Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Can’t we all just get along?

Trump is calling for “unity” again.

US President-elect Donald Trump has called for national unity in an address to mark the Thanksgiving holiday.

In the wake of what he called a “long and bruising” election campaign he said emotions in the country were raw.

The time had come, he said, “to begin to heal our divisions” but added that “tensions just don’t heal overnight”.

He is such a fucking gaslighting abusive bully. He’s the one who dished out all those bruises! It’s nothing short of creepy for him to tell us to “heal our divisions” when he’s the one who deepened and inflamed them. He was tweeting out insults only three days ago, so he’s not suddenly the Peace Daddy just because it’s a national holiday.

November 24, 2016
Hustling

More of Trump demonstrating that there’s no conflict of interest at all at all between his new job as President of the US and his longstanding job as Grifter who slaps his name on other people’s buildings for a large fee: he used a phone call with Erdoğan to puff his Turkish business partner.

When President-elect Donald Trump spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Nov. 9, he mentioned one of his Turkish business partners as a “close friend” and passed on his remarks that he is “your great admirer.”

The twinned Trump Towers bear the president-elect’s name in Istanbul. Dogan Holding, a massive media and real estate conglomerate in Turkey, owns the conjoined buildings and pays the Trump Organization to license the Trump name and brand. It can now rely on that name and brand to be sitting in the Oval Office and singing its praises to President Erdogan.

In his call with the Turkish leader, Trump passed on praise for Erdogan from Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, son-in-law of Dogan Holding owner Aydin Dogan and former president of the Dogan Media Group. His wife, Arzuhan Dogan Yalcindage, sits on the board of Dogan Holding. He’s friends with the Trump family and had worked closely on the Trump Towers project in Istanbul. On election night, he attended Trump’s shocking victory celebration at the New York Hilton in Midtown Manhattan.

So the next president is calling up heads of state and telling them how awesome his business buddies are. That’s happening.

Trump’s praise for Mehmet Ali Yalcindag was first reported by Amberin Zaman in the independent Turkish paper Diken. Zaman’s report has since been picked up by other Turkish newspapers and television stations.

Vouching for his Turkish business partner in the call with Erdogan is just the most recent sign of Trump’s near-impossible task in avoiding the significant conflicts of interest his global real estate business presents.

It’s blatantly corrupt. It’s disgusting.

One week after his election, he welcomed three of his Indian business partners to Trump Tower in Manhattan. The Trump Organization is involved in at least five real estate deals in India. Ivanka Trump, despite her supposed separate role as head of the Trump business, joined her father last week for his in-person meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The president-elect also reportedly handed the phone to Ivanka during a conversation with Argentinian President Mauricio Macri. Trump reportedly discussed the possibility of speeding up the permit process for a building that would bear his name in Buenos Aires. Spokesmen for both Macri and Trump denied that any such discussion took place.

But they apparently don’t deny that Ivanka got in on the conversation.

Further, Trump recently told British politician and former head of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage that he should help lead the opposition to offshore wind farms in Britain. Trump has long opposed the construction of such offshore wind farms near his golf course in Scotland. When the New York Times asked Trump on Tuesday if he had this conversation with Farage, he said, “I might have brought it up.”

Blatantly corrupt.

November 24, 2016
The rich get richer and the poor get children

Trump’s tax plan – massive tax cuts for the 1%, tax raises for single parents. Populist uprising!

“The Trump tax plan is heavily, heavily, skewed to the most wealthy, who will receive huge savings,” said Lily Batchelder, a law professor and tax expert at New York University. “At the same time, millions of low-income families – particularly single-parent households – will face an increase.”

Batchelder, who wrote an academic paper on Trump’s tax plan published by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said that the president-elect’s plan “significantly raises taxes” for at least 8.5 million families, with “especially large tax increases for working single parents”. More than 26m individuals live in those families.

According to Batchelder’s research Trump’s tax changes – taken at their “most conservative” – could leave just over half of America’s nearly 11m single-parent households facing an increased tax burden. This figure rises to 61% – or 7m households – if the analysis is run on “reasonable assumptions” that the changes Trump has suggested go ahead.

Single-parent families would suffer the most because Trump would lower the minimum of tax-free earnings to $15,000 per adult no matter how many children in the household. Under current law the threshold is $17,400 for single-parent families with one child and $24,750 for a couple with one child, and the threshold increases by $4,050 for each additional child.

He wants to raise taxes on people who make over 15k and lower them on billionaires.

What a mensch.

November 24, 2016
Briefings would help Trump get up to speed

Another thing Trump is failing to do: receive intelligence briefings.

President-elect Donald Trump has received two classified intelligence briefings since his surprise election victory earlier this month, a frequency that is notably lower — at least so far — than that of his predecessors, current and former U.S. officials said.

A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, by contrast, has set aside time for intelligence briefings almost every day since the election, officials said.

I guess Trump thinks he’s too important to waste time on global developments and security threats.

A senior U.S. official who receives the same briefing delivered to President Obama each day said that devoting time to such sessions would help Trump get up to speed on world events.

Which, given the job he has taken on of his own volition, he really ought to do.

