Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
Friday Links!
This list o' links brought to you by cashews.
Recommended Reading:
Graham Kates at CBS News: [Content Note: Nativism; child abuse; video may autoplay at link] John Kelly Joins Board of Company Operating Largest Shelter for Unaccompanied Migrant Children
N. Jamiyla Chisholm at Colorlines: A100 List 2019 Celebrates Influential Asian American Pacific Islanders
Ragen Chastain at Dances with Fat: Things That Need to Stop Happening in Fat Fashion
Joel Mowdy at Guernica: [CN: Violence; death] Nugrybauti
Gary Marcus at Nautilus: The Mystery of Human Uniqueness
Carol Off with Andy and Magnus Tait at the CBC: Scottish Brothers Return from Their 'Rude Trip' of U.K. Towns with Naughty Names
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
The Collusion Is Still Right out in the Open
Today, Donald Trump had a phone call with Vladimir Putin, because besties. Obviously, they had A LOT to talk about, and it was definitely all totally normal.
....We discussed Trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, Nuclear Arms Control and even the “Russian Hoax.” Very productive talk!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2019
The collusion has always been right out in the open, and it continues to be so.
Around the House
Here is a thread to discuss whatever home décor or structural or rehab projects we've got going on around the house (or condo or flat or trailer or modular home or tiny house or hobbit hole), or just finished, or want to do soon or someday!
From the small (new faucet) to the big (new addition), here's where to talk about your projects, plans, successes, and disasters, whether you're a DIY master or foreperson overseeing hired experts.
What's happening at your place?
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 834
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: This Is Extremely Bad News and Primarily Speaking.
Here are some more things in the news today...
Eric Beech and David Alexander at Reuters: Trump Says He's Not Inclined to Let Former Counsel McGahn Testify to Congress. "Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not believe he would allow former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to committees in Congress, saying McGahn had already spoken to the special counsel on the Russia probe. ...'I've had him testifying already for 30 hours,' Trump said, referring to McGahn's testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team. Trump said allowing McGahn to testify would open the gates for others to be called."
This is just the President of the United States openly admitting that he is obstructing justice, and no one who objects can do a fucking thing about it, because his party retains the majority in the Senate and is eager to abet his authoritarianism.
House Democrats are doing (mostly) what they can, but they can't really do anything of consequence without Senate support.
Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb at CNN: Nadler Threatens to Hold Barr in Contempt If DOJ Doesn't Comply with New Democratic Offer on Mueller Report. "Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in the special counsel Robert Mueller's report. ...Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply."
Great. Except what's doing to happen when Barr doesn't comply? Nothing. And Barr knows it and Trump knows it and we all know it.
Which is why Democrats should quit faffing around and just go straight to impeachment at this point. Calling for Barr's resignation (for example) is a waste of time. He's not going to resign. Impeach him. Let's go.
In other Barr news... Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: William Barr's Justice Department Just Filed the Most Nakedly Political Brief in the Agency's History. "On Wednesday afternoon, after Attorney General William Barr finished his truculent and mendacious testimony before the Senate, the Department of Justice filed perhaps the most embarrassing, illogical, and nakedly political brief in the history of the agency. With Barr's assent, the DOJ argued that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because Congress zeroed out the individual mandate's penalty in 2017."
I am old enough to remember when Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee brought in outside counsel Rachel Mitchell to question Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings because they were all dudes. That was "pretty pathetic." https://t.co/sV2hohDo2r
— Abigail Tracy (@abigailtracy) May 2, 2019
Paul Waldman at the Washington Post: Trump Is Already Set to Use the Government to Destroy the Democratic Nominee.
The 2020 election is going to be ugly in many different ways. If you thought Donald Trump ran a rancid campaign when he was trying to make it to the White House, just you wait until he's fighting to preserve his power. It has been obvious for some time that [Donald] Trump is planning to promote hatred and division, but one thing we haven't yet focused on is how he will use the resources of the federal government to make sure he wins reelection.Absolutely correct. And of course much of the political press is going to assist Trump in leveraging the power of the U.S. federal government to destroy his opponent(s), under the auspices of "campaign coverage," without clear indication of the role they are playing in undermining the integrity of both U.S. elections and the very U.S. government itself.
...[D]o you think Trump would hesitate for an instant before telling Barr to open an investigation of the Democratic nominee for president? And given everything we've seen from Barr, do you think he’d refuse that order?
Trump may already be preparing to mobilize the federal government's resources to destroy his opponent, whoever that turns out to be. The New York Times has a new piece featuring what is sometimes called an oppo drop: a news story about a politician initiated by a political rival passing damaging information to reporters. It happens all the time, and it's not necessarily illegitimate as journalism, because the information itself may be relevant and the journalist does his or her own investigation to verify what they've been told.
But in this case, the Times acknowledges the story's provenance right in the headline: "Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies."
...[W]hat we have here is the president's lawyer, with the direct involvement of the president himself, pushing a foreign official to open an investigation for the obvious purpose of embarrassing a potential rival, while the president is pushing the Justice Department to act in ways that could harm that rival as well.
That should be a scandal in and of itself. And I can't say this strongly enough: This is only the beginning.
On that note... Matt Gertz and Rob Savillo at Media Matters: Study: Major Media Outlets' Twitter Accounts Amplify False Trump Claims on Average 19 Times a Day. "Major media outlets failed to rebut [Donald] Trump's misinformation 65% of the time in their tweets about his false or misleading comments, according to a Media Matters review. That means the outlets amplified Trump's misinformation more than 400 times over the three-week period of the study — a rate of 19 per day. The data shows that news outlets are still failing to grapple with a major problem that media critics highlighted during the Trump transition: When journalists apply their traditional method of crafting headlines, tweets, and other social media posts to Trump, they end up passively spreading misinformation by uncritically repeating his falsehoods."
