Suggested by Shaker Carpe Librarium: "When participating in a meditation exercise, what springs to mind when you are instructed to think of a relaxing scene?"
Being on holiday with Iain in a sunny place near the sea, with a warm breeze blowing through my hair.
The moment pictured here, basically.
Question of the Day
Throwback Thursdays
[Please share your own throwback pix in comments. Just make sure the pix are just of you and/or you have consent to post from other living people in the pic. And please note that they don't have to be pictures from childhood, especially since childhood pix might be difficult for people who come from abusive backgrounds or have transitioned or lots of other reasons. It can be a picture from last week, if that's what works for you. And of course no one should feel obliged to share a picture at all! Only if it's fun!]
An Observation
It will never cease to fascinate me how it's the marginalized people who fight for inclusion every day, and our allies, who are called "divisive" by the people trying to keep us out, under the auspices of "unity."
Just get behind this wealthy straight white able-bodied cis man this time, and we promise we'll get to you someday.
Yeah. So I've heard.
And when I stop buying that line of shit, it's me who's "divisive" because I refuse to "unify."
Sure.
The Shaker HALP! Thread
Here is a thread to solicit advice on any subject or struggle we're experiencing on which some input from like-minded folks would be useful.
And because sometimes what we need is permission to go ahead and do what we've already decided is the best thing to do, if you need to ask for permission (which of course is validation and encouragement to give yourself permission), this is the place to do it.
As always, the guidance here is: Be supportive, not judgmental. If you're going to offer advice, make sure it's advice and not criticism.
Also: If you're someone seeking advice, and you've had your fill after a certain point, please feel welcome to note in-thread: "Thank you, that's all the advice I needed!"
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 826
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) 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.
* * *
Earlier today by me: Hillary Clinton Should Have Been Our President and Primarily Speaking.
Here are some more things in the news today...
Charlie Savage at the New York Times: Trump Vows Stonewall of 'All' House Subpoenas, Setting Up Fight over Powers. "The Trump administration escalated its defiance of Congress on Wednesday, as the Justice Department refused to let an official testify on Capitol Hill and [Donald] Trump vowed to fight what he called a 'ridiculous' subpoena ordering a former top aide to appear before lawmakers. 'We're fighting all the subpoenas,' Mr. Trump told reporters outside the White House."
We are tumbling toward a(nother) Constitutional crisis — and accelerating by the day.
Manu Raju and Kate Sullivan at CNN: White House Says Stephen Miller Won't Testify on Immigration to House Oversight. "The White House has informed the House Oversight Committee that aide Stephen Miller will not testify before the panel about his role in [Donald] Trump's controversial immigration policies, according to a letter obtained by CNN. In the Wednesday letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone says there's 'long-standing precedent' for the White House to decline offers for staff to testify on Capitol Hill. ...But the move is likely only to ratchet up tensions between the White House and the Maryland Democrat after both the administration and the Trump Organization have defied three of [House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings'] subpoenas this week alone — and have pushed back against a number of his other demands."
John Gore, who heads the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, will defy congress and not appear for a deposition with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, according to a letter the DOJ sent the committee chairman https://t.co/nbfLeYU9Ul
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 25, 2019
Seung Min Kim at the Washington Post: Trump's Defiance Puts Pressure on Congress's Ability to Check the President. ("Defiance" is not the word I'd use. "Lawlessness" is.)
Since taking office, Trump has consistently treated Congress as more of a subordinate than an equal — often aided by the tacit approval of congressional Republicans who have shown little interest in confronting the president.The fact is that there's very little House Democrats can do if Trump refuses to comply as long as Senate Republicans, who hold the majority, refuse to do their fucking jobs. And Trump knows that.
But tensions between Trump and Capitol Hill have escalated in recent days as the White House refuses to comply with subpoenas from newly empowered House Democrats eager to conduct aggressive oversight of his administration.
Trump's decision not to cooperate with House committees, coupled with reluctance from Republicans in control of the Senate to cross him, has left Congress struggling to assert itself as a coequal branch of government — most likely leaving it to the courts to settle a series of power struggles that could define the relationship between the executive and legislative branches for years to come.
Let me reiterate once again that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is one of the worst, most destructive politicians ever to hold elected office in this nation's history.
Senate Democrats are doing what they can, of course. Case in point: Senator Mark Warner at USA Today: Trump and Russia Threatened Our Democracy. What Are We Going to Do About It? "The special counsel's investigation now confronts us with an important choice. We can overlook the president's morally outrageous behavior; we can ignore the deep deficiencies in our laws and our defenses against foreign interference; or we can do everything in our power to make sure that what happened in 2016 can never happen again."
Unfortunately, Senate Republicans are going to ignore his plea just as hard as Trump is ignoring House Democrats' subpoenas.
In minimally more hopeful news...
Cristina Alesci at CNN: Deutsche Bank Begins Process of Providing Trump Financial Records to New York's Attorney General.
Deutsche Bank has begun the process of providing financial records to New York state's attorney general in response to a subpoena for documents related to loans made to President Donald Trump and his business, according to a person familiar with the production.I don't expect that this investigation will result in any accountability for Trump, either, but I hope I'm wrong.
Last month, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas for records tied to funding for several Trump Organization projects.
The state's top legal officer opened a civil probe after Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress in a public hearing that Trump had inflated his assets. Cohen at that time presented copies of financial statements he said had been provided to Deutsche Bank.
