Kevin Drum is being way too optimistic here.

But his latest howler at a town hall in New Hampshire—especially after his weak debate performance last night—might finally be his death knell. Note: the issue isn’t the questioner. There are lunatics in every crowd. This one declared, “We have a problem in this country: it’s called Muslims….They have training camps growing where they want to kill us.” Then he asked “When do we get rid of them?” Did he mean all the Muslims? Just the fantasy training camps? Who knows. But all Trump said was this: “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things.” No pushback, no nothing. I’m sure he’ll be walking this back soon, but it might be unwalkable. If there’s any justice, this might finally do him in.

Among all the stupid, bigoted, ridiculous things that Trump has said, why should having him agree to someone saying We have a problem in this country: it’s called Muslims be the one that does him in? We’ve had a presidency built around the Muslim threat that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and Dick Cheney is still going on bragging about it. Has there ever been any substantial downside for people who want to denigrate Muslim lives?

After all, we have one dead famous atheist who advocated bombing Iran, and responded to pragmatic arguments that that would just create more terrorists by suggesting that the solution to that was to kill them all. And we’ve got another live famous atheist who could write this:

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.

He still has swarms of defenders. And these are the supposed smart people.

I’m hoping the Trump balloon pops soon. I don’t have much confidence that his open pandering to bigotry will be the pin that does it.

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Jesus. Bill Maher.

Bill Maher really went off on the case of Ahmed Mohamed and said maybe liberals should drop the political correctness and consider that maybe being cautious is a good thing.

Maher made it clear that of course the Texas teen deserves an apology for being arrested over a clock, but said there’s nothing wrong with being a little suspicious when there’s a young Muslim student with something that “looks exactly like a fucking bomb” and there are young Muslims “blowing shit up” all over the world.

The exact quote, in defending the Irving police “erring on the side of caution”, is this bit of blinkered bigotry:

For the last 30 years, it’s been one culture blowing shit up over and over again.

In case the reference is unclear, he’s not talking about the United States of America.

He also claimed that we put [arrested] a kid after school for a couple of hours. This is not the end of the world. No, it’s not, but way to go, minimizing injustice, Bill Maher and panel of three wealthy white guys!

I don’t expect Maher to lose his show after this long pattern of egregious bigotry, just as I don’t expect Trump to suddenly be shunned for one more incident. But it won’t even end the reverence the atheist community has for Maher.

It would be good to be politically informed, but I think the GOP and the media have colluded to produce noisy spectacle and pointless demagoguery, so I skipped the whole thing — we all have better things to do with 3 hours than watch out-of-touch prudes and bigots purse their lips and yell. Also, I knew I could get a better digest of what was said on the web today.

It turns out I was right, and didn’t miss anything important. I checked the big name news sites, too, and they’re pulling the same shit they always do: what are the rankings in the horse race? Who ‘won’ this debate? Who delivered the best zingers? I want to know what policies (they’re Republican, I can guess they’re all heinous) they’re pushing, not who got win, place, and show among the yahoos.

I did learn that Carly Fiorina’s magic solution to all problems is to increase the size of the military. And she was considered the ‘winner’.

A terrible Rolling Stone interview of Trump really can’t get past the superficial crap: he’s rich. He’s number one in the polls. He’s gonna go all the way. The interviewer seems to have absorbed Trump’s perspective with all the exposure. It really needed a reporter who’d point out the problems with a political class defined by wealth, the media’s childish infatuation with poll position, and that coasting on gas and bluster isn’t substantive. But this is what we’ve got, and even in this tedious paint-by-numbers review, the full Trump ghastliness can’t help but erupt outwards.

When the anchor throws to Carly Fiorina for her reaction to Trump’s momentum, Trump’s expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. Look at that face! he cries. Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! The laughter grows halting and faint behind him. I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?

No, we’re not serious. The fact that a loud, crass, profoundly stupid clown like Donald Trump is dominating the election news says that politics and the media in this country are not serious at all.

It’s Labor Day! And you know what that means…no, not hot dogs and barbecue and all the soporific consumption The Man wants you to practice. It’s a day of righteous anger.

[Read more…]

This is unexpected — I thought fines were forthcoming, but Kim Davis is apparently also going to jail.

Federal District Judge David Bunning held Kim Davis, the county clerk who has become a national symbol of anti-gay animus for her resistance to marriage equality, in contempt of court on Thursday. According to Dan Griffin, a reporter for local news station WSAZ, she was led out by U.S. Marshals. The judge reportedly said that financial sanctions were not enough to ensure her compliance with the law.

Also, while she’s absent from office, other county officials have the power to issue marriage licenses. So her obstruction is at an end.