* * *
[Content Note: Christian Supremacy] At Rewire.News, Jessica Mason Pieklo has more on the new HHS rule (about which I wrote yesterday): Trump Administration Finalizes Health-Care Discrimination Rule. "Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement, 'Once again, this Administration shows itself to be determined to use religious liberty to harm communities it deems less worthy of equal treatment under the law. This rule threatens to prevent people from accessing critical medical care and may endanger people's lives. Religious liberty is a fundamental right, but it doesn't include the right to discriminate or harm others.'"
[CN: Nativism; death]
"In Hidalgo County, part of the Rio Grande Valley sector, sheriff's officials reported 27 migrant waterway deaths last year, an increase from 13 in 2017. 'We pull out one to two bodies a month from the river,' said Hidalgo County Sheriff J.E. Guerra." https://t.co/ADLu4aWoMS
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 3, 2019
[CN: Nativism]
Immigration lawyer Lily S. Axelrod has an important Twitter thread on an appalling decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals:
1/ The Board of #Immigration Appeals issued a surprise decision in direct contradiction of Supreme Court authority today. An unusual en-banc decision, the vote was 9-6 with a strong dissent: https://t.co/9zZhyxmr3k
— Lily S. Axelrod (@LilySAxelrod) May 1, 2019
[CN: Climate change] Jonathan Watts at the Guardian: Biodiversity Crisis Is About to Put Humanity at Risk.
The world's leading scientists will warn the planet's life-support systems are approaching a danger zone for humanity when they release the results of the most comprehensive study of life on Earth ever undertaken.Grim.
Up to one million species are at risk of annihilation, many within decades, according to a leaked draft of the global assessment report, which has been compiled over three years by the UN's leading research body on nature.
The 1,800-page study will show people living today, as well as wildlife and future generations, are at risk unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of plants, insects, and other creatures on which humanity depends for food, pollination, clean water, and a stable climate.
The final wording of the summary for policymakers is being finalised in Paris by a gathering of experts and government representatives before the launch on Monday, but the overall message is already clear, according to Robert Watson, the chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
"There is no question we are losing biodiversity at a truly unsustainable rate that will affect human wellbeing both for current and future generations," he said. "We are in trouble if we don't act, but there are a range of actions that can be taken to protect nature and meet human goals for health and development."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
What I'm Reading Now
A thread for sharing what we're currently reading: Fiction, nonfiction, novels, short stories, historical fiction, biographies, romance, fanfic, comic books, graphic novels, longform journalism, research papers, stuff for pleasure, stuff for work, whatever.
I'm still working on The Dry, by Jane Harper, as I haven't had the energy for a lot of leisure reading lately. And part of it is that I still don't like it enough to feel inclined to pick it up, but I also don't dislike it enough to set it down. LOL.
What are you reading now?
Primarily Speaking
Welcome to another edition of Primarily Speaking, because presidential primaries now begin fully one million years before the election!
Current Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden thought he would do a little reaching out to Republicans by praising former Vice President Dick Cheney as "a decent man." I wish I were making that up. I am not.
This is inexcusable. Decent men don't start wars of choice that cost half a million people their lives, leave untold people with physical and/or psychological trauma, and displace around 2 million people from their homes. https://t.co/eCFuxtbH4J
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
The limits of @JoeBiden's Old School Politics of glad-handing and telling off-color jokes and complimenting your opponents as "principled men with whom you have good faith disagreements" are showing early and aggressively.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
We're fighting fascism, Joe. Grasp the gravity of that.
Between this and Mayor Pete Buttigieg going on about Mike Pence's integrity and respect for democratic institutions, I don't want to hear another goddamned thing about how terrific Republican leaders are from Democratic presidential candidates.
But I'm guessing we're not even close to hearing the end of it, especially from Biden, who in March called Pence "a decent guy" and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "a good guy."
In a matter of months, Biden has publicly complimented Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Dick Cheney — but has trashed Hillary Clinton in deeply dishonest ways over and over and over and over, and had some shit to say about her supporters, too.
I have a problem with that.
* * *
Now that Senator Bernie Sanders is a frontrunner, he's finally getting vetted. I bet he doesn't like that at all!
At the Washington Post, Michael Kranish takes a look "Inside Bernie Sanders's 1988 10-Day 'Honeymoon' in the Soviet Union." And it's quite a straightforward and gentle accounting of Sanders' visits to the Soviet Union and Cuba, levying no judgment on Sanders, but the facts themselves are damning.
These are the final two paragraphs, so most people will never make it that far, but yikes:
"Under Castro, enormous progress has been made in improving the lives of poor people," Sanders said before leaving, while noting "enormous deficiencies" in democratic rights. While he failed in his goal to meet Fidel Castro, he returned home with even greater praise than he had for the Soviet Union.Just shocking.
"I did not see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people," Sanders told the Burlington Free Press. While Cuba was "not a perfect society," he said the country "not only has free health care but very high-quality health care. ...The revolution there is far deeper and more profound than I understood it to be. It really is a revolution in terms of values."
(More than a million Cubans fled for the United States following the revolution, and not because the country was merely "imperfect.")
