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In light of Whip Scalise’s David Duke problem…

I thought it might be fun to revisit my conversations with an expert on the subject of rank racialism. And no, I’m not talking about RSM, who may or may not be —

Oh, forget it.

This is about Rep Scalise (whom, incidentally, I have mostly contempt for, though not about this, necessarily) and David Duke. And of course, the leftist media’s double standards. Water being wet and all.

122 Replies to “In light of Whip Scalise’s David Duke problem…”

  1. LBascom says:

    Yeah, I’m thinking when the president of these United States began promoting the interests of La Raza, all bets are off.

  2. RI Red says:

    Just read that 2007 post, Jeff. Seems rather prescient, given the results of the next year’s elections and the events of the six years thereafter.

  3. bgbear says:

    It is a good thing all three networks felt the need to cover this otherwise those dumb voters might not get that it was a bad thing.

  4. dicentra says:

    Turns out all the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of Ben Trovato, the scoundrel.

  5. Affirmed that the KKK is an abomination. But damn!

  6. dicentra says:

    Trigger warning on that link, Trespassers W. Now I have to clear out my browsing history lest the pestilence overwhelm my entire machine.

  7. Ernst Schreiber says:

    To my mind, the blackest mark against Scalise is that Boehner and McCarthy are standing by him. That’s what ought get him defenestrated.

    And Boehner and McCarthy too, as long as we’re clearing the decks.

  8. Joan Of Argghh says:

    Yep. That’s a flypaper site.

  9. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It’s wishful thinking though to hope that Boehner’s leadership is endangered.

    If it was, he’d have underbussed Scalise already.

  10. newrouter says:

    klu klux kommunist news
    Reward: $100,000 for Khalidi Tape

  11. cranky-d says:

    Was Byrd a good man as well? Just wondering.

  12. newrouter says:

    >It’s wishful thinking though to hope that Boehner’s leadership is endangered.<

    depends on how the 'megaphone' reacts

  13. McGehee says:

    That public defender says he “has no explanation” for what he observes.

    What he means is, he dares not consider possible explanations that comport with the evidence and history.

  14. cranky-d says:

    That public defender is halfway to the truth. That’s better than a lot of his fellow travelers.

    Changing your worldview is tough, especially if it was formed from emotion.

  15. happyfeet says:

    if we have house leadership openly embracing the tenets of white supremacy how can obama say that race relations are getting better?

    it’s supremely confuzzling

    goodness but it just don’t make a lick of sense

  16. newrouter says:

    > house leadership openly embracing the tenets of white supremacy <

    he gave a speech cupcake

  17. happyfeet says:

    if you give a speech to someone that means you agree with every single position they espouse

    how long will obama be silent??

  18. Ernst Schreiber says:

    As regards reasoning ability, communication skills and impulse control among blacks, the public defender article is similiar to a public school teacher article that also caused a stir. But damned if I know how to find it again. It’s at least of couple of years old.

  19. dicentra says:

    Why on earth would anyone who aspires to political position accept an invite to speak to a white supremacist group to speak on any topic, unless it’s to rip them a new one for being such unbearable bigots?

    They can’t have THAT much money to donate, can they?

  20. sdferr says:

    It’s a little bit confusing hf, but can’t only be just a little confusing insofar as all the House Leadership embraces the outright racialist PresIWonPenPhone . . . and ain’t nobody takes exception to that.

  21. newrouter says:

    >who aspires to political position accept an invite to speak to a black white supremacist group to speak on any topic, <

    go ax baracky he's 10 feet small?

  22. happyfeet says:

    there’s no clear path forward

    but if we’re going to get to a healing place, we’re gonna need barack obama to lead us there, and to do that he needs to reject everything this steve scalise stands for, using every means at his disposal including armed violence

    this is no time to hide behind equivocation Mr. President

  23. newrouter says:

    >unless it’s to rip them a new one for being such unbearable bigots?<

    what happen to persuasion in political discourse? do you go to the naacp and call them idiots or do you try to point out the error in their ways?
    NAACP Honors Mike Brown Mom Despite Her Facing Armed Robbery Charges For Leading Violent Mob That Beat And Robbed Vendors…

  24. sdferr says:

    suppose that Scalise character is wed to the Papists’ crackerdome climate bull rampaging through the whorldhistorical political chinashop any day now too. Man, can they pick’em, or what?

