[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by steam engines.
Recommended Reading:
Monica: [Content Note: Trans violence; death] Rest in Power and Peace, Alphonza
Andy: Rep. Mark Pocan: I've Seen 'Damning Evidence' on Trump-Russia Coordination in Classified Reports
Charles: [CN: Disablism] Neil Gorsuch Is an Incredibly Callous Human Being
Amie: [CN: Addiction] The Opioid Epidemic: Why Are Women at Risk?
Rob: The BBC Is Using This Excellent Photo of Trump for Everything
Vivian: Brett Ratner Thinks It's Rotten Tomatoes, Not His Movies, That's Destroying the Film Industry
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Healthcare Bill Open Thread
Well, this is it. They're starting the vote, with the outcome not at all certain. As they take the vote, the latest Quinnipiac poll stands at 56 percent of respondents disapproving of the GOP plan, 26 percent unsure, and only 17 percent approving of the plan.
There is no question that the Republican House majority is not acting according to the will or the best interests of We the People.
Here is a thread for discussion, as it unfolds.
UPDATE: They pulled the bill. No vote.
UPDATE 2: Speaker Paul Ryan is now making a statement. "Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains. And we're feeling those growing pains today." Good grief.
If you're wondering if he's still trashing the Affordable Care Act, even after this shitshow, the answer is obviously yes.
UPDATE 3: Trump blames Democrats (sure), but he's relieved it's over.
TRUMP told me he is happy having this in the rearview mirror. "It's enough already," he said of the negotiations.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 24, 2017
No stamina. Sad!
Gonna be a long four years, bub, if you think this constituted an exhausting battle. JFC.
UPDATE 4: Ryan: "We're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." He and I have very different feelings about that statement.
UPDATE 5: This is a victory for today. The Republicans aren't going to drop the fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act, no matter how futile that fight may be, and they will, in the interim, do everything they can (especially via the Department of Health and Human Services) to subvert the protections of the ACA.
So we have only but a moment to celebrate. And I will use that moment to suggest we all laugh very hard at this.
"We're gonna win with health care...We're gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning." - Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/IYPk0SD6tE
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) March 24, 2017
We're gonna win with healthcare, and for our veterans! We're gonna win with every single facet! We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning! And you'll say: "Please, please, it's too much winning! We can't take it anymore! Mr. President, it's too much!" And I'll say: "No it isn't! We have to keep winning! We have to win MORE! We're gonna win more!"Asshole.
And now, back to the resistance.
This Is Not Good
Below, a Reuters video headlined: "Dozens of Russian tanks deployed close to Ukrainian border."
The Reuters description of the video, which is without narration, is as follows: "A Reuters witness on Wednesday (March 22) saw dozens of modern tanks arriving at a railroad station in Pokrovskoye in the country's southern Rostov region. The tanks were loaded off the railroad carriages and deployed in a field near Matveyev Kurgan village some 10 km from the border with Ukraine. Russian regularly holds military drills in Rostov region involving its infantry, artillery, and air force, and has a number of military bases in the area. Moscow had earlier said it planed to reinforce its western and southern flanks with three new divisions as a retaliation for NATO's plans to boost its military presence in eastern members Poland and the Baltic States."
Relatedly, with a hat tip to @ThatShockratees, the BBC reported yesterday: Ukraine Munitions Blasts Prompt Mass Evacuations.
Some 20,000 people are being evacuated after a series of explosions at a massive arms depot in eastern Ukraine described by officials as sabotage.Although there is no explicit blame directed at the Russians here, note that Ukrainian officials describing it as an act of "sabotage" makes very clear who they believe is responsible.
The base in Balakliya, near Kharkiv, is around 100km (60 miles) from fighting against Russian-backed separatists.
The dump is used to store thousands of tonnes of ammunition including missiles and artillery weapons.
Rescue teams are overseeing a huge evacuation effort for people living in the city and nearby villages. ...Everyone within a 10km (6 miles) radius of the dump is being evacuated, the Interfax news agency quoted an aide to President Petro Poroshenko as saying.
Munitions from the depot are used to supply military units in the conflict zone in nearby Luhansk and Donetsk, reports say.
The authorities are investigating various ways the explosions may have been caused, Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said, including the possibility of an explosive device being dropped from a drone.
A drone was reported to have been used an earlier attempt to set the facility on fire in December 2015.
And of course there is no question that the tanks being deployed near the Ukrainian border are Russian.
Meanwhile, the U.S. president is under investigation for collusion with Putin.
Healthcare Vote Update & John Lewis Brings the Fire
The final floor vote on the healthcare [sic] legislation is currently scheduled for 4pm ET. (KEEP CALLING!)
