism. That won’t change.
What you will never be able to do is to talk anyone here into accepting the policies. And that’s in the end all that will matter.
znModeratorI look at the same clinton-policies and i see
‘quick sand’, destruction of the poor, destruction of the biosphere…blah blah blah.And I think you’re wrong. In fact I think you’re misreading this whole thing, and it’s not simply a matter of “opinion.”
Certainly there’s nothing utopian or ideal there, with this round of dems.
But the destruction stuff? That’s Trump.
THe right-centrist Dems? It’s more like not doing enough. Or enough of the right things. That’s not destruction. That’s just the usual progress at a slow pace that measures the difference between my youth and the world my daughters live in.
Meanwhile if you are not white or male or straight or christian/or/mainstream, Trump’s policies will directly and materially make the world much, much worse for you. Direct impact stuff.
znModeratorFlorio: The same people who think Jared Goff is the answer now, thought Nick Foles was the answer a year ago.
Yeah Florio is fond of that kind of spin.
First, no one thought Foles was “the answer.” That’s bs.
Wrong. They thought Foles was the answer since they signed him to a big contract before he ever threw a regular season pass for the Rams.
This is semantics.
I was talking about how they measured his skill. They talked about him as being good enough to help a defensive team win.
If by “the answer” you mean a top franchise level qb, no they never indicated they thought that.
It was more like he was AN answer—to having or not having a qb.
And his modest extension made him by far, and it was by a LOT, the lowest paid starter in a second contract in the league.
The extension was a modest and smart calculated gamble. It was either pay him a modest extension then, and tie him up, but risk not seeing him come through…
…OR not pay him, see him do well, and then become a much more expensive FA.
Either way it’s just semantics but nothing they did indicated he was THE answer. And they quite simply did not talk about him the way they talk about Goff now. In fact when it comes to that the difference is stark.
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znModeratorAgain, how it appears to me.
No it;s not a cliff v. quicksand.
It’s a cliff v. ground that needs to be ploughed.
It’s not catastrophic both directions. It is only catastrophic one direction.
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Yeah, there’s where we disagree. I think its a “cliff vs quicksand”.No big deal to me ; We just disagree on it.
…and now, if you say ‘you dont know enuff about Trump’,
I will say ‘you dont know enuff about Hillary’….so lets not do that
w
vBut wv. I DO know about Hillary’s policies to the same extent I know Trump’s.
That’s why I see this the way I see it.
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znModeratorDo we really know what he would do or try to do?
Find out where he stands on policies.
If anything it’s more likely to be WORSE than what we know.
znModeratorHimalayan pink salt is really snake oil.
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/pass-the-salt-but-not-that-pink-himalayan-stuff/
For some reason when I try to connect to your link I get this:
I don’t know why that would happen. The link works for me. Perhaps it’s a setting on your computer that’s preventing you from accessing it? I would copy and paste the whole article but that’s too difficult with my cell phone (I’m at work). I’ll do it from my laptop when I get home.
Okay. Thanks for clarifying. It probably is me.
As for this—“I’ll do it from my laptop when I get home”—I did nothing to warrant that kind of hyperbolic personal gutter attack.
znModeratorHimalayan pink salt is really snake oil.
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/pass-the-salt-but-not-that-pink-himalayan-stuff/
For some reason when I try to connect to your link I get this:
znModeratorYou have no idea how many bright, very knowledgable people make the claim to know facts just facts not spin and they all differ from one another.
Um, well, why would you think I wouldn’t know about that?
Because I was talking about my personal experience with people I know on an individual basis, and, you couldn;t know about that.
That entire post was about how I am personally positioned in this.
I know several dedicated professional political scientists, and as it happens, the last couple of days, on the phone and through email and in facebook PMs, they have all been putting the screws on.
I get competing, different narratives, all claiming to be just the facts I need to account for, and I tell them that I am getting more than one narrative that claims to be the facts I need to account for, and so I cannot help but notice how different they are. And in terms of this conversation with you here, it’s how different they are from each other, and how different you are from each of them. And when I say that to any single individual each individually gets offended.