“Trump has a lot of catching up to do,” the official said.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a senior member of Trump’s transition team, dismissed the issue, saying that Trump has devoted significant attention to security matters even while meeting with world leaders and assembling his administration.

“National security is Donald Trump’s No. 1 priority and I think he’s taking it very seriously,” Nunes said in an interview. “Look how many leaders he’s met with, how many phone calls he’s done, positions he’s filled. People who are being critical need to get a life.”

Jesus h christ – people who are being critical need to get a life. Right, it’s only the presidency, it’s only foreign affairs, it’s only security threats and global developments – it’s complete trivia, and people should ignore it and watch football instead. According to the chair of the House Intelligence Committee! The lunatics are running the asylum.

Trump was given an initial briefing within days of his election victory, and took part in a second session with senior U.S. intelligence analysts Tuesday in New York before he departed to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday, officials said. Trump turned other briefing opportunities away.

He turned them away. He had time to call in tv reporters so that he could yell at them for not flattering him enough, but he didn’t have time for intelligence briefings.

“The last three presidents-elect used the intelligence briefings offered during the transition to literally study the national security issues that they would be facing and the world leaders with whom they would be interacting as president,” said Michael Morell, former deputy CIA director, who supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

“The president-elect is missing out on a golden opportunity to learn about the national security threats and challenges facing our nation,” Morell said, “knowledge that would be extremely valuable to have when he takes the oath of office and when he steps into the Situation Room for the first time.”

Terrifying.

Trump has yet to meet with Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. or other top intelligence officials — aside from an unofficial meeting with embattled Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, who is rumored to be a top candidate to replace Clapper. Trump has greeted a parade of other officials auditioning for Cabinet positions, but also met with Indian business partners, television news anchors and figures in the entertainment industry.

That’s what happens when you elect Howdy Doody president.

November 24, 2016
Backlashings

Michelle Goldberg rejects the rejection of “identity politics.”

We are going to spend the rest of our lives arguing about the precise mix of economic desperation and cultural grievance that drove the calamitous election of Donald Trump. Already, however, there’s an emerging consensus that the Trump apotheosis can be blamed in part on “identity politics” and “political correctness.” In Sunday’s New York Times, the liberal Columbia University historian Mark Lilla proclaimed “the end of identity liberalism.” In the libertarian magazine Reason, an essay was headlined, “Trump Won Because Leftist Political Correctness Inspired a Terrifying Backlash.” Bill Maher lectured liberals, “You’re outrageous with your politically correct bullshit and it does drive people away.” A Politico piece argued, “To many Trump supporters, Clinton … was merely another ‘PC’ liberal griping about ‘micro-aggressions’ and ‘triggering’ language.”

So we should go back to calling people niggers and kikes? (We never stopped calling women cunts and bitches, so there’s no back to go to.) Goldberg agrees there are problems with the “rhetoric of identity” but is not interested in any trips back.

There is truth in this analysis, but also a very real danger that it will be used to dismiss demands for equality for women and people of color. We are entering a moment of reaction that will reshape not just our politics but also our culture. Liberal assumptions that had become part of the atmosphere—that female leadership is desirable, that dismantling racism is an urgent social imperative, that diversity in gender expression constitutes progress—will likely fall out of fashion.

It already has in some circles. Breitbart is popular, and that predates Trump.

Trump himself gives every indication of thinking that his victory was driven by rage at what we might call woke culture rather than by inequality. Consider the fact that, on Nov. 15, he snuck away from his press pool to have a $36 hamburger at the 21 Club in midtown Manhattan. The well-heeled patrons applauded him when he arrived, and he was recorded promising to lower their taxes. No one considered this to be a gaffe. If any of Trump’s economically anxious supporters felt betrayed to see their savior gladhanding plutocrats, they’ve been pretty quiet about it.

Contrast that reaction with what happened on Friday, when Mike Pence attended Hamilton. At the show’s conclusion, the actor Brandon Victor Dixon delivered a message to the vice president–elect, asking for respect for the groups targeted by Trump. “We, sir—we—are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” he said. Unlike Trump’s trip to the 21 Club, this sparked screeches of indignation about New York elitism. There was a viral #BoycottHamilton hashtag campaign, and a threat from Bikers for Trump to blockade the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Trump himself tweeted a number of attacks on the Hamilton cast’s lèse-majesté. He seems to understand that a good portion of his followers are more inflamed by assertive cosmopolitanism than by capitalists luxuriating in their wealth, power, and access.

Yup. Slash taxes on the already very rich? Yessss, go for it!! Ask Trump to stop spewing sexism and racism? Omigod it’s the end of all our freedoms!! That makes sense coming from rich people, but others, not so much.

I certainly won’t mourn if the more illiberal aspects of social justice politics wither before the Trump juggernaut. Campus leftists who formerly disdained free speech will learn its absolute importance when faced with a regime that attacks protesters, the media, and dissenting artists. Perhaps progressive activists, newly aware of how many Americans reject their intellectual priors, will stop responding to clumsy questions with a sneering, “It’s not my job to educate you.” I’d like to see the language of privilege jettisoned altogether in favor of civil rights or equal justice, since the number of people who want to see their own privilege dismantled is vanishingly small. Maybe Everyday Feminism, the website that encompasses everything insufferable about social justice culture, will finally be revealed as an elaborate right-wing psy-ops campaign.