Speaker Paul Ryan met with Donald Trump earlier, purportedly to tell him that they don't have the votes. But I am not taking anything for granted unless and until this thing fails.
Meanwhile, Rep. John Lewis BROUGHT THE FIRE to the House floor in opposition to this bill, and it was fucking amazing.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this bill. As elected representatives, we have a mission, an obligation, and a mandate to fight for each and every American.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, who will stand for the American people? Who will speak for those who have been left out and left behind? Mr. Speaker, I've said it time and time again: Healthcare is a right. It is not a privilege reserved for a wealthy few. For what does it profit this body to pass this bill and lose our soul?
This bill is a shame. It is a disgrace. Mr. Speaker, today my heart breaks for the disabled, for women, for seniors, and working families. My heart aches for those who are living paycheck to paycheck. My heart mourns for innocent little children whose very lives depend on if their family can pay the bills.
This is the heart and soul of the matter. We cannot abandon our principles. Mr. Speaker, we cannot forget our values. I've fought too hard and too long to back down now. I will fight any bill that turns the clock back to a darker time. I will fight every single attempt to turn a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a cold shoulder to the sick! To our seniors! And to working families!
Mr. Speaker, I will fight every day, every hour, every minute, and every second! I oppose this bill with every breath and every bone in my body! We must not give up! We cannot. I will not give in. Not today, not tomorrow, and NEVER! EVER!
On this bill, there's only one option, and that option is to vote NO! We can do better, Mr. Speaker. We must do better! Vote no on this bill!
Thank you, @repjohnlewis, thank you!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
It's not just that @repjohnlewis is right. It's that he brought the APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF EMOTION to a fight that is literally life & death.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
THAT is what an elected representative who cares about the people he represents looks like.
Not that Paul Ryan would be able to recognize it with his cold, dead eyes.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 64
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Natasha Geiling at ThinkProgress: Trump Administration Issues Permit for Keystone XL Pipeline. "On Friday morning, pipeline developer TransCanada announced that it had received a presidential permit to move forward with the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Obama administration spent six years considering the controversial cross-border pipeline before ultimately denying a permit for its construction in November of 2015. The Trump administration reversed that decision after a little more than 60 days in office, following an executive order issued January 24 by [Donald] Trump calling for TransCanada to resubmit its permit request to the State Department."
"It's going to be an incredible pipeline," says @POTUS. #KeystoneXL pic.twitter.com/gJxubT8ecN
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) March 24, 2017
[Image in tweet shows Trump sitting at his desk, looking pleased with himself, while surrounded, as usual, by a bunch of white men.]
[Content Note: Nativism; covers next four paragraphs] Michael D. Shear at the New York Times: Trump Administration Orders Tougher Screening of Visa Applicants. "The Trump administration is making it tougher for millions of visitors to enter the United States by demanding new security checks before giving visas to tourists, business travelers and relatives of American residents. Diplomatic cables sent last week from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson to all American embassies instructed consular officials to broadly increase scrutiny. It was the first evidence of the 'extreme vetting' Mr. Trump promised during the presidential campaign."
Tina Vasquez at Rewire: ICE Report on So-Called Safety Threats 'Misleading at Best'. "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week fulfilled part of [Donald] Trump's January executive order by issuing its first report on declined detainers. The report, which advocates say is 'misleading at best,' meets the president's call for a weekly list of all the alleged crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. ...Michele Waslin, senior research and policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, told Rewire in a phone interview that there are 'glaring problems' with the report, but the fact that it exists at all is 'ludicrous.' 'The administration says it's doing this for public safety reasons, but the report undermines public safety in several ways,' Waslin said. 'It undermines the privacy of those listed and it undermines safety in the jurisdictions listed. ICE is using serious resources to create this report, rather than using those resources to, say, deal with actual threats to safety.'"
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Maria Santana at CNN: Source: ICE Is Targeting Sanctuary Cities with Raids. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been targeting so-called 'sanctuary cities' with increased enforcement operations in an effort to pressure those jurisdictions to cooperate with federal immigration agents, a senior US immigration official with direct knowledge of ongoing ICE actions told CNN. ...This week, a federal judge in Texas seems to have confirmed that tactic. US Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin revealed during an immigration hearing Monday that a mid-February raid in the Austin metro area was done in retaliation for a local sheriff's recent decision to limit her department's cooperation with ICE."
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Roque Planas at the Huffington Post: Trump Is Relocating Immigration Judges to Speed Deportations. "Donald Trump, whose administration argues that immigrants abuse the court system to delay deportation, dispatched immigration judges to the country's two largest family detention centers this week so detainees' cases can be processed more quickly. But experts―and The Huffington Post's visit to one of the centers―suggest that the president may end up disappointed if he thinks relocating judges will speed up deportations. When Judge Monica Little, who normally presides over immigration court in Los Angeles, heard the first four cases under the new system on Wednesday at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, she issued rulings that gave the detainees before her weeks to find lawyers and collect evidence."
