|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:15:15 GMT
Replaced by *******TYRANNY OF THE MINORITY*************(the new APARTHEID)******The tyranny of the majority isn’t a problem in America today. Tyranny of the minority is.
Minority rule brought us Trump, and worse.
Our Constitution has always had a small-state bias, but the effects have become more pronounced as the population discrepancy between the smallest states and the largest states has grown. Given contemporary demography, a little bit less than 50 percent of the country lives in 40 of the 50 states.
“Roughly half the country gets 80 percent of the votes in the Senate, and the other half of the country gets 20 percent.”
The distortion carries over to the Electoral College, where each state’s number of electors is determined by the size of its congressional delegation. This would matter less if the United States weren’t so geographically polarized. But America is now two countries, eyeing each other across a chasm of distrust and contempt. One is urban, diverse and outward-looking. This is the America that’s growing. The other is white, provincial and culturally revanchist. This is the America that’s in charge.
The US Senate is, by design, a grotesquely unrepresentative body that amplifies the power of small states at the expense of voters in big states. And given how America’s political geography has developed in the past two centuries, it’s now a body in which white rural interests are privileged over those of black and Latino city dwellers, given how much whiter the median state is than the median American voter.
While the Founders inserted checks against the tyranny of the majority at other points, they issued explicit and stern warnings against the danger of giving the minority too much power in the Senate—a distinction that’s usually glossed over by defenders of the institution’s status quo. In Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton called it a “poison” to give the minority the power to stop the majority in the Senate, and that doing so would lead to “tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.”
And then there’s the Supreme Court. These past few years, the Court has been dominated by a Republican-appointed majority that has issued rulings that happen to strengthen Republicans’ anti-majoritarian hold on power. In June, the Court banned a key financing mechanism for public sector unions, one of the financial and institutional backbones of the political party that won more votes in the 2016 presidential election.
In both Shelby and Citizens United, five Republican appointees struck down democratically enacted laws, and in doing so wound up substantially increasing Republicans’ odds of electoral success. In Janus, the public sector unions case, they’ve likely done it again.
So on the one hand, we have a president who lost the popular vote, the second time that has happened in the past five elections; a House districted in such a way that even a large, 5-point victory by Democrats in the popular vote in November wouldn’t give them a majority of seats; a Senate elected by a skewed, unusually white cross-section of America, where the median Senate seat is substantially more conservative than the median American voter; and a Supreme Court that is dismantling one party’s political economic base and helping preserve, even strengthen, the other party’s anti-majoritarian hold on power.
One way they do it:
Gerrymandering: Or How Republicans Win Elections Despite Fewer Votes?
companion threads
www.vox.com/2018/9/12/17850980/democracy-tyranny-minority-mob-rule-james-madison www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion/trump-electoral-college-minority.html ronstadt.proboards.com/thread/5307/news-killing-audience-dividing-america
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:15:56 GMT
FIRST, LET'S LOOK AT THE TYPE OF PEOPLE THAT FILL THE DEPLORABLE MINORITY BASKET'S RANK AND FILE.Unfiltered Voices From Donald Trump's Crowds | The New York Times
Published on Aug 3, 2016
New York Times reporters have covered Donald J. Trump's rallies for more than a year. His supporters at these events often express their views in angry and provocative ways. Here are some examples.
Produced by: ERICA BERENSTEIN, NICK CORASANITI AND ASHLEY PARKER
Read the story here: nyti.ms/2auUvCG
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:16:21 GMT
Charlottesville: Race and Terror – VICE News Tonight on HBO
Published on Aug 14, 2017 On Saturday hundreds of white nationalists, alt-righters, and neo-Nazis traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia to participate in the “Unite the Right” rally. By Saturday evening three people were dead – one protester, and two police officers – and many more injured.
“VICE News Tonight” correspondent Elle Reeve went behind the scenes with white nationalist leaders, including Christopher Cantwell, Robert Ray, David Duke, and Matthew Heimbach — as well as counter-protesters. VICE News Tonight also spoke with residents of Charlottesville, members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Charlottesville Police.
From the neo-Nazi protests at Emancipation Park to Cantwell’s hideaway outside of Virginia, “VICE News Tonight” provides viewers with exclusive, up close and personal access inside the unrest.