And I want to underline, especially for younger readers who may not grasp the global politics of that era, that Sanders, as the mayor of a small town in Vermont, was not a U.S. statesman making a state trip, and, however he may spin it or what his intentions were, the only reason government officials of Russia or Cuba would agree to meet with Sanders at that time was because he was an American stooge in their propaganda campaigns.
Given that Sanders still refuses to be accountable regarding his own campaign boost from Russians in the 2016 election, I have real concerns about his willingness and/or indifference to be used as a prop by foreign adversaries. Or worse.
In other news, Senator Cory Booker takes absolutely the right position here, which also indirectly throws some shade Sanders' way:
Our government should never force toxic waste on local communities. Supporting @SenCortezMasto and @SenJackyRosen’s bill to give communities a voice on important decisions happening in their backyards.https://t.co/05fZw4nuZN
— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) May 2, 2019
In the final section of Part 4 of her Looking for Bernie series, Aphra_Behn detailed Sanders appalling support of "the Texas-Vermont-Maine Compact, a bill that would allow the latter two states to dump their nuclear waste at a site near Sierra Blanca, a small, impoverished, hispanophone community in Texas." I encourage you to read it.
[CN: Video may autoplay at links] After Senator Kamala Harris showed off her prosecutors' chops while grilling Attorney General Bill Barr, Donald Trump said she was "probably very nasty," to which Harris responded by saying: "His primary interest has been to obstruct justice. My primary interest is to pursue justice. You can call that whatever name you want, but I think that's what the American people want in a leader. TELL HIM.
My favorite (cough) new genre of articles about Senator Elizabeth Warren is: "She has so many policies, but why doesn't anyone like her?" (Asks the same press that barely gives her any coverage, while slobbering all over a small-town mayor with zero policy proposals.) Today's entry, care of Grace Segers at CBS: Elizabeth Warren Bets Big on Policy to Break Through Crowded Democratic Field.
Warren has taken a clear stand on just about every major political issue facing the country, and even some more esoteric ones, while many of her opponents eschew policy minutiae. She has a vision. She has an agenda.That is followed by a lot of words about Warren facing misogyny, how her policies are detail-dense, electability, etc., but here's the thing: I guarantee if the press steadily delivered fawning coverage of Warren accompanied by photos taken by iconic fashion photographers, in which we heard all about her idiosyncratic talents peppered in between languid descriptions of the precise color of her eyes, she'd be "breaking through" in a big way, too.
And despite being the first major candidate to enter the race last December, she's lagging in the polls.
Instead, if we even get to hear about, say, her adorable dog, it's accompanied with a goddamn subhead about how she "has turned to Bailey the golden retriever to help humanize her." FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
Speaking of candidates getting shit treatment from the political press, I've now twice had occasion to post in comments this observation about Julián Castro, so I'm going to go ahead and publish it here on the main page, too:
He should be a leading contender.[CN: Ableist slur; homophobia] During an interview with the vile Laura Ingraham, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick used an ableist slur against Beto O'Rourke and implied that he is gay:
He's everything that the media claims to pay attention to when they try to justify ignoring certain candidates: He's experienced, he's competent, he's interesting, he's media savvy, he's terrific on TV, he's young, and he's even handsome (not that that should matter, but it does and he is — I mean, did you see the photo accompanying that New Yorker interview?!), which basically makes him the whole package, according to the press' own definition. He's also a dude.
The one thing that he isn't is white.
And, given all his other qualities, it's tough not to conclude that that's the only one which really matters, in the end.
Patrick, a Republican, had a long list of complaints about O'Rourke, a fellow Texan and former congressman. His gripes ranged from O'Rourke's describing immigration as "modern-day bondage" to his support for reparations for the descendants of slaves.That is not what "light in the loafers" means. That's not what it has ever meant. Fuck Dan Patrick and his dogwhistling and his gaslighting.
"What a moron," Patrick said of O'Rourke.
"Whatever happened to this guy?" Ingraham asked. "Wasn't he a little more reasonable not so long ago?"
Patrick responded, "He is so light in the loafers he floats off the ground at times."
Later in the program, Ingraham asked Patrick to clarify his use of the phrase and whether he intended it as a "pejorative."
"No, no, no! What I meant, to me, you know, he flaps his arms a lot," Patrick, a long-time conservative radio host, responded. "He's just a lightweight."
John Hickenlooper is still definitely running for president.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Hubble Lets Us Gaze at the Distant Universe
What you are seeing in that image is "a mosaic of the distant Universe, called the Hubble Legacy Field, that documents 16 years of observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image contains 200,000 galaxies that stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the Big Bang."
The composite image was "created from nearly 7,500 individual exposures" and "comprises the collective work of 31 Hubble programs by different teams of astronomers."
Absolutely stunning.
At CNET, Amanda Kooser writes: "The image is a wonder to behold, but it's more than just a looker. ...The Hubble Legacy Field image demands time and thought. It may look like specks on a dark canvas at first, but it's really the story of our universe and our very existence. It's also a reminder that the cosmos is a place of wonder and that Hubble can be our guide across both time and space."
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker YankeeTransferred: "What are you most proud of in yourself?"
That I love hard, with my whole heart.
Your Best Photograph
If you're a photographer, even if a very amateur one (like myself), and you've got a photo or photos you'd like to share, here's your thread for that!
It doesn't really have to be your best photograph — just one you like!
Please be sure if your photo contains people other than yourself, that you have the explicit consent of the people in the photos before posting them.
