Slow down there, Bunky

Jun 1st, 2020 12:07 pm | By

Trudeau says no you’re not.

Canada does not support Russia’s return to the Group of Seven, proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump over the weekend, because Moscow continues to flout international law, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday.

“Russia was excluded from the G7 after it invaded Crimea a number of years ago, and its continued disrespect and flaunting of international rules and norms is why it remains outside of the G7, and it will continue to remain out,” Trudeau said during his daily news conference.

[He means flouting. Reuters silently corrected him in its lede.]

Trump said on Saturday he would postpone a Group of Seven summit he had hoped to hold next month until at least September and expand the list of invitees to include Australia, Russia, South Korea and India.

Note the arrogance. He can’t just unilaterally “expand” the G7. He can throw a whole new party of his own, and other countries can say no or yes, but he can’t expand the existing group on his own idiotic say-so.

Trump spoke to Putin on Monday and informed him about his plans to hold an expanded G7 meeting later this year, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Then he called the governors to tell them to kill citizens.

Russia was expelled from what was then the G8 in 2014 when Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was U.S. president, after Moscow annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine. Russia still holds the territory, and various G7 governments have rebuffed previous calls from Trump to re-admit Moscow.

So now he’s trying to do it by fiat, but he can’t.



This was anticipated

Jun 1st, 2020 11:47 am | By

No problem, no problem, we planned for this, it’s all part of the plan, not a problem.

About 15 cadets from the US Military Academy Class of 2020 who were brought back for graduation where President Donald Trump is scheduled to give the commencement address have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a US Army spokesperson.

That is, they were brought back because Trump demanded to give the commencement address so the class had to be brought back to satisfy the needs of his ravenous ego. If Trump hadn’t done an I wanna the class would not have returned to West Point to graduate.

“The Army and West Point have done meticulous planning to ensure the health and safety of the returning cadets of the U.S. Military Academy’s Class of 2020. There is mandatory screening for all and we’ve had a small number — about 1 ½ percent — test positive,” the spokesperson said. “This was anticipated. None were symptomatic, and no cadet has contracted through person-to-person contact while under the Army’s care. Those who test positive are isolated, and receive appropriate care and attention, while we continue an orderly reintegration of our cadets.”

It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine we planned for it it’s fine.

In April, the President announced he was going to address West Point’s commencement ceremony taking place June 13. His decision to do so has been criticized for putting cadets’ health at risk. West Point said in a statement in late April the graduation procession “will look different from recent graduation ceremonies due to current force health protection requirements” related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump didn’t have to announce that, he just did it because he wanted the spotlight.

West Point’s campus is in New York state, which has been the state hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic so far. Cadets had been away from campus since early March.

But Trump’s ravenous ego must be fed.



“You have to dominate”

Jun 1st, 2020 9:18 am | By

The Times has more on Trump’s rage-fit at the governors:

Speaking on a private conference call, audio of which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Trump began the conversation with an extended, angry diatribe.

“You have to dominate,” he told governors on the call. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time — they’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

The president continued: “You have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go jail for long periods of time.”

Mr. Trump, who has not addressed the nation since the unrest began, said he was putting Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “in charge,” but did not immediately specify what that meant or if he would deploy the military to quell the violence in the nation’s cities.

Oh, you know – he’ll just order all the protesters to be shot on sight. That’s what Trump has in mind, at any rate.

Updating to add: at least one governor pushed back. (I expect several of them did, as many as could get a word in.)



Trump demands more violence

Jun 1st, 2020 9:01 am | By

Oh great, apparently Trump is doing a group call with a lot of governors and telling them to use the military to crush protests.



No justice no peace

Jun 1st, 2020 7:31 am | By

Bunker Don had his third bad night.

Multiple fires broke out near the White House late on Sunday evening, as angry protesters gathered in Washington DC for the third night in a row following the death of George Floyd.

Bunker Don’s insistence on pouring gasoline onto the fire probably hasn’t helped. If the only response to a protest against racist murder-by-cop is “WE WILL SET THE DOGS ON YOU” then people aren’t going to shrug and say ok.

There was an 11 pm curfew.

When 11pm came, the police line in front of the White House advanced with tear gas rounds across Lafayette park clearing out the protesters, with intermittent sprints.  An area of a few blocks around the White House was thick with smoke. A fire was started in the basement of St John’s church, which since 1816 has been the “Church of the Presidents”. Every president from James Madison on has worshipped there. The DC Fire Service got there quickly and are reported to have put it out. 

Around the corner, however, a few protesters smashed the plate glass window front of the AFL-CIO Union federation headquarters and someone started a fire in the lobby. A couple of bystanders tried to dissuade them, shouting that the “unions are on our side” but to no avail. 

