Demographic desperation is a helluva drug.
According to the Wikipedia entry on NC, 1990-2010
Whites 1990 - 75.6; 2010 68.5
Blacks 1990 - 22% 2010 - 21.5
Asians and "Other" and "2 or more races" are up a couple percent, enough to cover the white decline.
I doubt that any of the numbers have changed drastically in 6 years. This isn't Texas, that already is majority-minority.
My guess is that any change is probably in the internal composition of whites and blacks, the class education and social preferences of recent immigrants, and the emigration of more conservative whites
IOW, carpetbaggers and scalawags
4. Yes, he hasn't prosecuted enough state Assembly people.
Will new AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III do anything about this?
Here's what I don't get: have any NC Republicans even bothered to try and cloak this as something other than a naked partisan power grab? I.e., "we've looked at the power of the governor and believe it's too much in these ways, need more oversight from the legislature, we'd have made these changes even if McCrory was still in office, blah blah." Transparent bullshit, but usually we're at least given the bullshit. But I haven't heard any of that. You almost get the sense they would just reinstate these powers as soon as a Republican governor takes office again.
6: 9 times out of ten anybody with the middle name Beauregard is an asshole, so I'm going with no.
7: On NPR this morning the speaker of one NC legislative house or other was on saying that if they really wanted to make a power grab there's a lot more they could do, so this is no big deal.
The loss of NC whites in 2 is interesting.
1) Hispanics are 8.5%; white hispanics are 3%. It could be that some white hispanics re-identifing as non-white changes the numbers a little
2) the politics and party ID, statewide are complicated by the move from Dem to Repub among conservatives in the 1990s. But as far as I can tell NC for now remains a swing state and unpredictable. Voted Obama in 2008 and Romney in 2012
3) The more likely demographic change likely has to do with the economy moving from say textiles and tobacco to various kinds of high-tech. More jobs for Phds; less blue collar jobs.
4) Bishop's Big Sort says that looking at that future, the most conservative and blue collar whites would emigrate. I was trying to think of a state that has flipped from blue to red because of in-migration and came up blank. Colorado is the famous example of red turning blue due to in-migration, and NC conservatives might have that in mind.
5) The emotions of the rabid right, especially the educated profession rabid right, would be driven by a) in-migration of liberal whites, and b) the concentration of those liberal immigrants in cities where, for example, conservative professional legislators want to live and wield local power. Example: bathrooms.
6: And the Big Sort of conservatives and liberals is more interesting than racial changes. Bishop smartly starts off his book by relating his own story of moving to a very Democratic neighborhood in Austin, the community groups in that neighborhood, and the harassment that neighborhood's sole conservative professional received when he voiced his opposition to gay marriage. He withdrew from activism, and will likely move to somewhere more congenial.
His choices are becoming more limited, not because of race, but because of the concentration of Democrats in cities.
9 NPR has really become unlistenable, hasn't it?*
*For a long while now it's true but lately it's been much worse than usual.
7: Yes. Some of what they are reversing are ones they put in when he was elected. Providing an explanation is a sign of weakness.
You almost get the sense they would just reinstate these powers as soon as a Republican governor takes office again.
I'm 100% sure of this.
7- I read one claiming that they'd been thinking about this for a while and are just getting around to it now and it's entirely a coincidence that it's happening just after their guy lost.
14 is reassuring. At least they feel the need to bullshit.
Truly the foundation of liberal democracies.
Re: The Shamelessness
I had seen this stat in the reporting.
NC state gov positions appointed by Governer:
Before McCrory - 500
Under McCrory - 1500
After McCrory - 300
Many of 1200 McCrory appointees will now stay on as permanent civil servants.
I knew a guy who was appointed by the governor in Ohio and then they moved him down a step so that he'd do basically the same job but be civil service. He made "White Castle Pâté" for office parties. Some of them go native, is what I'm saying.
My only reference for NC is Apo, so I'm not sure what "going native" means in this context. Smiting your enemies with your brontosaurian cock? Inquiring minds want to know.
Because I would totally pay to see that, is what I'm saying.
I assume part of it is that they know they're going to get killed in the court-ordered un-gerrymandered special elections in 2017 and are trying to lock in as much power as possible before that.
