Oh I completely agree that he and his campaign were very careful to word the message in such as way as to be non-offensive on the surface. I’m Marco Rubio. I don’t like terrorists. I won’t negotiate with them. They need to be defeated. If that’s all he’s saying then I’m not even sure why he’s bothering. Does he think we will vote for him because he looks nice and states the obvious? He may as well be saying: I’m Marco Rubio. I breathe oxygen. I turn nutrients into fecal matter every day.
But Rubio and his campaign know damn well that is NOT how that message will be interpreted. Just look at the wording. It’s subtle, but it’s crafted to manipulate. “A civilizational struggle” (ISIS is not a civilization, but Islam sure is) “between freedom and liberty and radical Islamic terror” (why bother to define it as Islamic? Why not just radical terrorists?). “These aren’t disgruntled or disempowered people” (Who isn’t? The terrorists? Those words were not used to describe ISIS, but they have been used to describe the refugees.) “[they] want to kill us because we let women drive and girls go to school” (that’s not specific to ISIS, it’s well known that several Muslim countries have poor women’s rights records). “there can be no arrangement or negotiation” (Again, with who? The terrorists? Of course not. Nobody is advocating placation of ISIS. So we’re left to assume he means the refugees again.) “Either they win, or we do.” (It’s them or us, and them is a pretty broad brush stroke from the conservative right these last few days).
So yes, I would call that irresponsible. Either that or the Rubio campaign is monumentally stupid to think that issuing a blanket “I’m Marco Rubio, and I don’t like terrorists!” ad is somehow going to get them noticed above the din being caused by Trump, Carson and FOX News. I think the Rubio campaign is plenty intelligent, and they recognize this is a nice, subtle way to gain attention without having to look like a moron accusing a U.S. city of celebrating 9/11.
Here is another… shall we say “questionable assertion”… by the esteemed Mr. Trump. On Sunday, he tweeted this nice image:
Shockingly, it seems the statistics presented above are a little off. Some are as much as 7% off (blacks are responsible for black homicides 90% of the time), while others are… well, pretty much every other number on the chart is 400% to 540% off.
Whites kill other whites 82% of the time, not 16%. Black kill whites about 15% of the time, not 81%. Whites kill blacks about 8% of the time, not 2%. You can get the actual data for 2014 from the FBI if you’re interested; obviously the data for 2015 isn’t published yet since, you know.
Ah, and it turns out that the “Crime Statistics Bureau” doesn’t exist. Not in San Francisco, not anywhere in the US.
I debated putting this in the “Stupid Shit You See on Facebook” thread.
Telefrog
3044
The best part is the image of the movie stereotype militarized “thug” next to the graphic, just in case you didn’t catch the subtle racism.
Sounds like Mr. Rubio wants us to go to war with, and destroy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Good to know his position.
It’s not amazingly funny, but it’s nerd political humor.
2016 Presidential election as M:TG cards (from MightyGodKing’s blog, which is way slow, probably overloaded)
My favorite is the Carson.
LMN8R
3047
It was sourced directly from a Neo Nazi, actually. We discussed it on the last page.
Timex
3048
The magic cards are awesome.
Yeah, well it didn’t have pictures, did it? Pics or it didn’t happen.
Lots of new posts today. People must be bored stiff at work with everyone out. Or else they’re at home posting here rather than brining the turkey. Damn, I’ve gotta brine the turkey tonight.
Hey, we moved past this one really quick:
Trump told supporters: “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works.”
The Republican frontrunner then added “… and if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us”.
So he is advocating torture, not just for intelligence, but for the express purpose of torturing our enemies because they deserve it. He’s running for president. Of The United States. The Silent Majority stands with him.
MrGrumpy
3051
The Republican Party - the official party of _____. (Fill in the blank, many descriptions apply and none good.)
