Headline O’ the Day
by digby
Yeah, I’m going to guess a lot of those Republicans still believe that Ayn Rand was right about the whole parasite thing. For all we know Ryan was the guy who turned them on to it. And the rest think poor people are all lazy blacks and browns who refuse to work.
So yeah, this was always going to be a tough sell.
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Playground Bully for president
by digby
Here’s more of awful evidence that Trump is having a pernicious influence on the nation’s kids. It’s very depressing:
Tracey Iglehart, a teacher at Rosa Parks elementary school in Berkeley, California, did not expect Donald Trump to show up on the playground.
This was, after all, a school named after a civil rights hero in a progressive California enclave, with a melting pot of white, African American, Latino and Muslim students.
That has not stopped some children from channeling and adopting the Republican presumptive nominee’s xenophobic rhetoric in playground spats and classroom exchanges.
“They said things like ‘you’ll get deported’, ‘you weren’t born here’ and ‘you were born in a Taco Bell’,” said Iglehart, 49. “They may not know exactly what it means, but they know it’s powerful language.”
Hearing it in Rosa Parks elementary, of all places, came as a shock. “Berkeley is not an area where there are Trump supporters. This is not the land of Trump.”
Yet the spirit of the GOP presidential candidate has surfaced here and, according to one study, in schools across the country.
An online survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center found toxic political rhetoric invading elementary, middle and high schools, emboldening children to make racist taunts that leave others bewildered and anxious.
“We mapped it out. There was no state or region that jumped out. It was everywhere,” said Maureen Costello, the study’s author. “Marginalized students are feeling very frightened, especially Muslims and Mexicans. Many teachers use the word terrified.” The children who did the taunting were echoing Trump’s rhetoric, she said. “Bad behavior has been normalized. They think it’s OK.”
More than two-thirds of the teachers in the survey reported that students – especially immigrants, children of immigrants and Muslims – have expressed worries about what might happen to them or their families after the November election. More than half reported an increase in uncivil political discourse, and more than a third observed an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment.
They reported kids bringing their birth certificates to school because they’re afraid of being hauled off an deported because kids are taunting them. One kindergartner believes he’s going to be deported and trapped behind a wall.
At a basketball game in Iowa, students from Dallas Center-Grimes chanted “Trump, Trump, Trump” at Perry high school, which is nearly half Latino.
“It’s a hate word,” said Joe Enriquez Henry, Iowa chapter president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “Those in the white community with a racist slant are now jumping on the bandwagon using the name Trump and the phrase Make America Great Again to tell people of color, especially Latinos, you are not welcome here.”
Salvatore Callesano, a graduate student in Hispanic linguistics at the University of Texas, said such rhetoric transmitted coded messages. “The phrase ‘build the wall’ indexes Donald Trump and his ideology. It’s been repeated so much it has been picked up by the kids. It’s a covert way of being anti-Hispanic. The people who use it are highly aware of what it means.”
If you watch a Trump rally you see a ritual of them chanting “build that wall!” and when Trump says “who’s going to pay for it?” they all yell back “Mexico!” Every rally. They are rapturous.
This observation strikes me as very astute:
A father of four children in the Palisades, a wealthy neighborhood in west Los Angeles, was taken aback when he accompanied his 12-year-old son on a camping trip with scouts. “They were all supporting Trump, saying he was great, repeating his lines.” The father, who asked not to be named, inferred rebellion, not racism. “I think they did it to annoy the parents.”
Costello, the survey author, said Trump seemed a perfect candidate for seventh-grade boys. “They like his loudness, rudeness and brashness..
Phillip Carter, who researches sociolinguistics at Florida International University, and has a chapter on Trump and Hillary Clinton in a forthcoming book, said Trump’s iconoclasm, New York accent and inappropriate language could seem rebellious to white, monolingual boys.
I think that describes the average Trump voter quite well. They have the temperament of seventh-grade boys.
And yes, the kids are getting it from their parents. Millions of them.
According to Carter, the children who repeat the real estate mogul’s taunts tend to be from families and communities that share and mediate such sentiments. “Trumpism is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a much larger problem beneath.”
This is just creepy. And it’s going to get worse. President Obama is going to be on the trail and yet another level of disgusting rhetoric is going to bubble up.
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..a federal appeals court said Thursday people do not have a right to carry concealed weapons in public under the 2nd Amendment.
An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said law enforcement officials can require applicants for a concealed weapons permit to show they are in immediate danger or have another good reason for a permit beyond self-defense. — AP Mercury News
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Walk for Gun Safety at Golden Gate Bridge
#WearOrange Moms Demand Action – CA
photo by Spocko |
“..there was no evidence that crime went up in counties such as Fresno and Sacramento that had more permissive “good cause” standards. — Paul Clement, an attorney for the residents.
