No good reason

Mar 2nd, 2017 12:39 pm | By

Did Trump sign a secret executive order telling customs and border patrol to keep out as many brown foreigners as possible? Because if he didn’t, I don’t see why the Tibetan women’s football team was denied visas to come here for a tournament in Texas.

They say they were told they had “no good reason” to visit the US.

Most of the players are Tibetan refugees living in India, and had applied at the US embassy in Delhi.

India isn’t one of Trump’s random “seven countries.” Neither is Tibet.

Cassie Childers, the executive director of Tibet Women’s Soccer and a US citizen, told the BBC that she had accompanied the group of 16 players for interviews at the embassy on 24 February.

“I am disappointed because we had planned the trip for months. It was a big moment in every player’s life when they were told about the trip. It was their opportunity to tell the world that Tibetan women are capable of achieving anything,” she said.

Ms Childers added that she was “ashamed” that her country refused to grant visas to a women’s football team.

But she also said she didn’t think it was Trump’s doing. Apparently we don’t like to let Tibetans in, because they might ask for asylum.

The Women's Soccer team Tibet Women’s Soccer

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Children of the Sun

Mar 2nd, 2017 11:02 am | By

What’s on Bannon’s bookshelf? What’s on his list of top most inspiring and influential reads? One item is a clerico-fascist named Julius Evola, whom he name-checked in a speech at a Vatican conference in 2014.

“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.

Stagnation and hierarchy are so much better – provided you have the good fortune to be at the top end of the hierarchy rather than the bottom end.

Evola became a darling of Italian Fascists, and Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s looked to him as a spiritual and intellectual godfather.

They called themselves Children of the Sun after Evola’s vision of a bourgeoisie-smashing new order that he called the Solar Civilization. Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.

More important for the current American administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Mr. Bannon nurtured as the head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Mr. Trump.

“Julius Evola is one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century,” said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is a top figure in the alt-right movement, which has attracted white supremacists, racists and anti-immigrant elements.

And the president of the US and many people on his staff.

H/t Rrr

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It is crucial to our system of justice that we demand the truth

Mar 2nd, 2017 10:46 am | By

Matt Zapotosky and Mark Berman at the Washington Post point out a touch of hypocrisy or double standarding in Jeff “lied to Congress” Sessions:

Sessions served as a senator for two decades, and he was an outspoken surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. Because of that, he has talked extensively on all the topics for which he now faces criticism — lying under oath, the importance of meetings, handling sensitive investigations and even correcting the Congressional record. He was particularly critical of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and spoke extensively about the investigation of her use of a private email server while Secretary of State.

They found examples of his stated views on items like lying under oath.

After former president Bill Clinton was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, Sessions—then a freshman senator from Alabama—went on television to discuss the significance of lying under oath.

“I am concerned about a president under oath being alleged to have committed perjury,” Sessions said in a January 1999 interview with C-SPAN that was resurfaced and widely shared on social media Tuesday night. “I hope that he can rebut that and prove that did not happen. I hope he can show that he did not commit obstruction of justice and that he can complete his term. But there are serious allegations that that occurred.”

Well but to be fair, Clinton was accused of lying under oath about his non-marital sexual adventures. That’s serious business, unlike lying under oath about being in cahoots with Russia in its campaign to promote Donald Trump.

Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. Sessions, who voted to convict Clinton on both charges, said he was worried that the Senate’s decision would help anyone looking to lie under oath and could damage the country’s respect for the rule of law.

“It is crucial to our system of justice that we demand the truth,” Sessions said in a statement at the time. “I fear that an acquittal of this President will weaken the legal system by providing an option for those who consider being less than truthful in court.”

Sessions said that to him, it was “proven beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty” that Clinton committed perjury, and he assailed “the chief law-enforcement officer of the land, whose oath of office calls on him to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” for what he called an attack on the law.

Oh did he. Did he really.

This is important because during his confirmation hearing, Sessions testified under oath that he had not communicated with the Russian ambassador — despite two such contacts.

There’s plenty more.

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He did not have sex with that ambassador

Mar 2nd, 2017 9:47 am | By

Well great. Brilliant. The new US Attorney General lied at his confirmation hearing. Just what we need: a lying corrupt racist Attorney General, working for the most authoritarian and corrupt administration we’ve ever had.

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

That should be it. Fire him. Never mind recusing himself, he should be gone.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

He should be gone.

At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Is that scummy enough? It certainly seems scummy enough to me.

In January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to written questions. “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote.

Sessions responded with one word: “No.”

Sessions is saying wull he didn’t talk to Kislyak about the election, so he told the truth.

