Tag: meme

Rebecca Bradley uses the Hillary Clinton playbook, tries to paint critics as sexist

Remember the “BernieBro” meme that supporters of the Hillary Clinton campaign have used to criticize progressives who support the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign?

Well, it’s back, thanks to an ultra-right-wing Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who is seeking a full ten-year term on Wisconsin’s highest bench:

I don’t know why the media isn’t picking up on the one glaring problem Rebecca Bradley has…her temperament. Her mean girl antics have reached the surreal stage.

One critic has been using Bradley’s own words and deep political resentments against her, destroying her credibility as a judge or justice.

So what does she do? She accused him of using the “c-word” on Twitter. The (Milwaukee) Journal Sentinel investigated and didn’t find any evidence to back up Bradley’s juvenile claim.

While female politicians have been the victims of sexism ever since women started running for office in America, for someone to dig up hate speech that one wrote in the student newspaper of an university and use it against the author of the hate speech is not sexism. If Scott Walker appointed a male justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and he wrote a ton of hateful columns for a student newspaper (or, for that matter, any other type of publication), being familiar with Scot Ross’s work, he’d be more than willing to use that against him. Ross’s criticism and investigative work on right-wing politicians knows no gender boundaries, and he’s holding right-wing politicians, regardless of gender, race, etc., to the same standard.

I strongly encourage Wisconsinites to vote in the Democratic presidential primary for Bernie Sanders, and vote for JoAnne Kloppenburg for Wisconsin Supreme Court, on April 5.

 

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Paul LePage is a white supremacist

I’m not going to hold back in regards to my thoughts about Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage and his racist remarks about the heroin epidemic in Maine…LePage is a white supremacist.

Recently, LePage made racist remarks about the ongoing heroin epidemic in Maine and in America:

During an event Wednesday night in Maine, Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican, described the heroin trade in his state, suggesting it was being fueled by outsiders.

“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty — these types of guys,” he said. “They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” Mr. LePage told the crowd, according to The Portland Press Herald.

“Incidentally,” he added, “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.”

(emphasis mine)

If one is more concerned about a white woman being impregnated by a black man than actually doing something about the heroin epidemic in this country, than one is a white supremacist. In fact, the kind of racist meme that LePage used is a nearly identical meme to the one that Dylann Roof, the white supremacist perpetrator of the terrorist attack on the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, to, in his mind, justify mass murder. The only significant difference between the two memes is that LePage didn’t make an overt reference to rape, whereas Roof did.

We need a serious response to the heroin crisis in America, not racist remarks from right-wing politicians. I’m a lifelong resident of a downstate Illinois county that has faced a serious heroin problem in recent years, so heroin is a major political issue in my area. These are just my own ideas, but I believe that there should be a two-prong approach to addressing the heroin problem in America (I do recognize that heroin is something that can’t reasonably be legalized in the way that alcohol and tobacco currently are, and marijuana can be). First off, we should treat heroin addiction as a medical problem and not prosecute people for merely possessing and/or using heroin. Secondly, the criminal justice system should focus heavily on arresting and prosecuting people who are selling heroin, not prosecuting people who merely use heroin. I would more than welcome comments on other ideas about combating the heroin epidemic in America.

Meet Sady Doyle, the most vocal critic of Bernie’s Army out there

Sady Doyle, a Hillary Clinton supporter, resident of New York City, and freelance online journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian, has taken to Twitter in recent days to attack me, other Bernie Sanders supporters, the people of the State of Vermont, and rural America.

First off, Doyle has aggressively attacked and mocked Bernie Sanders, his home state of Vermont, and rural America:

I want to make two points here. First, Doyle, who is from the New York City borough of Brooklyn, is attacking Bernie for being from Vermont, a state that is mostly rural with small towns (although Bernie is from Burlington, Vermont, the state’s largest city, and was the mayor of Burlington for much of the 1980’s). This is a classic example of urban Democrats trashing rural Americans, which is one of many reasons why Republicans control both houses of Congress and most state governments. Second, U.S. Senators are responsible for representing the people of their home state, not serving as some kind of absolute monarch or imperial ruler, and, unlike most politicians in this country, Bernie completely lacks any kind of a royalist mindset.

Doyle didn’t stop at attacking Bernie himself. She mocked and attacked the legions of Bernie supporters, which I like to call Bernie’s Army:

There are two main themes that Doyle is using to attack Bernie’s Army. First, she’s accusing Bernie’s Army of being a group of racist and sexist Bernie supporters. Second, she’s attacking Bernie’s Army for supporting a presidential candidate who actually agrees with them on the vast majority of issues.

Regarding the first point, Doyle thinks that it’s a valid crime for white men (who are considerably less than 100% of Bernie supporters; there are many women and people of color who support Bernie) to be politically active in this country. In my opinion, if you’re a U.S. citizen, and you’re old enough to vote, it’s an important civic duty to be politically active, regardless of your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

Regarding the second point, in regards to the Democratic nomination process, I’d rather support a candidate that I agree with nearly 100% of the time than a candidate who doesn’t really share my values but is the favored candidate of party bosses. Since America’s political party system is a strong two-party system, I support the candidate nominated by the left-most of the major parties (in this country, the Democratic Party) in the general election. However, for the Democratic Party’s nomination process, I usually, but not always, support what I think is the most progressive candidate running in a Democratic primary, caucus, etc. For the 2016 presidential election, that candidate is Bernie Sanders.

Pivoting back the first point, while I’m a Bernie supporter, I am not someone with a “bro” personality. I’m from a redneck part of Illinois, I consider myself to be a redneck, and I love country music (especially older country music) and NASCAR. I guess one could me a “BernNeck”. Also, Doyle made an implicit comparison of Bernie supporters and “PUMA” supporters of Hillary in 2008. For those of you who don’t remember who the PUMAs were, they were a group of Hillary supporters in 2008 who refused to support Barack Obama after he won the Democratic nomination. While PUMA officially stood for “People United Means Action”, it unofficially stood for “Party Unity My Ass”. While there are probably a few Bernie supporters who would not support Hillary if she were the Democratic nominee, I’m not one of those kind of Bernie supporters, as I’d vote for Hillary in the general election should she win the Democratic nomination.

Doyle didn’t stop at just attacking Bernie’s Army as a whole. She took a couple of swipes at me:

While I thank Doyle for referring to me as “heroic”, she clearly attacked me for criticizing a lame reference to pop music singer Miley Cyrus that she made about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, as well as for saying that female supporters of the Bernie campaign (which there are a large number of), aren’t interested in silly pop culture references. Most supporters of the Bernie campaign, both male and female supporters, aren’t interested in silly pop culture references; they’re interested in making America a better place to live.

Oh, and while she was at it, Doyle admitted that Hillary is a bought-off corporatist politician:

I thank Doyle for reminding us what the primary reason we dislike Hillary so much is! Oh, and regarding Doyle’s claim that no other moderate Democrat has faced as much criticism of Hillary has, I can think of several moderate/conservative Democrats that have faced far more criticism than Hillary has. The most notable one that I can think of off of the top of my head was Mary Burke, a charter school supporter who was the Democratic nominee in last year’s election for Governor of Wisconsin (losing to Republican incumbent Scott Walker).

Last, but certainly not least, Doyle claimed that the vast majority of women that she knows are leaning towards supporting Bernie:

Keep in mind that Doyle is a known Hillary supporter, and she admitted that the vast majority of women that she knows are…you guessed it…leaning towards Bernie. Bernie is going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, and no Miley Cyrus references or attempts to divide Democrats based on gender are going to convince us to support Hillary for the Democratic nomination.

I now await the Twitter wrath of Sady Doyle…