John McCain says no: Today in Tweets

IP: the 2012 had a majority voting for changing the status quo, and a second question where far fewer voted.

The second question was a majority for statehood, but the construction of the plebiscite makes it ambiguous (on purpose, likely): Sure most voted for change and most of those who favored for change voted for statehood, but only a small minority voted for statehood.

The 1998 plebiscite had nearly half vote for statehood, but not quite half. I recall one of the major post-truth issues being bandied about was that federal tax plus territorial tax would be a lot! (Of course, upon becoming a state, the state would drop its tax a lot, and likely the overall tax rate would fall. But lies and pants.)

Just on the topic of Puerto Rico… it’s kinda funny in retrospect when I consider how little I contemplated it as a part of the United States until I watched the MST3K episode The Beast of Yucca Flats, which included two of my favourite shorts, one of which was of course:

Progress Island, USA!

Obviously trying to sell mainlanders on the upsides of the island circa the 70s, the one credit I’ll give it is that it thumbnails the critical exports that Puerto Rico has to the mainland United States: sugar, pharmaceuticals, and electronics incentivized by a low tax rate. But I just thought it was a goofy kitschy tourism ad until I went to the Redpath Sugar Museum in Toronto a couple years ago as part of Doors Open Toronto. The Redpath Sugar Refinery is a staple of the Toronto waterfront; there’s usually an enormous ship in port offloading sugar and to see the gigantic unrefined sugar mountain in its central warehouse will drop your jaw. But it was inside that museum that really get an appreciation of its history as a consumer product and just how exploitative its cultivation was and is to this day. There was a map inside with pins on all the sugar refineries around the world and right on the equator, particularly in the Caribbean and Central America, there was just no room to see the map, it was so full of pins.

In the 19th century, the Redpath family rivaled the Molsons in prominence, particularly in the Anglophone-Quebecois circles of the era, and John Redpath himself had a huge hand in the growth of Montreal, namely with the development of the Lachine Canal. McGill University’s Redpath Museum and Redpath Library were both donated by Peter Redpath, John’s son, in the late 19th century.

Seriously, that was the power of sugar money back then. Europe loved its sweets and rum, so much so that you’ll find sugar magnate names everywhere you turn without even realizing it. Sir Henry Tate, of Tate Gallery fame, was a sugar magnate. And all that money built on the backs of Amerindian or Afro-Caribbean workers for practically slave conditions in Jamaica, Hispaniola and of course Puerto Rico. Sugar cane harvesting is a dangerous occupation to this day.

Of course, the Puerto Rican sugar industry collapsed after WWII in favour of the cheap-labour manufacturing industry, primarily for pharmaceuticals. Restrictions on shipping imposed by the American government and its dependence on imports has squeezed the people to the breaking point. The Ponce Massacre remains a stark reminder of how the US government has abused Puerto Rico in the past and its putative shipping laws continue to punish the people living there.

Sam Seder had a great interview with Nelson Denis on the subject of America’s colonial abuse of Puerto Rico. Highly recommend watching the full interview on YouTube:

@WWTH:

What is Trump trying to accomplish by alienating football and basketball fans? That’s a big chunk of the electorate and it’s especially a big chunk of the male electorate. It really doesn’t make sense to me.

It’s a shiny object to get everyone to look away from the Russian investigation.

He’s probably feeling a little short on narcissistic supply, too, what with all the natural disasters in the headlines recently. Whenever the news cycle starts to gravitate towards something else, Trump will pick a fight with some celebrity, organization, or Broadway musical, just to keep the spotlight on himself. He’s not a president so much as a WWE ringmaster, full of bluster and throwdowns. His base loves cartoon villainy.

There’s no strategy behind his Twitter feuds. He’s just blindly lashing out at anyone he thinks isn’t showing sufficient fealty, heedless of how much damage it’s doing. Over time, it’s going to have the effect of alienating ever larger segments of the population (but never his 35% base, for whom hatred supersedes everything else). There’s only so many targets he can bash before it starts hitting too close to home for white moderates. His ego won’t let him stop.

