Hodad

You pointed out that Clark was a Democrat, as if it were somehow significant. That means nothing given the polarity shift that was underway around civil rights. As I said, conservatives were against equal rights, liberals were in favor of equal rights, and the parties realigned around this divide. It's not weird at all that a southern conservative was a Democrat in the early 60s or that a MLK could have been a Republican before civil rights. Who was a Republican and who was a Democrat prior to the Civil rights movement has no bearing on the parties today and what they stand for. The civil rights movement changed everything. King and the other civil rights leaders aligned strongly with Democrats during the civil rights effort- and ever since. They didn't simply keep voting Republican. They voted for the party and candidates who shared their values. On the flip side, do you think Clark felt welcome in the post-Kennedy/Johnson Democratic party? Do you really think he just turned his views 180 and kept voting Democrat? Or did he vote for the candidates who represented his views, aligning to the Republicans like Thurmond and most of the southern conservatives? So WTF is your point in even making such a comment? How is it relevant? Do you think it makes Republicans look good to say we used to be the party of equal rights 70 years ago? I know there's "an argument" that the civil rights movement has done more harm than good. It's not a good argument, but it exists. Racism didn't die with civil rights, the effect was simply blunted by legal protections.

1. Preaching to the choir! 2. Yes, Johnson was not a charismatic leader like Kennedy. He was a grinder who knew how to get shit done. The phone calls and transcripts (that are available) from that period are fascinating. A POTUS up 24/7 personally calling people and flogging votes. 3. I don't think it was a handshake and "good game" and "I'll get over it." There was a LOT of bitterness and some never got over it. Racism and the opposition to civil rights continued to animate conservative voters through the 70s at least. Obviously I don't think most Republicans today are explicitly racist, but still the party is the only viable home for Americans who are and it ends up reflected in the platform. They must leave room to accommodate them. Suddenly it's about "state's rights." And we see the same alignment for gay rights, trans rights, women's rights etc.

Wow, that's a lot of posts to come around to exactly what I said: conservatives, of both parties, opposed civil rights, with a concentration in the south. Liberals won the contest for the Democratic party with Kennedy and Johnson, leading alienated conservatives (of both parties) to consolidate in the opposition party: the Republicans. This brought/pushed MLK and other civil rights activists on board with Democrats because their purposes aligned. Alienated conservative (anti civil rights) Dems flipped to the Republican party--voters and candidates. The South flipped to a Republican bloc. Black voters aligned with the Democrats Which brings us where we are today. All of this Republican chest beating about "the party of Lincoln" is just nonsense. Yes, it is factually true, but entirely irrelevant to contemporary values and political alignment. Things changed in the late 50s and 60s and they remain changed today. Your tired rhetoric about the new Democrat plantation is entirely hollow. I mean, it's fine that you have opinions on the policy, but Blacks and other minority groups know full well which party is invested in equal rights and equal opportunities and they vote accordingly. You can tell yourself all day long that Republicans are really the good guys when it comes to civil rights, but the people to whom those rights matter most overwhelmingly disagree.

I don't have to say it. MLK said it. Openly and plainly. He supported Johnson. He worked closely with Johnson. Republicans did not spearhead civil rights. That's laughable. What we actually had was a regional divide, with the south generally opposed and the north generally in support of civil rights. Kennedy and Johnson, both Democrats, led the charge for the civil rights act, at significant political cost. Progressives took over the Democratic party. It alienated powerful southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond and his allies. The South didn't suddenly become less racist or less conservative. Thurmond didn't suddenly fall in line with the new Democratic agenda. His electorate wasn't going to vote for Democrats, who had "betrayed" them by supporting civil rights. They were going to vote Republican in the future. And that's the party in which Thurmond and his views were now welcome.

Oh, goody. More "history" from the conservative memeplex. ? I'm guessing that quote is also apocryphal, but you're clearly not concerned with credibility. Meanwhile, from reality @ the King Institute @ Stanford Yes, LBJ was rough-spoken and, by today's standards, was racist in his language (as were most men of his era) but he was also a genuine ally for Black folks and worked closely with King on civil rights legislation. As Kennedy and Johnson began aggressively pushing for civil rights as Democrats, southern conservatives, who opposed equal rights, had to find new allies - and homes - among the Republicans to oppose this progress, which effectively flipped the south to a Republican bloc we see today. That's how the "party of Lincoln" became the enemy of Black progress and why Blacks moved en masse to the Democratic party.