I'm not sure 21 really makes sense (couldn't a new legislature after the elections just reverse all this stuff?), but maybe the changes to the composition of electoral boards etc. are aimed at maximizing their advantages in the elections themselves.
Cock jokes aside, I think 21 is basically correct. The GOP is about to get shellacked so they are trying to do as much damage as possible first.
The "Democrats run the electoral board in odd years, Republicans run it in even years, so its fair," is just so, so amazing. It takes being a disingenuous bastard up to an art form.
The weird part about that, though, is that the next election is actually in 2017, and it's an important one. I dunno.
It's under appeal to SCOTUS which will soon have a 5 member majority to overturn the order. I'd give it no better than a 10% chance of actually happening (mostly based on whether Dems can delay Trump's pick). The only question is whether they just overturn the order for a special by-election or whether they entirely overturn the order to redraw the districts- I'd put that at 50/50, the racism was so blatant even Kennedy might have a conscience about it, notwithstanding it going against the Roberts doctrine of "Look what I found in my ass, a clause in the Constitution that says the federal government must never embarrass a state government."
Yes, he hasn't prosecuted enough state Assembly people.
In fairness, he's no longer a prosecutor, so his powers there are limited. He's on the city council here now.
I had assumed that McCrory was going to end up Energy Secretary under Trump, since he had been a Duke Energy exec for over 25 years before he entered politics, but direct experience seems to count against you with this administration. Given the track record so far, I half expect to see him running the EEOC.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciated Bob's 10.
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NMM2 the Russian Ambassador to Turkey (assassinated)
|>
Assassin apparently shouted that it was in revenge for Syria and Aleppo.
So the Russian ambassador to Turkey was killed by an apparently native Turk, in retaliation for Russia's support of Syria's siege of Aleppo. I'm sure Trump is totally on top of the relevant facts and is being briefed as we type.
The ambassador sort of looked like James Earl Jones.
Also remember that the US president recently vaguely threatened to retaliate against Russia for meddling in the election, so it's not like someone is going to claim the US is behind this.
The reporting is pretty surreal. The NYT caption says "A man, right, reported by the Associated Press to be the gunman, after the shooting of the Russian ambassador, on the floor, on Monday at a gallery in Ankara, the capital of Turkey." Reported to be the gunman? He's standing next to the body with a gun in his hand!
Also the ambassador was speaking at the opening of a photo exhibit called "Russia through Turks' eyes." Have to wonder about the effect on the value of those photos.
Background piece on Turkey, extensive analogy to approximately equivalent US political entities.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/only-power-rules-turkey-after-the-failed-coup/
At least we can be confident from history that major wars never start because of assassinations of obscure government officials in southeastern Europe.
Hey, who are you calling "obscure"?
37- Apparently the gunman is John Travolta.
40 And according to some reports the sole member of his security detail.
41.last Any photos from the Crimean War there?
45 https://twitter.com/BLCKDGRD/status/810914922406301696
Amateur. Should have flipped one of the images so they match better.
Russia was never in history well disposed towards Turkey until after the end of the Cold War. It's war aims in WWI included control of the Bosphorus and it was pencilled in for a big chunk of northern Iraq in the first drafts of Sykes-Picot (pre-1917). They were "neutral" in WWII until 1945, but their main concern was to get the wesrern allies to guarantee them support in the event of a Soviet invasion. Then NATO. I don't suppose Putin actually wants this to make much in the way of waves, but he might have a job on his hands.
Mayor of Ankara, Melih Gökçek, tweets that the killer was a policeman.
43: It was in Asian Turkey, so we are completely safe.
That guy who took the picture in 47 (the one on the right) is really brave. I thought it was from security camera or something, but it was an AP stringer.
53: it's "right" form the perspective of the pictures.
Do that with clocks so you can confuse yourself over counter- and clockwise
Someone in the bar playing "Rasputin" on the juke box.
54: Welp, I've just ruined myself on understanding clocks, the motion of the sun, and sundials, ever.
(There's an amusing argument in the paper of what's probably the best attempt at decoding the Buckquoy Whorl; the ogham is written in a way such that it isn't obvious which direction it goes. Previous decipherers had assumed that it was written clockwise, as that's lucky in the relevant cultures. But it's a spinning wheel, so if the user is spinning it clockwise, the words need to be written counter-clockwise for them to be visible to her.)