Shannon Vavra at Axios: Mnuchin: Losing Human Jobs to AI "Not Even on Our Radar Screen". Like I keep saying: Automation is the word that Trump simply will not utter, because you can't "bring jobs back" that have been lost to automation. From the same interview: "I think we should look at putting President Trump on the thousand dollar bill." Sure. Also, on Trump's stamina: "He's got perfect genes. He has incredible energy and he's unbelievably healthy." Holy shit.
"Perfect genes." I don't even know what to tell you if that sort of language doesn't disturb the shit out of you. https://t.co/i4ozhnpw8T
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] This is probably a good time for a reminder that "Trump's father instilled in him the idea that their family's success was genetic, according to Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio. 'The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,' D'Antonio says in the documentary. 'They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.'"
[CN: Misogyny] Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Mulvaney: If Your State Doesn't Mandate Maternity Care, Change Your State. "Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, one of the top administration officials who had been working to pass the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, on Friday morning brushed off concerns about a new provision in the bill that repeals the Essential Health Benefits requirement. That provision would repeal a requirement that insurers cover a list of 10 essential benefits, including maternity care. Asked about this on CBS' 'This Morning,' Mulvaney argued that states can still require that insurance companies cover the EHBs. ...Co-host Alex Wagner asked Mulvaney about people who do not live in a state that requires maternity coverage. 'Then you can figure out a way to change the state that you live in,' Mulvaney replied."
Matt Gertz at Media Matters: The Life Cycle of a Donald Trump Lie. "Trump and his team are doing everything they can to create an atmosphere of uncertainty in the which people will trust Trump over all other sources. ...But this only works if Trump is perceived as honest. And so Trump never admits that he was wrong, never acknowledges if his story has changed, claims that it is the people who say that he's pushing falsehoods who are the real liars, and kicks up as much dust as possible around his falsehoods. This turns every lie he tells into a polarized argument, with him and his media allies on one side and his perceived enemies on the other."
Nolan D. McCaskill at Politico: Eric Trump Will Share Business Updates with Father. "In an interview with Forbes published Friday, Eric Trump described the setup as 'kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain.' 'I am deadly serious about that exercise,' he said. 'I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us. That's kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it's something that we honor.' But nearly two minutes later, Trump admitted that he will keep his father up to speed on some aspects of the business."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Manafort Will Speak to Intelligence Committee, But Committee Chair Cancels Open Hearing with Others
During a press conference earlier today, Republican Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes announced that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, whose ties to Russia have raised serious questions about the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia during the campaign, would come in for an interview with the committee.
Paul Manafort has volunteered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Nunes says https://t.co/sGG8vmZr3P
— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 24, 2017
The counsel for Paul Manafort contacted the committee yesterday to offer the committee the opportunity to interview his client. We thank Mr. Manafort for volunteering and encourage others with knowledge of these issues to voluntarily interview with the committee.Note that Nunes did not specify whether Manafort would testify under oath; he merely said that he would come in for an "interview." He also did not specify whether said interview would be public, or would happen in a closed-door session.
Even if it's just an interview, it's not necessarily an entirely worthless, GOP ass-covering endeavor. It could provide the Democrats on the committee an opportunity to ask some questions, the answers to which, if they are unsatisfactory, could provide an argument for a subpoena.
That said, the Republican majority on the committee could refuse to issue a subpoena.
Which is why, again, we need an independent commission to investigate.
Another reason: Nunes also canceled the open hearing that had been scheduled with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Director of the CIA John Brennan, and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
BREAKING: Chairman just cancelled open Intelligence Committee hearing with Clapper, Brennan and Yates in attempt to choke off public info.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) March 24, 2017
Rep. Adam Schiff, Democratic Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, gave a press conference following Nunes' presser, condemning Nunes' decision and asking the majority members to reconsider.
He argued, quite rightly, that in order to do a credible investigation, as much as possible needs to be public. But, to the contrary, the committee chair, Nunes, is trying to "choke off public information."
Schiff: "We don't welcome cutting off public access to information when we have witnesses" willing to testify https://t.co/TwUSEZBmfq
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 24, 2017
Today the chairman has announced that meeting is canceled. He has also announced that he wants to bring back Directors Comey and Rogers for a closed session. We welcome at any time bringing the former directors back in closed session. We don't welcome cutting off the public access to information when we have witnesses, as these three very important witnesses, who are willing and scheduled to testify in open session.Democrats proposed an accommodation, which is accepted in other hearings, and the Republican majority simply rejected it out of hand. Because their concern isn't protecting sensitive info; it's protecting the president.
