Too many Republicans "is precisely why he is moving out of what Rick Perry once described as the 'blueberry in the tomato soup,' a predominantly Democratic city full of liberal expats..."

"... like himself seeking progressive politics and an urban lifestyle at a red-state cost-of-living discount. 'It was easy to just be in Never Neverland, floating with a bunch of other transplants having a good time,' said [somebody named John] Stettin, who relocated from Dallas to Austin five years ago.... [He's moving to] Massachusetts.... What was once seen as an affordable, creative haven is now a runaway boomtown, pricing out most of whatever was left of Austin’s proclaimed weirdness.... In the past year, rent soared more than 20 percent, and the median home price rose almost as much over the same period (before home prices dropped thanks to interest-rate hikes). The airport has new direct flights to Vail, Colorado, and Texas’s first Soho House opened there last year. Elon Musk has built a $1.1 billion 'gigafactory' nearby, turning 'Tesla' into shorthand among some to describe the city’s bougification. 'There’s nothing weird about Austin,' said one Soho House patron, who recently flew home to California for an abortion...."

From "Austin Has Been Invaded by Texas/The progressive paradise is over for some, and they’re fleeing to bluer pastures" (Intelligencer).

"This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic..."

Said Joe Biden at his press conference yesterday. Transcript. He was talking about new legislation in some GOP-led state legislatures tightening up voting requirements.

Context: 

What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick. Deciding in some states that you cannot bring water to people standing in line waiting to vote, deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work, deciding that there will be no absentee ballots under the most rigid circumstances, it’s all designed, and I’m going to spend my time doing three things. One, trying to figure out how to pass the legislation passed by the House, number one, number two, educating the American public. The Republican voters I know find this despicable, Republican voters, the folks outside this White House. I’m not talking about the elected officials. I’m talking about voters. Voters. And so I’m convinced that we’ll be able to stop this because it is the most pernicious thing. This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic what they’re trying to do and it cannot be sustained. I’m going to do everything in my power, along with my friends in the House and the Senate, to keep that from becoming the law.

By the way, he said he's "going to spend my time doing three things," then he ticked off "number one" and "number two," but he never listed the third thing. But he just kept rambling on, and he didn't have his fingers in the air to remind us that he was doing a list, so there was no Rick Perry "oops" moment. 

 

And, of course, the reporter (Yamiche Alcindor [formerly] of the NYT) did nothing to re-focus him on completing the list. But back to "Jim Eagle." I've seen some defense of this weird new character, upstaging the old Jim Crow. It's not hard to get what he was going for. If Jim Crow was bad, then Jim Eagle would be even worse. A crow is a bird, and an eagle is a bigger, more dangerous bird. But...

1. Is the new legislation even worse than Jim Crow laws? How could that be?

2. The eagle is the national bird, and Biden was standing in front of an image of an eagle, which we saw right behind his head as he was using the eagle as a symbol of evil:

3. The expression "Jim Crow" is not a reference to a bird, but a particular character: 

The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to "Jump Jim Crow",* a song-and-dance caricature of black people performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface, which first surfaced in 1828 and was used to satirize Andrew Jackson's populist policies. As a result of Rice's fame, "Jim Crow" by 1838 had become a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against black people at the end of the 19th century, these statutes became known as Jim Crow laws.

Click on the link to see how a black man was depicted on the sheet music to that song. "Jim Crow" is not a bird, but a man, depicted as inferior and contemptible, in what is overt racism. If a man were depicted in a way that called to mind an eagle, he would be a more powerful man — an admired man. Thus, to go from crow to eagle in this context is to put black people in a better position, not worse. Biden's word play is based on historical ignorance.

4. To do word play, you need to know what the thing you are playing on means. For example, earlier this morning, I blogged about the Washington Post Fact Checker, and we got to talking about the time last month when I fact-checked the Fact Checker. I wisecracked: "He's the Fact Checker, I'm the Fact Chess!" See? I'm proposing a new kind of word play where you deliberately misunderstand the word that you're playing upon. 