  25. McGehee says:

    Why on earth would anyone who aspires to political position accept an invite to speak to a white supremacist group

    Has it been established that he knew?

    He’d been an elected official for a year or so at the time, in a job that in most states doesn’t include staff and can often be had with a self-managed campaign.

  26. newrouter says:

    what happen to persuasion in political discourse?

    Malls Beef Up Security, Track Social Media After Monroeville Mall Brawl

  27. McGehee says:

    Hmm, apparently he was, like, a fifth-termer at the time. Still, I’d cut a state legislator a little slack for not toeing the SPLC line on which groups one may or may not speak to.

  28. newrouter says:

    > SPLC line on which groups one may or may not speak to.<

    the klu klux kommunist standard!

  29. newrouter says:

    klu klux kommunists:

    >hate jews

    >hate catholics/christians

    > hate ‘white'(“white hispanics) people

  30. newrouter says:

    > But damned if I know how to find it again.<

    something similar from "teach for america"

    How My School and District Failed its Students

  31. newrouter says:

    > It was a problem created by negligent leaders who willingly allowed a free-for-all environment that was conducive to chaos instead of learning. <

    alinsky for the ayers' classroom

  32. newrouter says:

    jackie uva goes nordic

    > “Now you will die you f***ing c***!” the Somali cried as he attacked her.

    He kicked and hit his victim in the head with a glass bottle and then raped her in different ways. The woman suffered serious injuries.

    According to the court, the rape was “ruthless, brutal and characterized by roughness”.

    “The woman felt the fear of death, and many times during the rapes she asked him to stop, at one point by resting on knees with her hands clasped. The man grabbed her by her jacket and choked her. He held the woman in a way so she could not breathe. She was lying on broken glass and he attempted anal intercourse,” reads the judgment.<

    link

  33. Ernst Schreiber says:

    something similar from “teach for america”

    It was something similiar, but much more explicitly analagous to

    “My experience has also taught me that blacks are different by almost any measure to all other people. They cannot reason as well. They cannot communicate as well. They cannot control their impulses as well. They are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike.along the lines of “black children are incapabe of being taught”

    i.e. “black kids can’t be taught,” or words to that effect.

  34. dicentra says:

    what happen to persuasion in political discourse? do you go to the naacp and call them idiots or do you try to point out the error in their ways?

    I stand corrected.

    Has it been established that he knew?

    Why wouldn’t he know? Did some yokel call him up and say “hey, speak to our group about economics” and he didn’t even ask who they were?

    Even if you’re not vetting them for political liabilities, you should at least know your audience so that you can give an effective speech.

  35. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Ignore the doubleblockquote at the bottom

  36. newrouter says:

    jackie uva goes nordic : broken glass and glass bottles

    A Rape Hoax for Book Lovers

  37. newrouter says:

    >i.e. “black kids can’t be taught,” or words to that effect.<

    what do you want to teach them? certainly more useful things than thug culture?

  38. newrouter says:

    >Why wouldn’t he know? Did some yokel call him up and say “hey, speak to our group about economics” and he didn’t even ask who they were?<

    well this and alot of boehner dislike i'm hoping for gop house establishment overthrow.

  39. Ernst Schreiber says:

    From what I heard on Levin tonight, Scalise’s speech was the one he was giving in support of a tax reform bill he was promoting at the time.

    If Scalise wasn’t a Boehner stooge, I might be able to muster some interest in this faux outrage. In so far as his choice of speaking engagements go, I don’t care if it costs him anything or not.

    Of course, maybe Breitbart.com’s wishcasting will pay off, and enough Republicans will take this exaggerated example of the GOP establishment’s political incompetence to finally do something about Boehner, McCarthy et. al.

    But I’m not holding my breath.

  40. newrouter says:

    >But I’m not holding my breath.<

    check the megaphone in the morning or 1/5

  41. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Changing your worldview is tough, especially if it was formed from emotion.

    This is my favorite bit from that piece:

    I am a liberal. I believe that those of us who are able to produce abundance have a moral duty to provide basic food, shelter, and medical care for those who cannot care for themselves. I believe we have this duty even to those who can care for themselves but don’t. This world view requires compassion and a willingness to act on it.