Ha! It has to be.

If you want to see Everyday Feminism at its worst, check out 5 Reasons Why We Need to Stop Saying That ‘Women Are Half the World’s Population’ from a couple of days ago for some right-wing psy-ops:

If we want to make a case for women’s equality around the world, we need to do it in a way that doesn’t erase or harm people of other genders and identities. We need to be bringing in a more intersectional approach.

Yeah – it’s always women who are erasing other people. Isn’t that strange? That this kind of thing is always aimed at women, and only women?

1. It’s Ridiculously Cisnormative

Let’s be real: This phrase isn’t logically correct. When we’re saying that women are half the world, what we’re actually saying is that roughly half the world is assigned female at birth.

We aren’t talking about gender (and therefore, women) at all. We’re talking about sex, and assuming that everyone assigned female at birth must identify as a woman.

This is totally cisnormative – reinforcing the assumption that being cisgender is the default, and centering the experiences of cisgender people, effectively erasing transgender people – and makes this phrase really problematic.

Think about it: This “statistic,” focusing on birth assignment, technically includes me – someone who doesn’t identify as a woman, but was assigned female at birth.

And more importantly, it doesn’t include trans women. Since this is a percentage that relies on assignment at birth, we’re inherently excluding transgender women – who have a different birth assignment – in favor of propping up cisgender women.

There it is, that chronic rage at women – “in favor of propping up cisgender women.” On a site that calls itself feminist! Right-wing psy-ops for sure.

But you know who is no help with that? Trump, that’s who.

November 23, 2016
Just say no

Charles Blow isn’t having the Times “let’s meet and discuss this” thing. He’s not impressed that Trump dialed down some of his claims and demands. (Neither am I. You don’t get to use evil attacks and incitement to win an election and then take them back once you’ve won.)

You don’t get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid after exploiting that very radicalism to your advantage. Unrepentant opportunism belies a staggering lack of character and caring that can’t simply be vanquished from memory. You did real harm to this country and many of its citizens, and I will never — never — forget that.

Likewise.

As I read the transcript and then listened to the audio, the slime factor was overwhelming.

After a campaign of bashing The Times relentlessly, in the face of the actual journalists, he tempered his whining with flattery.

At one point he said:

“I just appreciate the meeting and I have great respect for The New York Times. Tremendous respect. It’s very special. Always has been very special.”

Wasn’t that stomach-turning?

I will say proudly and happily that I was not present at this meeting. The very idea of sitting across the table from a demagogue who preyed on racial, ethnic and religious hostilities and treating him with decorum and social grace fills me with disgust, to the point of overflowing. Let me tell you here where I stand on your “I hope we can all get along” plea: Never.

And sex-based. I wish people would not leave that out. We people with the slot are not some weird little minority. But the rest of that I endorse with enthusiasm.

You are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything — no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your ambitions.

I don’t believe you care much at all about this country or your party or the American people. I believe that the only thing you care about is self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. Your strongest allegiance is to your own cupidity.

I also believe that much of your campaign was an act of psychological projection, as we are now learning that many of the things you slammed Clinton for are things of which you may actually be guilty.

Unmistakably.

So let me say this on Thanksgiving: I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.

I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.

No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.

On it.

November 23, 2016
They say it was definitely the most vicious primary

Back to that damn interview. It’s turning into my Moby Dick.

What we do want to do is we want to bring the country together, because the country is very, very divided, and that’s one thing I did see, big league. It’s very, very divided, and I’m going to work very hard to bring the country together.

He says, after a viciously dishonest and belligerent campaign that attacked most of the population – women, immigrants, people of color, the left, Muslims, Native Americans, people with disabilities, ugly people, fat people, “losers”…everyone except rich svelte white people who vote Republican.

They ask him about his plans to put Hillary Clinton in jail, and he nonsensically says he doesn’t want to put her through that.

The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious…

This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time…

But the fact is that there were some pretty vicious elections; they say this was, this was the most.

They say it was definitely the most vicious primary. And I think it’s very important to look forward.

He says that as if it were nothing to do with him – as if it were external, like the weather. Yes, the campaign was vicious, because he made it vicious. He sounds as if he’s forgotten that.

Then they talk about climate change.

FRIEDMAN: But you have an open mind on this?

TRUMP: I do have an open mind. And we’ve had storms always, Arthur.

SULZBERGER: Not like this.

TRUMP: You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know. I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important.

And you know, you mentioned a lot of the courses. I have some great, great, very successful golf courses. I’ve received so many environmental awards for the way I’ve done, you know. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work where I’ve received tremendous numbers. Sometimes I’ll say I’m actually an environmentalist and people will smile in some cases and other people that know me understand that’s true. Open mind.

Crystal clean water is important. Glad we got that straight.

And then Shear asks about conflicts of interest and as we’ve already seen, that’s where he collapses into total incoherence.

As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka.

Someone points out the obvious: he could sell his company. He says no he couldn’t possibly do that, because he doesn’t want to.