I'm gonna give you a pass on this one. It's probably just a matter of perception. It was probably hard to notice the rain while sheltered under the canopy of Trump's saggy old scrotum and focused on the deep, deep rimming. But for those of us on the outside, the audacity of the lie--the sheer brazenness of telling people that it didn't rain, when everybody with eyeballs can see that it *did* rain, and when thousands of people experienced that rain firsthand--elevates this to something truly special. It seems like it should be impossible to get away with that kind of a lie, but it turns out there are people stupid enough to believe it and others so invested in serving their master that they'll defend it to the bitter end. ?‍♀️

That's a great question. I think selfishness and jealously is the root cause. Conservative America has a hard enough time coming to terms with feeding hungry children. God forbid we provide 8 months of childcare to help the single mom get a cybersecurity certificate so that she can break the cycle.

That's pure crap. Nobody is forced into dependency. The social safety net simply catches people when they fall. Some of them fall constantly, but one of the beautiful things about America is that there is help available for even the the least successful among us. People who lack empathy never seem to understand why that's a virtue, but there's help for those selfish souls when they need it as well.

Lol. WTF could you*possibly* think you are right about? Rosa Parks working with Conyers but being a secret Republican, because you read something on Pinterest? You're a joke. Also no evidence that MLK was Republican. It's possible he was at some point, being at the historical polarity swap of the parties around race, but certainly he was all-in on LBJ. That is on record.

Yes, you seem to be an endless supply of garbage links for garbage ideas to ranging from poorly reasoned to (most often) outright and obviously false. Remember that this conversation started with you absurdly claiming that Rosa Parks was a conservative/Republican. Lol Rather than acknowledging those lies, you simply ignored them and jumped from one crappy premise to another. I wonder why no one can take you seriously? Physician, heal thyself.

Congratulations on learning a new word, but "eugenics" isn't news to most of us. And if you think Sanger, a woman in the U.S. had any influence on the holocaust, you're off your rocker. (Although I think that's already well established.) Yes, she was wooed by eugenics as a concept. Yes, she was a pioneering supporter of birth control. But she was also explicitly pro life and not overtly racist in the context of her time. Her concept of fitness was economic/success is based rather than racial and she never advocated killing of the born or unborn. If you want to blame someone for the holocaust, consider blaming Hitler instead of an American woman. Hitler who, like you, referred to people he disliked as animals.

I know you get your education from Pinterest and the conservative memeplex, but that's not an actual Margaret Sanger quote. It's fiction. Or more accurately, more lies from you. Surprise! Sanger was into eugenics, and that's ugly enough without lying.

You are a liar and a fool. Rosa Parks was NOT a conservative and NOT a Republican. What terrible things to say about an American icon! Lol She was a radical activist in every sense of the word. Black power! She worked to upend the status quo, not preserve it. And she *literally* worked with and for Democrats from the 60s on. You really think anyone will believe your preposterous lies? That Rosa Parks was joining forces with Strom Thurmond to fight the civil rights act or something? GTFO with your ignorant twaddle. You're going to have a hard time selling something that far fetched even to other gullible conservatives.

Well, that's a helluva lie for MLK day. Of course Rosa Parks didn't support Republicans in this era. WTF would a voting rights and Black rights activist support the party that was and is actively opposed to everything she stood for? It's a well known fact that she worked for Rep. Conyers for over 20 years. And for that matter, Trump wasn't a Republican in 1986 either, just a gadfly desperate for attention. Rosa Parks wasn't Trump's buddy and she sure as hell wasn't a political supporter. Trump just happened to be honored along with a ton of other people as descendants of "immigrants." Oy...

Finally, white men won't feel excluded from hockey anymore thanks to the heroic efforts of governor DeSantis!

This conspiracy theory is more than a fantasy for you, it's a goddamn fetish. Get some help.

Yep, unvetted, unsubstantiated Twitter posts fly by without a smidgen if skepticism, but the consensus view of the world's foremost experts cannot be trusted, as they're likely party of a very complicated (and pointless) conspiracy!

They did intend to change politics and media. It was deliberately conceived (and successfully executed) to sell a political POV to an older audience that is ill equipped for critical analysis. That tight pairing of real news with fictional opinion is something that audience just wasn't prepared for. It's a generation that grew up watching real journalism and honestly I think it never occurred to them that they shouldn't question if this upstart network was playing by new rules. I watched my father fall into it after retirement, in the early days of Fox, and it was like he fell into a different universe, slightly askew from our reality. Many studies on news literacy have determined that Fox viewers are less informed, but that's often not the best choice of words. Very often they are tremendously informed--about the wrong things. Misdirection, misinformation and disinformation is a spectrum of the harm done.