    Some might call that codependency, if we were talking in specifics rather than generalizations.

    Gotta love the moral vanity on display as well. I”m a good person. I choose to represent barbarism because I care so much.

    Anyways, it’s afforded me the opportunity to revist the title essay of Sowell’s Black Rednecks, White Liberals.

  42. newrouter says:

    >Anyways, it’s afforded me the opportunity to revist the title essay of Sowell’s Black Rednecks, White Liberals.<

    klu klux kommunists?

  43. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Seems like the only identity group that’s out of bounds is the European American Unity and Right’s Organization, which we all know is racist. But only because we already know, or at least suspect, that the various iterations of African-American/Latin-American/Hispanic-American organizations promoting group unity and group rights are exactly that.

    But we dare not say it.

  44. newrouter says:

    >But we dare not say it.<

    klu klux kommunist

    Casting Crowns – East to West

  45. McGehee says:

    Why wouldn’t he know?

    Politicians know everything, or should.

  46. newrouter says:

    >LET US now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.

    The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

    Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence ín people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.

    This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer was a threat to the system not because of any physical or actual power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings and, of course, because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the post-totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.

    In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force. How does the power of truth operate? How does truth as a factor of power work? How can its power-as power-be realized?

    VIII

    INDIVIDUALS can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response. Only against this background does living a lie make any sense: it exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its hidden openness to truth.

    The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists. But this place is hidden and therefore, from the perspective of power, very dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place within it goes on in semidarkness, and by the time it finally surfaces into the light of day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they create a situation in which the regime is confounded, invariably causing panic and driving it to react in inappropriate ways.

    It seems that the primary breeding ground for what might, in the widest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. The confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from that typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. Initially, this confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social consciousness, in the hidden aims of life, in human beings’ repressed longing for dignity and fundamental rights, for the realization of their real social and political interests. Its power, therefore, does not reside in the strength of definable political or social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society, including the official power structures of that society. Therefore this power does not rely on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy as it were—that is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment (in theory, at least) by the force of truth (or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that force). It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division. This power does not participate in any direct struggle for power; rather, it makes its influence felt in the obscure arena of being itself. The hidden movements it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to predict) in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth.

    Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime’s representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the post-totalitarian system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!”—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

    When I speak of living within the truth, I naturally do not have in mind only products of conceptual thought, such as a protest or a letter written by a group of intellectuals. It can be any means by which a person or a group revolts against manipulation: anything from a letter by intellectuals to a workers’ strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration, from refusing to vote in the farcical elections to making an open speech at some official congress, or even a hunger strike, for instance. If the suppression of the aims of life is a complex process, and if it is based on the multifaceted manipulation of all expressions of life, then, by the same token, every free expression of life indirectly threatens the post-totalitarian system politically, including forms of expression to which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any potential political significance, not to mention explosive power.

    The Prague Spring is usually understood as a clash between two groups on the level of real power: those who wanted to maintain the system as it was and those who wanted to reform it. It is frequently forgotten, however, that this encounter was merely the final act and the inevitable consequence of a long drama originally played out chiefly in the theatre of the spirit and the conscience of society. And that somewhere at the beginning of this drama, there were individuals who were willing to live within the truth, even when things were at their worst. These people had no access to real power, nor did they aspire to it. The sphere in which they were living the truth was not necessarily even that of political thought. They could equally have been poets, painters, musicians, or simply ordinary citizens who were able to maintain their human dignity. Today it is naturally difficult to pinpoint when and through which hidden, winding channel a certain action or attitude influenced a given milieu, and to trace the virus of truth as it slowly spread through the tissue of the life of lies, gradually causing it to disintegrate. One thing, however, seems clear: the attempt at political reform was not the cause of’ society’s reawakening, but rather the final outcome of that reawakening.