I’m heartened to see so many vets coming out in support of the kneeling protests. It’s high time we stopped pretending football games are patriotic events. It’s high time the right stopped fetishizing the flag as a stand-in for the military. Of all people, Orange Caligula has the least standing to insist on respect for the flag because troops. He’s a draft dodging chickenhawk who insults POWs, Gold Star moms, Purple Heart recipients, and vets with PTSD. People who’ve sacrificed for the country – ACTUALLY sacrificed, not just avoided STDs – make him feel small and inadequate. He spits on the flag every single day, with every hateful tweet, every executive order, every First Amendment threat, every race-baiting dog whistle vuvuzela he embeds in his speeches.

By making it about the flag and disrespect, he’s ginning up outrage among his base and trying to draw attention away from the epidemic of white-on-black police brutality in this country.

@Buttercup

By making it about the flag and disrespect, he’s ginning up outrage among his base and trying to draw attention away from the epidemic of white-on-black police brutality in this country.

Unfortunately, I think it’s working. I’ve seen news agencies all over the place misreporting the Kaepernick’s taking-a-knee as a protest against Trump, when it was against the epidemic of police brutality against African-Americans and began while Obama was in office. But if more and more major sports figures take this stand… this is the kind of thing that can signal a major paradigm shift in the way racial dynamics are discussed in America, and has the potential to completely implode Trump’s base. Sure, a lot of his supporters have put all their cultural credit chips in Trump’s basket, but only as a function of grievance; if that grievance butts up against the NFL–not only the most profitable league in North American pro sports, but also the most culturally significant–Trump is not winning that fight. Families that make gridiron football a touchstone aren’t going to sever that connection just because their temporary grievance talisman tells them to. As more players on more teams across pro sports start taking knees… I can see this starting a chain reaction.

The X factor will be ownership. Will owners stand behind their players, or will we get Harold Ballard-style “let’s sabotage the team because they’ll make money anyway” crapola? I’m curious to see where this goes.

seems to me that one of the issues being debated today, especially vis-a-vis Puerto Rico is “are these premises ‘bizarre’, or they still valid”.

Nothing bizarre about racism. It’s the most banal thing in the world.

WRT Trump and football:

I’ve long considered that one of the major driving forces in U.S. politics boils down to ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’. Sure, that’s a fairly generic human thing, but the U.S. culture has raised it to a force of nature capable of wiping out all else before it.

Trump just made the mistake of telling a whole lot of wealthy NFL franchise owners what to do. Yelling at the players he might have been able to get away with. Insisting that teams fire anybody who protested… that got the other rich white boys into defensive mode.

Trump’s doing a wonderful job of alienating his natural allies because he has no real concept of ‘allies’ in general.

Thank you for the laugh, Alan. There are some nice replies, it seems … such as this:

For those dimwits who think the Brighton Pavilion is a mosque – please be reassured that Mecca Bingo is just a night out for pensioners.

Martin Rowson’s latest cartoon is leaning more frightening than funny, though (complete with melt-down-trump):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/sep/25/martin-rowson-far-right-germany-uk-us-europe-eu-cartoon

(not sure how best to link)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/sep/25/martin-rowson-far-right-germany-uk-us-europe-eu-cartoon#img-1

Order a thousand pairs of finest cotton socks; take out the drawings for that beach hut at Brighton…

It’s not so much that he’s a hero, But McCain is the lemming that stands to the side and says, “What the FUCK are you doing, running off the cliff? I’m not doing that!!”

I mean, the metaphor falls apart considering that the senators will be fine, and it’s us being flung off the cliff. But if he can help that not happen, I’ll be grateful for at least that much.

@Kat

Passive-aggressiveness is not a good look.

Passive-aggressiveness that boils down to telling a black man that if he cares about climate change then he should go to the back of the bus and put your pet cause before his own life is an even worse look.

Seriously, that was uncharacteristically gross of you. =/

Btw Graham Cassidy bill dead because 3 gop members said no.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.usatoday.com/story/702249001/

Yay 4-0 on our side, now for the love of Makoda can the gop just stay down.

Oh and Trump blames Puerto Rico for their infrastructure problems and getting hit by a hurricane.

Amazing. Just 3 gop members are given the medal of meeting the bare minimum of a decent human. 3.

Oh and Trump blames Puerto Rico for their infrastructure problems and getting hit by a hurricane.

China is behind the climate change hoax and Puerto Ricans should just pick up the island and move it somewhere else. When is he getting impeached.. but is Pence even better..