We also have made the offer, rejected by the majority, that we could have these three witnesses testify in open session and if there were questions the members wanted to ask in closed session, that we could then go to a closed portion of the hearing. In fact, this is just what we do in the worldwide threats hearings often, where we have open testimony followed by testimony in closed session.
This is where we stand: There are serious allegations that the sitting President of the United States colluded with a hostile foreign power to win the election. He is now under investigation by federal intelligence agencies. The House committee tasked with investigating is controlled by a Republican majority, and the Republican chair, who was a member of the president's transition team, is colluding with the president outside the committee, while simultaneously hamstringing Democrats who want to meaningfully investigate.
This is not the description of a healthy democracy.
Senate Votes to Overturn Internet Privacy Rules
While everyone was (quite understandably) paying attention to the Republican healthcare bill yesterday, the Senate quietly voted to overturn internet privacy rules passed by the FCC during the Obama administration, which prevented internet providers from sharing your browsing history with corporations without your consent.
Jacob Kastrenakes at the Verge reports:
The privacy rules, passed last year by the FCC, required internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T; to get each customer's permission before sharing personal information like which websites they visit. But internet providers want to be able to sell that data and use it to target ads, so they've been vocal about opposing the rules since around the time [Donald] Trump took office.Emphasis mine.
This vote uses the Congressional Review Act, which lets Congress strike down recently passed rules by federal agencies, to block the FCC's action. It now heads to the House, where it'll need another vote before the rules are wiped out.
"This resolution is a direct attack on consumer rights, on privacy, on rules that afford basic protection against intrusive and illegal interference with consumers' use of social media sites and websites that often they talk for granted," Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in the Senate today ahead of the vote.
What makes this reversal particularly damaging is that it won't just undo these privacy rules, but it'll prevent the FCC from passing similar privacy rules in the future. That means that the FCC won't be able to pass strict privacy rules again, even if opinions change in Congress.
The potential for abuse is almost unlimited. Think about the things that people search online, which would be made available to for-profit corporations under the auspices of "targeted advertising." Think about the way that information could be misinterpreted. If my friend is diagnosed with an illness I don't know much about, and I research it online, will that search be reflexively presumed to be an indication of my own health?
This erosion of privacy is so, so chilling.
It hasn't been implemented yet. There is still time to call your rep's office and tell them to vote no on rolling back FCC privacy rules on browsing histories. If you've got a Republican rep, appeal to their espoused commitment to privacy rights.
Even if it won't change their vote, at least voice your opposition and let them know what hypocrites they are. Let them know we see them.
The "Healthcare" Vote Is Today
After calling off the scheduled vote last night, House Republicans will, at Donald Trump's urging, have the vote today at 10:00am ET.
If your rep is Dem voting against bill, call to thank them. If a GOP voting for, call to make your opposition heard. GOP on the fence? CALL!
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
Especially if your rep is a Republican who is on the fence, make those calls to urge them to vote no. Here is a thread about how that went for me with my Republican rep yesterday. Call call call!
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Trump started the day by tweeting this garbage: "The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan!"
The president openly using an attack on women's and trans people's healthcare to cajole members of his party to vote for garbage bill. https://t.co/gLdEQrqff2
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
Trump is using his Twitter account to advertise reducing healthcare access for women and trans people as a feature of the GOP plan. (And furthering the lie that federal tax dollars are used to fund abortion. Not a dime of it is.)
The media is almost universally reporting on this tweet as Trump going after his own party. Sure. But how he's doing it is the real story.
A profoundly misogynist president is taunting the men (used advisedly) of his profoundly misogynist party to vote for a "healthcare" reform bill so that they don't look like pussies (again, used advisedly) for refusing to be utterly cruel to women and trans people (in particular) who depend on Planned Parenthood for healthcare.
It doesn't get any more despicable than that.
Although, a very close second is the report last night that members of the House GOP caucus were crying at their own heroics:
Noted:
— Lisa Mascaro (@LisaMascaro) March 24, 2017
"There were tears," said one R lawmaker about tonight's #Obamacare meet.
"This is our moment. This is what we were elected for."
Imagine being the kind of revolting creep who weeps with joy and pride about legislation that will kill people. What vile wrecks they are.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
Some reports say that the House GOP now has the numbers to pass the bill. Others say they still don't have them. But my assumption is that this thing is going to pass. I hope I'm wrong.
I still fully expect the GOP to "find the votes" despite no more changes to the bill, b/c they always abandon "principle" to avoid defeat.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 24, 2017
KEEP CALLING. That's all we can do right now.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker ivyceltress: "If you could start a charitable foundation what would be its mission?"
Schumer Will Filibuster Gorsuch
In a statement on the Senate floor today, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he will force a cloture vote (triggering a requirement of 60 votes) on Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court.