...The bank is in the process of turning over documents, including emails and loan documents, related to Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC; the Trump National Doral Miami; the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago; and the unsuccessful effort to buy the NFL's Buffalo Bills.
* * *
[Content Note: Eliminationist violence] Will Sommer at the Daily Beast: Rhode Island Man Threatened to 'Eradicate' All Democrats, Eat Pro-Choice Professor. "Matthew Haviland, a 30-year-old resident of North Kingstown, threatened to murder and eat the professor in a series of March 10 emails, according to prosecutors. Haviland was arrested on Wednesday after an FBI investigation, and faces federal cyberstalking and threat charges. ...Haviland threatened Democrats in other emails, saying that people wearing 'pink fucking hats' — an apparent reference to the 'Pussy Hats' worn by Women's March participants — 'should all be slaughtered,' according to his indictment. He also allegedly wrote that all Democrats 'must be eradicated.'"
And what precipitated this violent rage, which also included a threat to "kill every Democrat in the world," bomb threats, the call for a second civil war, transphobia, racism, and anti-feminism?
A friend of Haviland's told law enforcement that his political views had recently become "more extreme," according to the FBI affidavit, because he was angry over media coverage of Trump.Trump continually positioning himself as a victim, waging war on the press, and casting Democrats as dangerous enemies of the state are all parts of his campaign of stochastic terrorism. And here we see every piece of it represented in Haviland's violent, eliminationist thinking. I cannot put this more plainly: The president is trying to get his political and cultural opponents killed.
"[Haviland's friend] believes this is at least in part because of the way the news media portrays [Donald] Trump," the affidavit noted.
...On his YouTube channel, Haviland praised a number of right-wing media personalities. He encouraged his handful of viewers to check out specific videos from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, former Pizzagate promoter Mike Cernovich, and cartoonist Scott Adams, the Dilbert comic-strip creator who has reinvented himself as a vociferous Trump booster.
Haviland also used YouTube to praise Trump, saying the president does "good things," and accusing reporters of being out to destroy his presidency. In one video, taken just days before his arrest, Haviland screamed into the camera about the prospect of Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifying before Congress, shouting that Trump "did nothing fucking wrong."
* * *
[CN: Transphobia] Dan Diamond at Politico: HHS Nearing Plan to Roll Back Transgender Protections. "The Trump administration is preparing to roll back protections for transgender patients while empowering health care workers to refuse care based on religious objections, according to three officials with knowledge of the pending regulations. ...One rule would replace an Obama administration policy extending nondiscrimination protections to transgender patients, which have been blocked in court. A second rule would finalize broad protections for health workers who cite religious or moral objections to providing services such as abortion or contraception, a priority for Christian conservative groups allied with the administration."
[CN: Rape culture; sex abuse; video may autoplay at link] Jason Hanna, Elizabeth Joseph, and Kristina Sgueglia at CNN: The List of Boy Scouts Leaders Accused of Sexual Abuse Has Nearly 3,000 More Names Than Previously Known. "The Boy Scouts of America believed more than 7,800 of its former leaders were involved in sexually abusing children over the course of 72 years, according to newly exposed court testimony — about 2,800 more leaders than previously known publicly. The Boy Scouts identified more than 12,000 alleged victims in that time period, from 1944 through 2016, according to the testimony, which was publicized Tuesday by attorney Jeff Anderson, who specializes in representing sexual abuse victims. ...'We care deeply about all victims of child abuse and sincerely apologize to anyone who was harmed during their time in scouting,' the BSA said Wednesday in a statement." That seems...inadequate.
In good news... Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade: Lesbian Candidate Wins Big in Tampa Mayoral Race. "Jane Castor won big Tuesday night in Tampa, Fla., when by a landslide she achieved victory in the race to become the city's next mayor, making her the first out person elected mayor of top 100 city in the Southeast. Castor, the city's former police chief, won 72.5 percent of the vote against her opponent... Annise Parker, CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund and the first openly lesbian mayor of Houston, commended Castor in statement for her victory, saying 'a lavender ceiling was shattered in Florida Tuesday night.' ...According to Equality Florida, Castor wins the distinction of being the first openly LGBT person to lead one of Florida's three largest cities."
And in more good news... Destiny Lopez at Rewire.News: Delaying Trump's Latest Abortion Coverage Restriction Shows That When Women Speak Out, We Win.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed a new restriction to dissuade private insurers from offering abortion coverage. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it had so received many comments on the proposal that it is unable to put its plan into action.I'll take it!
The Trump administration thought it could get away with another attack on abortion coverage by quietly proposing this rule and burying it in a 300-page document. Those of us who understand the serious harm insurance restrictions can cause didn't let them.
People across the reproductive justice movement answered our call to submit comments opposing the rule, and now HHS is still reviewing the more than 25,000 comments it received.
Thanks to our collective resistance, the rule won't go into effect until at least 2021 — that is, if it is ever finalized.
* * *
[CN: Climate change and environmental harm; covers entire section.]
Oliver Milman at the Guardian: North American Drilling Boom Threatens Major Blow to Climate Efforts. "More than half of the world's new oil and gas pipelines are located in North America, with a boom in U.S. oil and gas drilling set to deliver a major blow to efforts to slow climate change, a new report has found. ...In the U.S. alone, the natural-gas output enabled by the pipelines would result in an additional 559 million tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide each year by 2040, above 2017 levels, according to Global Energy Monitor, citing International Energy Agency figures. This surge in emissions is set to take place at a time when scientists have warned of punishing heatwaves, floods, and economic damage if greenhouse gases are not drastically cut."
