How’s that for standing up to corporate greed?

Dec 1st, 2016 7:04 am | By

Bernie Sanders points out that Trump has just signaled to every corporation in the US that it can get big tax benefits and incentives if it threatens to go offshore.

In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?

In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.

Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives.

Wouldn’t you think a brilliant deal-maker like Donnie from Queens would have figured that out?

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System One wallops System Two

Nov 30th, 2016 4:49 pm | By

AC Grayling notes that the hijackers of Brexit and the Trump win may be using the research of Daniel Kahneman and others to grab public opinion.

What Kahneman and other researchers have empirically confirmed in their work is that the majority of people are ‘System One’ or ‘quick’ thinkers in that they make decisions on impulse, feeling, emotion, and first impressions, rather than ‘System Two’ or ‘slow’ thinkers who seek information, analyse it, and weigh arguments in order to come to decisions. System One thinkers can be captured by slogans, statements dramatised to the point of falsehood, and even downright lies, because they will not check the validity of what is said, but instead will mistrust System Two thinkers whose lengthier arguments and appeals to data are often regarded as efforts to bamboozle and mislead.

That certainly fits Trump himself. He clearly wouldn’t know System Two thinking if it bit him on the ass. He thinks System One is all there is.

I hesitate to use the term, but ‘coup’ comes to mind in relation to what has happened with the Brexit referendum. UKIP and the minority of the Tory party in Parliament knew they would never get a Brexit by Parliamentary means or at a general election; but at long last, having made life hell for every Tory Prime Minister since Edward Heath, they succeeded in getting one of their leaders to promise a referendum. And they then went to town with those manipulating lies and distortions – such as the £350million promise for the NHS, and massive misinformation about immigration – helped by their non-resident billionaire newspaper-owner allies. Having achieved a very small majority of votes cast on the day, actually constituting only 37% of the total electorate (26% of the British population), they have run with it as vigorously as they can, claiming it as an ‘overwhelming’ demand by ‘the people’ that both mandates and binds the Government to take the UK out of the EU.

And Trump and his gang are doing the same thing.

In effect, Farage, Gove, Johnson, Fox and Davis, with their 60 or so supporters in the Tory party, are trying to stampede the UK out of the EU on the basis not just of the falsehoods and distortions of the Leave campaign and the 40 years of tabloid venom against the EU, but by continuing to lie about what the referendum really means, deliberately ignoring challenges over its advisory nature and the lack of effective mandate it offers, among other things ignoring the Remain vote entirely and the fact that nearly three-quarters of the British population did not vote to leave the EU.

One of many examples was provided by Leaver Tory MP Owen Patterson on the BBC Today programme recently. Describing the Leave vote in the referendum as ‘huge’ – which is dishonest use of language by any standard – he made a veiled threat that there would be trouble on the streets if the Leavers did not get their way.

Again, exactly like Trump and Co! Veiled threats and unveiled threats.

Patterson put this point obliquely by saying that disgruntled Leave voters would feel ‘betrayed by the Establishment’ if Brexit does not happen – thus aligning himself with one aspect of Leave rhetoric which is as risible as it is dangerous: figures of the Establishment and the elite such as himself and his Oxford-educated leader, the Prime Minister, who is married to a wealthy hedge-fund manager but who has claimed that she is championing the cause of the System One demographic against ‘the elite,’ aka the Establishment, of which she and Mr Patterson are shining examples.

Again. Trump the “populist” with his Solid Gold Living Room.

Pardon me while I lapse into despair again.

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Hotcha

Nov 30th, 2016 3:46 pm | By

A little break from Trumpnews:

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8 for men, 0 for women

Nov 30th, 2016 3:31 pm | By

Again with the push to erase women and delete them from all places and movements and discussions.

Why in Portland—one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in America, and home to the nation’s first bisexual governor and its first lesbian House speaker—is there no lesbian nightlife?

It’s been six years since the Egyptian Club, better known as the E-Room, lowered its rainbow flag in Southeast Portland, and in that time no brick-and-mortar lesbian bar has emerged to fill its space. (By contrast, Portland has eight gay bars for men.)

Moreover, the city doesn’t have a single dance night or recurring party that caters exclusively to women seeking women.

So what happened?

Genders multiplied and proliferated until there were 97 varieties, but it just so happened that “women” somehow got dropped along the way.

“I’ve never felt comfortable with the term lesbian,” says Llondyn Elliott, 19, who identifies as non-binary. “It’s really restricting to me to say I’m a lesbian. That means I’m a girl who likes girls. But am I a girl? And do I only like girls? No.”

The result? Announcing that a Portland party is intended exclusively for lesbians is stepping into a minefield of identity politics.