It is with all this in mind that I have come to a decision about the current nominee: After careful deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot support Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court.Damn straight.
His nomination will have a cloture vote. He will have to earn sixty votes for confirmation. My vote will be no, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
To my Republican friends who think that, if Judge Gorsuch fails to reach sixty votes, we oughta change the rules, I say: If this nominee cannot earn sixty votes, a bar met by each of President Obama's nominees and George Bush's last two nominees, the answer isn't to change the rules. It's to change the nominee.
Schumer also said that Gorsuch "was unable to sufficiently convince me that he'd be an independent check" on Trump, and that he is "not a neutral legal mind but someone with a deep-seated conservative ideology. He was groomed by the Federalist Society and has shown not one inch of difference between his views and theirs."
Right on. Thank you, Senator Schumer. Whether you ultimately succeed or fail in blocking Gorsuch, this is the right thing to do. And I am grateful that you are taking this stand.
Healthcare Vote Canceled!
Rachael Bade, Kyle Cheney, and John Bresnahan at Politico: Thursday Vote on Health Care Bill Canceled. Bloop!
Donald Trump and conservative House Freedom Caucus members failed to strike a deal on the GOP Obamacare replacement Thursday, endangering the prospects of passage and all but assuring any immediate vote on the measure would fail.This, of course, does not preclude some surprise, middle-of-the-night chicanery. But, at the moment, Republicans' failure to make their replacement plan terrible enough for the hardliners in their caucus have stalled what dubious momentum they had.
Hours later, House leaders canceled a planned Thursday night vote on the legislation. There was no immediate word when a vote might occur.
7 years of the ACA
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) March 23, 2017
Millions Covered
2,557 days of GOP railing against it
Trump, "master negotiator," said he'd get it done
Couldn't do it.
That about sums it up.
Meanwhile, Trump seems real broken up about it.
As health care vote gets scrapped for tonight, here's Trump in a big rig on the White House driveway honking the horn & pretending to drive pic.twitter.com/vTkNnJkrrc
— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) March 23, 2017
The video is precisely as described: Trump gets into the cab of a truck with a big, stupid grin on his face and honks the horn. He closes the door and waves through the window at a crowd of almost all white men, who laugh with delight at the Big Boy President.
* * *
UPDATE: Well, that was fast. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says that the House "will vote tonight on a rule that will allow us to vote tomorrow." That means: Keep calling. If they press ahead and vote tomorrow, it needs to FAIL.
The Long Slog of Progress
.@HillaryClinton backstage in Portsmouth, NH. Photo: @barb_kinney Words: @Shakestweetz pic.twitter.com/g1tXNszBYH
— Hillary In Pictures (@HillaryPix) March 23, 2017
Hillary in Pictures memed this beautiful photo from the campaign trail, taken by Barbara Kinney, about which I wrote a short piece, which ended up being widely shared.
When I saw their tweet this morning, it was perfectly timed, as I happened to be thinking about some of the erroneously characterized "populist" rhetoric currently in fashion, designed to appeal primarily to the resentments of straight, white, able-bodied, cis men, who are not wealthy.
Specifically, I was thinking about how that rhetoric functions to perfectly serve the entitlement that underwrites that resentment. The entitlement that is, for instance, evident in articles like this one at the conservative Federalist, which argues that the the Alt-Right is "what happens" when (privileged) men are expected to participate on a level playing field.
Or this one at the New York Times, in which a professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School posits that one of the "reasons that men may be reluctant to take jobs in the growing service sector" is because "many service sector jobs involve 'serving' people of higher social status. I think women are more willing to do this—for cultural or genetic reasons, who knows."
Who knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To a large extent, much of this "populist" rhetoric centers, though not explicitly, the idea that highly privileged people have the luxury of being lazy about politics, and that they want to keep being lazy.
"Populist" rhetoric of a certain sort assures them that they can be: It doesn't demand that anyone make sacrifices, or show up, or even do their homework to learn the basics of how politics and governance actually work.
It's sweeping promises that suggest all it takes to get things done is making lots of noise and showing up to vote once in awhile.
I recently wrote: "[Many voters] still haven't learned the most important lesson about themselves: That they eagerly preferred to listen to men who told them what they wanted to hear than a woman who told them the truth."
One of the truths Hillary Clinton told us, if not explicitly, is that progress doesn't happen instantaneously. Politics is rarely grand gestures and explosive moments; it is measured in frustratingly small increments, and many of the "biggest" moments consist of work that is not even visible. A phrase removed from, or inserted into, a piece of legislation can be a triumph. It can affect millions of lives, and the decades of advocacy and hours of last-minute negotiations can yet go virtually unseen.