I don’t care about my company. I mean, if a partner comes in from India or if a partner comes in from Canada, where we did a beautiful big building that just opened, and they want to take a picture and come into my office, and my kids come in and, I originally made the deal with these people, I mean what am I going to say? I’m not going to talk to you, I’m not going to take pictures? You have to, you know, on a human basis, you take pictures. But I just want to say that I am given the right to do something so important in terms of so many of the issues we discussed, in terms of health care, in terms of so many different things. I don’t care about my company. It doesn’t matter. My kids run it. They’ll say I have a conflict because we just opened a beautiful hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, so every time somebody stays at that hotel, if they stay because I’m president, I guess you could say it’s a conflict of interest. It’s a conflict of interest, but again, I’m not going to have anything to do with the hotel, and they may very well. I mean it could be that occupancy at that hotel will be because, psychologically, occupancy at that hotel will be probably a more valuable asset now than it was before, O.K.? The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. I can’t help that, but I don’t care. I said on “60 Minutes”: I don’t care. Because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters to me is running our country.

That’s ok then. Yes, of course, his new DC hotel will probably profit from his new starring role, but it’s fine, because he doesn’t care. Whew. Now that’s he’s explained he doesn’t care about all that extra profit, we can all relax. What a relief, hey?!

Then they talk about windmills. He explains all about windmills. They try again to ask about his personal objections to windmills, so he explains all about signing checks.

But I am phasing that out now, and handing that to Eric Trump and Don Trump and Ivanka Trump for the most part, and some of my executives, so that’s happening right now.

But in theory I could run my business perfectly, and then run the country perfectly. And there’s never been a case like this where somebody’s had, like, if you look at other people of wealth, they didn’t have this kind of asset and this kind of wealth, frankly. It’s just a different thing.

Oh, ah, I see. He’s saying that he has huge companies and assets and profits, much much bigger than any other president has had, so for that reason it’s all ok. You and I in our simplicity might have thought that made it worse, not ok, but no, we would have been wrong about that. The bigger the profits, the less the conflict of interest. Who knew?

Then he tells them how great his new DC hotel is.

I’ve greatly reduced meetings with contractors, meetings with different people that, you know, I’ve also started by — ’cause I’ve said over the last two years, once I decided I wanted to run, I don’t want to build anything. ’Cause building, like for instance, we built the post office, you’ll be happy to hear, ahead of schedule and under budget. Substantially ahead of schedule. Almost two years ago of schedule. But ahead of schedule, under budget, and it’s a terrific place. That’s the hotel on Pennsylvania.

Maybe at that point he gave them all 10% off coupons. The transcript doesn’t say.

Then he is asked about Bannon.

TRUMP: And if he said something to me that, in terms of his views, or that I thought were inappropriate or bad, number one I wouldn’t do anything, and number two, he would have to be gone. But I know many people that know him, and in fact, he’s actually getting some very good press from a lot of the people that know him, and people that are on the left. But Steve went to Harvard, he was a, you know, he was very successful, he was a Naval officer, he’s, I think he’s very, very, you know, sadly, really, I think it’s very hard on him. I think he’s having a hard time with it. Because it’s not him. It’s not him.

Ok…

We’re doomed.

November 23, 2016
The community standard that shields Nazis

Our Facebook overlords are helping the Nazis win.

Jim Wright tells us he’s been locked out of his Facebook account, while Nazis frolic happily all over the place.

I’ve been banned from Facebook.

My account has been suspended supposedly for violation of community standards.

My profile is still active, you can still access the page and comment on posts that haven’t been deleted by Facebook. But I myself am locked out. I can’t post, comment, or access the Facebook messenger system.

The community standard I violated is apparently the one where you’re not allowed to criticize actual, no fooling, Nazis.

Yes, actual Nazis.

That’s right, I was banned for criticizing an actual Nazi.

The Nazis who got him banned did it by flagging his post as spam.

So Facebook removed the post and then banned me from the platform for the next 24 hours.

The people who do this sort of thing, do so specifically in order to silence people they don’t like, not because they are actually offended. This is targeted harassment specifically designed to suppress people like me.

In my case, I’ve been targeted by certain rabidly obnoxious members of the Science Fiction community and more recently by actual neo-Nazis and Trump supporters. These people spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over my Facebook page and scheming to find ways to have me shut down.

It’s Trump’s world and we’re just unwelcome immigrants.

November 23, 2016
Haggling over the quid pro quo

On NPR, a conversation about the conflict of interest issue. Richard Painter advised Bush Junior and Norman Eisen advised Obama.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

President-elect Donald Trump shifted positions on several issues yesterday. But in a talk with The New York Times, he avoided placing many limits on his opportunity to profit while in office.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The president-elect, who has worldwide business interests, admits that he, quote, “might have requested a business favor from visiting British politicians.” His staff had previously denied that.

INSKEEP: His staff also denied that Trump sought a business favor when talking with Argentina’s president, but his daughter Ivanka – a vice president of his company – joined that call.

His daughter was on that call? Why? Why is no one putting a stop to all this?

GREENE: Ivanka Trump also joined Trump’s meeting with Japan’s prime minister.