When asked to comment on Sessions’s contacts with Kislyak, Franken said in a statement to The Post on Wednesday: “If it’s true that Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.”

Senators have to be polite. I don’t.

Several Democratic members of the House on Wednesday night called on Sessions to resign from his post.

“After lying under oath to Congress about his own communications with the Russians, the Attorney General must resign,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement, adding that “Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country.”

He never was. The racism is a major disqualifier before we even get to the lying to Congress.

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Hitler projected purpose and dynamism

Mar 1st, 2017 5:29 pm | By

The great historian Richard Evans on how Hitler did it:

Many people in Germany thought that Hitler would be a normal head of government. Some, like the conservative politician Franz von Papen and the leaders of the German National People’s Party, thought that they’d be able to control him, because they were more experienced and formed the majority in the coalition government that Hitler headed. Others thought that the responsibilities of office would tame and steer him in a more conventional direction. They were all wrong.

…

Whereas other politicians seemed to dither or to act as mere administrators, Hitler projected purpose and dynamism. They remained trapped within the existing conventions of political life; he proved a master at denouncing those conventions and manipulating the media. The first politician to tour the country by air during an election campaign, Hitler issued an endless stream of slogans to win potential supporters over. He would make Germany great again. He would give Germans work once more. He would put Germany first. He would revive the nation’s rusting industries, laid to waste by the economic depression. He would crush the alien ideologies—­socialism, liberalism, communism—­that were undermining the nation’s will to survive and destroying its core values.

Ullrich quotes a police report on one of Hitler’s early speeches, in which he “used vulgar comparisons” and “did not shy away from the cheapest allusions.” Hitler’s language was never measured or careful, but “like something merely expulsed.” Yet, revising earlier opinions, Ullrich shows how carefully Hitler prepared his speeches. Seemingly spontaneous, they were in fact calculated. Full of base allegations and vile stereotypes, they were precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and maximum reaction from the crowds he addressed. When he declared that fines were of no use against those he called Jewish criminals, his listeners interrupted him with chants of “Beatings! Hangings!”

Does that sound familiar enough?

Aided by his talented propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, Hitler not only flaunted his vulgarity and exploited tribal hatreds; he also lied and lied his way to success. The Jews, he argued, had stabbed the German Army in the back in 1918; the politicians of the other parties, he insisted, were hopelessly venal and corrupt and should be put in jail; the Nazi thugs who were condemned to death in 1932 for the “Potempa murders” were victims of a “monstrous blood-verdict”; liberal newspapers that criticized Hitler were, as Goebbels put it, the “Jewish lying press.”

Few took Hitler seriously or thought that he would actually put his threats against the country’s tiny Jewish minority, his rants against feminists, left-wing politicians, homosexuals, pacifists, and liberal newspaper editors, into effect. Fewer still believed his vow to quit the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. But within a few months of taking office, he did all of these things—and much more.

Scary enough?

Once in power, the Nazi regime was run exclusively by men: Only heterosexual white males, the Nazis thought, had the required detachment and lack of emotional connection to the issues at hand to make the right calls. Nazi propaganda mocked disabled people; within a few years, they were being sterilized and then exterminated. Hitler railed against the roving bands of criminals who were destroying law and order and called for the return of the death penalty, effectively abrogated under the Weimar Republic. Within a short space of time, the executions began again, reaching a total of more than 16,000 during his 12 years in power, while Germany’s prison population rocketed from 50,000 in 1930 to more than 100,000 on the eve of the war. Feminist associations were all closed down, the law forbidding homosexual acts between men was drastically sharpened, vagrants were rounded up and imprisoned, illegal Polish immigrants were deported. Germany pulled out of international organizations and tore up treaties with cynical abandon, dismantling or emasculating the structures of international cooperation erected after World War I and freeing the way for rogue states like Italy and Japan to launch their own wars of conquest and aggression.

And now many of the rogue states have nukes.

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A renaissance for filthy water

Mar 1st, 2017 5:05 pm | By

They want dirty water. “Restore dirty water!” they cry.

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday aimed at rolling back one of former President Barack Obama’s major environmental regulations to protect American waterways, but it will have almost no immediate legal effect, according to two people familiar with the White House plans.

The order will essentially give Mr. Trump a megaphone to direct his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, to begin the complicated legal process of rewriting the sweeping 2015 rule known as Waters of the United States. But that effort could take longer than a single presidential term, legal experts said.

But at least they’re getting started on doing away with that pesky clean water that nobody wants.