Yessenia Funes at Earther: Five Years After the Lead Crisis Began, Flint Residents Still Can't Trust Their Tap Water. "Five years. That's how much time has passed since the City of Flint switched its water source, exposing nearly 100,000 people to lead-tainted water. That crisis continues today and has traumatized the city in a way that will take more than another five years to fix. The legacy will likely last for generations. ...That tainted water no longer runs into homes as the city switched back to Detroit water in 2015, but that doesn't mean the crisis is over."
"Private wells used for drinking water in Iowa face widespread contamination due to agricultural practices, according to a new report out Wednesday, highlighting the latest in a series of major drinking water issues unfolding across the country." https://t.co/IhDEVykl8Z
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2019
Damian Carrington at the Guardian: 'Death by a Thousand Cuts': Vast Expanse of Rainforest Lost in 2018. "Millions of hectares of pristine tropical rainforest were destroyed in 2018, according to satellite analysis, with beef, chocolate, and palm oil among the main causes. The forests store huge amounts of carbon and are teeming with wildlife, making their protection critical to stopping runaway climate change and halting a sixth mass extinction. But deforestation is still on an upward trend, the researchers said."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Discussion Thread: Self-Care
What are you doing to do to take care of yourself today, or in the near future, as soon as you can?
If you are someone who has a hard time engaging in self-care, or figuring out easy, fast, and/or inexpensive ways to treat yourself, and you would like to solicit suggestions, please feel welcome. And, as always, no one should offer advice unless it is solicited.
* * *
Very shortly, I am going to take the time to prepare myself a nutritious and delicious lunch. And then I'm going to make time for some movement later today, whether it's a walk or a run about the yard with the dogs or a swim.
Primarily Speaking
Welcome to another edition of Primarily Speaking, because presidential primaries now begin fully one million years before the election!
Welp, he's finally done it, friends! Joe Biden has officially entered the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination! If you are excited as I am, try to contain your enthusiasm by putting it inside a dollhouse teacup.
[Content Note: Video autoplays at link; Nazi imagery] Obviously, his announcement video is the fucking worst, simultaneously proclaiming America's greatness (which he represents) and lamenting America's terribleness (which Donald Trump represents), while positioning himself as the superhero who can save us from the supervillain Trump, set to just the shittiest score by a composer I can only assume is named Zans Himmer.
The only way this could have been worse is if it were just 3 minutes of him staring into the camera while licking an ice cream cone.
Actually, on second thought, that might have been better.
Anyway. His logo is also really bad:
“It’s her time.” pic.twitter.com/WDZiHeNI4c
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) April 25, 2019
But, in good news, Biden is going around asking party lions for their early endorsement, and they are all eager to say no.
Frankly, I couldn't be less interested in Biden's campaign. (To be honest, the dollhouse teacup was generous.) I've already heard everything I want to hear from Joe Biden for a lifetime.
Thank u, next.
* * *
Hahahahaha here is just a real headline in the world, care of the Daily Beast: "Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren Lead an Incredible Field of 2020 Women. How Are They Trailing Pete Buttigieg?"
Hang on, I know the answer to this one!
The opening sentence of that story reads: "It's now a practically boring fact that women are running for political office in record numbers."
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL yes, one presidential election after Hillary Clinton made history as the first female nominee from a major party, it's now boring that there are now six women seeking the Democratic nomination. From historic to boring in one election cycle!
I remember writing sometime toward the end of the 2016 election that Clinton had blazed that trail so successfully that most people barely saw her historical achievement as remarkable, and now here we are one cycle later and it's boring that women have been exponentially empowered to run for president.
This is how women are denied their achievements. It takes a woman so extraordinary to break through an ancient misogynist barrier that she renders our memories incapable of recalling that women were disallowed from doing what she's done, and so we immediately forget how legendary she truly is/was.
Something else I wrote during that election, many times, was what execrable codswallop it was when palpably misogynistic shitwheels would assert that they didn't hate Hillary Clinton because she is a woman, but because of who she is, and they'd totes vote for a different woman. And now here we are, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are polling behind Boy Mayor Ben Wyatt.
Welp.
* * *
Speaking of Harris: "The Harris campaign says of 19 senior staffers hired so far, 13 are women, and 11 of those are women of color."
And speaking of Professor Policy: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to drive down the maternal mortality rate among African-American women — and she has a plan to get it done."
Senator Cory Booker has a neat plan to address the racial wealth gap:
Booker's so-called baby bonds proposal, which has quickly become a centerpiece of the New Jersey senator's campaign, would provide every child born in the U.S. with a $1,000 savings account. Each year, the government would automatically deposit up to another $2,000 into that account, depending on family income.The difference, of course, reflecting the existing difference in average household income. This is very good.
People would not be able to dig into the funds until they hit 18, and the uses of the money would generally be limited to paying for college, buying a house, and saving for retirement.
...Booker calls his proposal, 'the most ambitious ever Congressional effort to combat wealth inequality.' The average payment to black children under his plan would be $1,193 a year, compared with $628 for white children.
Meanwhile...
Dead
— Tormund XtopHodor, First of His Name (@tommyxtopher) April 24, 2019
Joy: Yeah, And for black women specifically?
Bernie: I’m sorry?
Joy: For black women specifically.