* * *
I haven't taken any especially interesting photos lately, so here, with a nod to Throwback Thursdays, is a photo I took of the full arc of a rainbow after a storm in May 2018:
This Is Extremely Bad News
[Content Note: Christian Supremacy.]
The Trump Regime issued a new rule today giving health care workers — and entire hospitals — the right to refuse to provide any healthcare services to which they have "a religious or conscientious objection."
Alison Kodjak at NPR reports:
The rule, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, is designed to protect the religious rights of health care providers and religious institutions.Yeah, people who expect healthcare providers to provide healthcare are the bullies. Sure.
..."This rule ensures that healthcare entities and professionals won't be bullied out of the health care field because they decline to participate in actions that violate their conscience, including the taking of human life," OCR Director Roger Severino said in a written statement.
And let us all take a moment to appreciate the bitter irony of these shitwheels wringing their hands over being forced to "take human life" when the whole point of this trash is to allow them to legally refuse to provide life-saving healthcare to anyone whose choices or needs they find distasteful.
As part of that change in focus, HHS in the last week also changed the Office for Civil Rights' mission statement to highlight its focus on protecting religious freedom.One thing that must be understood here is that these laws will absolutely not be equally applied. They will not protect anyone from a minority religion who claims a religious objection — unless, perhaps, that objections happens to align with the toxic bigotries (e.g. reproductive coercion or queer hatred) of the conservative evangelical Christians this law is designed to empower.
Until last week, the website said the office's mission was to "improve the health and well-being of people across the nation" and to ensure people have equal access to health care services provided by HHS. But the new statement repositions the OCR as a law enforcement agency that enforces civil rights laws, and conscience and religious freedom laws, and "protects that exercise of religious beliefs and moral convictions by individuals and institutions."
..."This rule allows anyone from a doctor to a receptionist to entities like hospitals and pharmacies to deny a patient critical — and sometimes lifesaving — care," said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, in a statement.
I'll reiterate what I wrote when this rule was first proposed by the Trump Regime more than a year ago: This was a constant fight during the Bush administration. (One against then-Senator Hillary Clinton fought vehemently. Cough.) And no matter how sophisticated the language — Republicans have since largely abandoned the term "conscience clause" and have significantly toned down the religious rhetoric on this subject — it's still a garbage position that privileges a very specific brand of conservative Christianity in direct violation of the mandate to "do no harm."
For more than a decade, healthcare providers who subscribe to the particular iteration of Christianity that gives them religious cover for their existing bigotries, have insisted that not being able to refuse to provide care to certain patients — abortion-seeking women, transgender people, gay/bi people — leaves them with "no choice," complaining that "the secular world increasingly demanding they capitulate to doing procedures, prescribing pills, or performing tasks that they find morally reprehensible."
(And what they find "morally reprehensible" will ever expand to include people of whose "lifestyle choices" they don't approve: Fat patients, addicts, alcoholics, smokers, people with chronic pain they decide are "pill-seeking.")
Only in an environment where "freedom of religion" is deliberately misconstrued to mean "the right of a single strand of conservative Christianity to not have to follow the rules everyone else does" could an expectation to provide legal healthcare services constitute religious discrimination. Only in this atmosphere could not being able to pick and choose which patients you want to serve, thusly redefining your entire profession on your own terms, be considered tantamount to having no choice at all.
Here's your choice: Do what you were hired to do or get another fucking job.
(Note: If a huge — and ever-increasing — number of our hospitals weren't run by the Catholic Church, we might have healthcare services that make the people they hire commit to performing every procedure.)
This culture of victimhood among conservative Christians is ridiculous in the extreme. It is predicated on the flawed assertions that their version of Christianity is the only version, and that it is the exclusive source from which morality can be derived.
The morality of all other Christians, all people of other religions, and all irreligious people must be diligently ignored — particularly those traditions in which there is an obligation to provide care to all people.
If those equally valid beliefs were not erased from all public conversation, the barking dipshits who equate oppression with a requirement of compliance with one's basic job description might have to face the reality that there's not some insidious siege upon religious freedom, but instead just a minority group whose religious beliefs make them intrinsically unfit to hold positions as healthcare providers.
They want to have their cake (opposition to certain healthcare procedures) and eat it, too (be healthcare providers free to decline patients of their choosing). But it just doesn't work that way.
A marketing exec for Phillip Morris who's lost a parent to lung cancer and decides that hawking smokes is "morally reprehensible" doesn't get paid to sit in her office doing nothing. She finds a way to navigate doing a job that she finds objectionable but provides a living, or she finds another job.
If you sign up to be a healthcare provider, you bloody well provide healthcare.
It's no one else's responsibility to indulge your conscience — especially not a patient whose very life might depend on your fulfilling the functions you were hired to do.
The vile irony of this trash is that asking for on-the-job exemptions from primary duties based on religious beliefs is nothing less than the "special rights" conservatives are incessantly accusing the LGBTQ community, women, and other marginalized populations of seeking.
But we just want baseline equality. Christians who want to use their interpretation of the Bible to rewrite their job descriptions want an inequality that caters to their personal whims.
It's bad enough when it's some asshole who doesn't want to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples or bake a cake for their wedding, but "conscience clauses" in the field of medicine, where lives depend on people who don't hesitate, who put patients' needs before their own desires, such a willful dereliction of duty is thoroughly contemptible.
It is immoral. It will be deadly.
Discussion Thread: Good Things
One of the ways we resist the demoralization and despair in which exploiters of fear like Trump thrive is to keep talking about the good things in our lives.