(Analyzing the results of a Pew poll):
“In Barack Obama’s six years as president, 13% of Republicans, on average, have said they trust the government always or most of the time – the lowest level of average trust among either party during any administration dating back 40 years. During George W. Bush’s presidency, an average of 47% of Republicans said they could trust the government. By contrast, the share of Democrats saying they can trust the government has been virtually unchanged over the two administrations (28% percent Bush, 29% Obama).”
The Pew findings confirm that the Republicans, on the whole, aren’t animated by consistent principles. They’re guided by false narratives and a conservative media invested in their anger. It doesn’t matter what Obama does or doesn’t do – conservatives will distrust him and virtually any other Democrat no matter what the results of their policies. The facts are largely irrelevant.
Trump understands that better than any other GOP candidate (but most of them are effectively guilty of the same thing, just without being openly racist and xenophobic.)
Pod
3052
Back in 2009 Donald Trump bought the Lowes Island Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. Six years and $25 million later the renovations were complete.
When he was done with it I guess he thought he would spice up the place by tying it into local history (and admirable move), only instead of actually using local history he just decided to make shit up.
He installed a plaque which reads:
Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” the inscription reads. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’
Unfortunately for him, no such battle was ever fought in Sterling, VA. The Battle of Ball’s Bluff was fought in Loudoun Co, VA, but that’s the closest battle to the golf course that’s ever been fought. Definitely no battle that became known as “The River of Blood”.
When asked about it Trump’s responses are stereo-typical anti-intellectualism.
“That was a prime site for river crossings,” Mr. Trump said. “So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them.”
Really? A river crossing counts as a battle? At least he got that much right.
Edit: Right that there’s a river crossing near the golf course. Not that people were shot at that river crossing.
“How would they know that?” Mr. Trump asked, when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. “Were they there?”
The Civil War wasn’t exactly before the dawn of writing.
“Write your story the way you want to write it,” Mr. Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. “You don’t have to talk to anybody. It doesn’t make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense.
This attitude is scary and too common. It’s also an interesting one from a historiographical perspective. It’s the clash between history and memory and what counts as history vs memory. They’re not always the same, and the history of one group might not be the same history as another group, and the history of one group might be seen as an attack on the cultural memory of another. It’s one reason why we have such outrage anytime under-represented groups try to reclaim their history.
Here’s a fantastic piece from The Atlantic on history and memory and how they intertwine and sometimes oppose each other.
He’ll make a fantastic president.
Well someone needs to get thermonuclear war going otherwise we will never realize the Fallout universe.
Well, at least he was just exploiting fake history.
Why Trump’s Lies Don’t Matter
“I spoke to a lot of his supporters who are waiting to come into this rally. And I asked them what they think of Donald Trump and whether or not they’re bothered by his inaccurate statements and whether they think they matter. And not a single one of them said that they thought it mattered. They said they like him because they think he’s going to be a strong leader, and they think he’s going to bring the change to Washington that they want.
“In fact, they blame the liberal media, as they say, on perpetrating lies against Donald Trump. They repeatedly asked, why don’t you ask this about Hillary Clinton, why don’t you ask this about President Obama? So there’s definitely a party line feeling among his supporters, that it is us-versus-them. And unfortunately, the media is very much the ‘them’ in this situation.”
There have been two great prophets in recent times. One is the Onion, and the other is Colbert.
Teiman
3057
Trump is part of the older trick in the book and people is gullible.
“Good cop, bad cop”.
You put a horrible person being next to a average person, to make the average person looks good.
He is tolerated to make the other politicians look smart in comparison.
The reality is that most of current politicians are very average people.
The reality is that Trump supporters are so blinded that they will vote the horrible person over the average one.
Murbella
3059
The reality is that as far as crazy goes, Trump is average among his fellow republican candidates.
I think they are all pushing the envelope to see who can out-crazy the others.
I was talked at for 10 minutes by a local man who said, and I quote, “I’ve been checking out Facebook and there are a lot of people connecting Obama to Muslims. So you gotta figure that there’s something there, with all those fingers pointing in that direction.”