The Supreme Court has ruled that individuals have a right to possess a weapon in their home. Thursday’s ruling centers on the next frontier in the gun-control debate.
“Probably the most important battleground of the Second Amendment has been whether there is a right to carry guns outside the home, and if there is, to what extent can states and localities regulate that right,” said Jonathan E. Lowy, the director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Deadbeat Donald
by digby
During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah’s at Trump Plaza.
The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.
Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.
Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will “protect your job.” But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.
In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.
Not that his voters will care. They have been primed to believe that the “liberal media” is lying and the system is rigged so he’ll say it’s all bullshit and most of them will believe it.
But it’s important to keep this drumbeat up anyway. His only claim to the office is that he’s an exceptional businessman. The truth is that he sucks at it and only made money because he inherited a boatload from his daddy who co-signed every loan until he was 40. His talent is being a celebrity, period. He has leveraged his celebrity into a “brand” which he licenses to every cheap con-artist who pitches him.
Donald Trump is a phony in every way and all of this has to be exposed over and over again to ensure that nobody but his deluded cult followers don’t know about it.
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All hands on deck
by digby
It’s time:
“I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”
It’s a helluva endorsement.
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About that Supreme Court vacancy
by digby
This case is going to wind up there:
Americans have no Second Amendment right to carry concealed guns in public, a federal appeals court in California ruled on Thursday in a significant blow to gun-rights activists and gun owners in a large swath of the Western U.S.
The San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 7-4 ruling, upheld a California law requiring residents to show “good cause” for carrying a concealed handgun.
Under the California law, personal safety alone doesn’t qualify as good cause, which is defined by county sheriffs. The plaintiffs, gun owners seeking licenses to carry their weapons concealed, said the policies in San Diego and Yolo counties where they live violated their Second Amendment rights.
“We hold that the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public,” wrote Judge William A. Fletcher, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, for the seven-judge majority.
Lawmakers are free to enact “any prohibition or restriction a state may choose” on the carrying of concealed guns, Judge Fletcher said.
I have noted that a lot of liberals don’t care as much about guns as I do. But nonetheless, it should be legal for cities and states to make it illegal to walk around with a gun hidden under your coat. This case will go all the way to the top eventually and it would be nice if there was a majority that would uphold it. This gun violence epidemic is one of the most important problems this country faces and it cannot be solved by everyone having more guns.
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The Great Whitebread Hope is back!
by digby
The Republicans are in full panic mode. I wrote about it for Salon this morning:
It seems odd that after an overwhelming litany of crude, demagogic insults over the course of the last year Republicans have suddenly recognized that Donald Trump is a racist whose reckless rhetoric is likely to destroy the Republican Party. Evidently, the “Mexicans are rapists” comments in his announcement speech a year ago didn’t ring any alarm bells. But better late than never. Party leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan both decided they needed to denounce his blatant bigotry although they made clear it wasn’t a deal breaker. Better an unfit, racist, authoritarian megalomaniac than a Democrat in the White House. You go to Hades with the devil you have not the devil you wished you have.
There have been a few prominent Republicans who have publicly withdrawn their endorsements. Senator Mark Kirk said he could no longer support Trump because he doesn’t have the temperament to be commander in chief. This has also been obvious for the last 12 months but again, it’s to his credit that he’s belatedly decided that it’s a disqualifying characteristic. He’s decided to write-in the name of General David Petraeus which he may want to re-think considering the news this week that Petraeus was not only found guilty of “mishandling” classified information by sharing it with his mistress, he also shared Top Secret information with reporters. It’s really tough finding a decent Republican to vote for these days.
Other GOP officials are in various stages of panic and Trump tried to calm with his stiff, unconvincing speech on Tuesday night without much success. But he was unrepentant and unimpressed. Before he gave the speech he let the New York Times know exactly what he thinks of his fellow Republicans:
Politicians are so politically correct anymore, they can’t breathe,”Mr. Trump said in an interview Tuesday afternoon as fellow Republicans forcefully protested his ethnically charged criticism of a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against the defunct Trump University.
“The people are tired of this political correctness when things are said that are totally fine,” he said during an interlude in a day of exceptional stress in the Trump campaign. “It is out of control. It is gridlock with their mouths.”
All of this has led to a new sense of urgency in the #NeverTrump camp, even though the pipe dream of knocking Trump off his recently acquired throne is as unlikely as ever. Joe Scarborough, formerly a huge Trump booster was nearly hysterical on Wednesday, saying:
“Donald, guess what, I’m not going to support you until you get your act together. You’re acting like bush-league loser, you’re acting like a racist, you’re acting like a bigot … Until you…prove to me you’re not a bigot and you don’t take my party down in the ditch, you don’t have my endorsement.