Because, even though it feels very much (and rightly so) like we are losing so many things we value, there are still daily moments of joy or achievement or love or empowering ferocity or other kinds of fulfillment.
Maybe you've experienced something big worth celebrating; maybe you've just had a precious moment of contentment; maybe getting out of bed this morning was a success worthy of mention.
News items worth celebrating are also welcome.
So, whatever you have to share that's good, here's a place to do it.
* * *
Dudley had a great follow-up with the vet after his dental surgery, and he's all clear to resume his normal ration of treats, about which he is very happy, which makes me happy!
And Zelda had a good appointment with the vet, too, and was an extremely good girl while he clipped her nails because he's got some kind of MAGIC that convinces her to let him do it and literally nobody else, including me, even after countless hours of desensitivity work, but I don't even care as long as those talons get trimmed, which also makes me happy!
My oldest friend, who has also lost three of his cats in the last few years, just rescued an all-black cat who is a very handsome, very shy boy — and doesn't even know yet that he just hit the cat jackpot!
This video of Taylor Swift meeting and adopting her new kitten is the best!
And SQUISHY SEAL!
Squishy seal pic.twitter.com/Z7lYFhEy29
— The Cute Plug (@TheCutePlug) April 20, 2019
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 833
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: We Have Become Inured to the Unfathomable and On Bill Barr's Senate Judiciary Committee Testimony and Primarily Speaking and Another Migrant Child Dies in Custody and Trump Wants Funding to Expand Detention Camps.
Here are some more things in the news today...
So, Attorney General Bill Barr did not turn up to the House Judiciary Committee hearing today, because he has as much contempt for the rule of law as his deplorable boss, and Rep. Steve Cohen pulled a ridiculous stunt, bringing a bucket of fried chicken to the hearing and eating it in front of the empty chair where Barr should have been, then holding a chicken figurine while giving a press conference and calling Barr "Chicken Barr."
First of all, Barr did not fail to show up because he's afraid. To the absolute contrary, he failed to show up because the Republican Party has consolidated power so thoroughly that a Democratic House majority no longer matters, and the Trump Regime will take every opportunity to show that.
Secondly:
It's already well established that I am the Most Humorless Feminist in All of Nofunnington, so let me go ahead and point out that stunts like this and language like "Chicken Barr" are firmly in Donald Trump's wheelhouse, and even if Dems *could* out-bully him, they *shouldn't*. https://t.co/2o9PePa72G
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
And let me just be really clear about how abuse dynamics work: When you're dealing with an abuser, you can't "fight fire with fire." All you can do is replicate the abuser's mechanisms of abuse, and that doesn't weaken them. It empowers them.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
That is not an argument against being strong. It's not even an argument against being aggressive, which fighting fascism absolutely calls for. It's an argument against legitimizing and normalizing Trump's tactics by replicating them. BE SMARTER THAN DONALD TRUMP, Democrats.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
For fuck's sake.
* * *
Kenneth P. Vogel and Iuliia Mendel at the New York Times: Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies. "The broad outlines of how the Bidens' roles intersected in Ukraine have been known for some time. The former vice president's campaign said that he had always acted to carry out United States policy without regard to any activities of his son, that he had never discussed the matter with Hunter Biden and that he learned of his son's role with the Ukrainian energy company from news reports. But new details about Hunter Biden's involvement, and a decision this year by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and reopen an investigation into Burisma, have pushed the issue back into the spotlight just as the senior Mr. Biden is beginning his 2020 presidential campaign."
The Trump campaign is going to milk this for all it's worth. And, to be clear, there is a valid question about potential conflicts of interest here. But trust that the Trump campaign doesn't care about that even a little. Their only interest is in how it can be used to hurt Joe Biden, legitimately or not.
So I'm linking the story as a heads-up, because the Trump campaign will not drop it, but also to direct your attention to the following passage, highlighted by Brian Beutler with the observation: "Many paragraphs in we learn one reason why the cat got Bill Barr's tongue when Kamala Harris put him on the spot about politically motivated investigations."
Mr. Giuliani has discussed the Burisma investigation, and its intersection with the Bidens, with the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general and the current prosecutor. He met with the current prosecutor multiple times in New York this year. The current prosecutor general later told associates that, during one of the meetings, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump excitedly to brief him on his findings, according to people familiar with the conversations.That would be why Barr acted like he didn't even understand the definition of the word "suggest" when Harris asked him if Trump or anyone else at the White House had ever asked or suggested that he open an investigation into anyone — because Trump asked him to open an investigation on Biden.
Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on any such phone call with Mr. Trump, but acknowledged that he has discussed the matter with the president on multiple occasions. Mr. Trump, in turn, recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors — echoing repeated calls from Mr. Giuliani for the Justice Department to investigate the Bidens' Ukrainian work and other connections between Ukraine and the United States.
Of whom Trump is not afraid, despite the widely-held assumption in the political press that Trump's obsessive tweeting about Biden indicates fear of facing him. The fuck it does. Trump wants to face Biden because he knows Biden is the most ethically compromised of all the Democratic contenders. Among other reasons. Like the odds that Biden will take a big roundhouse swing at Trump and end up hitting himself in the face instead.
* * *
Julia Harte at Reuters: Foreign Government Leases at Trump World Tower Stir More Emoluments Concerns. "The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York's Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause. ...The rental transactions, dating from the early months of Trump's presidency and first revealed by Reuters, could add to mounting scrutiny of his business dealings with foreign governments, which are now the subject of multiple lawsuits. Congressional staffers confirmed to Reuters that the Trump World Tower lease requests were never submitted to Congress."