Bernie: Black women will be an integral part of what our campaign, and what are administration is about. Okay? And that means…
Amy Allison: Were you finished with your..? pic.twitter.com/UUSS5udfYr
Speaking of Senator Bernie Sanders: "Bernie Sanders harshly criticized the wealth of U.S. senators during his first campaign for office in 1971, calling it 'immoral' that half the members of the Senate were millionaires." Whoooooooops!
Also: "Sanders, the Vermont independent who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, for years has drawn a pension for his eight-year stint in the 1980s as mayor of Burlington even has he received a salary as a member of Congress. ...That practice, known as 'double-dipping,' isn't illegal. ...But double-dipping does rub some public watchdogs — and even elected officials — the wrong way. In fact, in 2014, former Obama administration official Ro Khanna, while conducting a challenge to incumbent Rep. Mike Honda of California, blasted his fellow Democrat Honda for double dipping. ...And in February, Khanna joined Sanders' second bid for the White House, serving as one of four national co-chairs of Sanders' campaign." Whoooooooops!
* * *
[CN: Homophobia] "Franklin Graham, one of the country's most influential evangelical Christians, has called on Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg to 'repent' for being gay. Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called homosexuality 'something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised, or politicized,' in a tweet Wednesday." Hey, Franklin Graham, GO FUCK YOURSELF.
Pete Buttigieg is a veteran and public servant whose bravery is on display every goddamn day, while Franklin Graham is a cowardly piece of shit who hides his vile bigotry behind religion because he hasn't the courage to state his loathsome convictions as personal beliefs and be held accountable to the people he despises.
Instead, he passes the buck onto a deity and claims he's obliged to be a hateful wreck. That rank deflection is what needs repenting, because, unlike being gay, the hatred it justifies actually harms people.
* * *
Julián Castro was the first candidate to accept the invitation to participate in the She the People Presidential Forum, and they thanked him by using a photo of his twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro, in their event program. Oops. "During the summit, Julián pointed out the literature handed out to the more than 1,000 audience members accidentally featured a photo of his twin. He joked that the blunder was okay because his brother is 'better looking.'" That was incredibly gracious. (I keep telling you he's a great politician!)
Here's a headline: "Rep. Tim Ryan Shies from Socialism in 2020 Run for President." Haha no shit.
Here's another headline: "Presidential Candidate Seth Moulton Knows He's Not Very Well-Known." Haha well at least he knows something!
Oh good grief: "'SPOILER ALERT: I'm a white man,' Rep. Eric Swalwell declared in a tweet Tuesday as the 2020 presidential candidate tried to address the identity debate that has emerged within the Democratic Party. In the tweet, the Democratic presidential contender from California pledged to select a female running mate and 'pass the mic' in instances where he feels he 'can't speak to someone else's experience.'" Or maybe you could have just not run and thrown all the energy you'll expend losing the nomination instead helping one of the women who's running get it! Just a thought.
John Hickenlooper is still definitely running for president.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Hillary Clinton Should Have Been Our President
Hillary Clinton should have been our president for approximately eleventy-seven different reasons, and here is one of them: Despite the fact that she knows damn well the pushback she will get, she wrote this op-ed for the Washington Post anyway:
Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report. It documents a serious crime against the American people.There are always people who say that Hillary Clinton is not the right messenger.
The debate about how to respond to Russia's "sweeping and systematic" attack — and how to hold [Donald] Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law — has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests there's a better way to think about the choices ahead.
Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say I'm not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of Vladimir Putin's ascent, sat across the table from him, and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country.
I am also someone who, by a strange twist of fate, was a young staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate impeachment inquiry in 1974, as well as first lady during the impeachment process that began in 1998. And I was a senator for New York after 9/11, when Congress had to respond to an attack on our country. Each of these experiences offers important lessons for how we should proceed today.
They are wrong.
She is the right messenger for this message, in this moment. And it's not just because of the particular, unique, extraordinarily uncanny details of her resume detailed above — although that, too.
It's because she is the person, she has always been the person, with the courage and the wisdom and the unparalleled gumption to be the one to say what needs to be said about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
And lots of other things.
This country has made the grave mistake of not listening to Hillary Clinton before. I hope we have learned from that grievous and reverberating error, and listen to her now.
Head on over to read the whole thing.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker RachelB: "What's the first thing you remember learning to cook? (If you haven't cooked but would like to, what's the first thing you would like to learn to cook?)"
An apple brown betty in 7th grade home economics class. I'm sure it isn't actually the first thing I learned to cook, but it's the first thing I remember learning to cook. And I don't believe I've made one since, lol. But I could!
Wednesday Links!
This list o' links brought to you by fizzy water.
Recommended Reading:
Fannie Wolfe at Fannie's Room: Maybe It's Mostly Just Misogyny
Shay Stewart-Bouley at Black Girl in Maine: [Content Note: White supremacy; misogynoir; dehumanization] "Be a Human, Not a Black Woman"
Kevin Fallon at the Daily Beast: The Man Who Gave Birth to His Son — and Filmed It for You to See
Tiarra Mukherjee at Colorlines: New Documentary Explores Racism in the War on Drugs
Christopher Stroop at Not Your Mission Field: Epic Christian Fails: The Cross and the Clitoris
Miss Cellania at Neatorama: How an Internet Obsession Resurrected a Creepy, Long-Lost Sesame Street Cartoon
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Discussion Thread: How Are You?