This episode of VICE News Tonight aired August 14, 2017 on HBO.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:16:43 GMT
See the Sparks That Set Off Violence in Charlottesville | National Geographic
National Geographic Published on Aug 19, 2017 Warning: This video contains profanity and disturbing scenes from the Charlottesville, Va. demonstration on August 12, 2017. It also includes footage of James Fields, Jr., who has been charged with second-degree murder in an attack that day.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:17:08 GMT
Trump fans' anger at the media
Sky News Published on Nov 6, 2016 What's it like being part of the so-called 'crooked media' on the Trump campaign trail?
Sky's US correspondent Amanda Walker has been following Donald Trump around the US experiencing first hand the fury against the media, which the Republican candidate claims is biased against him.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:17:35 GMT
Worse than Pizzagate conspiracy theory is gaining force among Trump supporters Mark Sumner Daily Kos Staff Wednesday August 01, 2018 · 5:52 AM PDT
Sometimes “deplorable” just isn’t deplorable enough. That’s the case with a core set of Donald Trump supporters who have come together around a new conspiracy theory that’s … not Pizzagate. Because it’s worse. And, as the Washington Post reports, this new conspiracy is already spilling from under the rocks of alt-Reich websites, into living, screaming Trump rallies.
Believers in “QAnon,” as the conspiracy theory is known, were front and center at the Florida State Fairgrounds Expo Hall, where Trump came to stump for Republican candidates. As the president spoke, a sign rose from the audience. “We are Q,” it read. Another poster displayed text arranged in a “Q” pattern: “Where we go one we go all.”
Who or what is QAnon? It’s the handle for a racist troll who pretends to be “a government agent with top security clearance” working with Donald Trump to take out the “Deep State.”
Starting with connections to the original Pizzagate, QAnon has built up followers through mystery appearances in the Trump-loving depths of Reddit. Most of those posts come in the form of “breadcrumbs,” brief, haiku-like statements that can be interpreted as anything from a stock market prediction to an example of an AI attempting to learn human language through random word combinations. In a real sense, it’s wrong to even think of the QAnon story as something coming from the QAnon troll. It’s a collaborative effort; a group of like-minded racist conspiracy nuts riffing on blobs of half-assed beat poetry.
The supposed meaning of the posts are actually generated by thousands of Q followers who sift through this mess and convert the obscure “crumbs” into an elaborate story. There are entire 24/7 streaming channels and multiple Youtube videos dedicated to nothing but attempts to fit together the crumbs into a single narrative. And the story generated by this collaboration between incoherent source and conspiracy-monger fans isn’t just convoluted, self-contradictory, and utterly inane, it’s also deeply racist, anti-Semitic, and woven through with equal parts pedophilia and Christian end-times eschatology. In short, it’s a massively expanded version of Pizzagate in which Hillary Clinton, the Illuminati, and the Rothchilds—who may or may not be interchangeable—are waging holy war against Donald Trump and his supporters … while running child sex rings and satanic murder cults on the side. If that sounds ridiculous … it is. Unfortunately, the people behind it are not joking.
The full spray of QAnon information includes: How violent criminal John McCain must wear an ankle bracelet and be tracked at all times, the harem of child sex slaves owned by Tom Hanks, and how Trump actually installed Robert Mueller as part of an ongoing plan to capture the Muslim terrorist Barack Obama. At the climax of the consensus narrative, Trump supporters will have to unite for a mighty Good vs Evil fight in which Hillary will team up with George Soros in an attempt to overthrow the government, only to be cast down by Trump, who will then usher in a new age of Christian righteousness. One led by Donald Trump and, you guessed it, Vladimir Putin. Because in QAnon, Putin is one of the few who can see through the Jewish plot to turn the world to Satan. And yes, in QAnon, Jews are satanists. Not surprisingly, many QAnon followers also consider themselves evangelicals.
It’s the kind of conspiracy theory in which anything can be made to fit and any gesture or word has hidden meaning. Before every Trump rally, QAnon boards light up with speculation over which parts of the theory Trump will “confirm” this time. And after every rally, the boards fire up again with conviction that Trump has done exactly that—given them a phrase or a hand-sign that they’re on the right track. One of the QAnon posts mentioned the phrase “tip top.” Weeks later, another told believers to “follow the white rabbit.” So when Donald Trump said “tip top” while at the White House Easter egg roll … hey, who could miss a message that clear? Even when things don’t fit, they’re made to fit, as when promised revelations that failed to appear in the Inspector General report were turned into evidence of more tampering by insidious Deep State Jew Rod Rosenstein. QAnon is loony and ridiculous, but not at all funny. it’s also a growing force within the ranks of Trump. Where did Rosanne Barr get the outrageous, racist statements she made in many of her Twitter posts? She was quoting QAnon sites. And, as the Daily Best reports, Curt Schilling is also on board.