Mr. Pruitt, who was confirmed by the Senate to his new position this month, is expected to enthusiastically dive in to the lengthy task of undoing major environmental rules on clean water, climate change and air pollution. In his former job as attorney general of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt led or took part in 14 lawsuits intended to block the E.P.A.’s major regulations, including the clean water and climate rules that he is now charged with dismantling.

Speaking over the weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Pruitt told an audience, to applause, “I think there are some regulations that in the near term need to be rolled back in a very aggressive way,” and he said those rollbacks would probably begin this week.

The clean water rule, completed by the Obama administration in spring 2015, was issued under the 1972 Clean Water Act. It gives the federal government broad authority to limit pollution in major bodies of water, like Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River and Puget Sound, as well as in streams and wetlands that drain into those larger waters.

A stirring ambition, undoing all that.

The Obama administration’s water rule, put forth jointly by the E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers, was intended to clarify that authority, allowing the government to once again limit pollution in those smaller bodies of water. Environmentalists have praised the rule, calling it an important step that will lead to significantly cleaner natural bodies of water and healthier drinking water.

But it has come under fierce attack from farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers, golf-course owners and other business interests that contend that it will stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners’ rights.

Well you can see their point. Rivers and streams are so handy for sluicing away agricultural runoff, pesticides, motor oil – you name it, rivers whisk it away.

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Photo op

Mar 1st, 2017 4:38 pm | By

This is creepy.

Image result for carry owens

As you probably know, that’s the widow of the Navy SEAL who was killed on the raid in Yemen that Trump approved over dinner one evening.

What’s creepy is Ivanka Trump.

The normal reaction to people crying is to choke up oneself. That’s how innumerable poignant movies work, and it applies in real life, too. Ivanka looks as if she were watching a weather report.

In general I stay away from Trump’s relatives, but there are exceptions. Melania’s lawsuit against a blogger was one, and this is another. The whole manipulative use of Carryn Owens was sickening, and Ivanka’s glacial calm is creepy as fuck.

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He merely pirouetted

Mar 1st, 2017 4:10 pm | By

John Cassidy at the New Yorker also somehow managed not to be so overwhelmed by Trump’s ability to read a speech aloud that he took that to be A New And Better Trump.

If there was anything fresh about what Trump said to Congress, it was largely stylistic. He didn’t pivot; he merely pirouetted, and then he dug into the same political ground he has already claimed.

About all that happened was that Trump, perhaps feeling saddled by low approval ratings, caved to the normal conventions of political communication. These rules dictate that, on august occasions such as a speech to Congress, Presidents talk politely and try to avoid giving offense. They leaven the heavy fare they are bearing with moments of optimism and humanity, promise the viewers some goodies, and offer up some notes of inclusion. Trump did all these things, and he even deployed some uplifting prose. If his Inauguration speech sounded like it had been written by Steve Bannon suffering from a migraine, Tuesday’s appeared to have been the work of a professional speechwriter.

And all that is just normal, not to say minimal. It’s not remotely a reason to decide Trump is not the malevolent bullying ignoramus he seemed on Tuesday afternoon. Trump is still that malevolent bullying ignoramus with the undisclosed tax returns.

This tone was markedly different from the one Trump had struck as recently as last week, at the cpac conference, and the television pundits swallowed it whole. In substantive terms, however, Trump didn’t give an inch, or even a millimetre. The soft opening quickly transitioned into a reiteration of Trump’s harsh “America First” agenda, and once he got there his language got considerably darker.

Take immigration, an issue to which Trump returned repeatedly on Tuesday. After pointing out that he has already ordered the rounding up and deportation of large numbers of undocumented aliens, he boasted, “Bad ones are going out as I speak.” Further promoting the myth that America is bedevilled by an immigrant crime wave, he said that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to set up a new office to support the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.

Now why would he do that? Because it’s a chance to foment hatred against a powerless set of Others. He likes that kind of thing. What does that say about him? That he’s a terrible human being. His ability to read a speech aloud doesn’t alter that.

As Will Wilkinson, the policy analyst and blogger, pointed out during the speech, “The point of Trump’s lies is to create a widespread sense that an open, pluralistic, multicultural society is dangerous.” To justify his many illiberal proposals, as well as his authoritarian instincts, Trump needs to persuade people that everything is going to hell, and that only he can save things. Nowhere in his speech did he depart from this doleful and deceptive script.

What would Trump want with pluralism? He doesn’t admire anyone or anything except himself, so pluralism is never going to be his kind of thing.

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Those trivial fights are so far behind us

Mar 1st, 2017 11:58 am | By

Richard Wolffe at the Guardian isn’t fooled.