    I think the present also can be better understood in the light of this experience. The confrontation between a thousand Chartists and the post-totalitarian system would appear to be politically hopeless. This is true, of course, if we look at it through the traditional lens of the open political system, in which, quite naturally, every political force is measured chiefly in terms of the positions it holds on the level of real power. Given that perspective, a mini-party like the Charter would certainly not stand a chance. If, however, this confrontation is seen against the background of what we know about power in the post-totalitarian system, it appears in a fundamentally different light. For the time being, it is impossible to say with any precision what impact the appearance of Charter 77, its existence, and its work has had in the hidden sphere, and how the Charter’s attempt to rekindle civic self-awareness and confidence is regarded there. Whether, when, and how this investment will eventually produce dividends in the form of specific political changes is even less possible to predict. But that, of course, is all part of living within the truth. As an existential solution, it takes individuals back to the solid ground of their own identity; as politics, it throws them into a game of chance where the stakes are all or nothing. For this reason it is undertaken only by those for whom the former is worth risking the latter, or who have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to conduct real politics in Czechoslovakia today. Which, by the way, is the same thing: this conclusion can be reached only by someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a politics that requires such a sacrifice.

    The more thoroughly the post-totalitarian system frustrates any rival alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of politics independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more definitively the center of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area of the existential and the pre-political: usually without any conscious effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work against the automatism of the system. And even if such activities ultimately grow beyond the area of living within the truth (which means they are transformed into various parallel structures, movements, institutions, they begin to be regarded as political activity, they bring real pressure to bear on the official structures and begin in fact to have a certain influence on the level of real power), they always carry with them the specific hallmark of their origins. Therefore it seems to me that not even the so-called dissident movements can be properly understood without constantly bearing in mind this special background from which they emerge.>

    @ havel

  47. McGehee says:

    We could really benefit from not assuming the Mass Stupidity Media’s spin on things like this is anything but spin.

    How many Klan meetings has this guy spoken at since 2002?

  48. newrouter says:

    >For the time being, it is impossible to say with any precision what impact the appearance of Charter 77, its existence, and its work has had in the hidden sphere, and how the Charter’s attempt to rekindle civic self-awareness and confidence is regarded there. Whether, when, and how this investment will eventually produce dividends in the form of specific political changes is even less possible to predict. But that, of course, is all part of living within the truth. As an existential solution, it takes individuals back to the solid ground of their own identity; as politics, it throws them into a game of chance where the stakes are all or nothing. For this reason it is undertaken only by those for whom the former is worth risking the latter, or who have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to conduct real politics in Czechoslovakia today. Which, by the way, is the same thing: this conclusion can be reached only by someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a politics that requires such a sacrifice<

  49. Ernst Schreiber says:

    In his part of Louisiana, can you even hold a meeting without somebody showing up who’s tied to some organization or other that’s unacceptable to the likes of the liberal agenda driven ADL and SPLC?

    I’d be more concerned if he showed up at some tax policy wonk conference and gave a speech about the need for European Americans to unite for their rights, than I am that he gave a tax policy wonk speech to a conforence for alleged white supremicists.

    Let me also add that it would be easier to give a partisan damn about this had Boehner not gone and pissed away any good will in the lame duck session.

  50. geoffb says:

    I am a liberal. I believe that those of us who are able to produce abundance have a moral duty to provide basic food, shelter, and medical care for those who cannot care for themselves. I believe we have this duty even to those who can care for themselves but don’t. This world view requires compassion and a willingness to act on it

    This comes across to me as similar to Limbaugh’s seminar callers. In this case though a paleo-kkk-“conservative” pretending to be a card carrying liberal.

  51. newrouter says:

    hands up seek jesus fu to ftp

    Until The Whole World Hears

  52. geoffb says:

    Things are going well, too well. Time for the magic-pen&phone to spring into ACTION!!!

  53. newrouter says:

    >. I believe that those of us who are able to produce abundance have a moral duty to provide basic food, shelter, and medical care for those who cannot care for themselves. I believe we have this duty even to those who can care for themselves but don’t. <

    you do it. leave me the eff alone clown.

  54. newrouter says:

    @havel

    >N SOCIETIES under the post-totalitarian system, all political life in the traditional sense has been eliminated. People have no opportunity to express themselves politically in public, let alone to organize politically. The gap that results is filled by ideological ritual. In such a situation, people’s interest in political matters naturally dwindles and independent political thought, insofar as it exists at all, is seen by the majority as unrealistic, farfetched, a kind of self-indulgent game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns; something admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on the one hand entirely utopian and on the other hand extraordinarily dangerous, in view of the unusual vigor with which any move in that direction is persecuted by the regime.

    Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even to organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth.<

  55. geoffb says:

    Wait A Second: Did Scalise Admit To Speaking At A White Supremacist Event He Never Actually Attended?

    Kenny Knight is a longtime associate of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991. He’s been a key player in news that broke on Sunday that indicated Scalise addressed the white supremacist convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization when he was a Louisiana state representative in May 2002.

    Knight said on Tuesday that it’s “totally incorrect” to say Scalise spoke at that convention.

    “He spoke early in the day to a contingent of people, prior to the conference kicking off,” Knight said. “He was not there as a guest speaker at the conference.”

  56. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Plenty of folks will be happy to tell you that speaking to any size group of people at the invite of longtime former GW of the KKK David Duke assoiciate Kenny Knight is enough to get you drummed out of polite society.

    Hell, some of them folk probably believe having longtime former GW of the KKK David Duke assoiciate Kenny Knight as a neighbor is totally unacceptable.

    (Although, I have to admit, I would love to see Scalise adopt the “he’s just a guy from the neighborhood” defense).

  57. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Maybe. John Nolte has his doubts.

    “A close reading of the Gawker article shows that only 5 identifying characteristics in Dunham’s early book proposal point to the man Gawker chose to name, fewer than those that led to Barry One. “

  58. geoffb says:

    Leader from former Democrat Party enforcement organization making an endorsement in New York Congressional seat primary race.

  59. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Some red meat for those clinging bitterly to direct impingement vs. op-rod and 5.56 vs. 7.62 stopping power debates from half a century ago.

  60. cranky-d says:

    My brother rode in a helicopter for a while back in the early 70s. He picked up a few jammed M-16s which were no longer needed in any sense by the guys who had carried them.

    My brother carried an M-14.

  61. newrouter says:

    so i’m buying the harbor freight mini mill to do my 80% lower. the pulley upgrade will also be purchased. after machining these, on to making it a cnc.

  62. newrouter says:

    it is a funny time. 20 years ago i enrolled in a course to be credentialed a ‘machinist’. now you can ‘just do it’.

  63. geoffb says:

    [T]he big story was, depending on how charitable you’re feeling, either dubiously sourced, a mistake, or an outright hoax. It fell to Betsy Woodruff at Slate to dig deeper and discover that on the fateful day, Scalise actually spoke to an innocent civic association, along with representatives from the local sheriff’s office and the American Red Cross. The unpleasant chaps from the Duke-linked “EURO” group had the room booked after the civic association was finished with it.

    This is all based on the shifting recollections of a “longtime associate of David Duke” and neighbor of Steve Scalise named Kenny Knight, who is beginning to look like the unreliable single source for a too-good-to-check “scoop” the mainstream media’s “multiple layers of fact-checkers and editors” didn’t bother to investigate thoroughly before cudgeling an apologetic sound bite out of the Majority Whip.

    But it did get the Obama golf-wedding story off the pages.

  64. McGehee says:

    2015 has fallen upon the eastern shore of North America with thunder — and not of the meteorological variety.

  65. McGehee says:

    on the fateful day, Scalise actually spoke to an innocent civic association, along with representatives from the local sheriff’s office and the American Red Cross.

    Politicians know everything, and the Mass Stupidity Media never mislead.

  66. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It’s clear that all parties involved covered themselves with glory here.

    And by glory, I mean shit.

  67. Ernst Schreiber says:

    You can tell Scalise is a Boehnerstooge

    The media growls and he cringes.

  68. bour3 says:

    Man, TRESPASSERS W link sure was depressing.

    I agree with following commenter’s favorite passage, that stuck out for me too. He started out “sill liberal” and after all that, well, there is just no reasoning with such self-regarding sanctimony. It is too deeply engrained. His whole description is depressing, thorough as it is. He did cover every aspect imaginable, no? Even to grandmother’s impenetrability, perverse religiosity, and behavior of viewers in court. It’s like all life is one long protracted Jerry Springer show.

    And yet. And yet my own direct personal experience differs greatly. Why? Is he surrounded only by dregs and I magically avoid such?

    I do not know why I hit it off so well with minorities, but I do. I do not see any such thing. Never. I just don’t. And I don’t know why. On the contrary I am met with grace and kindness.