5. Voting rights are important and maybe humor isn't such a good idea here. I know I've just made a joke, and perhaps I should delete it, but if jokes here are to be self-censored, Biden ought to have resisted saying "Jim Eagle." In any case, it was a joke that was hard for some people to understand, and understanding it required us to come within his misunderstanding, with "Jim Crow" as a bird.

6. Since I blogged about Cliff Edwards yesterday, I want to end by saying that he — a white man — did the voice of the lead crow in the Disney movie "Dumbo," and here's the sequence "When I See an Elephant Fly," which you can watch for yourself to think about whether it's so racist it should be suppressed. Here's a Reddit discussion from a year ago, begun by somebody who thinks it's not so bad.

__________________________

*If you click on the "Jump Jim Crow" link in #3, you get to this additional material: 

The origin of the name "Jim Crow" is obscure but may have evolved from the use of the pejorative "crow" to refer to black people in the 1730s. Jim may be derived from "Jimmy", an old cant term for a crow, which is based on a pun for the tool "crow" (crowbar). Before 1900, crowbars were called "crows" and a short crowbar was and still is called a "jimmy" ("jemmy" in British English), a typical burglar's tool. The folk concept of a dancing crow predates the Jump Jim Crow minstrelsy and has its origins in the old farmer's practice of soaking corn in whiskey and leaving it out for the crows. The crows eat the corn and become so drunk that they cannot fly, but wheel and jump helplessly near the ground, where the farmer can kill them with a club.

Sometimes God chooses cancer.

July 22, 2015: "Rick Perry just gave an epic speech raging against Donald Trump and comparing him to a 'cancer'" (Business Insider).

"Let no one be mistaken - Donald Trump's candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded," Perry said.... "It cannot be pacified or ignored, for it will destroy a set of principles that has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in the history of the civilized world - the cause of conservatism.... [M]ost telling to me is not Mr. Trump's bombast, his refusal to show any remorse for his comments about Senator McCain, but his admission that there is not a single time in his life that he sought the forgiveness of God... A man too arrogant, too self-absorbed, to seek God's forgiveness is precisely the type of leader John Adams prayed would never occupy the White House."

November 25, 2019: "Rick Perry says Trump is the 'chosen one' sent 'to do great things'" (The Hill).

"God's used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect,” Perry said in the clip. “And I actually gave the president a little-one pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago and I shared it with him... I said, 'Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, 'You were.’  I said, 'If you're a believing Christian, you understand God's plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.'"

It's all in the plan, including cancer.

If you make it to the top, you're the chosen one, that time. As for John Adams, who prayed that a man like Trump would never occupy the White House (according to Perry), he must have been the chosen one in 1796 when he won the presidency, but being chosen once doesn't mean you'll be chosen twice, and he was not the chosen one when he ran for reelection in 1800. So even if you subscribe to this notion that the winner is necessarily the chosen one, it doesn't mean that "chosen one" Trump will win in 2020.

The plan is always a mystery until we see what happens.

"A presidential loathing for Ukraine is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry."

According to The Washington Post:

Three of President Trump’s top advisers met with him in the Oval Office in May, determined to convince him that the new Ukrainian leader was an ally deserving of U.S. support. They had barely begun their pitch when Trump unloaded on them.... In Trump’s mind, the officials said, Ukraine’s entire leadership had colluded with the Democrats to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. “They tried to take me down,” Trump railed.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the senior member of the group, assured Trump that the new Ukrainian president was different — a reformer in Trump’s mold who had even quoted President Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address, for which the three advisers had been present. But the harder they pushed in the Oval Office, the more Trump resisted. “They are horrible, corrupt people,” Trump told them....

“We could never quite understand it,” a former senior White House official said... “There were accusations that they had somehow worked with the Clinton campaign. There were accusations they’d hurt him. He just hated Ukraine.”....