In the past two years, events catering to lesbians, like the monthly meet-up Fantasy Softball League, have been targeted online as unsafe spaces for trans women and others who don’t identify with feminine pronouns. This past summer, semi-regular parties for lesbians, like Lesbian Night at Old Town’s CC Slaughters, changed their names and focus to avoid controversy and be more inclusive. And lesbian-owned bars that draw lesbian customers, like Escape, shun the label so as not to offend.

And yet bars that self-describe as being for gay men don’t. Isn’t that interesting.

Trish Bendix, former editor of AfterEllen, an online publication about lesbian, queer and bisexual women in the media, lived in Portland from 2011 to 2014. She says she has never been around so many queer people in her life, but she was often among a minority who identified as lesbian.

“I often feel like lesbians are forgotten or left behind,” she says, “and sometimes it feels lonely.”

Not to mention unfair.

Emily Stutzman, 31, tried to create a space for lesbians. It ended poorly.

A producer for a Portland ad agency, Stutzman says she couldn’t find places in the city to hang out with other lesbians after moving here from Indiana in 2008.

In 2014, after ending a romantic relationship, an unsettling thought struck her: “How do I find somebody else?”

So that year she decided to create her own social gathering for lesbians, calling it Fantasy Softball League, a winking nod to stereotypes about lesbians. The “league” had nothing to do with softball, and instead was a monthly meet-up at Vendetta, a bar on North Williams Avenue.

“Hey ladies,” an ad beckoned. “Cool girls, drinking cool drinks in a cool bar, talking about cool stuff.”

But all was not cool.

In summer 2015, Stutzman, who has wavy red hair and wears an enameled “I Love Cats” pin on her jean jacket, recalls walking through Vendetta greeting people when someone she’d never met—someone who didn’t identify with traditional female conventions like the pronoun “she”—confronted her.

“The person was hostile, and wanting to pick a fight,” Stutzman recalls. “This person was offended and said they would tell their friends that we were a group of people that were non-inclusive and not respectful of their gender.”

The person—Stutzman never got a name—left the event, and Stutzman was left feeling confused. As she looked around, she saw many people who fell between male and female. She thought her event was inclusive, even if the vernacular wasn’t.

“What we wanted to say is, if you’re a straight dude, don’t come to this event,” she says. “Everyone else was fine.”

Stutzman adjusted her language, no longer calling Fantasy Softball League a lesbian event. Instead, she called it an event for queer women. But even with the change, Stutzman still worried.

“Everything I tried, someone was offended,” she says. “It got weird and political, and I wanted it to be a fun thing.”

It’s funny how women turn out to be the universal enemy, isn’t it.

That fall, Stutzman handed responsibility for the event to Alissa Young, who renamed the event Gal Pals, relocated it to the Florida Room on North Killingsworth Street, and ran into more trouble. Some people took offense at the event’s new feminine name.

So Young folded the event. Now she mourns the loss: “Can’t we have spaces that are just for lesbians?”

No, because lesbians, like feminists, are required to “center” trans women. Rules are rules.

In September, a monthly party for queer women in Portland drew rebukes because it called itself a “dyke party” that catered to women and “female-identified folk.”

“Everyone who is female-identified is a woman,” wrote one critic on Facebook. “Are you saying that you believe there are people who identify as women who aren’t women?”

Are you saying there are sheep who identify as goats who aren’t goats?

The debate over naming identities and creating spaces for them isn’t limited to women. However, Byron Beck, WW‘s former Queer Window columnist, says the conversation is not as prevalent in gay male culture. “It’s easy to find gay events for men in town,” he says.

Quite so. Men aren’t told to erase themselves the way women are. Funny how that works, isn’t it.

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How to manipulate Donnie from Queens

Nov 30th, 2016 11:24 am | By

William Saletan has advice on how to deal with the pathetic needy narcissist that is Trump.

To understand Trump, you have to set aside the scripted speeches he gave before his election and the canned videos he has released since. You also have to set aside the caricature of him as a Klan-loving, Nazi-sympathizing woman hater who will deport every immigrant he can find. Instead, look at the four interviews he has given since his election: to the Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and a group of TV anchors and executives. In these exchanges, all of them conducted outside the behavior-warping context of the campaign, you’ll see how squishy he is. Trump did run a despicable campaign, and he’s a menace to the country and the world. But it’s not because he’s a strongman. It’s because he’s a weakling.

That’s the short version. The longer story is more complicated.

Narcissism is complicated. Trump demands universal love and adulation.

Emotionally, he’s a child. He can love others, but only if they love him first. And that’s how he sees his presidency. In his interview with the Times on Nov. 22, he explained that his job is “taking care of the people that really have proven to be—to love Donald Trump.”