INSKEEP: Two ethics lawyers – one Democrat, one Republican – now want Trump to do as other presidents have done. He can put his assets in a blind trust, where they will be sold. Richard Painter was President Bush’s top ethics lawyer, Norman Eisen was President Obama’s. They say federal ethics laws do not apply to the president but other laws do.

It’s unfortunate that federal ethics laws don’t apply to the president. I guess nobody believed we’d ever have one like Trump.

[pauses to have another moment of disbelief that this has happened]

Inskeep asks what’s the danger. Painter says well it gets too close to bribery.

INSKEEP: Is it – is the danger that someone in the Philippines or in Argentina or in Britain or name your country will do a business favor for the new president hoping that it might influence U.S. policy?

PAINTER: Here is where you get into the danger zone, when the government official starts talking about U.S. government business and then also talking about what personal business favors they might want. And when the conversation goes down that road, it does risk crossing the line into solicitation of a bribe. And people need to be very careful about these types of conversations, whether it’s I don’t like those windmills close to my golf courses or whatever it is. Those conversations should never take place at the same time as we’re discussing United States government business and what the – someone else might want from the U.S. government.

But Trump, astoundingly, doesn’t grasp that.

Eisen says there’s also the emoluments clause.

INSKEEP: What’s it say?

EISEN: Well, it says that presidents and other federal officials are not allowed to accept presents from foreign sovereigns. There’s already reports, for example, that the Trump Hotel here in Washington, D.C. is inviting representatives of foreign embassies to come and do deals with them to the extent they include presents, which is customary as part of these deals. That is a violation of the Constitution. And now we’re not only on criminal territory, we’re actually moving towards impeachment territory if a president violates the Constitution.

Why would we even want to be talking about this? Mr. Trump ought to do the right thing and set up a true blind trust and build a big beautiful ethics wall where Mr. Trump and his managers agree not to talk business in meetings with foreign leaders.

He absolutely ought to, but he has no intention of it, and when asked about it he babbles about never seeing his daughter again.

INSKEEP: Well, let me understand this because the Trump campaign has said, don’t worry about it, Trump’s kids are going to run his businesses. Isn’t that good enough?

EISEN: It is far from good enough. Every president has utilized the blind trust or its equivalent to reassure the American people that those presidents’ actions are motivated by the public interest, not their own personal special interests. So it’s not good enough.

PAINTER: And imagine where we’d be today if President Franklin Roosevelt had owned apartment buildings in Frankfurt and Berlin. You know, some of us might be speaking German. I mean, it is very important.

INSKEEP: Oh, you’re saying (laughter) – you’re saying what if the American president during World War II had had a financial stake in the future of Germany? Wouldn’t be good.

PAINTER: Well, yes, as many prominent American businessmen did. And those people who did often supported the America First movement and didn’t want us to stand up to Hitler. Are we going to be in a situation where we swap out the security of Israel so we can get a casino or a hotel in Abu Dhabi? I mean, this – the scenarios go on and on.

And nothing happens. Apparently no one will stop him.

INSKEEP: Why wouldn’t the president-elect respond to your concerns the same way that he responded to demands for his tax returns, just by declining to comply?

EISEN: Well, he’ll have an interval of goodwill. He’ll have a honeymoon period. And he may very well choose to decline. But just wait for that first scandal, that first impropriety to hit. The political pressure will become so intense that he’s going to be forced to do something.

Wait for the first scandal to hit if we know about it. He does it in secret as much as he can.

November 23, 2016
Eavesdropping on a toddler

Ploughing through the interview.

Jaw nearly dislocated.

As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka.

November 23, 2016
A disaster for humanity

Phil Plait tells us Trump is apparently going to cut off the funding for NASA’s climate research.

In an interview with the Guardian, Bob Walker, a senior Trump adviser, said that Trump will eliminate NASA’s Earth science research. This is the mission directorate of NASA that, among other important issues, studies climate change.

In other words, Trump and his team want to stop NASA from studying climate change. From the article:

Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.

This confirms essentially the same comments made by Walker in late October at a Federal Aviation Administration committee meeting.

So that’s horrifying.

If this slashing of NASA Earth science comes to pass, it will be a disaster for humanity. This is no exaggeration: NASA is the leading agency in studying the effects of global warming on the planet, in measuring the changes in our atmosphere, our oceans, the weather, and yes, the climate as temperatures increase. They have a fleet of spacecraft observing the Earth, and plans for more to better understand our environment. That’s all on the chopping block now.

Especially irritating are the details of what Walker said. Calling climate change research “politicized science” is so ironic you could build a battle fleet out of it, because it was the GOP who politicized it. They are the ones who attacked it as a party plank, they are the ones who have been taking millions in fossil fuel money to fund an organized disinformation campaign about it, they are the ones who harass climate scientists.

“Politicized” – honest to christ. It’s not politicizing to think it’s probably not ok to continue destroying the climate for the sake of our short-term gain while leaving the catastrophe for future generations to deal with.

Walker said the research should be done by NOAA, which Plait points out is outrageous since the Republicans have been relentlessly attacking NOAA for the past two years.