What a horrible reality for people who are used to getting everything they want on demand. Who have become accustomed to instant gratification.
That thing about Hillary that so many of us admired, and which strongly resonated with us—that she works so hard—was probably a huge turn-off to lots of people.
People who did not like hearing that effective governance is an extremely deliberative process.
That progress is a long slog.
She represented, she embodied, the notion that politics and progress are incremental and take lots of grit and determination and patience and work. That made me admire her. I'm sure it made lots of people resent her, because she was communicating the last thing they wanted to hear.
They wanted someone who would give them things now. And here we are, with a president who wants to make things happen fast, and it's a fucking disaster. Because fast is anathema to good governance.
And I suspect that it mattered—a lot—that it was a woman modeling for us what the incremental, deliberative, difficult work of progress really looks like.
Every pundit who groused that she reminded them of a nagging wife. Every internet commenter who complained that she reminded them of their nagging mothers. Resentful of those women who had the temerity to expect them to participate in household or emotional maintenance. In each of these bitter complaints was embedded a hostility to the notion of women doing and expecting hard work.
And a resentment that very privileged people are now facing a world in which they might be expected to work as hard as marginalized people have always had to work. A world in which very privileged people might have to earn that to which they feel entitled.
Some of them have already begun to discover that which people without their privileges have known for a very long time: Sometimes all the hard work one's body can give won't provide what one needs, no less that to which one feels entitled.
The only effective response to that is committing oneself to the hard work the long slog of progress demands. But many of them refuse to do that hard work, preferring instead the gossamer promises of men who vow to restore their privilege.
I look at that picture of Hillary Clinton and I see an invitation to join her in the hard work that needs to be done, not a figure of contempt who expects of me something I'm unwilling to give.
Progress demands our participation. Anyone who has had the luxury of not understanding that until this moment must greet it with fervor for the work that needs to be done. Because they've long been exploiting the work of others, who lacked such luxury for their whole lives.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda is a mutt's mutt: One of her parents was a Shar Pei-Australian Cattle Dog mix. The other one of her parents was a Siberian Husky-Alaskan Klee Kai mix. (A Klee Kai is basically a mini-husky.)
Her coat, however, is 100% husky.
Which means that she blows her coat in the spring, and OH MY GOD is it quite the dramatic event, lol. THERE IS SO MUCH FUR! I mean, if you've ever seen a photo of a husky blowing its coat after it's been groomed, you get the picture.
Zelly hates being groomed, so it's quite a production. Days and days of trying to cajole her to let me brush her or hand-strip her or remove the hair in any conceivable fashion. Fur piles larger than you would believe. Lots of frustration. Even more laughter. The most cuddles.
Did I mention lots of fur? LOTS OF FUR.
* * *
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 63
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
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Here are some things in the news today:
Today is the day the GOP House Caucus wants to vote on their garbage healthcare proposal which would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. CALL YOUR REPS TODAY AND TELL THEM YOU DO NOT WANT THEM TO VOTE FOR THE GOP PLAN.
This is not a drill: Flood your lawmakers offices with calls to demand they #ProtectOurCare & #StandWithPP→https://t.co/Y1RTuYVSrc pic.twitter.com/T1cBhuPNju
— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) March 23, 2017
Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Freedom Caucus Chair 'Optimistic' About Deal on Obamacare Repeal Bill. "With the Thursday vote on the legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act fast approaching, members of the House Freedom Caucus said earlier on Wednesday that they still had enough votes to block the bill's passage. This prompted Republican leaders to promise conservative House members that the Senate would accommodate one of their demands: removing Obamacare's Essential Health Benefits (EHB) rule. The EHB rule requires insurers to offer plans that cover a list of basic services like emergency room care and maternity care."
#SaveTheACA. We cannot allow this travesty to pass.
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[Content Note covering the entire section below: Terrorism; Islamophobia; racism.]
In case you'd managed to forget for two seconds that Donald Trump's children are just as disgusting as he is... Sam Levin at the Guardian: Donald Trump Jr Called 'a Disgrace' for Tweet Goading London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Donald Trump Jr is facing a backlash for criticizing London mayor Sadiq Khan with a scornful tweet sent hours after an attack at the Houses of Parliament left four dead, including a police officer.I don't suppose I need to point out that Trump Jr's target, Mayor Khan, is Muslim.
The US president's eldest son tweeted a link to a September 2016 story in the Independent, which quoted Khan saying terror attacks were "part and parcel of living in a big city," and "I want to be reassured that every single agency and individual involved in protecting our city has the resources and expertise they need to respond in the event that London is attacked."
"You have to be kidding me?!" Trump Jr tweeted, quoting the headline: "Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan."