    Well, except for that one ridiculous bint on twitter who is demanding reparations in pure critical theory fashion who I told straight out she is nuts and then who responded later WTHF are you? And I responded I’m they guy you’re demanding reparations from 150 years after the war my people waged to change. That’s who. Other than her everybody makes sense and does not speak at 3rd grade level and does not assume regular language is showing off superiority.

    However white people have challenged me on that. My own brother did. He told me to knock it off, and I told him I already am knocking it off. If he heard the vocabulary I use for processing and not the vocabulary I use to convey it, he’d be congratulating me for toning it down, not chiding me for trying to act smart. Because, seriously, I’m not. Perhaps he’d prefer a different language where I’m worse, say, Spanish, or ASL, or Egyptian hieroglyphics where I struggle even more than I do with English. Eh?

    Why just a few weeks ago I noticed my neighbor with friends waiting outside his apartment. I invited them in while they wait. I should mention he’s black and I’ve been interested to know him better. I offered my bathroom if their wait turned out uncomfortable. They refused.

    At length I could still hear them out there so I tried again. “Say, would you care for a beer?”

    They were prone on the carpet as they waited. There was a spinning blur. Then suddenly two males stood directly in front of me. They leapt to their feet with the impressive athleticism of two tigers. I was stunned. The two women refused to come in but the two males accepted a beer.

    I should have offered, “Cocktails ?” , “Coca cola?” , ” Ovaltine?”

    Once inside they wandered about. “I really like your style,” then, “I really like your style,” then, “I really like your style.”

    They liked my style.

    I don’t know what style. The offer of beer, it turning out to be a premium beer, my red pants, my home, I don’t know.

    Their door opened and they departed.

    Later, the neighbor encountered me getting my mail and called from a distance as he approached, “Bo! Thank you for taking care of my man.”

    I didn’t recall any such thing as taking care of a man. I was confused.

    “Thank you for taking care of my man. I appreciate that.”

    Oh. That thing back there. I made his friend comfortable while waiting for his door to open. It was nothing. Who wouldn’t do that.

    Moral of the story: Always have cold beer on hand even if you don’t drink the stuff yourself. For emergency purposes.

    Two days ago I answered an early knock on the door in my underwear. That’s okay, I thought. I look hot in my boxer briefs anyway. It turned out to be Olga. Odd name, I think, for a Mexican national. She likes me and speaks to me in Spanish. She trusts me and thinks my errors are endearing. She laughs at me for the dumb way I say things and corrects my locution. She handed me a bundle of something wrapped in aluminum foil. It was cold. She said the single word, “Tamales” then hastened off, embarrassed by my nakedness. She was talking to someone else down the hall. I think because she want to share her family holiday activities via food. Partially in exchange for things like this. Anasazi beans in jars.

    There were other exchanges too besides this example.

    [http://thingsimadethenate.blogspot.com/2014/11/gift-anasazi-beans.html ]

    No, I see nothing as described by the lawyer. He surely must see the worst in concentrated form and only the worst. That is not my experience at all. Nothing close to it.

  69. newrouter says:

    >But it did get the Obama golf-wedding story off the pages.<

    2015 needs a documentation of baracky's jerk moments for the end of the year list.

  70. happyfeet says:

    it’s cause of you have really great style i bet

  71. sdferr says:

    I got tamales from a neighbor too, but it was a straight up quid pro quo of fresh cut banana leaves to make tamales in for tamales made. Neither of us speaking a word of the other’s language, a hand gesture and smile exchange. God bless a Oaxacan cook for having such a good idea.

  72. newrouter says:

    baracky be really jerky this year methinks

  73. steveaz says:

    So, it’s really a case of guilt by mis-association!

    I can’t keep up, the rules keep changing… used to be you actually had to, you know, associate with scoundrels to be tagged by them by association.

    Now, all you have to do is use the restroom in the same public building where they once held a seminar to be GUILTY. And the HATE rolls on…

    The Democrat Media Complex is aching for a tribe-war, and it’ll get it by hook or by crook!

  74. McGehee says:

    I’ve about given up on even the good guys. They’re even more lynch-mobby than the Lefties who accused him.