Trump’s hatred, they concluded, was ingrained, irrational and possibly irreversible.

"Don’t play games with me, kid," Joe Biden snapped at a young woman who'd asked him how many genders there are.

At first, he gave an answer: "At least 3." But then she asked him to name them. That's when he said, "Don’t play games with me, kid." And then he grabbed her by the arm, The NY Post reports.

It was a great one-two question combination, and according the Post, the questioner came from a right-wing student organization. How are candidates supposed to answer that "How many genders are there?"?

Was "at least 3" a clever try... or something that's obviously not going to work? You have to anticipate the "name them" follow-up, and then what do you say?

I'm picturing Joe stumbling along: There are at least 3 genders: male, female, and... what's the third one there? Let's see. Male, female and, let's see. I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.

I adapted that from the stylings of Rick Perry in that awful debate in November 2011:



ADDED: I'll bet all the candidates have figured this out already, but I'll say it anyway. The right way to answer the "How many?" question is to decline to speak in numerical terms. Say something like, "I believe gender is a matter of individual feeling and expression and not something for politicians to talk about and count."

When Jon Huntsman said "to say that you can't secure the border I think is pretty much a treasonous comment."

I'm motivated to dredge up that old quote by this front-page display at HuffPo:



The link goes to "Trump’s Russia Ambassador Is Having A Very Bad Week/Jon Huntsman has spent decades cultivating a reputation as a pragmatic Republican. Now some of his allies are urging him to ditch the Trump administration."

I'm not recommending that you read that article. I'm just showing you what's out there — the idea that a person with a great reputation must abandon Trump. The target of such a message is buttered up — what a great reputation you have — for the purpose of delivering the message that he's going to lose it if he doesn't quit his job. The reader isn't supposed to think about whether the author ever admired the target or would give a damn about him if he abandoned Trump. One suspects that if Huntsman quit at this point, the new message wouldn't be anything positive about Huntsman, but gloating about how no one wants to be associated with Trump and Trump is so despicable that he's nearly entirely isolated now and ought to resign or be impeached.

But I just want to show you what Jon Huntsman said in the GOP debate on September 12, 2011. This is something I ran across yesterday as I was surveying the use of the word "treason" in public discourse over the last 13 years (searching my own archive). The moderator, Wolf Blitzer, had already already asked Governor Rick Perry if he'd stand by something he'd said about the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke. Perry — who'd said that it was "almost treacherous – or treasonous" to do quantitative easing in the run-up to the election — answered, "if you are allowing the Federal Reserve to be used for political purposes, that it would be almost treasonous." So the word "treason" was already in the discourse of the debate.

Blitzer then got the audience to boo by making Perry affirm that he has supported in-state college tuition for people in the country illegally. Blitzer then brought in Huntsman, reminding him that he'd supported "driving privileges to illegal immigrants." Huntsman answered:

Well, first of all, let me say for Rick to say that you can't secure the border I think is pretty much a treasonous comment.

Perry hadn't said we can't secure the border. He'd only said that building a wall across the southern border was "just not reality." Perry said the answer was more law enforcement personnel but Huntsman jumped at the opportunity to make Perry look as though he didn't believe the border could be secured, and then, later in the debate, when the question was how to treat people who'd made it across the border, Huntsman returned to the issue of Perry and border security and lobbed the word "treasonous."

Treason talk.

Let's look back before this week, to "treason" as it has appeared within the lifetime of this blog. In chronological order:

April 27, 2005: Discussing the "blood" metaphor in constitutional law, I quoted Article III: "The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

May 28, 2006: I wrote about the protest singer Phil Ochs declaring the Vietnam War over:

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over

July 1, 2006: "The editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times explain how they decide when to publish a secret... Baquet and Keller have written a lengthy defense of their behavior, behavior that they know has been severely criticized, even called 'treason.'"

