3002

I was going to post about the idiotic, racist, hateful, and factually incorrect things Trump has said in the last few hours. But fuck it, he has new ones coming out faster than I can keep up. He’s the broadband of stupid.

3003

I agree with you, the Hitler thing is overdone and people are hypocritical about it. I also think, like many others here, that the idea of a national registry for a religious group is much closer to Nazism than Obama’s celebrity following in 2008 or his health care reforms. My ideal is to have people call a national registry racist, destructive, and point to historical examples where registries led to horrible outcomes (including Nazi Germany). The magazine covers of Trump with a Hitler mustache are a bad idea, as I think they’re too provocative to help convert the Trump supporters who might think a registry is a good idea and therefore not really helping.

3004

FDR made some mistakes. I don’t think anyone who is decrying Trump would defend FDR’s decision for internment.

The girl I talked to the most in my unit in the military- is Muslim. If she has to go into some sort of registry for that it would be the dumbest thing America has done in the past 30 years- and my feeling that America has sold its soul would be complete. I’d also be buying weapons and ammunition for what I’d expect to be coming, because if they come for them, they can come for me later.

3005

Yeah, the decision by America to round up Americans of Japanese descent and put them into camps is one of the most shameful things we, as a country, have done in the last 100 years.

I also agree with Tim N that the Time cover probably will hurt more than help.

The last thing we should do as a country is revisit the type of attitude and action that signified the height of McCarthyism. The paranoid insecurities were only made worse by people being too scared to confront our own inner demons. Don’t let the kind of rhetoric, such as Trump’s registry list, stand. Pandering to hateful and xenophobic tendencies would be the worst thing we could do, and entrench the hate for generations.

3006

I don’t understand why people are at all hung up with bringing up Nazis with regard to Trump. His social media is literally sharing Neo Nazi propaganda

Discarding Trump as a “joke” ignores the fact that a significant portion of Republican likely voters are supporting him. Even after he’s made these Nazi-esque policy suggestions.

He’s not a joke to be laughed at or a fad to be ignored. Quite clearly a significant number of Republicans agree with him, which is far more dangerous.

Maybe people should stop getting hung up about how things are “too politically correct” about race and religion and consider that those they’re bitching about actually have a fucking point about tolerance and empathy?

3007

I guess Sinclair Lewis was wrong. Fascism will be wearing a suit and an ugly hairpiece.

3008

Or maybe people should understand that the level of obnoxiousness some of the complainers have shown has become so annoying that it’s helping to cause the backlash and anger that is leading to this? When a portion of the electorate feels threatened, they’ll vote identity politics, and Trump is the same identity politics that certain Dems have used for years, even if it comes in a more dangerous package.

3009

Yeah because being annoyed is like way worse than being oppressed and discriminated against.

3010

Right, because being annoyed is like way worse than being discriminated against.
A protester at a Trump rally was kicked and punched, and according to Trump:

Donald Trump said Sunday that the protester who interrupted his rally at a convention center here on Saturday morning was “so obnoxious and so loud” that “maybe he should have been roughed up.”

Further reading: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/22/9778330/trump-protester-rally-violent

3011

There’s an interesting article from The Daily Beast which made me feel pretty damned bad for Chris Christie.

See, Trump has claimed (again, most recently Saturday) that on 9/11, “thousands and thousands” of US-resident Muslims took to the streets in Jersey City cheering when the Twin Towers were burning across the river. This is a ridiculous piece of fiction – Jersey City has a population of about 300,000, not a massive metropolis. You’d think that if a significant portion of it’s population were cheering for the terrorists’ actions on that day, SOMEONE would have video-taped it.

The Daily Beast article is ultimately critical of Christie for not standing up and calling Trump out on impugning the character of the good people of New Jersey… but in doing so, it listed all the OTHER times that poor Christie has been assailed from the Right for <gasp> treating Muslims as human beings.

In 2011, Christie nominated Sohail Mohammed as a Superior Court judge. When rumors began to circulate on the Internet that Mohammed was tied to terrorism and sympathetic to Sharia, Christie came to his aid.

“This Sharia law business is crap,” he said. “It’s just crazy and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.” (In 2014, he responded to a question about his record on Islam with an even more passionate defense of Mohammed. “Sohail Mohammed knows about as much about jihad as I do, being an Italian-Irish kid from Newark, New Jersey,” he said. “Sohail Mohammed knows about as much about Sharia law as I do.”)