He’s vindictive. His ego is terribly fragile.

To understand how central this is to Trump’s sense of himself, check out the first 19 paragraphs of his interview with the Times. Invited by the publisher to give opening remarks, Trump spoke at length, not about the future but about his genius and prowess on the campaign trail. In his Nov. 11 interview with 60 Minutes, he bragged about the number of Twitter followers he had gained.

I did marvel at his opening remarks to the Times – at the self-obsession and irrelevance.

He craves approval. Trump often comes across as indifferent to the feelings of others. That’s misleading. He cares intensely about being respected and loved.

That’s an odd way to put it. That is being indifferent to the feelings of others. If your only concern about the feelings of others is how much they love you, then you are indifferent to their feelings. Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck how others feel when he insults them; that’s being indifferent to the feelings of others.

He’s easily soothed by flattery. Trump is a champ at nursing grudges when he feels cheated, threatened, or disrespected. But his grudges, like his commitments, can be washed out by small doses of affection. He speaks glowingly of generous post-election phone calls he received from the Clintons and the Bushes. He has praised both families in return. Those threats to prosecute Hillary? Never mind. Trump also can’t stop clucking about his Nov. 10 meeting with President Obama. At least three times, Trump has claimed to have “great chemistry” with the man he had never previously met and had repeatedly denounced as the worst president ever. That’s how easily Trump’s wrath can turn to warmth—and vice versa.

It’s also another illustration of his indifference to the feelings of others – his ability to forget all about the years he spent pretending to believe Obama was born in Kenya and the revolting way he talked about Clinton. To put it another way, it’s one more illustration of his total lack of a theory of mind. Obama was nice to him during their meeting, so Obama must love him; nothing that went before has any relevance.

He’s a softie. If Trump hurts a lot of people as president, it won’t be out of malice.

That one seems dead wrong to me. Trump boils with malice.

He’s obtuse to the pain he inflicts. If Trump cares so much about feelings, why doesn’t he see all the fear and stress he has caused? Because that would require him to accept criticism, and his ego can’t handle it. On 60 Minutes, he batted away questions about his invective during the campaign, insisting that “my strongest asset is my temperament” and that he “can’t regret” anything he’d said. If some folks are upset by his election, that can’t be his fault, so it has to be theirs. “There are people, Americans, who are scared, and some of them are demonstrating right now, demonstrating against you, against your rhetoric,” Stahl told him. Trump seemed baffled. “That’s only because they don’t know me,” he said.

Trump is virtually lobotomized. Unable to acknowledge his role in stirring up hatred and fear, he blames others. When Stahl told him that “African Americans think there’s a target on their back,” and “Muslims are terrified,” he shrugged that such fears were “built up by the press, because, frankly, they’ll take every single little incident … and they’ll make [it] into an event.” In his interview with the Times, Trump claimed that low black turnout showed how popular he was: “A lot of people didn’t show up, because the African-American community liked me.” The vanity of this man is bottomless.

He cares about his friends but not people he considers enemies. That’s universal, in a sense, but in Trump it’s absolute.

12. He’s easily manipulated. Having a fragile, approval-craving narcissist as president isn’t the end of the world. It just means that to get him to do the right thing, you have to pet him. In Trump’s post-election exchanges, we have several useful models. The first is Obama, who gave Trump a tongue bath in their 90-minute meeting on Nov. 10 and may have saved his signature legislative achievement in the process. Three days after that meeting, Trump told the Journal he was reconsidering his pledge to abolish Obama’s health insurance program: “Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced.”

Well, all I can say is, I’m glad I’m not one of the people in a position to manipulate him that way. I’m glad I’m free to keep saying what an awful shit he is.

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Puffing the name

Nov 30th, 2016 10:53 am | By

Damn, I missed one. Too busy documenting his tweets, no doubt. Ten days ago he met with three business partners from India, who tweeted a photo of the four of them thumbs-upping.

President-elect Donald J. Trump met in the last week in his office at Trump Tower with three Indian business partners who are building a Trump-branded luxury apartment complex south of Mumbai, raising new questions about how he will separate his business dealings from the work of the government once he is in the White House.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump described the meeting as a courtesy call by the three Indian real estate executives, who flew from India to congratulate Mr. Trump on his election victory. In a picture posted on Twitter, all four men are smiling and giving a thumbs-up.

The tweet seems to be gone now. At any rate – there’s no such thing as a “courtesy call” in this context. You can’t brush it off or polish it up by calling it that. This is the pres-elect putting his business interests ahead of his job as president.

The three Indian executives — Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia, and Kalpesh Mehta — have been quoted in Indian newspapers, including The Economic Times, as saying they have discussed expanding their partnership with the Trump Organization now that Mr. Trump is president-elect.