Considering that Pizzagate already inspired one Trump supporter to appear in a DC pizza place carrying an AR-15 (and become frustrated by his inability to find a basement, much less the child-sex ring dungeons he had been expecting) there are ample reasons to be concerned about a greatly expanded Pizzagate now with a extra large side of anti-Semitic claims and calls for widespread conflict. QAnon has already become a much bigger factor in Trumpdom than the original Pizzagate. It’s not just websites and handmade signs. Hundreds of QAnon followers marched in DC in January. There’s a QAnon industry turning out T-shirts and trinkets. Rightwing celebrities like Barr and Schilling have helped bring the conspiracy theory to a larger audience, and also helped ease it into larger Trump-centric sites like Breitbart.
Not for the first time, events under Donald Trump make it clear that English just isn’t sufficient. Because it would take way too many adjectives to describe just how deplorable his followers really are.
www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/1/1785051/-Worse-than-Pizzagate-conspiracy-theory-is-gaining-force-among-Trump-supporters?detail=emaildkre
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:18:02 GMT
‘Hitler was right’: KC area winner of Missouri House primary leaves trail of bigotry By Edward McKinley The Kansas City Star (TNS) 3 hrs ago
KANSAS CITY, Mo. • On his Monday morning radio show, Steve West promotes fanatical conspiracies about “Jewish cabals” that are “harvesting baby parts” through Planned Parenthood, that torture and molest children and that run the Republican Party.
On Tuesday he won the Republican primary for a Clay County seat in the Missouri House.
“Looking back in history, unfortunately, Hitler was right about what was taking place in Germany. And who was behind it,” West said on a show on KCXL radio on Jan. 23, 2017.
By Emily Heil, (c) 2018, The Washington Post
West won the 15th District nomination in a four-candidate race by nearly 25 points. Besides his radio show, he also has a YouTube channel and a website. Donning a wig and fake beard and calling himself Jack Justice, he has unleashed an array of bigotry including homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and outright racism.
“I’m trying to get sense of why he flew under the radar, and I’m not sure I have a great answer,” said Karen Aroesty, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. “What is a person who is elected into a position of power going to do with beliefs like this?”
The Missouri Republican Party late Thursday afternoon issued a statement about West’s “disgusting comments”:
“Steve West’s shocking and vile comments do not reflect the position of the Missouri Republican Party or indeed of any decent individual. West’s abhorrent rhetoric has absolutely no place in the Missouri Republican Party or anywhere. We wholeheartedly condemn his comments.”
KCXL did not reply to a request for comment.
West, reached by phone Thursday afternoon, said he wanted to talk about “the issues” and his platform. He declined to speak about statements he’s made that he said have been taken out of context.
“You guys want to make it an issue, you can go there, but I’m not going to comment on that,” he said. He then asked if he could call back in a few minutes, and hung up.
When he called back, he said: “I’m not running as a radio show host, I’m running for state representative. I’m sorry. I’m not going to have this discussion.”
Pressed to clarify his Hitler comment, he questioned its validity until a reporter cited the date and time of the recording. West then said that he’d been taken out of context. He said that he believes all men are created equal, but not all ideologies are equal. Specifically, he said, he finds fault with Islam and Judaism.
He said Islam is a political movement masquerading as a religion and that it’s trying to create an autocratic theocracy in the U.S., and that it should be stripped of all benefits religions receive.
“Jewish people can be beautiful people, but there’s ideologies associated with that that I don’t agree with,” he went on. “Jews today are a remnant of the tribe of Judah that rejected Christ.”
He again asked to speak about issues related to the job of a state representative. When asked about Jewish people in Missouri, he said, “Well, maybe they shouldn’t vote for me.”
At no point did West apologize for or retract his comments. He asked that the Kansas City Star link to his website within the story and expressed hope that readers would listen to his remarks in full to make up their own minds.
Although West’s most overtly bigoted and offensive statements were sent anonymously to a reporter on Thursday, he had enough “dog whistles” before the election that voters should have known better than to support him, Aroesty said. She said her opinion is coming from a place of principal over politics because the Anti-Defamation League is an apolitical organization.
A dog whistle, she said, is when someone hints at extremist beliefs in such a way that others who hold those beliefs will know, but they retain plausible deniability.
Some example of dog whistles from West’s statements before the election include him saying things like “Islam is a problem for America. … It is a political movement masquerading as religion and should not receive the benefits we provide religious institutions as well as access to our prisons” and “Many parents and students don’t want to have to deal with alternative sex ed, and the LGBT clubs and staff at all the public high schools today.”