I wondered about that – I went in there once, when I was walking around DC the day before Women in Secularism. There’s some good labor iconography in there. I was in the Teamsters once upon a time.

On Sunday it was reported that Donald Trump, his wife, Melania and son Barron, had been taken down to the White House bunker at the height of the protests on Friday and then brought back up as the crowds dispersed.

Maybe if Bunker Don didn’t insist on making himself the enemy of the people…



He should not speak to the nation because he had nothing to say

May 31st, 2020 6:19 pm | By

With all that’s going on, Trump has stayed locked in with his Twitter. Not for him the address to the nation filled with compassion and a sense of justice.

That was by design. Trump and some of his advisers calculated that he should not speak to the nation because he had nothing to say, according to a senior administration official. He had no tangible policy or action to announce, nor did he feel an urgent motivation to try to bring people together. So he stayed silent.

It’s nice to know that he specifically did not feel like trying to bring people together, so decided to rage at us on Twitter instead.

The United States is visibly, painfully broken by the unprecedented confluence of health, economic and social crises, any one of which alone would test a president. It was extraordinary then to hear some in the public arena suggest Sunday that this president ought stay in the background, arguing that Trump lacked the moral authority and credibility necessary to heal the country.

Extraordinary but not extraordinary. Of course he lacks the moral authority to heal the country. All he has is hatred and rage and contempt and yet more rage. That’s it. He hates everything that’s not force and domination and cruelty.

It is an open question, too, whether Trump aspires to unite. There is ample evidence that he does not, as he built a political strategy around pitting groups against one another and declaring winners and losers.

In other words it’s not an open question; it’s all too obvious that constant war is all he aspires to, with him holding all the cards and punishing people at will.

“The rioting in the streets has put an exclamation point on what this president cannot do: To bring people around and say we are all in this together,” said Tom Rath, a longtime Republican official and former attorney general in New Hampshire. “On his automatic transmission, there is one speed. It is not conciliate. It is not comfort. It is not forge consensus. It is attack. And the frustration right now is that nobody is in charge. Anarchy rules.”

That’s exactly right. Attack is all he knows. It’s as if some acid has eaten away the rest of his brain and only the bit that wants to fight (but safely, from behind Twitter and those vicious dogs) is left.

Trump’s record of racially insensitive and sometimes outright racist comments over the years has led many Democrats and even some Republicans to conclude that he does not fully comprehend the nation’s history of racism and the corresponding tensions that live on today.

Ya think??? Of course he doesn’t; he doesn’t have the faintest clue, and doesn’t give a rat’s ass that he doesn’t. He’s a vulgar brainless sack of effluent and he fully comprehends nothing.

David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers University, said past presidents at moments of national crisis, whether George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, have instinctively shifted their message and tactics in an effort to heal.

“Most presidents have found a way to rise to the occasion, even if it meant swallowing hard and suppressing some of their own anger and frustration,” Greenberg said. “There’s no mystery that Trump is not sticking to the normal presidential script here.”

Obama Delivers Eulogy as Thousands Attend Funeral for Pastor Slain ...
Not Trump


Solidarity

May 31st, 2020 3:54 pm | By

Hur hur. Misogyny? Us?? Neverrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Funny what a lot these “activists” have in common with Trump – the hatred of women, the slavering over projected violence, the contempt for women, the longing to see snarling dogs tear people to bits…



Sir stop talking sir

May 31st, 2020 3:40 pm | By

They all wish Trump would stop talking.

The President tweeted on Saturday that if protesters breached the White House’s fence, they would “have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.” And he called on Democratic officials to “get MUCH tougher” or the federal government “will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.”

On Sunday, Trump tweeted his thanks to the National Guard and the job they did in Minneapolis Saturday night before calling for the National Guard to be used in “Other Democrat run Cities and States.”

Elected officials on both sides of the aisle said on Sunday that the President should instead focus on unifying the nation or decline to address the country at all.

“He should just stop talking,” said Democratic Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper. “He speaks and he makes it worse.”

“It’s sort of continuing to escalate the rhetoric,” added Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on CNN. “I think it’s just the opposite of the message that should have been coming out of the White House.”

You mean he shouldn’t keep screaming about how much he hates us and would like to see us torn to pieces by dogs?



Going over why it was making things worse

May 31st, 2020 3:26 pm | By

I’d love to know more about the advisers telling him why not to tweet. Anyway sure enough, he’s pouring gasoline on the fire with all the strength in his thumbs.