That did not go over particularly well with the far right. In 2012, the conservative National Review wrote about “Christie’s Islam Problem,” attacking him for, in addition to Mohammed’s nomination, having publicly “embraced and kissed” an imam.

In 2013, when the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, put Christie on its list of public figures who “deserve recognition for their outstanding contributions to pushing back against Islamophobic trends in 2011 and 2012,” things only got worse. The Clarion Project, a group “challenging Islamic extremism,” reported on Christie’s honor by claiming that CAIR is “a Muslim Brotherhood front.”

I don’t really like Christie’s policies, but I still feel bad for the guy – he’s really the model of “compassionate conservative”.

3012

In fairness, the black lives matter folks are total dickheads.
Going to a political rally and trying to disrupt it is a dick move.

Trump has claimed (again, most recently Saturday) that on 9/11, “thousands and thousands” of US-resident Muslims took to the streets in Jersey City cheering when the Twin Towers were burning across the river.

This is absolutely insane.

3013

So what? Escort the person out. It’ not okay to resort to physical violence and it’s even worse when the candidate endorses it. There’s nothing ‘fair’ about it.

3014

The fact that in recent days the conservative right has really come out very strong in their racist anti-Muslim fear-mongering xenophobic insanity and nobody from the Republican party in general or the conservative controlled media (FOX and such) has made a peep to try and temper the vitriol with some common sense REALLY has me worried about what is yet to come. The top Republican candidates really seem to be embracing the near-fascist rhetoric, as they obviously see it as a way to surge their polling numbers and get media sound bites. How low will the right go to win an election? How fast has this become a race to the bottom, and, if they win, what does it mean for the future of this country?

I know that many Republicans can not be comfortable with what’s happening inside their party right now. Where are the voices of reason?

30 days ago I would have told you there is no way in hell I would vote for Hillary Clinton. While I lean Democratic in most ways, I find Clinton untrustworthy and far too Washington-as-usual for my tastes. I think she would make a terrible president for the middle class. That said, after the past week of watching the right sink into borderline fascism, I feel like Clinton may be my ONLY choice if I don’t want to watch history repeat itself and my country make mistakes that could end in a holy war that lasts decades.

Separation of Church and State, it’s there for a reason.

3015

The mayor of Jersey City was on the news this morning and essentially called Trump a bare faced liar.

3016

Marco Rubio’s first TV campaign ad: https://youtu.be/iXmMl0_RnXg

“I’m Marco Rubio. I approve this message because there can be no arrangement or negotiation. Either they win or we do.”

3017

Holy shit. That has to be absolutely terrifying for a Muslim American to watch. He’s essentially saying “There is no middle ground, all of Islam is bad. Kill them all, let Allah sort them out.”

3018

The GOP is going to get a lot of mileage out of Paris. Fear-mongering works really well when you have nothing else to say about your party.

3019

David Atkins: It’s Trump’s GOP Now.

As for Marco Rubio, the leading establishment candidate? Well, after seeing Donald Trump threaten to create (wildly unconstitutional) national registries of Muslims in the United States, Rubio decided to up the ante by pushing for unconstitutional government spying measures in order to shut down any locations where muslims might gather, from mosques to diners. At a time when the anti-establishment GOP candidates are saying increasingly outlandish and terrifying things that, at the risk of fulfilling Godwin’s Law, can only be described as proto-fascist, the leading establishment candidate isn’t pushing back but rather doubling down on the crazy.

By doing so, Rubio is conceding what should by now already be obvious to even the D.C. pundit circruit: the GOP is Donald Trump’s party now. Whether Mr. Trump is the eventual nominee or not, Trumpism (or Carsonism, in its more mild-mannered but equally extremist form) is what GOP voters want. And lagging not far behind is the despised government shutdown huckster Ted Cruz. Collectively they represent 64% of the GOP vote, in addition to the smattering of support garnered by far less prominent anti-establishment candidates. That’s what the party is now. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio combined can’t even manage to pull down a fifth of GOP voters between them.

Journalists need to acknowledge this reality. Trumpism is not a passing fad in an otherwise responsible GOP electorate. It’s all that’s left of a Republican Party that long since gave up any pretense at serious governance and instead became the unapologetic, Koch-owned plutocratic political arm of the resentment-fueled outrage machine created by talk radio, Fox News, and Breitbart.

3020

It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I think the GOP is setting itself up for a very big fall in the general election. They’re candidates have thrown caution to the wind and are going all out during the primary stage. They used to be better at going just part way crazy.

They’ve forgotten that all-important lesson: never go full retard.

3021

I just felt like pointing out that they are dickheads.