Sagar Chordia did not respond to a request for a telephone interview. But in a series of text messages with The New York Times early Sunday, he confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Trump and members of his family had taken place, and that an article written about it in the Indian newspaper, which reported that one of his partners said they had discussed the desire to expand the deals with the Trump family, was accurate.

Washington ethics lawyers said that a meeting with Indian real estate partners, regardless of what was discussed, raised conflict of interest questions for Mr. Trump, who could be perceived as using the presidency to advance his business interests.

It’s pretty hard not to see it that way. What he’s selling here is his name, his brand, and it would be fatuous to try to claim that name and brand are not worth more after his election. Of course he’s using the presidency to advance his business interests.

“There may be people for whom this looks O.K.,” said Robert L. Walker, the former chief counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee, who advises corporations and members of Congress on government ethics issues. “But for a large part of the American public, it is not going to be O.K. His role as president-elect should dictate that someone else handles business matters.”

In an account of the meeting that appeared in The Economic Times, Mr. Trump was quoted as praising the United States’ relationship with India and its prime minister, Narendra Modi.

…

Internationally, many properties that bear Mr. Trump’s name are the result of marketing deals — like the one in India — in which he is paid by someone for the use of his name but does not actually own the underlying property. He has such marketing agreements in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, the Philippines and Turkey, according to a list published by his company.

So that’s a major conflict of interest with all those countries.

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Trump vows to cover his ass

Nov 30th, 2016 9:06 am | By

The Times has another cruel headline about Trump, although this one won’t bother him because he won’t get it.

Trump Vows Steps to Avoid Appearance of Business Conflicts

Precisely. He’s throwing a damp kleenex over his business conflicts, but not, of course, actually terminating them. He’s hoping to conceal them; he’s not in the least hoping to do away with them.

The headline is pretty funny, really, despite the horror of the reality behind it. Trump promises to try to hide how corrupt he is. Cool, bro, thanks.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday said he would take steps to separate himself from his vast, global business empire in the hopes of preventing the appearance of a conflict of interest as he becomes president.

But Mr. Trump’s announcement, delivered in a series of early-morning posts on Twitter, drew an immediate rebuke from legal and ethics experts in Washington, who said that a close reading of the actual words in the posts suggests that Mr. Trump is not planning to take sufficient steps to eliminate the conflicts.

The president-elect provided few details, but promised to hold a “major news conference” with his adult children in two weeks to reveal legal documents that will remove him from what he called the “business operations” of his company. He vowed to leave the Trump Organization “in total” to focus on running the country from the White House.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803931490514075648

That last sentence is so grotesque…as if we need to be told that the presidency is more important than his profits, when he’s the only one who’s confused about it. He’s such a goon.

The emphasis on “business operations,” not on ownership, hinted that Mr. Trump is not ruling out retaining a financial stake in the Trump Organization or putting his children in control of the company. Ethics experts said such moves would leave Mr. Trump vulnerable to accusations that his official actions are motivated by personal financial interests.

More to the point, such moves would leave all of us vulnerable to the fallout from Trump’s corruption.

Reince Priebus, who will be the White House chief of staff, said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that he was not ready to provide any more information about the legal discussions.

“You should know that he’s got the best people in the world working on it,” Mr. Priebus said, adding that the American people were aware of Mr. Trump’s business entanglements when they elected him.

Well that’s outrageous. No they weren’t. Some were, if they took the trouble to look into it, but it’s ludicrous to say they all were, since it’s not as if Trump and his campaign made a point of talking about them, is it. It would be fair for Priebus to say the information was available before the election, but it’s insulting to claim everyone was aware of the information.

But hey, it’s appearance that counts.

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Inspired by Trump

Nov 30th, 2016 8:27 am | By

In Florida:

A white Florida man has been charged with battery after he was accused of punching an Hispanic man in the back of the head “for Donald Trump.”

It happened in a parking lot behind a grocery store in Gainesville.

According to a police report obtained by Egberto Willies, Caleb Joseph Illig arrived at the parking lot at around 1:10 a.m. and began punching Pablo Echevarria in the back of the head.

The report said that Illig shouted, “Let’s Trump down,” as he punched Echevarria. When Echevarria asked why he was being attacked, Illig reportedly replied, “This is for Donald Trump.”

Trump the warrior against political correctness. Now that political correctness has been defeated, it’s cool for white guys to beat up people with names like “Echeverria.” It’s so PC and SJW to fail to beat up people with Spanish surnames.

Police said that security footage “clearly shows [Illig] striking [Echevarria] in the back of the head, and completely corroborates the [victim] and [witness’] accounts of the incident.”

Illig said he didn’t remember a thing about it.