It is in your hands on whether you are going to prove to the Republican Party and me personally that you’re not a bigot. Don’t use Hillary Clinton as an excuse, as your blank check to say racist things about [a judge] born in Indiana. No, Donald, you don’t get to play it that way.”
Radio and TV pundit Hugh Hewitt was one of the first right wing media personalities to expose Trump’s gross lack of knowledge about world affairs when he asked him about the Iranian Quds force on his radio show and Trump clearly had no clue what he was talking about. Nonetheless Hewitt promised to support Trump if he became the nominee and has stuck with him as he demonstrated his unfitness for office over and over again. But the racist attack on the federal judge has put him over the edge and he is now suggesting that the GOP must do something drastic: change the rules of the convention and give the nomination to someone else. He was so overwrought he exploded with crazed mixed metaphors on Wednesday saying, “it’s like ignoring stage-four cancer. You can’t do it, you gotta go attack it. And right now the Republican Party is facing—the plane is headed towards the mountain after the last 72 hours.”
Trump supporters were not amused:
— Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) June 8, 2016
But if don’t ban Hewitt from the convention and take his suggestion seriously, which some people seem to be doing, who could possibly step in? Paul Ryan, everybody’s favorite blue eyed dream boat has said he will not do it. And as noted, he doesn’t believe Trump’s racism — or any other of his pathological personality characteristics — are deal breakers in the first place so he’s out. Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard wrote an open letter to Mitt Romney to run as an Independent, but there’s little reason to think he’d go along with seizing the Republican nomination from Trump at the convention and even less reason to think the delegates would want him to.
But there is one possibility that has the political world aflutter: the Great Whitebread Hope himself, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. There was a time when he was lauded as the most formidable Republican in the land, a Harley driving, union busting, tax cutting superman destined for the White House. Then he ran for president and showed himself to be a dud of epic proportions. He proved himself to be uninformed, boring and amateurish and ran through his millions in big donor money in record time. By the end of September he was gone, the first of the “Deep Bench” superstars to drop out.
Apparently, he’s tanned, rested and ready to rumble. After months of tweeting his lunch orders and informing his followers he got a haircut, he’s back in the game:
Apparently “Fighting for Us” means those who gave to Clinton Foundation or who paid BIG speaking fees to Clintons. pic.twitter.com/d0hsMBH4Wr— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) June 8, 2016
And this comment to a Wisconsin radio station sent a frisson of anticipation through the Never Trumpers:
He’s not yet the nominee. Officially that won’t happen until the middle of July, and so for me that’s kind of the timeframe. In particular I want to make sure that he renounces what he says, at least in regards to this judge.
Or else what?
The problem with this scenario is that these elite Republicans are failing to take something very important into consideration: their voters. It’s certainly possible that they are in danger of losing some faction of the party over Trump’s repugnant behavior. But there is little reason to believe it’s a majority. This week, millions of them went to the polls and voted for him even though he had already won the nomination. Granted, he’s not the electoral juggernaut he pretends to be, but he is the legitimate winner of the Republican nomination and his voters will not take kindly to having their wishes ignored.
Moreover, the Republican rank and file doesn’t agree with the premise that Trump is out of bounds in the first place. This YouGov survey done after Trump made his bigoted comments about the judge show 81% of Democrats and 44% of independents believe they were racist. But only only 22% of Republicans agree. In other words, 78% of GOP voters are just fine with Trump and seem to agree with his statement that “people are tired of this political correctness when things are said that are totally fine.”
Scott Walker’s ill-fated campaign fizzled so early in the primary process the he never faced the voters. His performances in the debates were rated dead last in every poll. The fact that Republicans are contemplating pulling him out of mothballs in the vain hope that he, of all people, will be able to vanquish Trump at the convention is so desperate you almost have to feel sorry for them. But then you remember that they created this monster and deserve what they’re getting. Let’s just hope they don’t somehow manage to take the rest of us down with them.
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Donald the mind-killer
by Tom Sullivan
My favorite thing about this ad is Bob Corker's look after he gets the question. He's so shook. https://t.co/3FO1VKOcK0— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) June 6, 2016
“Fear is the mind-killer” is familiar to legions of Dune fans. Jamelle Bouie’s post at Slate suggests Republicans might ought to memorize the Litany Against Fear. Watching them at once condemn and yet pledge themselves to vote for Donald Trump is, if not mind-killing, at least mind-numbing:
Republicans, from the top of the ticket to the bottom of the ballot, are caught in a bind. If they don’t say anything to counter or condemn Trump’s rhetoric, they are complicit in the Trump candidacy. If they say anything, they become fodder for Democratic efforts against their party. The only alternative is to try to walk the line of criticism without disavowal. But as we see with Paul Ryan—who was savaged by both mainstream and conservative press for looking past Trump’s racism even as he bemoans it—that’s almost impossible.