September 20, 2006: "To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," said Alice Cooper, indicting rock stars who were telling people to vote for John Kerry.

August 3, 2007: Markos Moulitsas says that in 2002, "Dissent against the president was considered treason."

August 11, 2007: A 9/11 truther criticizes me for declining to debate him, which he took to mean that I know I'm "complicit in covering up mass murder and high treason."

May 12, 2008: A scholar assures us that the Muslim world would view Obama, the son of a Muslim father, as guilty of apostasy, which has "connotations of rebellion and treason," which is considered "worse than murder."

September 12, 2011: I'm live-blogging a debate in which "treason" is thrown around casually: "Perry stands by his 'almost treasonous' remark, referring to the use of the Federal Reserve for political purposes... Huntsman accuses Perry of treason for saying we can't secure the border."

May 8, 2012: "Isn't it funny, this 'treason' incident?" Mitt Romney, running for President, failed to chide a woman who asked whether Obama should be tried for treason. I brought up (as I did today), the 1964 book "None Dare Call It Treason." I also quoted the casual use of "treason" by Chief Justice John Marshall  Cohens v. Virginia to refer to doing something unconstitutional. ("We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution.") And a commenter brought up an even more venerable use of the word, Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it." That made me say: "The country was founded on treason. We celebrate the treason we like."

Also on May 8, 2012: "Obama supporters who express outrage over the use of the word 'treason' seem to think the word means nothing but to the crime defined in law — as if the woman Romney talked to wanted Obama tried and executed. It's as if people who say 'property is theft' are freakishly insisting that property owners be prosecuted for larceny. Think of all the words we use that have more specific legal meanings that do not apply: This job is murder... The rape of the land... Slave to love..."

June 17, 2013: Edward Snowden explains why he left the country: " [T]he US Government... immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it."

July 26, 2013: From a post about the death penalty: "Here's the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found the death penalty for rape (even rape of a child) to be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. No one has been executed in the U.S. for a crime other than murder since the 1960s, though the Kennedy case leaves open the possibility of capital punishment 'for other non-homicide crimes, ranging from drug-trafficking to treason.'"

April 22, 2014 : Above the Law had hyperventilated, "Justice Scalia Literally Encourages People To Commit Treason," and I punctured it, saying Scalia was just giving his usual speech about the Constitution, which is always subject to the right of revolution explained in the Declaration of Independence. I bring up Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it."

February 23, 2015: "'Edward Snowden couldn't be here for some treason,' said Neil Patrick Harris, the Oscars host, when the documentary about him won an award." I said: "I liked the joke, because of its language precision and because it seemed at least a tad risky in the context of Hollywood celebrating itself."

February 29, 2016: Trump hesitated to "unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election" after Duke it would be "treason to your heritage" for a white person not to vote for Trump.

October 14, 2016: "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," said Ezra Pound, who was charged with treason in WWII. He was disaffected after WWI, moved to Italy, felt inspired by Mussolini, and went on the radio criticizing the U.S., FDR, and the Jews.

December 21, 2016: I quoted the official course description for "The Problem of Whiteness," a course offered in the African Cultural Studies department of my university, the University of Wisconsin–Madison: "In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke, and consider the journal Race Traitor’s motto, 'treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.'"

January 16, 2017: I quote someone talking about Chelsea Manning: "He is a member of the military who knowingly committed treason. His, or her, gender status has nothing to do with his conviction for treason."

February 10, 2017: I quoted Trump (before his election) talking about Edward Snowden: "I think he's a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," "And if I were president, Putin would give him over," and "Snowden is a spy who should be executed." I wondered: "But maybe you think Trump will end up looking good forefronting the iniquity of treason."

February 7, 2018: Trump had used the word "treasonous" to describe the Democrats who didn't applaud during his State of the Union Address. Yeah, it was a joke, but: "He's President and in the position of enforcing the law, and from that position punching down. He really should not be joking about treason. And I get that he's punching back, and that's his style. But people aren't just idiots if they feel afraid of a President who isn't continually assuring us that he's aware of his profound responsibilities."