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To address any issues

Nov 30th, 2016 8:16 am | By

Trump is going to be in violation of his lease with the GSA the minute he becomes president.

The new Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., is in a historic federal building. A government agency called the General Services Administration, or GSA, negotiated the lease with the Trump Organization. And that lease includes this language: No elected official shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease or to any benefit that may arise there from.

Steven Schooner is a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University Law School; he read the lease and says it means what the words say.

I think that the only logical or reasonable reading of that language is that the president of the United States may not be admitted to a share of the lease and may not benefit from it. So come January 20, it seems to me the president-elect is in breach of the contract. And quite simply, I believe the GSA should end the contract. They should simply terminate it.

But will they? I’m getting the feeling that nobody is going to do anything about Trump’s many violations except whine about them.

To the extent that he is going to appoint the head of the GSA and the head of the GSA will serve at his pleasure and he’s going to be basically the tenant, there’s no way there can be an arm’s length relationship between the two parties – more importantly, that GSA employees have to demand financial information from the Trump Organization on an annual basis and then renegotiate the pricing.

There’s no way a GSA civil servant is going to be able to negotiate with the president or the president’s children with the government and the public’s interest at heart.

But will anybody do anything about it?

 

SHAPIRO: Trump recently settled a lawsuit over Trump University for $25 million or so, and you argue that under ordinary circumstances, that would be a red flag for GSA and that in fact it might be enough to prevent the office from ever doing business with the Trump Organization again.

SCHOONER: Absolutely. If you read the New York attorney general’s press release, basically what they said is that among other things, there was fraud. If this was any other contractor, there would be members of Congress screaming at the GSA suspension and debarment official, basically saying, you must ensure to protect the government’s interests that the government never does business with this type of contractor again.

And Trump of course isn’t this type of contractor but the actual contractor – the fraud himself in person.

Shapiro (the NPR reporter) asks what would happen if the GSA did terminate.

SCHOONER: Well, the obvious solution would be a transfer or what in government contracts we call innovation. GSA could go to some other firm and basically say, run the hotel for us. It’s just another lease. So that’s easy enough.

But let’s also be clear. GSA could simply tomorrow – and I believe they should – terminate the contract because the president-elect has breached a material or a significant or important term in the contract. If they terminate, look; we know the Trump organization is notoriously litigious, so maybe they sue. But in terms of contract interpretation 101, we think the GSA wins that case.

But even if they lose – and this is so important – it’s only money. The principle here, the idea that federal procurement is supposed to be free from these types of conflicts, is much more important than a little bit of money.

That’s that line near the end of Fargo – “and all for a little bit of money.”

The GSA says it’s not going to do anything about it.

SHAPIRO: We requested an interview with the head of GSA. They declined and sent us a statement that says in part, it is the Office of Government Ethics that provides guidance to the executive branch on questions of ethics and conflicts of interest. GSA plans to coordinate with the president-elect’s team to address any issues that may be related to the Old Post Office building, which is the home of the Trump hotel. What do you make of that statement?

SCHOONER: Well, the Office of Government Ethics is a policy shop. They specifically make clear that they don’t solve these kinds of problems. They don’t investigate. They don’t prosecute. They make policy.

It’s GSA’s contract. They had plenty of time to figure out a solution. They can’t foist their problem off on anybody else, and it’s time for them to step up to the plate and do the right thing.

But they won’t. This is how it’s going to go – everybody will just say that’s someone else’s job, and Mr Corrupt Thieving Fraud will do whatever he wants to.

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The Fascist rallies start tomorrow

Nov 30th, 2016 7:34 am | By

Trump’s Triumph of the Will tour has a shiny pretty logo.

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Democratic deconsolidation

Nov 29th, 2016 5:58 pm | By

A disquieting bit of research via the NY Times: democracies may not be as good at building in their own stability as we thought.

Political scientists have a theory called “democratic consolidation,” which holds that once countries develop democratic institutions, a robust civil society and a certain level of wealth, their democracy is secure.

For decades, global events seemed to support that idea. Data from Freedom House, a watchdog organization that measures democracy and freedom around the world, shows that the number of countries classified as “free” rose steadily from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. Many Latin American countries transitioned from military rule to democracy; after the end of the Cold War, much of Eastern Europe followed suit. And longstanding liberal democracies in North America, Western Europe and Australia seemed more secure than ever.

But since 2005, Freedom House’s index has shown a decline in global freedom each year. Is that a statistical anomaly, a result of a few random events in a relatively short period of time? Or does it indicate a meaningful pattern?

Mr. Mounk and Mr. Foa developed a three-factor formula to answer that question. Mr. Mounk thinks of it as an early-warning system, and it works something like a medical test: a way to detect that a democracy is ill before it develops full-blown symptoms.