Yes, irreparable harm. Or perhaps it can be repaired, but I don't see how. The bar has been lowered so far that it will be difficult to raise again. America has been a model for democracies worldwide, and it appears that is still true, as Brazilian followers of Trump-ally Bolsonaro staged their own Jan 6 riot today. I would admit those things were harmful, had they happened, but I reject the premises.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. You live in a fantasy world and simply make up straw men, because straw arguments are the only thing you are fit to debate. And as is also entirely predictable, when your arguments are destroyed you fire up the insults, deployed with all the wit and grace of a pimply pre-teen. Of course you WERE lying. And again, you'd need stilts and a stepladder to get anywhere near me. Proof you were and ARE lying: "How stupid does one have to be to believe that a handful of people tried to "violently overthrow the US gov't without so much as a single gun or a knife"?" Did you think people wouldn't notice? lol. You're such a joke. Again, you're a fool if you think people are going to believe your lies and let them slide. I can only assume you don't have capacity for shame to be so brazenly dishonest. Vice “I don’t f*cking care that they have weapons,” Trump said angrily to Ornato. “They’re not here to hurt me. They can march to the Capitol from here.” Despite the president being “effin’ furious,” his staff didn’t listen to him and the magnetometers remained. In total, the Secret Service confiscated “42 canisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items likes scissors, needles, or screwdrivers'' from the 28,000 people who went through the magnetometers to enter the protest grounds at the Ellipse. Many others refused to enter or hid their bags so they wouldn’t have their weapons confiscated. " Those are just the folks who were scanned and caught. Obviously the gun toters who we KNOW entered the capitol didn't submit to scanning. WestCanMan says: "Not a single gun or knife." --- Pathethc There are HOURS of footage of violent insurrection. Is it your assertion (bald-faced lie) that this wasn't a violent event? And there is zero question that there was an attempt to overthrow the government and democracy. It's the express intent of the Eastman plan, which Trump believed would be served by his mob of rubes. Ashli Babbitt (you could at least spell your hero's name correctly) may not have been carrying a gun, but there is zero question that she was at the vanguard of a violent mob on a mission to keep Trump in power after he lost the election. They were literally smashing through doors and windows to get at the legislators. Grow up yourself, liar. You are factually wrong. If you were mature and honest enough to simply acknowledge it and learn I wouldn't need to rub your nose in it, but you're neither of those things, so I'm dropping this gem here again:"How stupid does one have to be to believe that a handful of people tried to "violently overthrow the US gov't without so much as a single gun or a knife"?" Mazza had two guns, FYI. They weren't there to kill police officers. They were there to kill Pence, Pelosi and who knows how many others. He told as much to LEO after his arrest. I know you're bummed out that he didn't get to follow through, but I'm still going to call you out for the commited, if inept, defense of the indefensible. I literally laughed aloud when I read this. I gotta tell you, it hurts my feelings about as much as a "little person" telling me I'm the shortest man in the room. You're not Reason10 dumb, but you'd need 20 more IQ points to play in my league. Maybe tone it down a notch if you want to be taken seriously. After all... "How stupid does one have to be to believe that a handful of people tried to "violently overthrow the US gov't without so much as a single gun or a knife"?"?

"For some reason..." Lol They DID pack the court with Trump-appointed justices (and cheated to do it). And what makes you think that a man who proposed suspending the constitution to regain power is going to listen to the courts? He already tried to overturn the will of the voters, from which all power is supposed to originate. You're making excuses for behavior that was truly beyond the pale, hand-waving it away because it probably wouldn't have worked or some other entity would surely have stopped the madness. A. The idea that someone might have stopped the coup does not excuse the attempt. B. Even a failed coup is a grevious and irreparable harm to the institution and the people. C. Every fallen democracy starts with naivete and a lack of vigilance. "It'll never happen here!" Regardless of what you think might have eventually happened, something terrible and harmful DID happen and we were on the verge of far, far worse.

You are a dupe or a liar. Time (or anywhere) Greg Jacob, Vice President Mike Pence’s counsel, recounted a White House meeting on Jan. 4, 2021, in which Eastman said told Trump that his plan to thwart the counting of the Electoral College violated federal statute." ^^They knew it was illegal. They tried it anyway.

No hyperbole whatsoever. That is the express intent of the Eastman memo. Trump literally wrote that the constitution should be suspended. If you're ignorant of those facts, shame on you. If you're aware of those facts and still giving them a pass, then you're beyond shame.

The funny thing is, you're taking to the "team" that didn't just try to overthrow democracy and "suspend" the constitution. Hey some damn perspective.

Yes, a handful of violent traitors were not granted bail. Fark 'em. Most got bail though, only the worst didn't.