Funny kind of “birthday”…

Happy Independence Day, Marines.#HappyBirthdayAmerica pic.twitter.com/6DNndxHazV

— U.S. Marines (@USMC) July 4, 2019

How it’s seen over there.

(Spoiler: not admiringly.)

The US president will deliver an Independence Day speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, which honours the president who won the civil war and helped end slavery and was the site of civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech a century later.

Yes, and the result is that that is how we see it and think of it now. It’s a place where we gather to petition the government for redress of grievances. It has a certain resonance. It’s not a place for triumphalist displays of military power. Right after WW II it might have been, but now, no. It stands for everything Trump hates, and Trump stands for everything that civil rights struggles oppose. Trump doesn’t belong there. He wouldn’t belong there without the military show of force, and with it he’s an excrescence.

And for decades, presidents have kept a low profile during Washington’s annual celebration of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, as typically hundreds of thousands of people gather at the National Mall for a nonpartisan concert and fireworks.

I didn’t know presidents have kept a low profile. I haven’t paid much attention to the 4th. I guess it’s a bit of polite consideration so that people of all parties and none can feel comfortable going. Naturally Trump has no use for any kind of polite consideration.

White House staff are worried the crowds will be thin.

Though thousands of tickets have been distributed to the military, White House aides have reportedly been struggling to draw crowds to Trump’s event because of the last minute arrangements. Congress is not in session, and Washington typically becomes quieter over the holiday, as residents escape the city’s summer heat.

“They started this too late and everyone has plans already,” Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor, told Politico, which reported that even top level White House officials were expected – but not confirmed – to attend.

They could always fly in the people sweltering in camps on the border.

Crowd size is a sensitive subject for the president. A government photographer edited official pictures of Trump’s inauguration to make the crowds seem bigger following a personal intervention from the president, according to investigative documents from the inspector general of the US interior department.

“Edited” is a euphemism. The official pictures were faked.

The Pentagon said the administration has provided 5,000 tickets for Trump’s Independence Day event to the military. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign has also handed passes out to Republican allies and donors.

In other words it’s a campaign event, at taxpayers’ expense. That’s all kinds of illegal.

Asked earlier this week if he could give a speech that would represent all Americans, Trump said he thought he could, and then launched into an attack on Democrats’ policies on healthcare and taxes.

“Instead of addressing something like veteran homelessness, he’s spending it on boosting his ego with a parade that’s fundamentally about him and then getting tickets in the hands of wealthy donors for the Republican party. What a waste of money,” Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro said on CBS This Morning on Wednesday.

It’s a waste of money and a violation of campaign finance laws.

Pink News issues a correction and apology:

Last week we published and tweeted a story claiming Joanna Cherry QC the MP For Edinburgh South West and the SNP Justice and Home Affairs Spokesperson was being investigated for homophobia. The claim was untrue and we would like to apologise unreservedly to Ms Cherry.

It is well known that Ms Cherry is a human rights lawyer. She came out as a lesbian over 30 years ago and campaigned against section 28. She has spent a lifetime marching and campaigning for the rights of the LGBT+ community and as a politician regularly speaks up for their rights in parliament and beyond.

It was not our intention nor is it in our interest to alienate any member of the LGBT+ community and we are truly sorry for the harm caused.

We are happy also to confirm that we have made a donation to the Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group at Ms Cherry’s request in compensation for the damage done and we have paid Ms Cherry’s legal costs.

In a statement Ms Cherry said: “I am pleased that the PinkNews has withdrawn this damaging and hurtful allegation. I believe in equal rights for all. It is not acceptable for lesbians who speak up for women and girls’ rights and against hateful speech and abuse to be denigrated. I hope the LGBTI+ movement can resume its previous habit of respectful debate over differences of opinion within the community.”

So there.

The Washington Post editorial board is not a fan of Trump’s plans for July 4.

It was bad enough that Mr. Trump sought to make the holiday about himself with plans to deliver a nationally televised address from the Lincoln Memorial, thus eliminating what many consider the hands-down best spot in Washington for fellowship and fireworks on the Fourth of July. But Mr. Trump now plans to cordon off an area in front of the memorial reserved just for dignitaries, family and friends. Nothing about reserved seating says “We the people.”

Equally, if not more troubling, is his insistence on a display of military might that will include a flyover of warplanes and the stationing of tanks or other armored military vehicles on the streets of the capital.

On the streets. What do we normally think when we see tanks stationed on city streets? Either that there’s a coup in progress or that there’s a crackdown on dissent in progress.

What this will cost the Defense Department and the National Parks Service is anyone’s guess. (Officials have refused comment.) But the question of expense pales in comparison with the message that will be sent by a gaudy display of military hardware that is more in keeping with a banana republic than the world’s oldest democracy.

What’s that one? Santiago, Chile, September 11 1973.

To get rid of the bad taste that left behind…

Watch all 23 seconds, there’s a big surprise at the end.