  75. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Maybe I’m behind teh narrativ by a news cycle or two, but the only good guys I know of calling for Scalise’s head are those like Levin, who want him gone because he’s an establican, or, like Hannity, want him because they want Boehner and his whole fucking crew cast into the outer darkness.

    Folks like that Jade chick in the thread above are just useful idiots.

  76. McGehee says:

    Sarah Palin’s on the bandwagon too, and she has personal experience on the other side of a lynch mob.

    When which side one is on has more influence on one’s opinion than what actually happened, one is just as poxworthy as one’s opponents.

  77. palaeomerus says:

    I have no preference. I am either feeding a burning train wreck more rope to hang itself with or ignoring a burning train wreck trying to get its towel and sheet noose over a beam or tree limb. The outcome is the same. If this is how the party wants to die then so be it. I’m hateful if I point it out and hateful if I stay silent. We already have the hole dug so the vultures can’t steal what was promised to the worms. The fat lady has blown her tuning-harp backstage and is tapping her foot to the intro as the the “fires” rise in the back of the set. The minute hand and the hour hand are about to kiss.

  78. palaeomerus says:

    The GOP is not intelligent enough to rue the day it decided to validate all the induced paranoia (over sexism, colonialism, fat-cat/bank corruption, racism, homophobia, imposed Christian theocracy, environmental destruction, fuel conservation, and wages/employment) to try and “fit in” with a bunch of dirty stupid hippies and union stooges.

    They fucked up, alienated their voters by insulting them and standing against them, instead of defending them from slander, and they STILL don’t know it. They try to raise money off of their clueless face slapping treachery.

    “And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire”

  79. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I thought Palin was on Levin’s the liberals have taken over the Republican party soap box, not the there’s no room in the Republican party for anything liberals disapprove of bandwagon. Maybe I’m wrong.

    As I said above, nobody comes out of this smelling like roses.

  80. McGehee says:

    I wanted Trent Lott gone for years before he was ousted. It didn’t matter why anyone wanted him gone, all that mattered was that he lost his leadership post soon after saying something to Strom Thurmond that the Sharptonistas didn’t like. As a result, it became an unearned credit on their RaceCard®.

    Never again.

  81. McGehee says:

    I didn’t read all of Palin’s argument but it started out lambasting him for appearing at a racists’ convention, and then went into a whine about how the ‘Stabs wouldn’t have defended a Tea Party member who was thus accused.

    Hence, “When which side one is on has more influence on one’s opinion than what actually happened, one is just as poxworthy as one’s opponents.

  82. happyfeet says:

    you should go back and read it all

  83. McGehee says:

    Life is too short.

  84. happyfeet says:

    downton comes back sunday

    i got me some tissues

  85. McGehee says:

    You’ll give your mind diabetes.

  86. newrouter says:

    i think by wednesday it will be chilly

  87. happyfeet says:

    today is warm and sloshy

    i miss cynn

  88. happyfeet says:

    is she dead?

    nobody tells me anything

  89. newrouter says:

    the embers of failures past will keep you warm

    Fiorina Staffs Up

  90. happyfeet says:

    fiorina does not have historic geriatric titties like hillary

    she just doesn’t

    sorry.

  91. newrouter says:

    >she just doesn’t<

    carly's got real world failure so there's that

  92. happyfeet says:

    in spades

  93. happyfeet says:

    i mean, she’s no meg whitman

    but i wouldn’t say that to her face

  94. happyfeet says:

    cause of i’m polite like that

  95. newrouter says:

    & more hopey change

    >I promise to create an economic depression and confine it to a 40 mile radius of the US capitol. #Iowahawk2016<

    link

  96. newrouter says:

    >she’s no meg whitman<

    whitman privilege is a problem there

  97. happyfeet says:

    the shenandoah valley, it’s mostly saved then

    goddess be praised

  98. newrouter says:

    >the shenandoah valley, it’s mostly saved then<

    terry mcauliffe says hi

  99. newrouter says:

    >About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

    In the development of its institutions America can fairly claim that it has remained true to the principles which were declared 150 years ago. In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people. Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth. The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guaranties which even the Government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government – the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them. We hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction. But even in that we come back to the theory of John Wise that “Democracy is Christ’s government * * *.” The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty. <

    link

  100. serr8d says:

    RIP Stuart Scott
    Respect.

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