“It’s a subtle form of hatred,” Aroesty said. “Not open, but it should be watched, in some ways, more carefully than if someone was openly extreme.”
The Anti-Defamation League has been seeing extremist candidates pop up all around the country, Aroesty said.
“There is a level of political rhetoric and anger out in the world today that is providing people with more extremist views a comfort to come forward and share those extremist views,” she said. “I’d like to say he is unusual this year … but there are a whole variety of folks.”
The internet gives so many people a voice, she said, that it’s easy to think that people with extreme, hateful beliefs are everywhere. They’re not, she said — the ones who are out there are just making a lot of noise.
“The fact that Mr. West won the primary should highlight to people — did they really know what they were voting for?” Aroesty said. “One thing I’ve said for years about extremists is that they’re out on the fringe and we should keep them there.”
State Rep. Jon Carpenter, the Democratic incumbent for the district, responded to the news of West’s statements in an email.
“It is my hope that folks who voted for Steve West in the Republican primary weren’t aware of any of this stuff. I sincerely hope that’s true. … I can’t think of a single American political candidate in the 21st century who has engaged in this level of hate speech and unhinged conspiracy-mongering who actually won a primary election,” he wrote.
“I just want everyone who lives in this community to know that they’re welcome here. Muslims, Jews, Catholics, the LGBTQ community, people of all races and national origins, and everyone else Steve West has targeted with hate. His views do not reflect our values. We’ll stand together and love will conquer hate, as it always does.”
www.stltoday.com/news/local/state-and-regional/hitler-was-right-kc-area-winner-of-missouri-house-primary/article_98ef5974-71d4-5d69-89a9-60dedf439062.html
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:18:27 GMT
COUCH POTATO ANARCHISTS
Ex-Fox News analyst: Trump is a danger to the US
CNN Published on Aug 19, 2018 Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a former Fox News military analyst who left after accusing the network of "assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law," talks to CNN's Brian Stelter about his views on President Trump's impact on the country.
The Year of The Donald - The Opposition w/ Jordan Klepper
Comedy Central 9.42M subscribers
Jordan joins Donald Trump's gung-ho supporters at a rally in Pensacola, Florida to celebrate the president's greatest accomplishments of the year.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:19:01 GMT
Another disgusting and hypocritical deplorable:Politics Ken Starr Just Produced the Most Incredible Hypocrisy in the History of Cable NewsE squire Charles P. Pierce,Esquire 7 hours ago .
Photo credit: Cooper Neill - Getty Images
From Esquire
Not much can amaze us any more but, you have to admit, this is pretty damn amazing. Flagged by lawandcrime.com:
“ “The mandate that Bob Mueller received has some broad language, including ‘related-to’ type of language, which tends to open the door, but there are some checks and balances,” Starr continued to say, “We don’t want investigators and prosecutors out on a fishing expedition.”
How does this sanctimonious hack have the guts to show his face in public, let alone spout the most incredible, back-flipping hypocrisy in the history of cable news? His alleged nonfeasance in office at Baylor while his athletic department was burying cases of sexual assault should have been enough to run him out of the company of decent people. And his direction of the Great Penis Hunt of 1998 should have been enough to keep him from getting hired at Baylor in the first place. The decades-long pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton remains one of the worst things that ever happened to American electoral politics, and Ken Starr was the ringmaster of most of it.
Remember that, when Robert Fiske tried to close the book on Whitewater, TravelGate, FileGate, and the death of Vince Foster, Republican senators engineered Fiske's dismissal on the grounds that he wasn't enough of a Republican tool. Enter Kenneth Starr. He not only went back into those cases again, while running a sieve of an office, it was he who decided that the president's liaison with Monica Lewinsky should be part of his investigation into a failed Arkansas land deal. What is really ironic in what Starr said to CNN on Monday was the fact that an awful lot of the bogus information he chased during his own fishing expedition came from an actual bait shop in the Ozarks, run by one Parker Dozhier.
Photo credit: David Hume Kennerly - Getty Images
(Starr tried to quit in the middle of his probe when Pepperdine offered him a sweetheart deal running its law school, but the Republicans on whose behalf he'd been hired raised hell, and so Starr turned down the gig above Malibu Beach in favor of rooting around further in the president's underwear.)
It has become increasingly clear that the revelation in The New York Times that White House counsel Don McGahn gave 30 hours of testimony to Robert Mueller's investigators has set off some serious fibrillations at the White House, and among the members of the president*'s party.