April 17, 2018: I quoted Neil Gorsuch, concurring — and voting with the liberals ‚ in a case about immigration: "Vague laws invite arbitrary power. Before the Revolu­tion, the crime of treason in English law was so capa­ciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. The founders cited the crown’s abuse of 'pretended' crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution. See Declaration of Independence ¶21."

May 4, 2018: A conservative commentator sarcastically said he was "waiting for the Left to scream treason" over John Kerry's "quiet play to save Iran deal with foreign leaders."

July 17, 2017: I quoted Byron York: "Would it have been appropriate for the Trump campaign to try to find the [Clinton] emails?... What if an intelligence operative from a friendly country got them and offered them? And what about an unfriendly country? Would there be a scale, from standard oppo research on one end to treason on the other, depending on how the emails were acquired?"

Trump adopts Governor Scott Walker's line: "Wisconsin is open for business" becomes "America is open for business."

From Scott Walker's first inaugural address in 2011:

And as your Governor, I make this pledge: Wisconsin is open for business. We will work tirelessly to restore economic growth and vibrancy to our state. My top three priorities are jobs, jobs, and jobs....

Our first step is to rebuild Wisconsin's economy. And how will we do that? We open Wisconsin for business....

To begin our transformation, we will work with our legislative partners - in both political parties - to pass a series of bold reforms that will send a clear message: "Wisconsin is open for business."

From Trump's Davos speech today:

The world is witnessing the resurgence of a strong and prosperous America. I'm here to deliver a simple message. There has never been a better time to hire, to build, to invest and to grow in the united States. America is open for business and we are competitive once again. The American economy is by far the largest in the world and we've just enacted the most significant tax cuts and reform in American history. We've massively cut taxes for the middle class, and small businesses to let working families keep more of their hard earned money.

I thought Trump gave a great speech, and I'm not saying he plagiarized. I just want to shine a little credit on Scott Walker.

ADDED: "[V]ariations on the phrase have been used by politicians and states — including New Jersey, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — to describe their own pro-business policies for at least two decades."

New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, 1994: "We will be competitive. No more losing our employers to job raids by low-tax states. New Jersey is open for business."

Texas, Rick Perry, 2010:



West Virginia, reported in 2006: "Last year, Gov. Joe Manchin III began changing a slogan on some state highway signs from 'Wild and Wonderful' to 'Open for Business.'"

And the winner is George Allen, who said "Southwest Virginia is open for business" in 1997. Remember George Allen? Speaking of rhetoric: He lost in the governorship after saying something wrong:

The pivotal moment in the campaign, and the one that the vast majority of political observers attribute Allen's stunning upset loss to [Jim] Webb, came on August 11, 2006, at a campaign stop in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, where Allen twice used the racist slur "macaca" (meaning 'monkey') to refer to the dark-complexioned S. R. Sidarth, who was filming the event as a "tracker" for the opposing Jim Webb campaign. In what was dubbed as his "Macaca moment”, Allen said:

"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent... Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

Before that happened, people thought of George Allen as a potential President of the United States. Now, who thinks of him at all?

Who wants to be Trump's nemesis? Al Franken!

I'm reading this at The Hill:

The progressive Minnesota Democrat was the breakout star during a packed week of [confirmation] hearings.... Franken, who was elected in 2008, has largely kept his head down in the upper chamber, focusing on legislative duties and representing his constituents.

Because he couldn't step/stomp on Obama, Franken was caged. The comedian — who came from TV to become a politician — suddenly has a President — who came from TV to become a politician — whom he can attack. What fabulous liberation!

And I'm pretty sure that Trump would be delighted to have Franken as his nemesis. We'll see who's the better comedian-politician.