It's unclear if the president's son read the article or understood that the quote was from six months ago and not a response to the Wednesday attack, which police are treating as a terrorist incident.
...The tweet earned strong criticisms in the US and the UK, including from Wes Streeting, the MP for Ilford North and former president of the National Union of Students.
"You use a terrorist attack on our city to attack London's Mayor for your own political gain. You're a disgrace," Streeting wrote.
...Others on Twitter pointed Trump Jr to Khan's actual response to the attack on Wednesday, in which he said: "Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism."
"I want to reassure all Londoners and all our visitors not to be alarmed. Our city remains one of the safest in the world. London is the greatest city in the world. And we stand together in the face of those who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life. We always have and we always will," the mayor said.
Meanwhile, his father the president tweeted his sympathies for an American killed in yesterday's attack. That was a decent thing to do. However, as Clark Gregg noted, Trump failed to acknowledge the American who was killed by a terrorist in his hometown.
Another American was murdered in a terror attack in your hometown yesterday. Because he was black. #SpeakUp #NYC #StrongerTogether https://t.co/i3e93Shq10
— Clark Gregg (@clarkgregg) March 23, 2017
Gregg is referring to Timothy Caughman, a Black man who was viciously murdered by James Harris Jackson, a white U.S. Army veteran who traveled from Baltimore to New York City "to target black men," for whom "he had harbored feelings of hatred...for at least 10 years."
He repeatedly stabbed Caughman in the chest, then turned himself into police. According to Assistant Chief William Aubry, Jackson chose NYC "because it's the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement."
Additionally: "Police said Jackson is a member of a known hate group in Maryland but did not identify the group."
White supremacy doesn't exist in a vacuum. And Trump's silence speaks volumes.
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Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz, and Jim Sciutto at CNN: U.S. officials: Info Suggests Trump Associates May Have Coordinated with Russians. "One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests 'people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready.' ...The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said."
Cameron Norsworthy at Romper: How Will the WIC Program Be Affected by Trump's Budget Proposal? Cuts Are Expected. "Cutting $200 million from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, Trump would be taking away funds from vital familial health initiatives, such as efforts 'reducing infant and maternal mortality and morbidity,' should his proposed budget be passed in its current state (that likely won't happen, but whether WIC programs will remain on the table following congressional debate is yet to be seen). It would also cut initiatives that '[provide] food vouchers for low-income pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children under five years old,' as well as preexisting programs offering venues for 'breastfeeding support and nutrition education.' In other words, low-income women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or have children under 5 years old would have to go elsewhere for the support and services they've come to depend on."
[CN: Homophobia] I'm not going to link to this directly, because FUCK THAT.
Incredible. The United States Secretary of Energy took the time to write an op-ed humiliating a gay student leader. https://t.co/ANqkLih2tF
— Teddy Goff (@teddygoff) March 22, 2017
[CN: Othering] Paul McLeod at BuzzFeed: A Top Trump Health Care Appointee Thinks Tattoos Are Linked to Drug Abuse. "If you've got questions about penis phobias, the link from goth culture to drug abuse, and how opioids are evidence of the existence of God, a top Trump appointee has answers. Those and other subjects were touched on in a 2006 book by John Fleming, the former congressman who was just appointed by President Trump as assistant secretary for health technology at the Department of Health and Human Services." Some of the shit he's spewing is indistinguishable from the thinking that railroaded the West Memphis Three.
Jia Tolentino at the New Yorker: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death. "At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy's rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
His Extremely Presidential Voice
[Content Note: Description of sexual assault; misogyny.]
Via Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair (emphasis added):
"Trump's one brief moment of acting presidential—when he read off a teleprompter for 60 minutes and 10 seconds during his address to Congress—served only to show just how low the bar for presidential behavior has plummeted since January. Watching TV commentators applaud him for containing himself for a little over an hour was like hearing a parent praise a difficult child for not pooping in his pants during a pre-school interview. Besides, vintage Trump is not going anywhere anytime soon. A couple of weeks earlier, during a visit by the Japanese prime minister, ShinzÅ? Abe, the president told an acquaintance that he was obsessed with the translator's breasts—although he expressed this in his own, fragrant fashion."I know we have a seemingly never-ending cascade of items to resist with respect to Donald Trump and his Republican administration.
But, I will never forget that, at 70 years of age, misogyny and imagined male supremacy are inextricably embedded within the fabric of the man's deplorable personality.
As such, even though some media elites might fawn over his ability to, from time to time, read from a teleprompter without pulling out his penis and plopping it onto the podium for all to admire, at his core he is a misogynist who has admitted on tape to grabbing women's genitals without their consent. Many people voted for him, not in spite of what having a misogynist as president symbolizes in terms of gender dynamics, but precisely because of it.
