Moore on the Campaign Trail
Via AL.com: Roy Moore at campaign rally: ‘We don’t need transgender bathrooms, transgender military’.
It took Moore less than 90 seconds of a seven-minute speech to again trumpet on some of the conservative values he holds.
“We don’t need transgender bathrooms and we don’t need transgender military and we don’t need a weaker military,” Moore said. “We need to go back to what this country is about.”
I fully expect Moore to ride opposition to transgender rights, abortion, and gay marriage to the Senate.
The following is ultimately ironic, given Moore’s more recent stint on the Alabama Supreme Court:
“If God doesn’t give you your rights, where do you think they come from?” Moore said. “Government? If they come from government, government will take them from you. “
The sad irony is that Moore himself wants to use government to take right away from people (such as his assertion that the state of Alabama did not have to allow gay marriage despite the SCOTUS ruling).
And, there is this:
He was asked about Muslims serving in Congress. Moore famously spoke out in 2006 when U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress.
Earlier this week, U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake said he would not support Moore because of that position.
“Of course they can serve,” Moore said Saturday. But he said that when they take the oath of office by placing their hand on the Bible, they are swearing an oath to swear to “a God who is not of their faith.”
I cannot think of a politician more invested in the notion of fusing church and state than Moore.
In his speech opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Senator Richard Russell said: “In all of the sanctimony about protecting the rights of minorities, let us understand fully that the bill is aimed at what has become the most despised and mistreated minority in the country — namely, the white people of the Southern States.”
The exact targets may change, but the logic never does.
Didn’t Rep. Ellison swear his oath on a Koran that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson? And wasn’t there an incredibly silly kerfuffle about that at the time? Damned if you do & damned if you don’t, apparently.
Moore is also an illiterate & redundant cretin: “Swearing an oath to swear to …”
Kind of off topic, but as long as we’re talking about the over-churched, Rod Dreher’s name comes up sometimes in these threads and I see a few familiar commenter names over at TAC. WAPO has a long profile of Dreher today.
I was going to comment at WAPO on his illusion of religious persecution and the difference between being prevented from practicing your religion and being prevented from imposing it on the rest of us, but I found the comment thread had it already adequately covered.
What’s sad is that the true responsibility for what’s going to happen to this country doesn’t rest with Trump, Moore, or the people who vote for them. That responsibility ultimately lies with people like Steven L. Taylor. After all, you’re supposed to be the smart ones, right? You’re the experts that Hillary tells us we’re supposed to trust and place our faith in you.
Yet confronted by such remarkable phenomena as President Donald Trump and likely US Senator Roy Moore, is Steven L. Taylor asking any questions? Re-examining old assumptions? Reconsidering the policies and choices that have led us here? No.
For example, there is now an entire generation of adults who have never known what is it like to work in a strong economy. They’ve spent their entire working lives in an environment of below average economic growth, interrupted only by the worst downturn since The Great Depression, and extreme economic inequality where what little gains there are mostly flow to the already rich. But has Steven L. Taylor spent even a second thinking about what that kind of environment will ultimately produce? Judging by his posts here, the answer is…no, he hasn’t. The main thing his posts here convey is a nigh-aristocratic conviction that the only thing wrong with the world is that certain people have forgotten their station.
By the way, I’ve seen a couple of polls that put Ed Gillespie in the lead in the Virginia Senate race. Perhaps they are bunk but if the GOP wins there, will THAT finally cause any introspection?
Mike
@MBunge:
Whoops! That’s Virginia Governor’s race, not US Senate.
Mike
@M. Bouffant: Yes, Rep. Ellison swore his oath on a Koran, and yes it had once belonged to Jefferson.
@MBunge: You are proof that even an eminent scholar such as Dr. Taylor can’t fix stupid.
@MBunge: OK, I am going to try again to understand where you are coming from: do you support Trump because you think he will hasten the end of the current paradigm?
You are confusing because you seem to be criticizing the prevailing neoliberal order, but at the same time you seem to be supportive of Trumpism at the same time you seem to be criticizing him as well.
All I can figure out is the following:
1) You can’t stand Hillary.
2) You seem to be in opposition to the neoliberal/globalized political economy.
3) You seem to think that Trump is a problem.
4) You seem to support Trump.
5) I get under your skin yet you continue to read and comment on my posts.
Also: I am not sure what your comment really has to do with this post. (But I often feel that way).