There’s one other exasperating thing Walker said, and it’s a pants-on-fire doozy:

Walker, however, claimed that doubt over the role of human activity in climate change “is a view shared by half the climatologists in the world. We need good science to tell us what the reality is and science could do that if politicians didn’t interfere with it.”

That is complete garbage. “Half the climatologists”? In reality, at least 97 percent of climatologists agree that humans cause global warming, and the data show you can’t explain the current rising temperatures without human influence.

And need I remind you, this is all happening while the planet has seen a string of record breaking heat, month after month, where the Arctic sea ice is melting in unprecedented ways, where President Obama has said climate change and its denial is a threat to national security, and a top military advisory board has said the same thing.

I find it outrageous that Trump won this presidency in large part by stoking fear in people, yet he denies the single biggest thing we actually should be scared of.

We’re screwed.

November 23, 2016
Buffoons who end up ruling their worlds

A bit later Trevor Noah said more about Trump’s skills as a crowd-pleaser.

You know, funny enough, one of the biggest moments of realization was when Donald Trump won the election because when I came into the show, I said, I think this guy can win. This was when he first came down that escalator. He gave his first speech. And then I was like, wow, this guy’s going to do well. And I remember man – people laughed at me. People were like, oh, you silly ignorant person who’s just come to this world. You clearly shouldn’t be at “The Daily Show” because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

And I was like, but I don’t know. He seems like he connects with people. I can relate to him as a performer. I can see what tools he’s using. He’s good at riffing. He’s good at taking the crowd on a journey. I can see what he’s doing. And people would say – and all throughout the race – and there were times when on the show I would mention it. You know, I mean, that’s why I said Trump reminds me of an African dictator. And that’s where that came from because everyone said to me this guy is – he’s just a fool. He’s just – he’s a buffoon.

I said, yeah, you can say that, but I’ve seen this before. I have seen this before. I’ve seen clowns that go on to take over their countries. I’ve seen buffoons who end up ruling their worlds. And it came to pass. And I’ve just come to realize I’m going to share my point of view. Some people won’t like me for it, some people will. I will work every day to be as honest as I can because I do believe that we’re all trying to get to the same place. But various people have tricked us into believing that we are not.

And I see America going into that space. And I know that in South Africa, we were in that space and we’re still suffering from that space. And that was where a government very successfully convinced the majority of a population that every single person there was blocking the other people from achieving greatness in the country only to realize that we were all being oppressed at the same time.

It’s true and it’s infinitely depressing. Trump is a buffoon. He is empty. And he’s going to ruin everything.

November 23, 2016
You have to be able to switch up as well as down

Speaking of Trump’s incredibly stunted vocabulary, and the horrifyingly stunted thinking and knowledge that reflects – Trevor Noah said some interesting things about all that on Fresh Air yesterday.

If you look at this election, I feel like Donald Trump was speaking a different language to Hillary Clinton. You know, it’s not dissimilar to what we saw in South Africa with our president Jacob Zuma. I remember sitting with people laughing when they would watch the debates, and they’d go this guy’s a buffoon. Oh, man, he has such a low word count. He’s got the grammar of a 5-year-old. He has the – you know, vocabulary of a toddler. And I said, yeah, but do know how many people find that appealing right now? He’s up there and everybody understands what he’s saying. And they were like, oh, can you imagine this guy as a president? And I said, yeah, but think of how many people who for the first time are listening to a presidential candidate understanding every single, quote, unquote, “policy” that he puts forward.

And sometimes that’s a thing that I will call them, you know, like elites, not even liberal elites, just people who are educated. They forget sometimes that communication is more important than your grasp of language. You know, can you communicate effectively with a person? That’s what I learned as a comedian. I remember one time I went on a little bender I tried to learn as many words as I could from the dictionary. And I thought I’m going to increase my vocabulary on stage. I’m going to expand my word count. My word cloud will be immense.

And I got onstage, and I lost half of the audience because half of the people in the audience were going we don’t know what perambulate means. Why do we have to think about this? And I realized you’ve got to be careful in deciding what your intention is. Are you using language, you know, as a flourish or are you trying to communicate as effectively as possible with another human being? And that’s what Donald Trump, in my opinion, did very, very well.

In other words you have to be good at code switching. That’s how Terry Gross responds to what he said:

GROSS: Do you find yourself code switching in the U.S.?

NOAH: I do. I do definitely, depending on where I am. And code switching is fun for me. You know, I don’t even do it intentionally. I just find, speaking to one person, I change a few words; I change my tone; I change my accent slightly. It’s a seamless transition that I do without even thinking, like a chameleon. I don’t think that I’m doing it. I just do it.

Sure. We all do. Adults code switch when they talk to toddlers, for instance. But I disagree with his last two sentences about Trump –

Are you using language, you know, as a flourish or are you trying to communicate as effectively as possible with another human being? And that’s what Donald Trump, in my opinion, did very, very well.

He did it well in the sense of getting a lot of people on his side. He did not do it well in many other senses that are relevant. He did not for instance do it well in the sense of getting people on his side without inciting them to misogynist and racist hatred. He did not do it well in the sense of telling the truth. He did not do it well in the sense of modeling reasoned political discourse. I could go on.