I am as anxious about the state of the nation, and the world, as I have ever been since the day after the 2016 election, which is to say extremely fucking anxious.
I continue to loathe the entire Trump Regime with the fiery power of ten thousand suns.
My contempt for every member of the Republican Party and their deplorable base cannot be measured on a scale fathomable by human intellect. Even my own. Because when I am certain I have reached the bottom of my reserves, I discover there are yet ponderous new depths.
I am feeling an increasing amount of stress and trepidation about the Democratic primary. Not just about what the outcome will be, and how damaged the victor will emerge for what will be a rough general election, but about the resources it will take to process the personal abuse I am obliged to navigate simply by virtue of covering candidates with very aggressive supporters. I am scared by the escalating extremism I'm seeing on the left.
I am pleased that, among the ginormous field of Democratic candidates, there are a few for whom I want to cast an enthusiastically affirmative vote, not just a vote against the rest.
I am so happy it's springtime.
I am grateful for my lovely husband, for our home, for my friends, for all the times they make me laugh, and for Dudley and Zelda.
I am also, as always, glad for this community. Anyone who wants to join me in another enormous virtual group hug is welcome.
How are you?
The Fun and Games Thread
Here is a thread for discussion of all things gaming: Board games, card games, video games, dice games, role-playing games, strategy games, party games, whether you play in groups or on your own. Tell us all about the games you love!
I haven't played anything new lately, so today I'll just share a pic of one of my favorite things — my Atari Touch Me, the only handheld game that Atari released, a version of their arcade game of the same name.
The party game "Simon" was a ripoff of Atari's arcade version of "Touch Me," and Atari tried to compete with "Simon" by releasing the handheld version of "Touch Me" in 1978.
Suffice it to say, "Simon" won that battle, but I nonetheless love my little handheld "Touch Me" and still have fun playing it.
What game(s) have you been playing lately?
Daily Dose of Cute
They have two speeds: GOOOOOOOOOO!!! and Zzzzzzzzzzz...
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 825
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) 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.
* * *
Late yesterday and earlier today by me: An Observation and Financial Freedom for Everyone and Primarily Speaking.
Here are some more things in the news today...
Robert Costa, Tom Hamburger, Josh Dawsey, and Rosalind S. Helderman at the Washington Post: Trump Says He Is Opposed to White House Aides Testifying to Congress, Deepening Power Struggle with Hill. "[Donald] Trump on Tuesday said he is opposed to current and former White House aides providing testimony to congressional panels in the wake of the special counsel report, intensifying a power struggle between his administration and House Democrats. In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said that complying with congressional requests was unnecessary after the White House cooperated with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe of Russian interference and the president's own conduct in office. 'There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it's very partisan — obviously very partisan,' Trump said."
That is absolutely incorrect. And it is infuriating that the Washington Post is framing this as a "power struggle" between Trump and Congressional Democrats, which is the absolute nadir of bothsideserism bullshit.
This isn't a "power struggle." The Democrats aren't trying to seize power; they are trying to protect our democracy, which is their job. They are tasked with holding the president accountable. Trump, on the other hand, is orchestrating a subversion of our democracy and a consolidation of power in the executive branch, with the assistance of Congressional Republicans.
Goddammit.
Alison Durkee at Vanity Fair: The White House Escalates Its Battle to Keep Don McGahn Silent. "[T]he White House is reportedly planning to use executive privilege to block [former White House counsel Don McGahn] from complying with a congressional subpoena, after McGahn's comments to special counsel Robert Mueller pointed toward potential instances of the president obstructing justice. ...[T]he move to block McGahn's testimony is part of a broader effort to thwart House Democrats from securing testimony from current and former White House aides, and comes after White House deputy counsel Michael M. Purpura instructed former personnel security director Carl Kline not to appear before Congress."
President Trump stopped to talk to reporters on the WH lawn. He said: The Democrats are trying to win 2020 and they aren’t going to win with the people I see...The only way they can luck out is by constantly going after me. pic.twitter.com/0FphDLtHXA
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 24, 2019
President Trump didnt stop long enough to answer the many questions reporters had today. My Qs: Should DHS be preparing for new & different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election? Do you plan to exert executive privilege in response to congressional requests?
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 24, 2019
Staff at the Daily Beast: Trump: If Democrats Try to Impeach Me, I'll Take It to the Supreme Court. "In his latest tweet, strewn with misplaced capital letters, the president made clear he wouldn't go quietly. 'The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn't lay a glove on me,' he wrote. 'I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only ... are there no 'High Crimes and Misdemeanors,' there are no Crimes by me at all. All of the Crimes were committed by Crooked Hillary, the Dems, the DNC and Dirty Cops — and we caught them in the act! We waited for Mueller and WON, so now the Dems look to Congress as last hope!'" YIKES.
Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress: Trump Thinks the Supreme Court Is His Personal Goon Squad (and He May Be Right). "Trump is wrong that the Supreme Court may lawfully intervene if the House of Representatives chooses to impeach him. ...So a Supreme Court decision weighing in on whether the House properly impeached Mr. Trump would be utterly lawless. The House has the 'sole' power to decide which officials should be impeached, and the Senate has the 'sole' power to determine whether the charges brought by the House warrant removal from office. As the court held in Nixon, 'the Judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments.' The problem, however, is that this Supreme Court seems to think that that the law is optional when the Trump administration is involved."