56: As in the disco song? If you're at your usual local, that's entirely within character there, yet still somewhat disappointing.
Yes, yes. Death stalks us all regardless.
We're all going to die. But we're not all going to die sober.
At least not if the world ends before 5 am or so.
It's always happy hour somewhere.
So the electors didnt save us after all.
They were never going to. That whole deal was never anything but a distraction and an embarrassment.
Still worth doing. Take every opportunity to delegitimize these assholes.
I guess, but all it accomplished in practice was further alienation of Republican Party operatives. No one in the general public is paying any attention to this at all.
63 I know.
Dems are spineless. "This is my fight song..."
I don't understand 65.1.
It keeps the popular vote margin in the public consciousness, gives more publicity to people worried about cabinet appointments, and hinders normalization.
Oh dear god, we've lost the Republican party operatives.
But seriously, I take both the Stein recount and the electoral college push to be signs of broad popular opposition that a real opposition party could channel into useful action, but which the Dems as an org seem to want nothing to do with. It's demoralizing, the almost complete and utter lack of leadership. Trump isn't even a leader, national politics is just garbage drifting on sewage.
Happy holidays!
Jesus Christ, people. The Democratic Party as an organization continues to exist, and if you don't think it is reflecting your concerns you should fucking get involved and try to influence the party from the inside rather than complain ineffectively from the sidelines. Or if you reject the notion of representative democracy entirely you should do whatever it is that would establish a different form of government (which is unlikely to be pleasant, and I don't encourage it).
The "Hamilton Electors" effort was directed entirely at trying to convince Republican Party operatives to repudiate their party's successful nominee based on vague constitutional arguments that they were never likely to buy. It failed, as anyone who was observing this situation rationally would have predicted it would. Like it or not, Donald Trump is going to be our next president, in accordance with the will of the voters under the prevailing rules (which are ludicrously undemocratic, of course, but them's the rules and everyone involved in both campaigns understood this going in).
If you want to defend American democracy, you need to fucking defend American democracy, regardless of its ridiculous rules, and enforce the norm that there will be elections in 2018 and 2020 to challenge the Trump administration on those terms. Responding to Trump's antidemocratic rhetoric with antidemocratic actions is just surrendering to autocracy.
enforce the norm that there will be elections in 2018 and 2020
Wild-eyed radicalism.
Of course the electoral college and recount movements were stupid and going to fail. It's worth asking how fucking pathetic a purported opposition party can be at capturing popular sentiment that that's what otherwise reasonable and sympathetic people put their support behind anyway. I think if people had faith that some kind of effective opposition was getting ready for the new Congress and administration, there wouldn't have been so many people pushing these things.
But maybe I personally could have changed all that by attending some local meetings, sure. I mean, I might actually get involved with the party*, but it would be because I believe these things about the Democrats, not because I believe it's unfair and counterproductive to say they're lacking as an opposition party.
*I'd maybe even register with it!
If you don't think the California Democratic Party serves your interests, you should do what you can to express your interests within it, because that's the only chance you've got, man. I think the Alaska Democratic Party serves my interests okay, but it could do better, so I'm doing what I can to get involved. This is no time to fuck around with how the perfect could be better than the good. The other side is armed to the teeth, and not nearly as committed to democratic norms as any of us are.
Did even a single Republican elector defect?
I think one refused to vote at all and he was replaced with a Trump vote.
I read that two defected. Compared to 4 Democrats who didn't vote for Clinton. Which really says all that needs to be said.
Democrats defecting has no impact on the outcome, so the barrier to doing something silly is much lower. There was no hope of an electoral college overturn of the results anyway, so might as well cast a protest vote.
The Hamilton Elector thing didn't work because they were trying convince Republicans to vote for "someone" who was a Republican, without actually being able to identify who that someone was.
If they had been able to get Mitt Romney to stand up and actually campaign for the thing, that would have been huge news and occupied the national conversation for weeks. It may not have worked, but it was the best possible chance and would certainly have moved some votes. But that possibility was foreclosed the day that Mitt and Donald sat down to eat frogs legs.