Some offices are better than others… https://t.co/H0QMFQtDv3

— Tom Sutcliffe (@tds153) July 3, 2019

Hmmm. What are we saying here?

I think we have to have a serious discussion about what's more important – your right to feel comfortable, or your right to be safe. These rules are supposed to ensure EVERYONE is safe, not just you. Trans women are not safe in male changing rooms.

— Jacob (@wellhat) July 2, 2019

Trans women are not safe in male changing rooms, so women and girls have to share changing rooms with them.

But women and girls are not safe in male changing rooms either, so why do they have to make their changing rooms less safe for them in order to make them more safe for trans women? Why does the obligation always run that way? Why is there maximum concern for the safety of trans women and zero concern for the safety of women and girls?

Can we have a serious discussion about that maybe?

Trump is putting on the full fascist display for the 4th of July, at least as close to it as he can get.

Donald Trump said on Monday that a display of US military tanks would be part of a special event he is headlining on the Fourth of July in Washington.

As if that were just normal, but it isn’t.

Trump had wanted a military parade of tanks and other equipment in the District of Columbia after he witnessed a similar parade on Bastille Day in Paris in 2017. That plan eventually was scuttled, partly because of cost, though Trump apparently held on to the idea.

Want tanks! Want tanks n planes n sojers n noise! Am big baby! Plus despot! Am big despot baby!

Two M1A1 Abrams tanks and two Bradley Fighting Vehicles will be on display as part of Trump’s “Salute to America” event, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the exhibits have not been made public.

You could always do a salute to America by celebrating its people, or its scenery, or its spasmodic efforts to live up to its myths. You don’t have to salute it in the literal military sense.

Federal lawmakers, local officials and others have voiced concerns that Trump could alter the tone of what traditionally is a nonpartisan celebration of America’s independence from the British by delivering a political speech. Trump formally announced his bid for re-election in June.

Count on it. If there’s a tradition, count on him to break it. If there’s a norm, count on him to flout it. If there’s a better way to go, count on him to ignore it.

Some House Democrats went to inspect two border prisons yesterday. The news is not good.

They described horrific circumstances at facilities on the same day the investigative news organization ProPublica revealed a closed Facebook group in which current and former Border Patrol agents reportedly share jokes about migrant deaths, derogatory comments about Latina lawmakers and a lewd meme involving at least one of them. The posts have been turned over to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, said US Border Patrol Chief of Operations Brian Hastings.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the Democratic lawmakers who toured a facility here Monday following reports of squalid conditions for detained migrants at the border, overcrowded facilities and thinly stretched resources. She claimed she saw migrants drinking out of toilets, which a Border Patrol official flatly denied, and that she felt unsafe during the visit.

“People (are) drinking out of toilets, officers laughing in front of members Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a series of tweets. “I brought it up to their superiors,” she said in one tweet. “They said ‘officers are under stress & act out sometimes.’ No accountability.”

This is after the Pro Publica story came out, so Ocasio-Cortez was having to deal with officers who could well have been members of that creepy Facebook group, the one that singled her out as a target for misogynist “jokes.” They had guns; the members of Congress were forced to hand over their phones.

Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania tweeted “conditions are far worse than we ever could have imagined” and that “this is a human rights crisis.”

“(Fifteen) women in their 50s- 60s sleeping in a small concrete cell, no running water. Weeks without showers. All of them separated from their families,” Dean wrote on Twitter.

It sounds much too familiar.

Large generalization department.

Unlike liberals, leftists & progressives who claim to care about minorities, gays, blacks, women, immigrants, et al. don't. Witness the assault on @MrAndyNgo who is gay, Asian, son of immigrants & the response ("but he films Antifa so deserved it")https://t.co/escJDKJvFU

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) July 1, 2019

All leftists and progressives (as opposed to “liberals” by which Shermer means libertarians) respond to the assault on Andy Ngo by saying he deserved it.

Really?

No. Of course not. Some do, but everyone to the left of Shermer? Don’t be ridiculous.

He also embarrassed himself by saying that Nazism was anti-capitalist. He deleted that one.

Uh oh. Again. It was the Canadian Arctic, it was the Himalayas, now it’s the Antarctic. All the ice that we thought was so locked up is melting much faster than expected.

The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic.

The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.

But researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought. Unlike the melting of ice sheets on land, sea ice melting does not raise sea level. But losing bright white sea ice means the sun’s heat is instead absorbed by dark ocean waters, leading to a vicious circle of heating.

The two poles work differently.

The loss of sea ice in the Arctic clearly tracks the rise in global air temperatures resulting from human-caused global heating, but the two poles are very different. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents and is exposed to warming air, while Antarctica is a freezing continent surrounded by oceans and is protected from warming air by a circle of strong winds.

Antarctic sea ice had been slowly increasing during the 40 years of measurements and reached a record maximum in 2014. But since then sea ice extent has nosedived, reaching a record low in 2017.