Now, I think that after all that has transpired in the past couple of months, we can drop the pretense that those "lock her up" chants were actually about a concern for criminal wrongdoing or treason and instead admit that maybe, just maybe, they were about something else entirely.
Putin Critic Killed in Kiev
[Content Note: Assassination.]
Shaun Walker at the Guardian reports that Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian MP who was critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and fled to Ukraine, has been fatally shot by an unidentified gunman in Kiev.
My condolences to his family and friends, in particular his wife Maria Maksakova, who is also a former MP.
Voronenkov, 45, who had given "a number of interviews after his defection that were sharply critical of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Kremlin policy in Ukraine," was on his way to meet another former Russian MP who had also fled, Ilya Ponomarev, when he was killed.
Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, summoned the head of the security services to brief him on the killing. He later released a statement calling the attack an "act of Russian state terrorism."Emphasis mine.
"Voronenkov was one of the main witnesses of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and, in particular, the role of Yanukovich regarding the deployment of Russian troops to Ukraine," he said.
That would be Viktor Yanukovych, who featured prominently in my lengthy piece yesterday about 2016 election ties to Russia and Ukraine.
One of the main witnesses who was to testify against an ousted pro-Putin Ukrainian leader, for whom Donald Trump's campaign chief Paul Manafort and Bernie Sanders' chief strategist Tad Devine both worked, has been murdered in the street.
Presumably on the orders of Putin, whose habit of killing his political opponents the U.S. president shrugged off by saying: "There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?"
[H/T to Eastsidekate.]
This Man Is the President of the United States
Time magazine's latest cover story is about Donald Trump being a liar. That's not the way they're putting it, but it's the way they should be—and it's definitely the way I'm putting it. They way they put it is "the way he has handled truth and falsehood in his career." Sure.
In conjunction with their cover story, [CN: video may autoplay at link] their Washington Bureau Chief, Michael Scherer, did an interview with Trump. It is...something.
Throughout the entirety of the interview, Trump is exactly who we already know him to be, and yet simultaneously somehow even worse.
He brags relentlessly about being "right," even about things he was not even remotely right about. (Was he getting paid $5 by Nigel Farage every time he said the word Brexit?) And naturally he never admits to being wrong about anything.
Which is why I wonder: What is the point of giving him this platform? You know he's never going to admit to being wrong, so, going in, you know what you're handing him is a visible platform for more lying.
The decision to do and publish this interview strikes me primarily as evidence that the media continues to believe there's something "more" to Trump. No, there isn't. There's even less.
Anyway. Three pieces I want to highlight (the interviewer's words are in bold):
1. Trump is always right, the media is garbage, everything is a competition, and he is going to win.
I tend to be right. I'm an instinctual person, I happen to be a person that knows how life works. I said I was going to win the election, I won the election, in fact I was number one the entire route, in the primaries, from the day I announced, I was number one. And the New York Times and CNN and all of them, they did these polls, which were extremely bad and they turned out to be totally wrong, and my polls showed I was going to win. We thought we were going to win the night of the election.Kudos to Scherer for that dig which Trump didn't even recognize. But here is another reason to ask whyyyyyyy even indulge this guy? Every media outlet, aside from Fox News and Breitbart, has to know by now he'll talk shit about them and they'll be obliged to print it. And that he'll tell enormous lies and they'll be obliged to print them. This isn't actually helpful.
So when you…
And then TIME magazine, which treats me horribly, but obviously I sell, I assume this is going to be a cover too, have I set the record? I guess, right? Covers, nobody's had more covers.
I think Richard Nixon still has you beat. But he was in office for longer, so give yourself time.
Okay good. I'm sure I'll win.
2. Trump won, so nothing else matters.
Hey look, in the mean time, I guess, I can't be doing so badly, because I'm president, and you're not. You know. Say hello to everybody okay?That's how the interview ends—with Trump declaring that he's the president and you're not. Fuck off. Which is not the first time he's used "I won" to end a conversation about accountabililty.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
3. As promised, Trump is going to put in "his own people" and fix all this business of people trying to hold him accountable.
But isn't there, it strikes me there is still an issue of credibility. If the intelligence community came out and said, we have determined that so and so is the leaker here, but you are saying to me now, that you don't believe the intelligence community when they say your tweet was wrong.This is just the President of the United States saying that he's installing intelligence officials whose primary qualification is loyalty, in order to "straighten out" the problem of being investigated for potentially treasonous activities. Cool.
I'm not saying—no, I'm not blaming. First of all, I put Mike Pompeo in. I put Senator Dan Coats in. These are great people. I think they are great people and they are going to, I have a lot of confidence in them. So hopefully things will straighten out.
And such breathtakingly despotic behavior has already become so routine in 60 days that it won't even warrant major headlines.
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