In the same way that fear of a third-party candidacy drove Republicans to craft and embrace a “pledge” that did nothing but tie their fortunes to Trump, fear—of backlash from pro-Trump Republican voters, of attacks from Democrats, of opprobrium and contempt from everyone else—is driving them to hedge and hesitate in the most craven way possible. Fear is the mind-killer, and Trump has scrambled their ability to think clearly about their dilemma.
Lay down with dogs, the saying goes. Republicans have made their bed with Trump and now face the inevitable. For comedians, Trump jokes write themselves, but the most devastating attacks coming against Trump are no joke. Abigail Tracy observes at Vanity Fair:
Using Trump’s own words against him has already emerged as a theme in Clinton’s campaign and she is doubling down on it. On Monday, a Clinton super-PAC, Priorities USA, also released an ad that criticizes Trump for mocking Serge Kovaleski, a New York Times journalist who suffers from a condition that limits the movement of his limbs, during a speech in November of last year. Roughly 20 seconds into the emotional spot, parents of a young girl, Grace, who was born with spina bifida condemn the New York billionaire for his derisive and widely criticized impression of Kovaleski. “When I saw Donald Trump mock a disabled person, I was just shocked,” Grace’s mother, Lauren Glaros, says. “The children at Grace’s school all know never to mock her, and so for an adult to mock someone with a disability is shocking.” Politico reports that the ad, which is part of a $20 million campaign and will run for six weeks in seven states, reflects the findings of a number of focus groups. According to the outlet, Trump’s taunts provoked some of the highest negative ratings responses toward the presumptive G.O.P. nominee.
Trumps attacks against a federal judge born in Indiana of Mexican heritage are taking a toll on Republicans (or is that troll?).
Weakness is the cardinal sin on the right and the ultimate conservative insult. They fear it. It is why you can count on Republicans always to double down and never back down. “I will never, ever back down,” Trump said in his speech on Tuesday. Tracy writes, “Trump—brash and outspoken egomaniac that he is—can’t resist responding to any fight.” The way the Clinton campaign can set the terms of the fall campaign is to play a tune to which Trump cannot resist dancing. Attack him as weak and he will walk right into it. Every time. Trump cannot help himself. And in trying to refute it, he will only confirm it.
Get Ready
by digby
This is what Democrats united to beat @realDonaldTrump look like. Get ready, Donald – we’re coming. pic.twitter.com/p8dFtvr9NV— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) June 5, 2016
He thought he’s faced his toughest opponents already.
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So is every white judge is on notice that they can’t fairly judge minority defendants?
by digby
Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter on Tuesday likened the federal judge overseeing the civil fraud case against Trump University to an Iraqi-American presiding over a case involving “American Sniper” Chris Kyle.
The California congressman told Sean Hannity on his radio program that he thought it was a mistake for Trump to bring up Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s “Mexican heritage,” arguing that Trump should keep his business matters separate from his presidential campaign. Hunter said it was “bigger deal” that the law firm in the class action case paid the Clintons to give a speech in 2009. Still, Hunter decided to try out a thought experiment.
“What I like to do is take these arguments out to there logical extremes,” Hunter said on Sean Hannity’s radio program. “So let’s say that Chris Kyle, the American sniper, is still alive and he was on trial for something, and his judge was a Muslim-American of Iraqi descent. Here you have Chris Kyle, who’s killed a whole bunch of bad guys in Iraq. Would that be a fair trial for Chris Kyle? If you had that judge there? Probably not. And Chris Kyle could probably say, ‘this guy’s not gonna like me.’”
“You could look at the O.J. trial too, was that fair?” asked Hunter.
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to take this fatuous, racist nonsense for another six months. (I don’t even know what he’s talking about with the OJ trial … black jurors, maybe?)
This is what it comes to. An American Muslim of Iraqi descent cannot be impartial when judging a soldier who killed Iraqis in the war? He must not be aware that we have actual Muslims in the armed services, many of whom killed Iraqis during the war or his tiny little brains would burst out of his thick head.
But I will note that he’s out there blabbering the Trump talking points about the law firm who brought the case being contributors to Clinton. I would suggest that everyone put them at the top of their list if they ever get into legal trouble because they are clearly clairvoyant — they must have known Trump was going to run for president back in 2010 when they took the case.
Trump is working very hard to make these cases look like some kind of political hack jobs, but they aren’t. He’s obviously very worried his phony “business” success (as opposed to inherited fortune) is going to be exposed. We’ll see if the press has enough fortitude to resist the he said/she said he’s offering them.
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