“It’s very clear now that he is trying to raise his profile and position himself as a leading critic of Donald Trump,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who was active in Franken’s recount in 2008. “After watching him skillfully interrogate some of the Trump nominees in recent days, he’s clearly angling to mix it up much more so than he has in the past.”

Here's an example of Franken's newly unleashed prowess:

At former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's hearing to be Energy secretary, Perry referred to an earlier meeting with Franken by saying that he “hope[s] you are as fun on the dais as you were on your couch.”

The hearing room erupted in laughter, and Franken asked Perry to rephrase. “Please. Please. Oh my lord,” Franken said. Once the laughter subsided, Franken pressed Trump’s Energy secretary nominee about his opinion on climate change. 

Rick Perry was the funnier comedian there, unless you think he doesn't notice his own double entendre. If you think he doesn't, you're assuming that the other side is dumb, an easy target. I think Texas politicians can rope you in with that. Watch out, Minnesotans.

Rick Perry hams it up delightfully quick-stepping to "Green Acres" on "Dancing with the Stars."

"It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone – Commerce, Education and the um, what’s the third one there?"

The department that Rick Perry forgot — in his infamous "oops" moment — was Energy.

I'm thinking of this today because Donald Trump might be going after the same 3:

At a private meeting of conservatives in Cleveland this summer, Donald Trump’s senior economic adviser, Stephen Moore, said the candidate planned to pay for his costly proposals by eliminating the departments of Commerce, Energy and Education.... Together, these agencies employ an estimated 150,000 people, and they oversee things ranging from nuclear security to federal student loans to the U.S. patent system.

“I’m going to press as hard as possible to [eliminate the agencies],” Moore said. “We’re putting a budget together right now that is going to not only pay for the tax cut, but balance the budget in six or seven years. And to do that, you’ve got to make very significant cuts in those kinds of programs.

“I mean, my God, why do we need an Energy Department?” Moore asked, semi-exasperated. “All the Energy Department has done in the last 25 years is make energy prices more expensive!”

In an interview Friday, Moore said he has spoken to Trump about eliminating the Energy Department. “I don’t know if he’d shut it down, but there’s a good chance the energy subsidies are going to be on the chopping block. I haven’t talked to him about the Education Department, so I was speaking for myself. As for Commerce, I call it the department of corporate welfare, and I know Trump has been specific about ending the crony corporate welfare systems.”

(Via Instapundit.)

Rick Perry is doing "Dancing with the Stars"?!

Fine with me. It's good to dance.

He'll be competing with Olympians Ryan Lochte and Laurie Hernandez.

Asking for the black vote.

I noticed a meme yesterday: asking for the black vote.

Rick Perry — as a Trump proxy — was on Jake Tapper's show ("The Lead").

Tapper showed an old clip of Perry saying "For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn't need it to win. But when we gave up trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln."

Asked if Trump need to pay attention to that "warning," Perry talked about how Trump's policies are actually better for African-Americans, and Tapper said, "But Hillary Clinton, whatever you think of her and her policies, she was in Philadelphia today reaching out directly to many in the African-American community."

When Perry continued with the idea that Trump's policies are better and wondered why African-Americans keep voting for Democrats, Tapper sledgehammered his idea: "Well, I guess the point I was making is because they're showing up and asking for their vote."

Perry seemed a little annoyed at the idea: "Is that all it takes? If just a Democrat shows up and asks for their vote, that is enough?" He proceeded to characterize the showing-up-and-asking idea as "denigrat[ing]" African-Americans, who, in his view, "want to see action."

But who knows? Maybe the key is asking for the vote. Trump did show up — later that day — near the scene of the unrest in Milwaukee. Last night, in West Bend, Wisconsin, Trump said: "I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future."

I'm just observing notion that there are special words and that those words happen to have been said. But here's an excerpt from the transcript, if you want to see Trump's argument why black people should respond to his request:

"After what she said about me today in her phony speech – that was a phony speech, that was a Donald Trump hit job – I will say this: Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, okay?"