“There has been a huge decrease,” said Claire Parkinson, at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the US. In her study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she called the decline precipitous and a dramatic reversal.

The scientists don’t know why it’s happening.

Hey, here’s an idea, let’s put women back into corsets. People who can’t breathe properly can’t rebel.

Kim Kardashian West is perched on a chair. She’s not quite sitting; instead, she’s pushing her hands into the armrests then leaning against the cushion. Her figure is grotesque: above her generous hips rests an already small waist, tightened beyond belief thanks to a flesh-coloured corset. She addresses the camera. “Anna, if I don’t sit down for dinner, now you know why. I’ll be walking around mingling, talking, but I can hardly sit …” – she tries to sit, she can’t – “I can only half-sit.”

…Perhaps she was right not to sit; a few weeks later, actor Elle Fanning attended a dinner at Cannes where she fainted and fell off her chair. Her dress, a vintage Prada gown with a corseted waist, was too tight.

Breathing is for men.

Earlier this month Kylie Jenner posted a picture of her nails on Instagram. They were tie-dye, presumably acrylics, and absurdly long. How long is absurdly long? There aren’t universal rules about this of course, but if your nail goes on for around an inch after your finger ends, it seems fair to assume that your ability to go about your day normally will be limited.

Are they all drugged in that family, or what?

Like Victorian aristocrats, women who wear corsets and long acrylics are flaunting the fact that their lives and status do not depend on labour, either physical or requiring long hours. Like Victorian aristocrats, they frequently discuss the sheer amount of time and energy they spend on physical appearance, thus making it clear that their reliance on labour has been substituted with the need to look absolutely flawless. Labour is no longer necessary to them because beauty is their work; their beauty is understood to be enough, because to them it is labour.

But is it even beauty? Not to me it’s not. I’ll take Reese Witherspoon grubby and sweaty in Wild over a Kardashian in a corset any day.

Pro Publica reports:

Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.

In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies.”

It’s inevitable, I suppose. People with humane generous instincts wouldn’t go into that line of work. I think that’s more the case than it is with for instance the police. Hopeful immigrants aren’t doing anything inherently wrong, so wanting to be in the Border Patrol probably has little to do with a taste for justice or the public good. But the attitudes coming from the top also make a difference, I should think.

“These comments and memes are extremely troubling,” said Daniel Martinez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who studies the border. “They’re clearly xenophobic and sexist.”

The postings, in his view, reflect what “seems to be a pervasive culture of cruelty aimed at immigrants within CBP. This isn’t just a few rogue agents or ‘bad apples.’”

Definitely the kind of thing you want to see from people who have power over others.

“These comments and memes are extremely troubling,” said Daniel Martinez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who studies the border. “They’re clearly xenophobic and sexist.”

The postings, in his view, reflect what “seems to be a pervasive culture of cruelty aimed at immigrants within CBP. This isn’t just a few rogue agents or ‘bad apples.’”

The Border Patrol Facebook group is the most recent example of some law enforcement personnel behaving badly in public and private digital spaces. An investigation by Reveal uncovered hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers who moved in extremist Facebook circles, including white supremacist and anti-government groups. A team of researchers calling themselves the Plain View Projectrecently released a hefty database of offensive Facebook posts made by current and ex-law enforcement officers.

And in early 2018, federal investigators found a raft of disturbing and racist text messages sent by Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona after searching the phone of Matthew Bowen, an agent charged with running down a Guatemalan migrant with a Ford F-150 pickup truck. The texts, which were revealed in a court filing in federal court in Tucson, described migrants as “guats,” “wild ass shitbags,” “beaners” and “subhuman.” The messages included repeated discussions about burning the migrants up.

Several of the postings reviewed by ProPublica refer to the planned visit by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, including Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Veronica Escobar, to a troubled Border Patrol facility outside of El Paso. Agents at the compound in Clint, Texas, have been accused of holding children in neglectful, inhumane conditions.

Hurr hurr, a burrito, get it?

The head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Joaquin Castro, reviewed the Facebook discussions and was incensed. “It confirms some of the worst criticisms of Customs and Border Protection,” said Castro, a Democrat who represents San Antonio. “These are clearly agents who are desensitized to the point of being dangerous to migrants and their co-workers.” He added that the agents who made the vulgar comments “don’t deserve to wear any uniform representing the United States of America.”

Next up: Trump will invite them all to sit with him at his July 4 Nazi Rally.

Updating to add: AOC points out that the membership of this group is nearly half of the total. Damn. I hadn’t realized that.

There are 20,000 TOTAL Customs & Border Patrol agents in the US.

9,500 – almost HALF that number – are in a racist & sexually violent secret CBP Facebook group.

They’re threatening violence on members of Congress. How do you think they’re treating caged children+families? https://t.co/AfDB50cgHQ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019