The Trump admin just filed a brief trying to dismantle the ENTIRE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 2, 2019
-130 million people w/pre-existing conditions could lose coverage
-13 mill people covered by Medicaid could lose coverage
-2.3 mill young adults could lose coverage
We can’t stand for this.
Jon Swaine at the Guardian: Stephen Moore: Trump's Fed Pick Underpaid Ex-Wife's Alimony for Years. "Stephen Moore, Donald Trump's embattled pick for the Federal Reserve board of governors, has underpaid his ex-wife's alimony bills for years, leaving her out of pocket by tens of thousands of dollars. ...The underpayment persisted even after Moore was found in contempt of court in Virginia in 2012, and came close to having his home seized, after he failed to pay Allison Moore more than $300,000 he owed her at the time. A spokeswoman for Moore said he declined to comment." I'll bet he did.
[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse] Jacob Soboroff at NBC News: Emails Show Trump Admin Had 'No Way to Link' Separated Migrant Children to Parents. "On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a 'central database,' an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. ...In the absence of an effective database, the emails show, officials then began scrambling to fill out a simple spreadsheet with data in hopes of reuniting as many as families as they could." Holy hell.
Matthew S. Schwartz at NPR: ACLU: Border Agents Violate Constitution When They Search Electronic Devices.
The ACLU, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the federal government in 2017, alleging that its "warrantless and suspicionless searches" of electronic devices at the U.S. ports of entry violated the First and Fourth amendments. Lawyers now say that, through depositions of border agents, they have learned that the scope of the warrantless searches has expanded far beyond the mere enforcement of immigration and customs laws.This is so bad. And if the government is allowed to get away with it, we can be certain that such encroaches on people's privacy will not be limited to the borders.
Border officers have the authority to search belongings for contraband, or to determine who is admissible into the U.S., the ACLU said. But agents now "claim authority to search travelers' devices for general law enforcement purposes, such as looking for potential evidence of illegal activity beyond violations of immigration and customs laws," plaintiffs wrote.
"That claimed authority extends to enforcing 'hundreds' of federal laws, including tax, bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws. Defendants' asserted purposes for conducting warrantless or suspicionless device searches also include intelligence gathering or advancing pre-existing investigations."
[CN: Islamophobia; abuse] In a chilling view of what that future might look like... Rosie Perper at Business Insider: Chinese Authorities Are Reportedly Using an App to Monitor Muslims in Xinjiang and See If They Match 36 'Person Types' Deemed as Dangerous. "Researchers at Human Rights Watch said they obtained a copy last year of a mass surveillance app used by police in Xinjiang, which is home to an estimated 13 million Uighur Muslims as well as a other Muslim minority groups that are subjected to unprecedented surveillance measures. ...According to the report, the app compiles data about Xinjiang inhabitants, including their blood type, height, and information about their electricity use, and warns government officials and police officers when it detects a suspicious person."
[CN: Extreme weather; video may autoplay at link] Swati Gupta and Helen Regan at CNN: 100 Million People in Path of India's Worst Cyclone in Five Years. "What is expected to be India's strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in nearly five years is barreling toward 100 million people on the east coast, prompting officials to begin emergency evacuations. ...As Fani was classified as an 'extremely severe cyclonic storm' in India, the country's Coast Guard and Navy deployed ships and helicopters for relief and rescue operations. Army and Air Force units have also been put on standby in Odisha, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh states."
[CN: Sexual violence] Tom Vanden Brook at USA Today: Military Sexual Assaults Rise by Almost 38%; Alcohol Involved in Nearly Two out of Three.
Sexual assaults in the military rose nearly 38% from 2016 to 2018, according to survey results obtained by USA TODAY.One might imagine that the increase is attributable to higher incidents of reporting, but that is, unfortunately, not the case: "The rate of reporting sexual assault to authorities declined, a trend that might point to less confidence among troops." Additionally, the increase is only in female victimization: "For women, assaults involving groping and crimes involving penetration both increased, Galbreath said. The type of assaults for men stayed relatively stable."
That spike in crime within the ranks comes after years of focused effort and resources to eradicate it.
The report, due to be released Thursday by the Pentagon, surveyed Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine personnel in 2018. Based on the survey, there were an estimated 20,500 instances of unwanted sexual contact — an increase over the 14,900 estimated in the last biennial survey in 2016. Unwanted sexual contact ranges from groping to rape.
Enlisted female troops ages 17 to 24 were at the highest risk of being assaulted, said Nathan Galbreath, deputy director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.
...More than 85% of victims knew their assailant. Alcohol was involved in 62% of the total assaults.
...The latest report on sexual assaults requires Congress to intervene, said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Armed Services Committee's personnel panel.
"The department must accept that current programs are simply not working," Speier said. "Congress must lead the way in forcing the department to take more aggressive approaches to fighting this scourge.”
It is possible that official reporting has declined, while anonymous reporting in a survey has increased. But it's tragic that the best-case scenario is that it's the same number of assaults with dwindling hopes for justice.
My guess is that it's not a coincidence that this time period overlaps precisely with the time period that a confessed serial sex abuser has been serving as commander-in-chief.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Another Migrant Child Dies in Custody and Trump Wants Funding to Expand Detention Camps
[Content Note: Nativism; death; child abuse.]
Following the deaths of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal and 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez in December while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a third child has now died while in CBP custody.