Said Donald Trump.

Hillary's "phony speech" was a criticism of Trump's speech (in something of the style of a Trump speech): "Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent...They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies."

That speech of hers was supposed to be a major foreign policy speech, but — as Hillary-friendly sites have noted — it was short on foreign policy. Here's the NYT:

But although her campaign had described the speech as a major foreign policy address, Mrs. Clinton spent more time ridiculing and dismantling Mr. Trump’s statements than she did elucidating her positions. Here are a few key issues she did not discuss....

Ironically, the main argument against Trump has been that he's ridiculing and attacking other people and not providing any policy specifics.

I don't think it works to attack Trump by talking like Trump. For one thing, you're not Trump. How can you suddenly adopt his style? His style emanates from him and is the culmination of a long life of practicing talking like that. Second, if you talk like him, you're a hypocrite if you criticize him for talking like that.

Of course, you can say that other ways to attack him don't work either. That's called checkmate.

AND: Now, a word from Rick Perry: "Donald Trump will peel her skin off in a debate setting...."

PLUS: Trump's San Jose speech, in full:

Rick Perry: "A broken clock is right once a day,"

Oh, Rick.

Mitt Romney steps up to the role of keeping Republicans from attacking Republicans.

From yesterday's "Meet the Press":

CHUCK TODD: There have been some reports that you and Sheldon Adelson, the big, Las Vegas casino mogul, that you want to avoid a repeat of the primary chaos you went through in 2012. What does that mean? What was the chaos of 2012 that you don't want to see repeated for the Republican field in 2016?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I think that's a comment I'll make very broadly, which is I think it's harmful in a process if you have Republicans attacking Republicans. And so I think it's very effective if instead we can talk about the differences between our views to help people in the middle class and help the poor versus the views in our opposition, as opposed to going after one another. And I'm not saying I was perfect in that regard either. But going back to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, that kinda makes a lot of sense for our party.

Embedded in Romney's answer is an assumption that Republicans did go too far attacking Republicans in the 2012 primaries and unwisely burdened the Romney campaign. When you think about that now, what do you remember? What hurt him? What stifling of vigorous debate would — in retrospect — have been a better idea? I have trouble calling to mind anything specific. I asked Meade, and he came right up with this:



By the way, Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" has its own Wikipedia page:

"Next week, Scott Walker will go to the Packers' game, root for his state's team, & sit in the cheap seats & freeze with the common people."

Tweets Bill Kristol, right after "Chris Christie cavorting with Jerry Jones in the owner's box. Numbers plummeting in IA & NH. OTOH, will Jones write big Super PAC checks?"

Then: "And Rick Perry and Ted Cruz will go to Green Bay to root for Dallas, but will sit out in the cold with the voters rather than the donors," "What about Jeb? He doesn't watch football. He'll be at a polo match," "Huck will watch the game at a church-affiliated youth center in Des Moines," and "Rand Paul? Doesn't watch football. Doesn't approve of team sports."

Doing the okey-doke with Sylvia Burwell.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Chuck Todd was talking to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, and he presented one of those amazing Jonathan Gruber clips like this: "This is how Gruber explained taxing high-end Cadillac health insurance plans and sort of doing a little 'okey-doke.'"

I had never heard "okey-doke" used like that. I only knew "okey-doke" as a cute/corny way to say "okay." I Googled and got to Ice Cube's "Don't Fade Me": "I don't fall for the okey-doke/And before I fall for the okey-doke/I let the pistol smoke." Rap Genius explains: "'Okey doke' is slang for pulling a trick on someone. Cube would rather commit murder than take care of a baby that isn’t his because the girl lied to him."