The first factor was public support: How important do citizens think it is for their country to remain democratic? The second was public openness to nondemocratic forms of government, such as military rule. And the third factor was whether “antisystem parties and movements” — political parties and other major players whose core message is that the current system is illegitimate — were gaining support.

Brexit and Trump provide very grim data on the third item.

Trump is also a distortion, though, because he has that tv celebrity-name recognition factor. Maybe he won because fascists are significantly more popular, or maybe he won because he was an asshole on tv for years.

But that’s very weak comfort.

According to the Mounk-Foa early-warning system, signs of democratic deconsolidation in the United States and many other liberal democracies are now similar to those in Venezuela before its crisis.

Across numerous countries, including Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States, the percentage of people who say it is “essential” to live in a democracy has plummeted, and it is especially low among younger generations.

I have to go have nightmares now.

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Monitoring

Nov 29th, 2016 3:58 pm | By

Aaron Blake at the Washington Post also says no we shouldn’t ignore Trump’s tweets.

Undergirding the idea that Trump’s tweets shouldn’t be big news is the theory that he’s manipulating the media into focusing on small things to cover up less sexy but more important things — conflicts of interests and possible corruption, in particular.

I’m skeptical any such plan exists, given that Trump’s thin-skinned tweeting is pretty indiscriminate. But this idea has returned with a vengeance given the latest tweetstorm, and it’s likely to perk up again after Trump on Tuesday morning suggested revoking the citizenship or jailing of people who burn the American flag.

…

What we’re basically talking about here is treating Trump like a social media troll with an egg for an avatar who can be blocked or ignored and hopefully loses the will to keep harassing us.

But this is the president-elect of the United States. The job comes with the so-called bully pulpit, and what he says matters and will be the subject of debate no matter what the mainstream media does. Everything he says reverberates. It doesn’t matter if he says it on Twitter or at a news conference; either way it’s going to be consumed by tens of millions of people, and the media has an important role to play when it comes to fact-checking and providing context.

Plus it matters. It matters that he’s that reckless and irresponsible, that petty and vain, that rage-driven and out of control, that wholly unfit for the job he’s taken on.

ProPublica senior reporting fellow Jessica Huseman nailed it in an interview with The Fix’s Callum Borchers on Monday.

“If he had said something similar in a press conference, no one would be concerned that journalists are getting distracted by his absurd language,” Huseman said. “But because it was a tweet, that’s somehow different? Unfortunately, this president-elect has decided to make Twitter his main means of communicating with the American public, and the American public listens deeply to things that he says on Twitter.”

We can’t ignore any of it.

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A fire lit to hypnotize us

Nov 29th, 2016 3:14 pm | By

Rex Huppke at the Chicago Tribune also called Trump a liar.

On Sunday, the man who will soon lead this country tweeted a lie — a big, fiery one. It read: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

That statement is based on nothing. Actually, it’s based on less than nothing. Its origin is, roughly, this: A nobody Republican with zero credibility or evidence tweeted that 3 million people voted illegally; a conspiracy theory website reported on that tweet, taking it as fact; the president-elect, in need of a distraction, tweeted that information as fact with no citation, not that a citation would have made it any less false.

Let’s pause for a moment and consider the staggering level of irresponsibility Trump showed in tweeting that lie. It’s akin to: My crazy uncle told me the world is flat; I reported that on my blog; the president of the United States then declared the world flat and banned boats so nobody would sail off the edge of the Earth.

And the staggeringly irresponsible liar is the next president.

Huppke says it’s a distraction, though, and that we should ignore it. Lots of people say that about Twitter-Trump, but I think they’re wrong – I think we need to pay attention to what a horrifying reckless monster the next president is on Twitter, because that is who he is. We should also of course pay attention to all the other horrors, and that’s hard to do because they’re so copious, but I don’t think Trump’s narcissistic public displays are a distraction or side show.

There is reason to be irritated — and maybe even terrified — by the soon-to-be president of the most powerful country in the world sharing false information that draws the legitimacy of our electoral process into question. But, sadly, that’s the least of our concerns.

It’s just a fire lit to hypnotize us, set by an arsonist who knows how to burn a narrative to the ground.

No, sorry, we have to do it all.

H/t Freemage

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Trump v the Constitution

Nov 29th, 2016 1:10 pm | By

The Times also reports on Trump’s jolly tweet about how he’d like to punish people who burn flags.

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Mr. Trump wrote in a 6:55 a.m. Twitter post.

Mr. Trump wrote the post shortly after Fox News aired a segment about a dispute at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, which removed the American flag from its campus flagpole after protests over his election victory; during one demonstration, someone burned a flag.