And officials' story about the fate of the 16-year-old boy, whose name they have not yet released, sounds very familiar:
[O]n April 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials brought the boy to an ORR shelter.In every case of a child dying in custody, there is a health check in which the child is given minimal treatment and released, only to die within days.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection clinicians did not notice any health concerns and the boy himself did not mention any when brought to the shelter, said Evelyn Stauffer, a Health and Human Services spokesperson. The next morning, however, the boy became "noticeably ill," including having a fever, chills, and a headache, she added.
Workers at the shelter brought the boy to a hospital that morning on April 21, where he was treated and released that day and brought back to the shelter, Stauffer said.
"The minor's health did not improve after being transferred back to the shelter so on the morning of April 22, 2019, the minor was taken to another hospital emergency department via ambulance," she said. "Later that day, the minor was transferred to a children's hospital in Texas and was treated for several days in the hospital's intensive care unit. Following several days of intensive care, the minor passed away at the hospital on April 30, 2019."
The cause of death has yet to be determined as the ORR investigates the case.
And I want to stress that this is the third child that we know of. I desperately hope there are not more dead children whose lives ended while in U.S. custody, and I fear that there are. Unfortunately, we have no reason to trust CBP and every reason not to trust their official stories, which curiously change upon scrutiny.
Meanwhile, as eyes were focused on the Barr hearing yesterday, Donald Trump requested $4.5 billion in emergency border aid from Congress, including "$1.1 billion for border operations like detention beds. The administration's request includes money for an additional 23,600 beds."
Twenty-three thousand more beds. Under the auspices of "humanitarian aid."
Trump has created a humanitarian crisis at the border and now he wants to build concentration camps to "fix" it.
I can't even find the words to describe how incandescently angry, how grief-stricken, how full of white-hot blinding rage I am. This is wrong. This is indecent. This is cruel.
Donald Trump must be removed from office. Urgently. Children are dying because of his relentless malice.
Primarily Speaking
Welcome to another edition of Primarily Speaking, because presidential primaries now begin fully one million years before the election!
Let's start today with someone who isn't running for president, and yet continues to show us why she is the best leader we'll never have:
Once again, @HillaryClinton is the most prominent person to urgently highlight the threats to our democracy: Indeed, the 2002 election could become a proxy battle between foreign interlopers. We should try listening to her this time. https://t.co/kmfRp7jRoH
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
While everyone else is busily pretending that we're just going to have a normal election — despite the evidence that our elections will be neither free nor fair, owing to some combination of foreign interference, bigotry wielded against marginalized candidates, Republican voter suppression efforts, inaccessibility of voting, gerrymandering, hacking, social media manipulation, vanity candidates and their catastrophic egos, purity leftists, wannabe spoilers, obvious Kremlin agents, bots, trolls, ratfuckers, and everything else that conspires to undermine our democracy — Hillary Clinton is out here warning us that, if we don't get our shit together, our election could become a proxy war for foreign interlopers.
And yet again, we will fail to heed her warning. To our own peril.
On that note, let me say once more that I have real complicated feelings about this series, because I am constitutionally averse to pretending like everything is fine when it isn't. And sometimes it feels like this series implicitly suggests we're going to have a normal election, even though I don't believe that. But I don't know how to proceed except with the desperate hope that something seismic will happen and meaningful changes are made swiftly to ensure a legitimate election.
I expect more, and prepare myself for the worst.
* * *
On this #InternationalWorkersDay, let us recommit to fighting for an economy that puts people first. That means supporting unions, fighting for fair wages, protecting immigrants, and working to undo the damage of ‘right to work’ laws and the Supreme Court’s Janus decision. https://t.co/syfBRjo6yY
— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) May 2, 2019
I love seeing Julián Castro connecting immigration policy to workers' rights. This is why I want him on that debate stage. To that end, he's getting very close to meeting the individual donor threshold, if you have money to donate and want to help him get there.
Likewise, Senator Cory Booker is close to meeting that goal. I just threw a few bucks his way. I am giving a little to each candidate whom I want to see on that stage.
I continue to be a fan of Senator Elizabeth Warren's straight-talking Twitter game:
Hate has no place in our country. The threat of white nationalism is real. And when I'm president, the Justice Department will prosecute domestic terrorists to the full extent of the law.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) May 2, 2019
Senator Amy Klobuchar is no Elizabeth Warren in that department, but she's no slouch, either:
People are dying. Pharmaceutical companies need to be held accountable and bring down prices before more lives are lost. https://t.co/EH1DvlJVH5
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) May 2, 2019
A lot of the candidates are taking to cable news and social media to argue that Attorney General Bill Barr must be impeached, if he doesn't resign. See, as but one example, Senator Kamala Harris:
There's no question: Attorney General Barr has intentionally misled Congress and the American people about the contents of the Mueller report. pic.twitter.com/4MpB2foJqD
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) May 2, 2019
Attorney General Barr lacks all credibility and has compromised the American public's ability to believe that he is a protector of justice.
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) May 2, 2019
He must resign immediately.
He definitely won't resign immediately, so let's get those impeachment proceedings rolling, Speaker Pelosi! Especially since Barr didn't bother to show up to the House Judiciary Committee hearing today.
* * *
Joe Biden, who naturally is going to run a foreign policy driven campaign (because that's kind of his thing), took a strong position (and the right one) on the United States' support of Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen: "'Vice President Biden believes it is past time to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen and cancel the blank check the Trump administration has given Saudi Arabia for its conduct of that war,' Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told me. 'He urges Congress to override [Donald] Trump's veto.'"
In other Biden news...