I read all the lyrics. They're pretty evil: "Then I thought deep about giving up the money/What I need to do is kick the bitch in the tummy... I'm thinking to myself why did I bang her/Now I'm in the closet looking for the hanger..." I get distracted into thinking about doing a parody. What rhymes with Gruber? 1. goober, 2. uber, 3. FUBAR, 3. rube err. What rhymes with Burwell? 1. Stairwell, 2. Orwell.

But who am I to parody rap songs? And I've got to finish this post.

Todd plays Burwell some Gruber, including: "This bill takes, what I call, the spaghetti approach. Which is it takes a bunch of ideas that might work and throws them against the wall, we'll see what sticks." And Todd pushes her: "He said, 'Spaghetti at the wall.'" (What rhymes with spaghetti? 1. machete, 2. already, 3. unsteady.) "And he said that the week the health care law passed. Is that what this bill is? To see what works and what doesn't?"

Burwell began: "This law is a piece of legislation that is about three fundamental things.... Affordability, access..." And I paused it so Meade could make a joke about how funny it would if she couldn't remember the third thing, Rick Perry style. But she didn't. The third thing was "quality." So affordability, access, and quality — how can that be spaghetti thrown at the wall?

Todd tried a different tack: "Is Mr. Gruber going to be welcomed back as a consultant?" Burwell evaded: "Certainly right now in terms of the work that we're doing at HHS, we are doing our work and focusing on what we are doing and our modeling." Todd attempted the old paraphrase move: "So he's not welcome back?" And Burwell utters the line that makes us laugh: "With regard to Mr. Gruber and his comments, I think I've been clear. That's something we fundamentally disagree with."

Welcome back, you're not welcome back, Gruber
Welcome back, you're never coming back, it's FUBAR
Well, the names have all changed, now there's Burwell
But those dreams have remained, they're from Orwell
That bill you called spaghetti (bill you called spaghetti)
Could you shut up already? (shut up already)
Yeah, we tease him a lot cause we've got him on the spot
Welcome back, you're never coming back....

(Apologies to John Sebastian.)

Let's talk about Rick Perry's mugshot.

Do you think he had his own lighting people on the scene? It's got that portrait look, with one side of the face in shadow. Don't they normally shine a light right at you?

What advice do you think he was given on how to do a good mugshot? Smile. Seem confident, but not cocky. Try to look like you're posing for a normal photograph, like you're not in a mugshot.

I've seen the mugshot described as "defiant." Do you think he was advised to look "defiant"? Would you describe the expression as "defiant"? I wouldn't. People project. They think he should be defiant or is defiant, so they see defiant. But I don't think defiant is what you want in a mugshot. Randy Travis looks defiant in his DUI mugshot:



That's not what you want.

The Rick Perry indictment is "not a joke, and it isn't a farce, and it's not a laughing matter."

"It is exactly what the Democrat Party is. It is exactly what the Republican Party's been up against for years and refuses to recognize, push back against, or do anything," says Rush Limbaugh.

When I first heard this over the weekend, I can't tell you how outraged I was.  Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and now Rick Perry. Three potential Republican presidential nominees, all smeared, all targeted via indictment and criminal charges simply because of political differences.  

The media will see to it that from now on, for the rest of his life, every news story featuring Rick Perry will have the word "indicted" in it. In the first paragraph. Every story, for the rest of his life! Every other headline: "The indicted governor, formally indicted. Acquitted, yes, but still indicted."  Remember, now, we're talking [a] presidential candidate.

I appreciated this outrage, because I could feel in myself a creeping sensation of: Oh, well, Rick Perry was never that good anyway. We marginalize someone, set him aside, consign him to the dustbin of damaged candidates. Since I didn't like Rick Perry anyway, it's easy for me to let him slide into irrelevance. But this criminalization of politics is really wrong, and every time it works to take out a candidate, it makes it more likely that it will be done again and again. So, as I said, I appreciated the outrage from Rush. It's not a joke, and it shouldn't be a joke even to people who think Rick Perry is a joke. I mean, I laugh at this every time:



But the criminalization of politics is not a joke.