Ah, so that’s what he’s doing – watching Fox News and blurting out tweets in response to what he sees.

Even if Mr. Trump could persuade Congress to enact a criminal statute, a dramatic shift in the balance between government power and individual freedom, anyone convicted and sentenced under it could point to clear Supreme Court precedents to make the case for a constitutional violation.

The obstacles include the precedent that the Constitution does not allow the government to expatriate Americans against their will, through a landmark 1967 case, Afroyim v. Rusk. They also include a 1989 decision, Texas v. Johnson, in which the court struck down criminal laws banning flag burning, ruling that the act was a form of political expression protected by the First Amendment.

Well, sure, but what’s that got to do with Trump? He’s just been elected absolute dictator, hasn’t he? He certainly seems to think so.

David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who co-wrote the Supreme Court briefs in the flag-burning case and who is about to become national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said he wondered if Mr. Trump’s strategy was to goad people into burning flags in order to “marginalize” the protests against him. But he also called Mr. Trump’s proposal “beyond the pale.”

“To me it is deeply troubling that the person who is going to become the most powerful government official in the United States doesn’t understand the first thing about the First Amendment — which is you can’t punish people for expressing dissent — and also doesn’t seem to understand that citizenship is a constitutional right that cannot be taken away, period, under any circumstances,” he said.

“Troubling” is putting it mildly.

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Reporting on the L word

Nov 29th, 2016 12:40 pm | By

I mentioned that newspapers like the Times don’t call people liars lightly. For corroboration, here’s the Independent reporting on the very fact that the Times called Trump a liar.

The headline is: New York Times brands Donald Trump a liar

The New York Times has publicly accused Donald Trump of lying after he claimed millions of people had voted illegally in the US presidential election.

…

The New York Times used an editorial on Monday to attack Mr Trump’s claims.

In the piece, published under the byline of the paper’s Editorial Board, it said: “This is a lie, part of Mr. Trump’s pattern, stretching back many years, of disregard for indisputable facts.

“There is no evidence of illegal voting on even a small scale anywhere in the country, let alone a systematic conspiracy involving ‘millions’.

“In addition to insulting law-abiding voters everywhere, these lies about fraud threaten the foundations of American democracy. They have provided the justification for state voter-suppression laws around the country, and they could give the Trump administration a pretext to roll back voting rights on a national scale.”

Just a week ago Trump told Sulzberger to phone him when he got something wrong. Sulzberger of course did not agree to do that, because it would be grotesquely inappropriate. The Times – the whole Times, not a single commentator – is making it clear that it will report on his lies rather than coaxing him like a wayward child.

Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the New York Times, which endorsed Mrs Clinton for President. A week after his election he claimed the newspaper was “failing” and said its writers “looked like fools”.

He had earlier said it was “losing thousands of subscribers because of [its] very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena’”. The paper responded saying it had actually seen a rise in subscriptions.

The row is the latest of Mr Trump’s attacks on US media outlets. On Tuesday he criticised news station CNN, tweeting: “I thought that CNN would get better after they failed so badly in their support of Hillary Clinton however, since election, they are worse!”

“CNN is so embarrassed by their total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don’t know what to do.”

Our own little Hitler.

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On the road again

Nov 29th, 2016 12:27 pm | By

He’s really doing it. He really is doing more rallies, even though the election is over – because that’s where he gets the instant gratification of people cheering him right in his face. It’s all he wants, along with the many many opportunities to boost his profits.

Donald Trump will once more feel the love that unexpectedly propelled him to victory over Hillary Clinton three weeks ago with a so-called ‘Thank You Tour’ of public appearances starting with a giant rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday night.

While there is so far no published tour schedule, the director of Mr Trump’s advance planning team, George Gigicos, has said that that the president-elect will be traveling “obviously to the states that we won and the swing states we flipped over”.

This…isn’t a thing. This isn’t something presidents do right after they are elected. They have too much other stuff to do, for one thing, and it’s probably a tad too obviously self-gratifying for people with an ounce of adult awareness. It takes a case of narcissism as severe as Trump’s to think this is an ok and reasonable thing for a president-elect to do.

While some will see it as Mr Trump looking to indulge in a victory lap around the country, Mr Gigicos insisted that it was about giving thanks to those voters who helped him on his way to his Electoral College victory on 8 November, against the expectations of nearly all the main polling organisations and of the Clinton campaign as well.

Yeah that doesn’t change anything, because “giving thanks” isn’t part of the routine. It’s like when the local public radio station thanks me for listening – I don’t do it as a favor, I do it when and because there’s something I want to hear. But even the local public radio station doesn’t set up rallies to thank the listeners.