All I can see is an annoyed woman with a hand on her hip. https://t.co/wAJxtlvg92
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 2, 2019
Maybe that's projection. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, dear: This is not a good headline for Beto O'Rourke: "Beto O'Rourke Blew It." And the subhead is even harsher: "Reacting to losing to Ted Cruz by running for president is like failing to land a role in a community theater production and deciding to take your talents to Broadway." Ouch! (But where's the lie?)
Um, Vogue — what are you even doing?
Calling anyone in this race a “policy wonk” who’s name is not Elizabeth Warren is...I don’t have the words for it
— blackness everdeen 🍋 (@traceyecorder) May 1, 2019
(and Mayor Pete does not have the range) pic.twitter.com/iSOwNanicJ
Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg spent the day yesterday clarifying his position on vaccinations, which is about as softball a policy question as a presidential candidate is going to get.
If he can't knock a question about vaccines out of the park, he's going to struggle. He sure ain't a "policy wonk," folks.
A number of prominent people have already announced support for Buttigieg and arranged to throw big fundraisers for him, and I suspect they are going to be very embarrassed by that in short order, if they're not already.
Turns out, it pays to see if a candidate knows a single thing about anything that matters before going all in for him. WHO KNEW!
John Hickenlooper is still definitely running for president.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
On Bill Barr's Senate Judiciary Committee Testimony
Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Mueller report, and it was something. (As I mentioned, Aaron Rupar has an extensive Twitter thread with video, if you want to watch the highs and lows.) Barr's performance was so egregiously awful that multiple Democratic senators called for his resignation.
After questioning William Barr @senkamalaharris: "This Attorney General lacks all credibility and has I think compromised the American public's ability to believe that he is a purveyor of justice."
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 1, 2019
Q: "Should he resign?"
Harris: "Yes." pic.twitter.com/hh8rBVHBjj
[Senator Kamala Harris stops to talk to reporters and laughs about how they're waiting for her, before agreeing to quickly answer some questions]Harris is referring to the exchange in which she straightforwardly asked Barr if he reviewed all the evidence before deciding to clear Trump of possible obstruction of justice charges and he admits that he did not.
Female reporter, offscreen: You finally got [Barr] to sort of narrow down— Quick question on exactly what you wanted to hear: Do you feel like there's a huge conflict of interest now for him moving forward in any sort of capacity?
Harris: I do, I do believe that. And I believe that what was, I mean, absolutely enlightening and should be deeply troubling to the entire American public is that he made a decision and didn't review the evidence! No prosecutor worth her salt would make a decision about whether the President of the United States was involved of an obstruction of justice without reviewing the evidence. This Attorney General lacks all credibility and has, I think, compromised the American public's ability to believe that he is a purveyor of justice.
Male reporter, offscreen: Should he resign.
Harris: Yes. [walks away]
Barr also admitted, under questioning from Senator Dick Durbin, "that he had already been working on decision saying Trump did not commit obstruction — before receiving the Mueller report or having anyone look at it."
Barr was, in sum, a total disgrace, managing to undercut even my rock bottom expectations.
But all of the Democratic Senators running for president who are on the committee — Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker — did an outstanding job nailing Barr's ass to the wall.
Harris and Klobuchar were particularly great, which is the value of having prosecutors on your senate committee. (And, as Joy Reid noted, they were both demonstrating "what having a prosecutor on stage debating Trump would look like.")
Here is Klobuchar, backing Barr into a corner where he is unable to answer the simplest question about whether Donald Trump's actions, as detailed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, meet the Constitutional requirement that the president uphold the law:
Klobuchar asks if "the president's actions as detailed in the report are consistent with his oath of office." Barr responds with a verbal shrug. pic.twitter.com/m3wmu3Hry3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2019
Barr: ...as have other officeholders.In other words, the answer is no. Donald Trump's actions have not been consistent with his oath of office. We didn't need the Attorney General to confirm that, but there it is.
Klobuchar: Okay, last question: Are the president's actions detailed in this report consistent with his oath of office and the requirement in the Constitution that he take care that the laws be faithfully executed?
Barr: Is what consistent with that?
Klobuchar: I said: Are the president's actions detailed in the report consistent with his oath of office and the requirement in the Constitution that he take care that the laws be faithfully executed?
Barr: Uh, well, the, the evidence in, in the report is conflicting and, and there's different evidence, and they, they don't, they don't come to a determination as to, uh, how they're coming down on it.
Klobuchar: And so you made that decision.
Barr: Yes. And, and as, as, yeah, if it's, if—
Lindsey Graham: All right, we got two minutes left.
Klobuchar: Okay.
Perhaps because nothing about this shitshow has the ability to surprise me anymore, the thought that I couldn't shake watching the proceedings was this:
Evidently there is literally *no one* before whom Barr doesn't want to embarrass himself by looking like a goddamn ethics-free fuckclown, not a single person in his personal or professional life who will judge him negatively for this performance, as equally asinine as traitorous.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 1, 2019
I just cannot imagine behaving the way the Attorney General of the United States is behaving, not only because of my own principles, but because I would piss off and alienate literally every single person in my life about whom I care, because they are principled patriots, too.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 1, 2019
The problem is not just that Trump himself is surrounded by unethical, sadistic, civically disloyal sycophants who abet his behavior, but that each of them is surrounded by their own gang of unethical, sadistic, civically disloyal sycophants who abet their behavior in turn.
It's a toxic bubble which decency cannot penetrate. And it's going to consign us all to a terrible fate, unless we can find a way to pop it. Fast.
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