Steve Vladeck at NBC News: Trump Tweet About Impeachment Confuses Political Conclusions with Legal Ones. "Whether Trump broke any criminal laws is therefore formally irrelevant to whether the House of Representatives has the constitutional authority to impeach him. The House certainly can impeach the president — or any other government officer — for non-criminal misconduct. The harder question is whether the House should do so. But the one point on which we all should be able to agree is that the Constitution commits resolution of that question entirely to our elected representatives in Congress — and not to the president's Twitter feed or the absence of criminal charges against him."
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Trump Plausibly Committed Impeachable Offenses. A Leading Expert Explains How.
I spoke to [Philip Bobbitt, constitutional scholar at Columbia University and co-author of Impeachment: A Handbook] at length about the latest revelations. The upshot: Bobbitt now believes it's "plausible" that Trump committed impeachable offenses and that the House of Representatives is obligated to proceed from this premise.In sum: Trump's obstruction to protect his own hide has also impeded investigation into Russia's subversion of the integrity of our elections — and that is an impeachable offense.
...Coming from Bobbitt, this is notable, because he has long maintained that impeachment must be reserved only for the most extraordinary cases and (as his book argues) that we must approach the question of whether conduct is impeachable with extreme caution.
...In our interview, Bobbitt described the implications of all this for impeachment this way:
Mueller depicts an executive branch that is using the levers of his constitutional power in a corrupt way. It's not that a president can't determine whom to prosecute or investigate, or give advice to members of the executive to shape their testimony at legislative hearings. It's that he can't do so with the intent to frustrate the investigation of his own culpability. We certainly have ample evidence that suggests this what he was trying to do.What's more, this obstructive conduct can be directly tied to the other element of the case against Trump: his response to Russian electoral sabotage. Importantly, Trump did not merely seek to derail an investigation into his campaign's conspiracy with that Russian sabotage — that is, into his own conduct.
Rather, Trump also sought to derail a full accounting of the Russian attack on our political system, separate and apart from whether his own campaign conspired with it. He did this because acknowledging the sabotage would detract from the greatness of his victory, which also led him to fail to marshal a serious response to the next round of interference.
Bobbitt explained the relevance of those facts to the impeachment question this way:
The real problem isn't just cooperating with the Russians, or just impeding an investigation into that cooperation. It's impeding an investigation to stop a determination of what Russia did, why, and how they did it. Because this is not over. It's going to happen again, not just in our country. In many countries.
The exposure of the country to very damaging political intelligence techniques, for the venal reason of not diminishing the status of your victory — would that be a high crime and misdemeanor? It certainly would.
Cough:
Western diplomat says Putin decree easing procedure for people in areas of eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists to obtain Russian citizenship is "a highly provocative step that undermines efforts to de-escalate the situation."
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) April 24, 2019
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Maria Vasilyeva at Reuters: North Korea's Kim Arrives for Summit with Russia's Putin. "North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in the Russian city of Vladivostok on Wednesday for a summit he is likely to use to seek support from President Vladimir Putin while Pyongyang’s nuclear talks with Washington are in limbo. ...Kim will sit down for talks with Putin on Thursday at a university campus on an island just off Vladivostok. It will be the first summit between the two leaders, and the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program will top the agenda, according to a Kremlin foreign policy aide."
Julia Hollingsworth at CNN: Duterte Threatens 'War' Against Canada over Trash Shipped to Philippines. "Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to 'go to war' with Canada if the country doesn't take back tons of trash a Canada-based company had shipped to Manila several years ago. 'I'll give a warning to Canada maybe next week that they better pull that (trash) out,' he said Tuesday, according to CNN Philippines. 'We'll declare war against them, we can handle them anyway.'" Just as a reminder, Trump thinks Duterte is tops.
Patrick Wintour at the Guardian: Iran Will Continue to Defy U.S. Oil Sanctions, Says Tehran. "The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has said Tehran will continue to defy U.S. sanctions by finding buyers for its oil and warned that Washington should 'be prepared for the consequences' if it tries to stop it. ...Zarif, seen as the moderate face of Iran and speaking in New York, said Tehran would also keep the Strait of Hormuz open for oil exports. ...'It is in our interest, our vital national security interest, to keep the Persian Gulf open, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.' He added that if the U.S. entered the Strait, they had to 'talk to those who are protecting the Strait of Hormuz, and that is (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).' The IRGC has been designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the Trump administration."
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Staff at BBC News: Europe Wildfires: Norway Police Evacuate Hundreds in Sokndal. "Hundreds of people have had to leave their homes in Norway as emergency services try to extinguish forest fires raging in the south of the country. Some 148 homes were evacuated around the town of Sokndal, where fires have been burning since Tuesday. Police say the fires are still out of control and warn that heavy winds could help them to spread. April is very early for forest fires in Norway, and experts have warned of a dramatic increase across the continent."
Emily Holden at the Guardian: Millions More Americans Breathing Dirty Air as Planet Warms, Study Finds. "Air quality in the U.S. has been improving since the 1970s, but that progress may be backsliding and 43% of Americans are now living in places where they are breathing unsafe air, according to the American Lung Association report. As temperatures rise, wildfires are getting worse and spewing smoke across the west. And more smog, or ozone, is forming on warmer days. For the three hottest years on record, 2015 through 2017, about 141 million people lived in U.S. counties that saw unhealthy levels of particle pollution, either in a single 24-hour period or over a year, or unhealthy levels of smog."