So my reminder is always this.
I can’t take the time to sort out and debate details because one crucial thing is missing and its absence makes all the difference. That crucial thing is—I don’t care. It’s hard to sort out the details when you’re not interested.
In light of that I draw back and say, this is my real priority, and it absorbs all my energy.
The focus is on the present difference in policies going forward. On the one hand, I will be resigned to more of the patient slow awareness that progress is slow…and that’s the way I have lived this (politics) my entire life. So it’s not new.
On the other hand, there’s clear, regressive, catastrophe where we (as I see it) will lose ground.
That’s my focus and that’s what I tell everyone who is pressuring me at the moment to ascent to their narrative of past facts about past elections.
Enough. It’s cacophony. In contrast the focus is simple and easy.
That’s all I am saying.
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znModeratorFlorio: The same people who think Jared Goff is the answer now, thought Nick Foles was the answer a year ago.
Yeah Florio is fond of that kind of spin.
First, no one thought Foles was “the answer.” That’s bs. Compare what they said about Foles to what they say about Goff.
Foles if he continued in his 2014 mode was a decent qb especially compared to the alternative, which was nothing. No one said or thought Foles was special. It’s no accident IMO that they drafted Gurley the same year they had just traded for Foles. They thought he could effectively manage an offense on a team that featured defense.
Goff, on the other hand, they clearly believe is worth trading up to the first pick in the draft.
Florio does that. He gets into superficial barbs. And he’s wrong at about an equal percentage to when he’s right. But then he doesn’t know. He covers 32 teams equally and therefore doesn’t know as much about the Rams as we dedicated and well-informed Rams fans.
That isn’t the same as guaranteeing Goff will be a star. But I DO know they talked about each them, Foles and Goff, completely differently when each first came aboard.
And no one btw foresaw the Foles meltdown. That’s because there actually isn’t anything in Foles’s play in 2014 that foreshadowed that.
Oh and I don’t think it was just play on the field. There’s behind closed doors stuff at work in this too, but we have only gotten small hints about that.
Either way the situations were different. With Foles it was, they had no shot at a qb if they unloaded an injured Bradford, other than Foles.
With Goff they spent months looking at the alternatives and asking who was worth the price. They made a choice in that case. Foles was never their “choice” that way. He was, as I said, better than the alternative—nothing—and you could see them working to make the best of that. With Goff, they are doing far more than just working to make the best of something. He’s their guy. It’s different.
..
znModeratorAnd my entire life I have never met anyone who possessed “the truth” on anything when it comes to political vision. I always just see better or worse theories, and clashing assumptions and premises. That’s just how I approach all of this. That’s me.
That’s fine. But if you actually do believe no one possesses the truth, then it’s sensible for you not to lead with the claim that someone else is “searching for a dubious truth,” when all I did was use numbers and draw a logical inference from those numbers and our electoral system.
It’s not “spin” to say what is self-evidently the case. Presidents don’t win because of one particular state. Again, just as that last-second field goal can’t possibly “win the game.” And within those states, they don’t win based on third-party votes which don’t even match those lost to Democratic voters who DIRECTLY voted for Bush. By definition, the voting process is cumulative within each state. By definition, the electoral process is cumulative within the nation as a whole.
Those ARE facts. No spin. Just facts.
BT, all that’s lost on me. I wouldn’t waste my time if I were you. You have no idea how many bright, very knowledgable people make the claim to know facts just facts not spin and they all differ from one another. Differ from one another and differ from you. And when I say this to any of them they all get offended and remind me that their narratives are just true. I tune it out.
I just don’t play the game.
I can give you a perfectly good analogy from football talk. Back in the St. Louis days I read several different guys who attended camp regularly. And there were always times over certain issues where inevitably they all differed on what the facts were. I would point this out and each individually would take offense because each individually KNEW the facts on that issue, even though they all differed. My take was, well to you you may “know the facts” but to me you are all different so I account for that.
