As we first heard from two TPM readers early this afternoon, a White Nationalist Super PAC (yes, that’s now a thing) is now blanketing Iowa with Robocalls on behalf of Donald Trump. And for bonus awful, the leader of the organization is the man Charleston Massacre shooter Dylann Roof cited as inspiration for his killings in his manifesto. As the audio puts it, “We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.” Details and audio here.
Back in September 2013 we got an email from a TPM Reader with a subscription to Ancestry.com who’d decided to poke around to see about Ted Cruz. TPM Reader JR had come up with a 1974 voter list that appeared to show that not only Ted Cruz’s father Rafael was a Canadian citizen (that’s part of the public record) but that his mother Eleanor was too. This was during the lead-up to the Cruz-inspired 2013 government shutdown. So I assume JR was inspired by Cruz’s mounting prominence. But that’s purely my speculation. In any case, JR sent us an email with a link to the document on Ancestry.com.
During the daily punishment of listening to Fox News everyday, I just heard a segment on the Republican primary. The gist was that people in the know are saying that this year “a great ground game” is more important than its even been before. And it may count for a lot more than great poll numbers this time around.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) has said so many crazy things and enough really disgusting things that at this point he almost gets a pass from people since it’s just expected. But, man, some of the things aren’t just ‘Yeah, that’s terrible. Let’s definitely write that up‘ but ‘Good Lord, I can’t believe the governor of a state said something like that’. Here’s the actual words: “These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty… these types of guys… they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”
Watch the video here.
Gov. Paul LePage (R) will no longer stand for the scourge of (black/brown?) drug dealers from New York impregnating young white girls in Maine. Watch.
As we go through the Bundy white privilege performance art drama, in my own mind I keep coming back to the importance of understanding why exactly the federal government owns this land in the first place.
LaVoy Finicum appears to be getting bored. He’s one of the guys who’s hold up in that Wildlife Refuge visitor center, except when he runs down to the mini mart to get a sandwich. LaVoy says he needs to get back to his ranch. “I got cows that are scattered and lost.”
So far so good.
The Bundys are Patriots, anti-federal government revolutionaries and also decent sized federal campaign donors.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, when we look at the ridiculously inconsistent way law enforcement handles white right-wing freaks as opposed to other people who break the law or threaten violence or whatever, the import should not be that federal law enforcement should just rush in and kill everyone. Using force should be a last resort. And, within reason, if you can just wait people out and then charge them with whatever crimes they committed, great. As we say in the main policing debate, killing people really needs to be the last resort. But we just confirmed from Oregon State police the Ammon Bundy and his crew, who appear to be running low on supplies (Fritos, beef jerky, pizza, etc.) are actually free to come and go as they please. So if they need more food they can just leave the stand off, drive off to the nearest grocery store on a food run and come back and keep up the historic seige.
As the other patriot and militia groups who were initially critical of the Oregon refuge takeover start to come around and see it as a good thing, you can’t help but think that part of their original disgruntlement was not being in on the action in the first place.