The best part about this tweet is gonna be when Roberts pretends not to have seen it and insists the citizenship question is important to the voting rights act, a law he has bitterly hated since he was in his 20s. https://t.co/LKLoHhIlME
— Adam Serwer🍝 (@AdamSerwer) April 24, 2019
[CN: Environmental racism; classism; food insecurity] Marlene Cimons for Nexus Media at ThinkProgress: Flint's 'Food Apartheid' Is Impeding Recovery from Water Crisis. "Community activists like Bob Brown are trying to create new hope for residents. He is among those in the Flint community working with Laura Schmit Olabisi, an associate professor of community sustainability and environmental science and policy at Michigan State University, to help residents cope with the ongoing health effects of lead poisoning. Her focus is on nutrition, trying to find ways to improve their access to healthy food. When people don't eat enough fruits and vegetables — and fail to consume nutrients like calcium and iron — the impact of heavy metals like lead in the body is exacerbated."
[CN: Rape culture] Edward McKinley at the Kansas City Star: Lobbyist's Crusade to Change Title IX in Missouri Stems from His Son's Expulsion. "After his son was accused and subsequently expelled from Washington University in St. Louis last year through the school's Title IX process, a leading Jefferson City lobbyist launched a campaign to change the law for every campus in the state. Richard McIntosh has argued to legislators that Title IX, the federal law barring sexual discrimination in education and mandating that schools set up internal systems to police sexual violence, is tilted unfairly against the accused." Fucking of course.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Shaker Gourmet
Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
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Our The-Sunday-Other-People-Celebrate-Easter Feast: Ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, roasted potatoes, and rice with broccoli.
Two different kinds of potatoes, because roasted potatoes are Iain's favorite, and mashed potatoes are Deeky's favorite, and everyone gets their favorite kind of potatoes when I'm making dinner!
Primarily Speaking
Welcome to another edition of Primarily Speaking, because presidential primaries now begin fully one million years before the election!
This is a very good article by Will Bunch at the Philly Inquirer about how misogyny is working against Senator Elizabeth Warren, despite the fact that she is "offering the boldest and the most thoughtful policy solutions for the ravages of the 21st Century's flawed capitalism — a wealth tax that would pay for education and other programs, the forgiveness of America's massive college debt load for the middle class, breaking up the Silicon Valley tech monopolies."
I've talked with Democrats — both professionals and rank-and-file neighbor types — and I keep hearing the same things from people who, for the most part, would have swooned over a Warren campaign in the year 2015 B.H. (Before Hillary). That they love her and her ideas but that America would never elect someone like her. A woman who'll turn 70 this June, attractive but unglamorous, with the raspy voice and sometimes didactic syntax of a school marm. A woman whom Trump and his pale-faced mob would endlessly ridicule as "Pocahontas."And this is a very good article by Xorje Olivares at Teen Vogue about the significance of Julián Castro's presidential run:
A woman who can be Hillary-ed.
In other words, a woman.
As someone who grew up on the border, I see Castro as a new kind of politician, one combating perceived bigotry by presenting sharp ideas and moral understanding, going beyond racial and ethnic identity, like supporting universal pre-K, Medicare for All, a renewal of the assault weapons ban, and combatting the effects of climate change. He's no stranger to criticizing Trump's treatment of Latinx people, and sees his vision as the antithesis of the anti-immigrant agenda currently underway.Senator Cory Booker impressed in Milwaukee when he "made a campaign stop Tuesday at Coffee Makes You Black in Milwaukee where he held a roundtable discussion on gun violence. ...The issue is one that anti-violence advocates in Milwaukee are happy to be seeing addressed by a presidential candidate. 'Any time a call for prevention can be amplified on this level I think is critically important,' said Reggie Moore, Director of the Office of Violence Prevention in Milwaukee."
The lifelong Texan, whose grandmother immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico, roused the San Antonio crowd by highlighting the benefits of welcoming immigrant communities to the state, touting his comprehensive "People First" immigration plan, which, among other things, calls for ending immigration detention and classifying undocumented migration as a civil, not criminal, offense.
Castro's passion matches the flame that now serves as the accent mark atop his name on logos and marketing materials that appear at his campaign events. It's about time we talk about and celebrate that accent, which notes the correct Spanish pronunciation of who-lee-AHN.
That small punctuation mark in Castro's name serves as a powerful example of nonwhite visibility, particularly for Latinx people, in a presidential race where the country is now vetting Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and John Hickenlooper, after electing Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Castro referenced the significance of the accent mark last fall, telling The Daily Show's Trevor Noah that it "would be the first time that anybody has run for president with...an accent over a letter." It represents "who you are, and you should run as who you are," he said.