Actually when it comes to sorting out the facts over football analysis I am more patient than I am with political history. And actually the different voices talking to me about political history are also different from football in this respect…I care about football. To me the political scientists are all arguing over a sport I don’t even care about. That is, whose narrative of political history is just the facts. They all claim it’s them. But to me it’s like hearing a drawn-out detailed story about baseball when I don’t care about baseball.
So with political history, what I do instead is look at all the highly informed and detailed people telling me opposite things, and I go…I don’t care.
My focus is on the present and what I believe are the choices in the present.
When it comes to the facts of political history, I have many camp reporters trying to get me to “hear” distinctly different, opposed narratives. Every single one of them is offended when I say this to them, too.
I listen to be polite, until I reach “enough” mode, but either way there always comes the time when I have to decide for myself, and the decision for myself is to set priorities and focus. The minutia is just guys arguing over a sport that doesn’t interest me.
znModeratorI am a pragmatist not a purist. Worse is worse. Once I see that clearly—that worse is worse—all the rest is rhetoric to me.
I get that. But some people truly believe that the status quo is bringing them down anyway. You drop off a cliff or you stand in quicksand. You die either way. Those are strong feelings. They are real feelings. And politics, if it’s about anything–it’s feelings. So why put forth a candidate who has a lot of baggage and people do not trust? Not everyone will put this aside as rhetoric. They BELIEVE this deeply.
All I’m saying is that the party did not HAVE to give it to her. They did so KNOWING it would be a challenge. That’s my problem. Why make it this hard?
But we agree on Trump. I agree with that. But I do feel if I lived in a safe state I would give them a middle finger and vote for Stein. I would have to believe Trump had no chance to win it.
Again, how it appears to me.
No it;s not a cliff v. quicksand.
It’s a cliff v. ground that needs to be ploughed.
It’s not catastrophic both directions. It is only catastrophic one direction.
I am not sure I remember how old you are, but, I came into political being during Vietnam (with a draft number), and the last years of civil rights. So in my era, you were politicized at 15 or 16. I had older high school friends who died in Vietnam.
And of course my entire life, like all of us, or most of us, I have lived with a leftist vision and so saw clearly the bad things around us.
And things are not where they need to be yet, but when I look at my daughters lives I see progress.
It’s one thing to think the progress is too slow. I get that. The only reason I never went crazy is because I have a way of patiently living with the slowness of progress.
But…that also means I am completely, and irredeemably, on watchguard mode against REGRESSION.
Trump is regression.
So I vote for another compromised centrist asshole. Done it my whole life. And slept fine afterwards. Meanwhile I note that real progress doesn’t come from the top anyway. To me EXPECTING THAT is no different from the uninformed sound-byte mired voters we all complain about. Progress doesn’t come from the top.
BUT regression CAN.
We have made gains, and they are considerable compared to when I was 17. But the entire time, the gains were never made by heroes elected to office.
But we can put ourselves in a position to dismantle what gains there have been.
Being impatient for an ideal to materialize overnight, to me, is not worth the risk of actually dismantling what gains have been made.
As I said that’s my focus, and to me, all the rest is spin.
…
znModeratorthe shot about “trying to find a dubious truth.” Um, no. That’s not what I was trying to do. I was analyzing the facts on the ground, and just asked for your take on Nader’s role in 2000.
Beyond all of that? We don’t differ on the terrible effects of a Trump presidency. I despise everything he stands for.
I am telling you how things appear to ME. And I get dozens of people telling me “the facts on the ground,” and they’re all different, and all I ever hear in it is spin. For example I have friends who are career published professional political scientists who spin it differently, both from you and from each other, and I also see how all the people behind the different spins all sincerely believe what they gave me was “the truth.” I would even take the considerable time it took to sort it out, but, I can’t climb over this one wall—the wall being, I don’t care.
Of course we both despise Trump. The difference being, maybe, I would never risk, under any circumstances, him being elected. So the minutia and details and different historical spins I hear? I tune it all out.
That’s a fair warning to you about how I personally approach this issue.
And my entire life I have never met anyone who possessed “the truth” on anything when it comes to political vision. I always just see better or worse theories, and clashing assumptions and premises. That’s just how I approach all of this. That’s me.
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