Also, Trump can’t actually code switch. He can’t code switch in the way he needed to in that meeting with the Times people for instance. He can’t switch up, he can only switch down. That’s no good in a president.

You know who can code switch, of course. The current president is brilliant at it. Remember him at the funeral in Charleston? And his campaign speeches over the past few weeks, too. But Trump has only the one register, and it’s desperately inadequate.

November 23, 2016
Special tremendous

The Times published a transcript of its meeting with Trump yesterday. Le tout Facebook is talking about it, so I hastened to find it. It will probably take me all day to read it though, because I’ll have to take frequent breaks, because reading unscripted Trump is so abrading to the nerves.

I just can’t get over how thick he is. I feel as if I should take that as read and focus on the substance, but I find it difficult. The thickness has a lot to do with why the substance is what it is. The first extended passage reveals it in all its chattering nakedness:

TRUMP: O.K. Well, I just appreciate the meeting and I have great respect for The New York Times. Tremendous respect. It’s very special. Always has been very special. I think I’ve been treated very rough. It’s well out there that I’ve been treated extremely unfairly in a sense, in a true sense. I wouldn’t only complain about The Times. I would say The Times was about the roughest of all. You could make the case The Washington Post was bad, but every once in a while I’d actually get a good article. Not often, Dean, but every once in awhile.

“Special.”

Look, I have great respect for The Times, and I’d like to turn it around. I think it would make the job I am doing much easier. We’re working very hard. We have great people coming in. I think you’ll be very impressed with the names. We’ll be announcing some very shortly.

The desperately stunted vocabulary is one index, but the complete incomprehension of “the job he is doing” and its relationship to the press is another. He thinks it’s legitimate for him to ask the Times to make his job easier!

Everybody wanted to do this. People are giving up tremendous careers in order to be subject to you folks and subject to a lot of other folks. But they’re giving up a lot. I mean some are giving up tremendous businesses in order to sit for four or maybe eight or whatever the period of time is. But I think we’re going to see some tremendous talent, tremendous talent coming in. We have many people for every job. I mean no matter what the job is, we have many incredible people. I think, Reince, you can sort of just confirm that. The quality of the people is very good.

That’s the next president. That’s why I have to take a break at that point, in order to recover.

November 23, 2016
Turkish police continue rounding up academics

Mahir Zeynalov on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MahirZeynalov/status/799514778716794881

https://twitter.com/MahirZeynalov/status/800823333159890945

https://twitter.com/MahirZeynalov/status/798185888408707076

November 23, 2016
Guest post: The slow nuke of climate change is already detonating

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on This is who he is.

Also, he will have the nukes. He’ll use them. I don’t think there’s any way he won’t. He has no inhibitions, no understanding, no impulse control, no ability to reason or check himself – why would he not use them?

He could be game over. It’s looking likely.

And of course the slow nuke of climate change is already detonating at a rate of 4 Hiroshima bombs a second. Even if we cut carbon emissions to zero at this very moment, this accumulation of energy would continue for many decades due to the enormous inertia of the climate system. That’s just how long it would take for the global temperature to stop rising. Getting back to “normal” temperatures is going to take millennia.

Of course this all assumes that there are no unpleasant surprises in store, which seems unlikely. Despite all this talk of “alarmism” and “hysteria”, climate scientists are actually far more guilty of understatment than overstatment (Naomi Oreskes has called it “erring on the side of least drama”). If the edge of the cliff is 100 ft ahead, then aiming to stop after 180 ft is not “half as good” as aiming to stop after 90 ft. And there are many such “cliffs”:

– Ice reflects lots of energy-carrying sunlight back into space. When you release carbon into the atmosphere, the planet heats up, which means less ice, which means less reflection of sunlight, which means even more global warming.

– Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. When you release carbon into the atmosphere, the planet heats up, which means more water vapor, which means more greenhouse effect, which means even more global warming.

– Permafrost stores vast amounts of Methane, which is yet another greenhouse gas. When you release carbon into the atmosphere, the planet heats up, which means melting permafrost, which means more methane in the atmosphere, which means more greenhouse effect, which means even more global warming.

– The oceans absorb vast quantities of carbon (which is a serious problem in itself, since it leads to ocean acidification). But warm water holds less carbon than cold water. When you release carbon into the atmosphere, the planet heats up, which means warmer oceans, which means less absorption of carbon by the oceans, which means more carbon in the atmosphere, which means even more global warming.

– Etc… etc…

At some point these positive feedback-loops may become self-perpetuating, such that the planet will keep warming even if we cut our carbon emissions to zero…

…which, of course, we are not doing. We already have 5 times more fossil fuels in store than we can possibly burn while having a reasonable chance of limiting global warming to 2 degrees (which is already way too high, maybe fatally). And we are still looking for more. It’s the most urgent existential threat our species has ever faced, and it’s hardly even on the cultural radar. As I have previously written elsewhere, it’s as if we’re in a car heading for the cliff mentioned above, and the only discussion going on inside mainstream culture is whether we should aim to stop after 1000 ft or 1500 ft (or never).

But at least with the Paris accord – for all its shortcomings – we finally had in place a strong international consensus that the problem was real and that something (just not something in particular) needed to be done about it.

Enter Trump.