Certainly it is an unusual project. Mr Trump already has a full plate completing his choices for his cabinet and other top positions in Washington and keeping his transition from descending into chaos, as it has already threatened to in recent days, not least the tug of war that has erupted over his courtship of Mitt Romney as a possible Secretary of State.

And learning the basics of the job, and indeed learning the basics of American history and world affairs. Oh he has a lot he could usefully be doing.

And even if Mr Trump believes he can spare the time to return to the hustings even though the election is over, it is unclear who would be paying the costs of renting spaces as large as the US Bank Arena and covering all the other associated costs of major rallies.

I’m sure he’ll just send us the bill.

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The L word

Nov 29th, 2016 9:51 am | By

The Times again says Trump has been telling lies, which is something newspapers don’t do lightly.

On Sunday, President-elect Trump unleashed a barrage of tweets complaining about calls for recounts or vote audits in several closely contested states, and culminating in this message: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

This is a lie, part of Mr. Trump’s pattern, stretching back many years, of disregard for indisputable facts. There is no evidence of illegal voting on even a small scale anywhere in the country, let alone a systematic conspiracy involving “millions.” But this is the message that gets hammered relentlessly by right-wing propaganda sites like InfoWars, which is run by a conspiracy theorist who claims the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax — and whose absurdities Mr. Trump has often shouted through his megaphone, which will shortly bear the presidential seal.

That’s an appalling fact all by itself – the fact that the next president treats InfoWars as a reliable source.

In addition to insulting law-abiding voters everywhere, these lies about fraud threaten the foundations of American democracy. They have provided the justification for state voter-suppression laws around the country, and they could give the Trump administration a pretext to roll back voting rightson a national scale.

Could and doubtless will. If there’s a bad thing he can do, he will do it.

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The M word

Nov 29th, 2016 8:55 am | By

An unedifying protracted conversation on Twitter, started by someone I don’t know from Adam.

Sigh.

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There is no getting better

Nov 28th, 2016 6:27 pm | By

N Ziehl on coping with an apparent narcissist in the White House.

I want to talk a little about narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve unfortunately had a great deal of experience with it, and I’m feeling badly for those of you who are trying to grapple with it for the first time because of our president-elect, who almost certainly suffers from it or a similar disorder. If I am correct, it has some very particular implications for the office. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) It’s not curable and it’s barely treatable. He is who he is. There is no getting better, or learning, or adapting. He’s not going to “rise to the occasion” for more than maybe a couple hours. So just put that out of your mind.

I should probably pay attention to that. I’ve never expected him to rise to the occasion, but I suppose I have been thinking he might realize what a fucking fool he is if everyone told him so. I should just put that out of my mind.

2) He will say whatever feels most comfortable or good to him at any given time. He will lie a lot, and say totally different things to different people. Stop being surprised by this. While it’s important to pretend “good faith” and remind him of promises, as Bernie Sanders and others are doing, that’s for his supporters, so they can see the inconsistency as it comes. He won’t care. So if you’re trying to reconcile or analyze his words, don’t. It’s 100% not worth your time. Only pay attention to and address his actions.

Well I’m not doing it because he will care but because others care. We have to keep track – for the prosecution if nothing else. Plus it’s a kind of coping mechanism itself. Decline and fall sort of thing.

4) Entitlement is a key aspect of the disorder. As we are already seeing, he will likely not observe traditional boundaries of the office. He has already stated that rules don’t apply to him. This particular attribute has huge implications for the presidency and it will be important for everyone who can to hold him to the same standards as previous presidents.

So that’s another reason we should keep track.

5) We should expect that he only cares about himself and those he views as extensions of himself, like his children. (People with NPD often can’t understand others as fully human or distinct.) He desires accumulation of wealth and power because it fills a hole. (Melania is probably an acquired item, not an extension.) He will have no qualms at all about stealing everything he can from the country, and he’ll be happy to help others do so, if they make him feel good. He won’t view it as stealing but rather as something he’s entitled to do. This is likely the only thing he will intentionally accomplish.

I have suspected as much. Good to have it spelled out.

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Makeup to cover the bruises

Nov 28th, 2016 12:30 pm | By

News from Morocco:

Women in Morocco have reacted in horror after a programme on state television demonstrated how they could use makeup to cover up evidence of domestic violence.

The segment in the daily programme Sabahiyat, on Channel 2M, showed a smiling makeup artist demonstrating how to mask marks of beating, on a woman with her face made up to appear swollen and covered with fake black and blue bruises.

“We hope these beauty tips will help you carry on with your daily life”, the host said at the end of the segment, broadcast on 23 November – two days before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Have the clip:

https://twitter.com/CurioGorilla/status/802496936393711616

Lipstick on a pig bruise.

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