McConnell: "We didn't mean THAT kind of ballot security!

[The Barbarian]

Putin Denies Mitch McConnell Is Russian Asset: “He Has Never Been an Asset to Any Country”
MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Pushing back against charges that Senator Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that McConnell “has never been an asset to any country.”

“You can scour the four corners of the globe, and you will not find a nation that would ever in a million years consider Mitch McConnell an asset,” Putin said.

The Russian President urged pundits who have called McConnell a Russian asset “to look up the word ‘asset’ in the dictionary.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/bor...set-he-has-never-been-an-asset-to-any-country

WFTH-I

 

[annabenedetti]

There was a moral blind spot in our society on race, for a long time. You have to consider people in the context of the times in which they lived.

That doesn't mean they get a pass.

 

[The Barbarian]

That doesn't mean they get a pass.

No, it doesn't. There were, after all, lots of people in Reagan's time who recognized the evil of racism. But society changes, and when it does, we hold people to different standards. Today, even many of Trump's followers would be disgusted by that kind of talk. But back then, among many Americans, it was deemed no more than bad manners, if that.

Who knows what we think is right today, which will repel future generations?

 

[Town Heretic]

Can you imagine how Ronald Reagan would have reacted if one of his aides had suggested allowing an enemy state to mess with our elections, because it meant more republicans would win?

I'm thinking Reagan would have tossed him out the window.

That's how far the republican party has fallen since Reagan.

It's remarkable.

Saw a Republican Representative on the PBS NewsHour the other day and he was being asked about attempts to influence our elections and Democrats speaking to the issue. He (and I wish I'd thought to hold onto his name) said the Democrats shouldn't be taken seriously because they hadn't proposed any bills on the point. His hard close was, "Don't listen to what they're telling you. Look at what they do."

Well, I'm looking today. And I'm looking at what Mitch and his crew did in response. I hope no one missed it.

Meanwhile, conservative politicians have played American yet again, by failing to step up and override the president on the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a nation whose current ruler is responsible for the murder of a US citizen.

Only 5 of 53 Republican Senators voted to support the prior bipartisan resolution stopping the sale.

 

[Town Heretic]

He grew up before WWII, when that kind of thing wasn't even considered to be evil. Yes, he was badly prejudiced in principle. So was my father. But one-on-one, he couldn't act that way. I discovered after he had died, that just before shipping out to Europe in the war, he had to sell his car. Instead, he gave it away to a black guy he knew, who needed transportation for his job.

And my father was a guy who referred to black people with an insulting name, when they weren't around. Lincoln thought blacks were inferior to whites. Jefferson owned slaves. There was a moral blind spot in our society on race, for a long time. You have to consider people in the context of the times in which they lived.

I sometimes speak to Faulkner's perspective on the Southern and Northern racist. He said that the Southern racist hated the race and loved the individual, while the Northern racist loved the race and hated the individual.

One of my grandfathers was that sort of racist. He could say horrible things about the race, but everyone he knew of color was an "exception"...and my grandmother, well, after she died there was a steady stream of people from down the hill (communities where blacks lived, along with poor whites) to relate how often she'd be present and ready to offer help and support during hard times and illness. There was this peculiar compartmentalization that happened in many of that generation...I never really understood it, but I'm glad that it existed in the sense that it at least revealed the more common humanity underneath the ignorant traditions and instructions that they received as children, a thing that weakened with generations coming after them.

 

[The Barbarian]

I sometimes speak to Faulkner's perspective on the Southern and Northern racist. He said that the Southern racist hated the race and loved the individual, while the Northern racist loved the race and hated the individual.

My dad was from south of the Mason/Dixon line, so that makes sense.

One of my grandfathers was that sort of racist. He could say horrible things about the race, but everyone he knew of color was an "exception"...and my grandmother, well, after she died there was a steady stream of people from down the hill (communities where blacks lived, along with poor whites) to relate how often she'd be present and ready to offer help and support during hard times and illness. There was this peculiar compartmentalization that happened in many of that generation...I never really understood it, but I'm glad that it existed in the sense that it at least revealed the more common humanity underneath the ignorant traditions and instructions that they received as children, a thing that weakened with generations coming after them.

I think so. For one thing, racists in the old days were honest enough to admit it. Today, most of them try to hide it or make excuses for it. Integrity seems to have weakened among them as well.