THE END

November 23, 2016
Trump is out to destroy the free and independent media

Robert Reich on Facebook:

Historically, despots have used 7 techniques to destroy the independence of the media:

1. Berate the media. Yesterday Trump called two-dozen TV news anchors and executives to the Trump Tower – including Lester Holt, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos, and Wolf Blitzer — to chew them out about their reporting during the election.

2. Blacklist media that criticize them. Trump has maintained a blacklist of news outlets to which he has refused to grant event credentials. This morning he cancelled a meeting with the New York Times.

3. Turn the public against the media. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” He tweets that the New York Times has lost “thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena.’” (The Times says it added 41,000 net paid subscriptions in the week after the election.)

4. Threaten the media. Trump says he’ll “open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

5. Block media access. Trump hasn’t had a news conference since July. He has blocked the media from traveling with him, or knowing whom he’s meeting with. (His phone call last week with Putin was first reported by the Kremlin.)

One evening last week he told the media he wasn’t going out again and they left, and then he went out to dinner.

6. Establish their own alternative controlled media. Trump sends messages through Alt-Right Breitbart News and Fox News.

7. Bypass the media and communicate with the public directly. Trump uses tweets and videos. The word “media” comes from “intermediate” between newsmakers and the public. Trump wants to eliminate the media.

A free and independent media is essential to a democracy. Even before he’s sworn in, Trump is out to destroy that freedom and independence.

He added a bizarro 8th item today: being inappropriately matey and needy with the New York Times, suggesting editors should call him when they think he’s doing something wrong.

At any rate, yes, what Reich said. He’s acting every inch the dictator with regard to the media, and it’s appalling. We mustn’t let him normalize this behavior.

November 22, 2016
The Queens boy

Journalists and journalistic outlets must never again agree to meet with Trump off the record.

Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post says what the tv people did wrong yesterday and the Times people did right today.

The disaster yesterday:

Brandon Friedman, a Virginia-based public relations executive, offered his theory on Twitter: “They walked into an ambush, agreed not to talk about it, then Trump went straight to the Post with his version.”

Then it was just a hop, skip and jump to a big headline on the Drudge Report, with its huge worldwide traffic: “Trump Slams Media Elite, Face to Face.” As Business Insider politics editor Oliver Darcy aptly put it, that is “how a lot of America will see this.”

The result for the president-elect: He once again was able to use the media as his favorite foil. Having a whipping boy is more important than ever now that the election is over and there is no Democratic opponent to malign at every turn.

And yet at the same time he wants to be besties with the New York Times. It’s as if his mind goes blank every few minutes and he reboots and starts all over from scratch.

On Tuesday, shockingly, a new melodrama arose: Trump’s planned meeting at the New York Times was canceled, then restored.

The Times played it right. Despite a tweet attack from the president-elect, editors refused to go the off-the-record route with Trump, which was his preference, for obvious reasons — because he wanted again to control the story.

With the exception of a brief off-the-record conversation between Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger and the president-elect, the meeting was fair game for news stories — as it should be.

Off-the-record was a mistake for the TV people, and it would have been a mistake for the Times. The paper successfully called Trump’s bluff. As much as he professes to despise the Times, he remains in some ways the Queens boy who lusted after Manhattan success and acceptance.

Doesn’t he though. That’s why I call him Donnie from Queens.

Always on the record with Donnie from Queens. Never trust him.

November 22, 2016
Just call them Nazis

Dear Media:

Please stop calling them the “alt-right.” Just call them Nazis. They won’t be offended. Nazis are super hard to offend, unless you call them Jews.

-Andy Borowitz

November 22, 2016
Trump now sees things differently

As we’ve seen, in one of the least surprising “surprises” of the week Trump said hahaha I was just kidding, I’m not going to throw Crooked Hillary in jail.

The Washington Post reported this morning that Trump “has decided that his administration will not pursue criminal investigations related to former rival Hillary Clinton’s private email server or her family foundation.” We learned of the decision by way of Kellyanne Conway, who appeared on MSNBC earlier today.

…Conway said Trump now sees things differently. “I think when the president-elect, who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content” to fellow Republicans, she said. “Look, I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the President of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them,” she added.

Notice how casual she is about admitting that he’s not going to do what he repeatedly said he was going to do. Notice how casual she is about admitting he lied to the voters, as if they should have known that all along.

I suspect much of the political world will perceive this as a conciliatory, and perhaps even magnanimous, decision…

Oh surely not. It was just his typical scuzzy lying bullshit and projection, seeing as how he’s the actually corrupt one of the two. His fans will be pissed off that he lied to them, and his non-fans can’t possibly think it’s magnanimous to say he’s not going to do something he had no business doing in the first place.

It was a scandal of sorts during the campaign that Trump saw himself as some kind of unhinged strongman, threatening to lock up those who stood in the way of his pursuit of power, in large part because he was claiming a legal authority that did not exist. Today’s news may seem reassuring – Trump won’t keep a ridiculous campaign promise – but look just below the surface and you’ll see that it’s actually a continuation of the scandal because Trump is still acting as if he has a power that remains imaginary.

Certainly. I wouldn’t dream of looking at it any other way.

November 22, 2016