Steven, Bunge is a troll, either intentionally or unintentionally. By “troll”, I mean someone who makes posts not to advance an argument, but to engender a reaction, any kind of reaction. I’ve been posting on electronic comment sections since before usenet, since before the internet was called the Internet. And one thing I’ve learned, hard and fast, is that it debases the forum to argue with a troll. It’s not just that you won’t have any effect on the troll (you won’t) but that it brings the entire level of the discussion down to a fruitless and exasperating debate over nonsense points.
I generally think it is fruitless to ask people to not feed the troll, but in this case I figure it’s worth as shot since you are a primary post and a moderator. Take a look at any number of discussions that started out with some interesting points and counterpoints and then degenerated into a frustrated mess of a half dozen people pounding on MBunge, endlessly pointing out that he’s not answering the question, that he makes no sense, that he is ignoring the obvious. Of course! HE’S A TROLL!!! He’s not trying to convince anyone. He’s trying to get us flustered and responding. And he’s relatively good at it.
Many years ago, when Apple was in its death throes and the loyalists felt under siege, I was a frequenter of a group that had both PC users and Mac users on it. (I honestly can’t remember what it was about, but it was some kind of technical forum.) But there was a perfect Troll on there, someone who executed his calling with the purest minimalism. Someone would comment on a problem they were having and mention they were on a Mac. “That’s the problem”, he would say, “Get a PC and you won’t have these annoyances.” And the whole thread would dissolve for days into a vituperative mess. He never did more than that one post. A week or ten days later, the group was more or less back on track and dealing with the technical issues. And then someone would mention that they were a PC user and were having some problem. And the same troll, with the exact same user name, would post “That’s the problem”, he would say, “Get a Mac and you won’t have these annoyances.” And the whole thing would start over again.
FWIW, not all Troll’s are created equal. There is one truly great Troll that is actually fun to read. His name is Ken M. Here’s an example from the comment section of a Good Housekeeping article “A Tastier – and Prettier! – Alternative to Baked Potatoes”
Ken M: also you get more vitamin if you eat the shell
Big Voice: It’s called the skin……….potatoes have skins.
Ken M: technically a shell cause potatoes are in the peanut family
Matt: No Ken you need to stop smoking what ever your smoking there buddy
Ken M: then how come potato is latin for king of the peanuts
Or another one, this time in the comment section of an AP article “Maine candidate for governor announces he’s gay”
Ken M: today’s Christians seem to ignore evidence that God Himself is gay
Jonathan: And that evidence would be what, Ken?
Ken M: well for starters God is a creative type
Rather than engage MBunge on his own turf, we should be demanding that he up his game to this level….
@MarkedMan: @MarkedMan: Trust me, I know what I am dealing with having blogged for 14+ years.
@Steven L. Taylor: Bunge isn’t coming from anywhere. He’s just a troll, but it’s very kind of you to try to ferret out his position. You must be a very conscious teacher, and I can see why they appointed you as dean.
@MarkedMan: You’re right; Ken M. may be the King of the Trolls.
OK, I gotta put in one more, my personal favorite. This is about the Curiosity Rover, from an AP article titled “Eclipse season on Mars, so Curiosity took photos”
Ken M: The Rover would be wise to refrain from sight-seeing and stick to its job
Chris: Sight-seeing is it’s job
Ken M: It can do that on it’s own time – every minute there costs billions of MY tax dollars
Thacransta: you are an idiot THE WHOLE POINT OF EVERY MISSION TO MARS IS TO SIGHT SEE #$%$
Ken M: well it must be nice to be paid to be a tourist when the rest of us are busting our butts on earth
——————-
Such a perfect touch!
No discussion of trolls would be complete without referencing David Brooks, King of the Republican Concern Trolls. No matter what the topic, no matter whether he comes at with political analysis, history, or his weird pop-sociology, his conclusion is that we should all do or believe something Republicans want us to do or believe.
@MarkedMan: Pfft. The problem, obviously, was that they were using Macs and PCs when they should have been using Linux.
^_^
@gVOR08:
“I was going to comment at WAPO on his [Dreher’s] illusion of religious persecution and the difference between being prevented from practicing your religion and being prevented from imposing it on the rest of us, but I found the comment thread had it already adequately covered.”
I have attempted a couple of times to point out the difference in consequence between the sanctions Dreher complains about being imposed on Christians for beliefs which differ from the current secular majority and the sanctions which Christians imposed in prior centuries on groups whose beliefs differ from Christianity (Crusades, Inquisitions, witch burnings, etc.), but somehow my comments never get past his moderation.
I’m a little late to this thread, but I think it’s summed up in the first two words of the title: “Moore On”