“ The president’s lawyers said on Sunday that they were confident that Mr. McGahn had said nothing injurious to the president during the 30 hours of interviews. But Mr. McGahn’s lawyer has offered only a limited accounting of what Mr. McGahn told the investigators, according to two people close to the president. That has prompted concern among Mr. Trump’s advisers that Mr. McGahn’s statements could help serve as a key component for a damning report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which the Justice Department could send to Congress, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
McGahn, it is said, has emphasized to the president* that his client is the presidency itself, and not its current, temporary occupant. I will bet serious cash money that the president* doesn't understand this, but it's the way things work whether he understands it or not. McGahn has declined to be sold down the river by someone who stiffs landscapers and is confused by time zones.
This was a serious turn in events, as is evidenced by the fact that Rudy Giuliani now regularly goes completely bananas on national television. It seems that it has dawned on whatever lawyers there are who still will work with him that the president* has been lying to them, too. Still, though, when you've got the likes of Ken Starr out there making your case, you've discovered that there is no bottom to the barrel.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.
www.facebook.com/esqpolitics
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:19:24 GMT
RAW VIDEO: Violence erupts at Donald Trump rally in Chicago
KTVU Published on Mar 11, 2016 Donald Trump canceled a rally in Chicago over security concerns. Minutes later fights erupted in the crowd
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:19:47 GMT
Trump Rally Fight Compilation — ROUND 2 — Politifight 2016
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:20:16 GMT
Trump Rally Fight Compilation — Politifight 2016
Politifight Published on Jan 17, 2016 Trump Rally Fights and Fails, Jan. 2016
California Trump Rally Fight Compilation — ROUND 5 — Politifight 2016
Politifight Published on Jun 6, 2016 Trump Rally Fights and Fails, June 2016 - See round 4 for another CA protest fight compilation.
Trump Rally Fight Compilation — ROUND 9 — Politifight 2016
Politifight Published on Nov 12, 2016 Trump Rally Fights and Fails, November 2016
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:20:43 GMT
Noam Chomsky: Donald Trump is a Distraction
ANONYMOUS Published on Mar 3, 2018 While Donald Trump works to distract the public, his administration is working to dismantle every aspect of government that benefits the people.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:21:17 GMT
And this is why Democrats, whether incumbents or progressive newcomers, cannot afford to have the talk be about impeachment by itself. All it does is activate the GOP base of Trumpster Arsonists. They need to talk about the bottom-line issues, and tell people what the Democratic Party will do for them.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:21:40 GMT
and here we have a media deplorable and ratfucker wannabe:Trump in Oval Office Meets Promoter of QAnon Conspiracy Theory That Says Democrats Run Pedophile CultBy Will Sommer 7 hrs ago
'State of the Race': Biden’s midterm strategy has presidential feel
FILE - In this April 15, 2017, file photo, demonstrators participate in a march and rally in New York to demand President Donald Trump release his tax returns.Trump Insiders Could Offer ‘Holy Grail’ of Long-Hidden Finances a man and a woman sitting on a table: Courtesy of the White House© Provided by The Daily Beast Courtesy of the White House President Donald Trump posed for Oval Office photos on Thursday with one of the leading promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that top Democrats are part of a global pedophile cult.
YouTube conspiracy theorist Lionel Lebron was in the White House for an event on Thursday, according to a video Lebron posted online. During the visit, Lebron and his wife posed for a smiling picture with Trump in the Oval Office.
Lebron is one of the internet’s leading promoters of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory based on a series of anonymous clues posted to internet forums. QAnon believers have interpreted the clues, which they claim without evidence are coming from a highly placed source in the Trump administration, to mean that Trump and the military are engaged in a high-stakes shadow war against a globalist pedophile cult. The conspiracy theory has caught on with Trump supporters, who have held up QAnon-related signs and wear QAnon shirts to the president’s rallies.
Lebron claimed to have received a “special guided tour of the White House” before posing for pictures with Trump. In a video posted Friday, Lebron said he didn’t use the brief encounter with the president to ask Trump about QAnon or its slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”
“I think we all know he knows about it,” Lebron said in the video, sipping from a coffee mug he claimed to have received as a gift at the White House.
Lebron and the White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Lebron used his White House appearance to promote QAnon, tweeting a picture of himself in the White House with QAnon-related hashtags. His visit to the White House comes as other prominent Trump supporters in the media try to push back on QAnon’s spread, claiming it makes Trump voters look ridiculous.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
|
|