What kind of GREATNESS does he have in mind, exactly? White supremacist GREATNESS? Golden combover GREATNESS? Grab them by the pussy GREATNESS? Corruption in government GREATNESS?

The tweet is unavailable because Twitter removed it.

The tweet is unavailable because Twitter removed it.

Trump retweeted:

The president is screaming for MORE POLICE VIOLENCE MORE MORE MORE



Top 5

May 31st, 2020 12:46 pm | By

These guys are so lucky to live at this hour – when suddenly misogyny is the most progressive thing on the menu, as long as you can shield it with the pretense of “transphobia.” Ten years ago it just would not have been cool to call a female novelist one of the 5 worst people on Twitter, but now it makes you…well it makes you a misogynist shit, but Craig Gallagher seems not to realize it.



Unable to contain his eagerness

May 31st, 2020 12:18 pm | By

Karen Tumulty in the Post yesterday:

It’s a good thing Donald Trump wasn’t president during the civil rights movement. Judging by his tweets, Trump would have been tempted to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, the notorious Alabama public safety commissioner.

Tempted shmempted; he would have done it.

Nearly six decades later, the man who sits in the White House is channeling his inner Bull Connor, unable to contain his eagerness to see play out on his own front lawn the vile tactics that Connor employed against civil rights marchers. In a giddy tweetstorm on Saturday morning, Trump let loose about how excited he would have been to see protesters who showed up across the street in Lafayette Square “really badly hurt” by “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”

“Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action,” Trump wrote. He added a quotation, one the president presumably wants us to believe he heard from someone who manages the White House security force: “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and . . . good practice.”

To suggest that the agents are “just waiting for action” against their fellow citizens impugns both the professionalism and the humanity of the Secret Service. But it very much fits in the worldview of a commander in chief who has excused war crimes by members of the U.S. military with the claim that they are trained to be “killing machines.”

And who wets himself every time he types “sir” in a tweet.

What a president should be doing at this moment is trying to calm the country and bring it together, not fantasizing about how glorious it would be to witness bloodshed just outside his doorstep. Trump was so thrilled that he thinks a celebration is in order: “Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???”

Half the people I know are hitting a wall of despair right now.



Must invite Pootie

May 31st, 2020 11:36 am | By

Trump has given up on doing the G7 meeting in June so now his red-hot plan is to hold the G19 or something in September so that he can invite Russia. The slight problem there is that the rest of the G7 doesn’t want to invite Russia. At all.

Trump’s new plan, outlined to reporters on Saturday, is to host an expanded G7 meeting including Russia, Australia, South Korea and India, dedicated to building an alliance against China. The plan is likely to be controversial because Russia has been banned from western-led summits since Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and is not seen as a natural ally in the defence of human rights in Hong Kong.

Or anywhere else. Putin isn’t a human rights kind of guy. Neither, of course, is Trump, so that’s awkward.

The G7 brings together the US, Japan, France, Germany, the UK, Canada and Italy.

Justifying the cancellation of the June meeting and his proposed new format, Trump said the group’s current makeup was “very outdated” and does not properly represent “what’s going on in the world”. 

There’s some truth in that, but probably not in the sense Trump had in mind. The US is not currently a good fit with the other G7 countries, because we have a corrupt incompetent authoritarian criminal as head of state.



No such plans

May 31st, 2020 11:19 am | By

The Guardian notes that Trump isn’t altogether the ideal person to be president at a moment when systemic racism is in the spotlight.

Trump, who forged his political identity in racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birthplace, has proved unable to articulate the accumulated pain of black Americans over 400 years of slavery, segregation and police brutality, now exacerbated by a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on communities of colour. Instead he has resorted to a series of tweets that critics found divisive, inflammatory and self-serving.

As if it even occurred to him to try to articulate the accumulated pain of black Americans over 400 years of slavery, segregation and police brutality. Ever. In his entire life.

With an election less than six months away there are fears that Trump, who ran on the slogan “Make America great again”, is motivated more than ever by what plays to his support base, encouraging him to pour fuel on the fire of racial division with a law-and-order crackdown.

Ya think? It’s not fears, it’s certainty. Of course that’s what he’s going to do.

In such a dark hour, an American president might be expected to address the nation. Trump had no such plans on Sunday. David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W Bush, told CNN: “Well, that’s good, this president’s shouldn’t speak because what could he possibly say?

“He’s already spoken. He’s already conjured up the image of dogs attacking protesters, one of the most powerful anti-civil rights images this country has. That’s what’s on his mind. He’s identifying with the people who unleash dogs on protesters.”