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] During an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand let loose on Jared Kushner for shit-talking the Mueller report: When presented with Kushner's remarks, which he made on Tuesday at the TIME 100 Summit in New York, the senator lit into the president's senior adviser. 'He clearly hasn't read the report himself,' Gillibrand said. 'But what he said is an outrage. For him to make light of a foreign adversary purposely trying to undermine our elections is untenable,' she continued. 'I am gravely concerned that this administration continues to not take this seriously,' the senator said. 'And those statements are highly inappropriate.'" To say the least.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg believes that imprisoned people should not be allowed to vote:
Pete Buttigieg says incarcerated felons should not be allowed to vote#ButtigiegTownHall https://t.co/5pa1b251Io pic.twitter.com/jGMkRX0hQf
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 23, 2019
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Just before we go to the audience, one more question: Senator Sanders earlier this evening said he's in favor of felons being able to vote even while serving their prison terms. He was asked specifically about people like the Boston Marathon bomber, people convicted of sexual assault, rape, and other things, pedophiles. He said the right to vote is inherent to our democracy, yes, even for terrible people. Senator Kamala Harris just said we should have that conversation. She didn't really answer one way or another. What do you think? Should people convicted of sexual assault, the Boston Marathon bomber, should they be able to vote?Yikes. This is a very bad answer, and it is a very bad answer no matter whether you agree or disagree on felons having the right to vote, because Buttigieg's justification for his answer is dependent on the highly faulty premise that everyone who is in jail is definitely guilty. That is not accurate.
BUTTIGIEG: While incarcerated?
COOPER: Yeah.
BUTTIGIEG: No, I don't think so.
[audience applause]
I do believe that when you are out, when you have served your sentence, then part of being restored to society is that you're part of the political life of this nation again. And one of the things that needs to be restored is your right to vote. As you know, some states and communities do it. Some don't. I think we'd be a better country if everybody did it. And frankly, I think the motivations for preventing that kind of re-enfranchisement in some cases have to do with one side of the aisle noticing that they politically benefit from that, and that's got some racial layers, too. So that's one of many reasons that I believe that re-enfranchisement upon release is important. But part of the punishment when you're convicted of a crime and you're incarcerated is you lose certain rights. You lose your freedom. And I think, during that period, it does not make sense to have an exception for the right to vote.
That particular inaccuracy is something we take into consideration when we are discussing the death penalty, and it is something we cannot abandon just because the right to vote isn't regarded as having the same stakes.
It may not on the individual level, but on the systemic level, it surely can be a matter of life and death to disenfranchise millions of people who have the most vested interest in voting for people who support criminal justice and prison reform.
(See also on this subject: Luke Darby at GQ.)
Here is how some of the other candidates, including Senator Bernie Sanders (good answer) and Senator Kamala Harris (not so good answer), responded to the same question.
Harris' answer on another question, however, was pretty stellar: "During a Q&A; portion of an event held at Keene State College in New Hampshire Tuesday, the California senator addressed the issue, when a member of American Civil Liberties Union asked her about the rights of people who don't conform to the traditional idea of male or female genders. Responding to a question by a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, who asked if 'as president, would you recognize a third gender marker on federal IDs?' 'Sure, sure,' Harris said matter-of-factly. 'Absolutely.'"
You're in luck if you're interested in how the 2020 candidates' fundraising is stacking up. I've already seen one headline about how James Comey and his wife gave money to Senator Amy Klobuchar, and I have no idea how that is supposed to work against Klobuchar, but I'm sure I'll find out!
Joe Biden is supposedly going to announce tomorrow now. Okay. I really don't give a fuck. I was not a fan of Biden before he was vice-president, I was not a fan of Biden while he was vice-president, and I'm not a fan of Biden now. The end.
John Hickenlooper is still definitely running for president.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Financial Freedom for Everyone
Earlier this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren published her audacious higher education plan, which includes universal free public college and cancellation of student loan debt. It would change millions of people's lives for the better.
And yet, I have seen so many perplexingly bitter responses from people who have indebted themselves to attend college, rejecting Warren's proposal outright. Their argument is essentially: Why should someone else get for free what I had to pay for?
It's a familiar line of thinking, of course. It's conservatives' central grievance with the social safety net and their gripe with robustly funding government welfare of any sort.
To see self-identified progressives regurgitating this ungenerous, parsimonious rap is truly disappointing.
I will tell you why I think someone else should get for free what I did not: Because it's the right thing to do. Because there is no moral value in having to struggle. Because it does not build character; it just makes life harder and limits opportunities.
Financial freedom is an indescribable gift. Most of us will never have total financial freedom — we will work for a living and have mortgage or rental payments and the need to pay for transportation, whether a car payment or lease or a public transportation card, and so forth. But if we are very lucky, we will spend some time in our lives where we can manage to pay for the things we need, and maybe some extra things that we want, without the relentless stress of worrying from where the next dollar will come.
That is psychological freedom. It is the difference between the feeling of constantly drowning in a sea of anxiety and feeling like you can relax once in awhile, because you are not being haunted by the threat of falling off the edge.
I want to have that. I want every human being to have that. To live precariously is torture.
And even if it merely makes the difference between being comfortable and even more comfortable, fine. I want maximum comfort for everyone, too.
It's possible, so let's do it.
It's possible to give everyone free public college and student debt forgiveness. It's possible to give everyone access to free healthcare. It's possible to give everyone who menstruates free pads and tampons and cups. It's possible to give everyone free childcare. All of these things, and more, are possible.
And I cannot imagine why, just because you didn't have them, you wouldn't want anyone else to have them, too.
Especially because, even if you can't make use of free college and student loan forgiveness now, if we can successfully make that happen, and the value becomes evident, trust that there will be some stuff of which you can make use coming down the road. Like socialized healthcare or a universal basic income.
Support it out of self-interest, if you can't be generous.
And naturally I know that none of this is "free." It is paid for with taxes, and I would happily see my taxes go to send young people to school, instead of sending them to war.
We have decisions to make about our national priorities, and those decisions start with a commitment to generosity. We can't leave the world better than we found it if we are too stingy to allow the next generation to have anything we didn't.
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