It’s good that he’s not speaking, but it’s bad that it’s good that he’s not speaking. It’s bad that his speaking would make everything even worse; it’s bad that he’s incapable of speaking well, thoughtfully, generously, empathetically, as if he gave a damn…any way that would do some good. It’s very bad that he can no more do that than he can fly.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, told CNN’s State of the Union: “He should just stop talking. This is like Charlottesville all over again. He speaks, and he makes it worse. There are times when you should just be quiet. And I wish that he would just be quiet.”

Being quiet is another thing he can’t do. It’s a long list.



Sssshe isssssss

May 31st, 2020 10:34 am | By

Adding a few more because the venom dressed up as feisty girly sass is remarkable.

I particularly despise that theft of the “white people” trope as if racism were somehow linked to seeing men as men even if they wear pink skirts and makeup. Trans ideology is not a partner or cousin or ally of anti-racism, and pretending it is is gruesomely appropriative.

But nobody is denying the existence or the rights of trans people. Nobody.



“She’s a bigot”

May 31st, 2020 10:22 am | By

A Twitter account that claims to be a bookshop for women…

I wonder why Rowling blocked this bookshop for women.

Oh. I guess that’s why. Claims of the “she doesn’t believe trans people should have rights” type – lies, in short. Possibly also the illiteracy – “on accident” “what if that child was trans” – two in just one sentence.

What “believes”? What are these terrible believes she holds that show she has no heart and are such a heartbreak? That men are not women. How could she possibly come to hold such a believe?

Well, no, not truth. Lies, actually. LIES TO POWER. That’s useful how, exactly?

Not a women’s bookshop at all.



Trump votes for fraud

May 30th, 2020 5:25 pm | By

Meanwhile

President Trump moved to protect regulations issued by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that restrict federal student loan forgiveness in a veto issued Friday night. Several veterans’ groups have argued that the rules, which make it more difficult for student borrowers to prove that a college defrauded them, will harm former service members cheated by for-profit colleges, the New York Times reports.

In other words, for-profit colleges, which are a scam to begin with, have won a victory over the students they cheat. Of course Trump is down with that: he’s one of the scammers. Remember Trump “University”? Which was in no way a university, and took people’s money for very nearly nothing?

Trump said the vetoed legislation “sought to reimpose an Obama-era regulation that defined educational fraud so broadly that it threatened to paralyze the Nation’s system of higher education.”

Utter bullshit. The US system of higher education doesn’t depend on for-profit not-universities, and most of them are fraudulent and worthless. They exist to enrich the scam artists who own them, and for no other reason.



Unsafe

May 30th, 2020 2:53 pm | By

That’s not the only mud Harrop threw at Rowling today.

https://twitter.com/AdrianHarrop/status/1266654521888997376
https://twitter.com/AdrianHarrop/status/1266657728090570753

How insensitive.



It was misinterpretation m’lud

May 30th, 2020 2:34 pm | By

Aw, poor DOCTOR Adrian Harrop has had to apologize to JK Rowling.

Rowling raises an eyebrow.

He’s not a bully, he’s not he’s not he’s NOT. He’s just inthenthitive.

What did he say?

Image

Replying to @StandWithMaya

Jimmy Saville was the UK’s most popular children’s entertainer at the height of his career, & one of the most famous men in the country. working with how you’re framing JKR, I suppose you’d have gladly given him unsupervised contact with your kids – or have I misunderstood you?

Sure, just insensitive, not libelous at all.



MAGA loves

May 30th, 2020 11:30 am | By

He said that??

He said it.



Kristallnacht to MAGA night

May 30th, 2020 11:02 am | By

The Guardian on Trump’s repulsive excitement about the vicious dogs and big big guns all ready to massacre protesters:

Donald Trump has praised the US Secret Service for confronting protesters who massed outside the White House on Friday night, tweeting that had any of the crowd breached the fence, they “would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen”.

On Friday night, as protests reached the White House gates, Trump turned back to incendiary tweeting, electioneering on the back of protests, riots and looting in cities across the US.

Outside the White House, people hurled bricks, bottles and other objects at Secret Service and US park police officers in riot gear behind barricades.

Trump said he watched the events from the White House and that the Secret Service did a “great job”.

The president added: “They let the ‘protesters’ scream and rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard – didn’t know what hit them.”

He had to mop up a lot of drool after that one.

Without evidence, the president claimed the protesters were “professionally” organized but had failed to breach the White House perimeter.

“If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least,” Trump tweeted.

He wishes it had all played out while he watched.

In subsequent tweets, the president again claimed without evidence the protest was “professionally managed” and involved “organised groups”. The protesters, he said, “had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble … Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???”

He’s trying to arrange a confrontation…a Reichstag fire.