The sheer effort required to start a speech by condemning racist murders and antisemitic attacks was historic. After all, earlier in the day, the same president had suggested all those bomb threats to Jewish community centers were the work of his political opponents “to make others look bad”.

And in between the two he suddenly became a completely different person. Yeah, that’s it.

“The time for small thinking is over,” said this president of exceedingly large thinking. “The time for trivial fights is behind us.”

Those trivial fights are so far behind us that it’s been a full two days since he tweeted that the Russian stories were just a Democratic conspiracy to “mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!”

Well that was before he became a completely different person.

“We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts,” Trump concluded. “The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls.”

Sometimes those hopes and dreams just happen to include the demise of the New York Times, CNN and all the enemies of the people known as the free press.

There is indeed a torch in Trump’s exceptionally large hands. And he’s not afraid to use it.

His hands tripled in size yesterday between that conversation with Fox and the So Presidential speechy thing. His hands are now bigger than his head.

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Oh, this changes everything

Mar 1st, 2017 11:42 am | By

NPR, predictably, takes the bait.

Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the occasion for his most presidential performance to date, balancing a reprise of his angry campaign themes with a recitation of hopes and dreams for the nation.

It was his most successful, if not his first, effort at assuming the public persona and personal demeanor associated with his new office. He stuck to the script on his teleprompter, spoke graciously to individuals in the audience and refrained from attacks on critics, rivals or adversaries.

In other words it was his least worst performance so far – but that’s a very low hurdle. He for once didn’t act like an angry toddler; big deal.

The president began with words of condemnation for the hate crimes lately unleashed on religious and ethnic minorities around the country, including the fatal shooting of an immigrant from India in a suburb of Kansas City.

“Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.”

It’s good that he mentioned them, very belatedly, but again that’s a low hurdle – but even more, how dare he claim that we are “a country that stands united in condemning hate” when he spent the last two years doing everything he could to stoke and foment and inflame hate? How fucking dare he.

The president, however, did not respond to critics who say these recent acts have been encouraged by some of his own rhetoric or apparent signs of disrespect for targeted groups. Rather, he turned to strikingly poetic sentiments.

Fuck poetic sentiments. He has speechwriters; we know that. He incites hatred and he himself persecutes some of the groups he targets for hatred.

The success of the big speech strategy seemed immediately apparent. Media coverage was largely positive, even laudatory. Snap polls showed big majorities found the speech optimistic and uplifting. The president’s approval rating, which had been at historic lows for a president in his first month in office, is expected to pop back up in the next few soundings.

I hope people are not that stupid.

There was the monstrous thing Trump said to the war widow:

Carryn Owens was honored by a standing ovation by everyone visible in the vast House chamber, regardless of party or position. She wept openly, clasped her hands and looked upward as the ovation continued for several minutes. When it finally subsided, the president said, “Ryan is looking down right now and he’s happy because I think you broke a record.”

Huh. So Ryan is dead, and his widow is unhappy, but it’s cool because he’s actually just perched up there “looking down” and feeling awesome about the applause his widow got for crying because he’s dead. So he’s not dead and she has nothing to cry about so what was the standing ovation about?

Meanwhile Trump is still Trump. The fact that he can read a speech doesn’t change that.

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We’re not allowed to punch back anymore

Mar 1st, 2017 11:16 am | By

My Freethinker column.

Barry Duke illustrated it with cartoons, including this very pointed one by Matt Bors:

Matt Bors

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In a light, off-hand manner

Mar 1st, 2017 11:02 am | By

Meanwhile back at the ordinary everyday White House – they’re still confused (or, more likely, pretending they’re confused). They think corruption is all about intent.

President Trump’s top adviser, Kellyanne Conway, acted “without nefarious motive” when she promoted Ivanka Trump’s clothing line during an interview last month, the White House said.
CNNMoney reported Wednesday that a letter from the White House to the Office of Government Ethics said a White House lawyer met with Conway to discuss the rules regarding endorsements by government employees.

“Upon completion of our inquiry, we concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again,” says the letter, signed by Stefan C. Passantino, a White House deputy counsel for compliance and ethics, according to CNN.

“It is noted that Ms. Conway made the statement in question in a light, off-hand manner while attempting to stand up for a person she believed had been unfairly treated and did so without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally.”

The letter did not note any plans for disciplinary action against Conway.

Sigh.

That is not the issue. “She meant well.” “She was just standing up for poor dear Ivanka.” “She was just joking around.” It’s time for the White House people to grow up now. This is not school, it’s the grownup outside world where people have to follow certain rules, including job-related rules. Nobody cares what their mood was when they flouted the rules.

Presidents are forbidden to use their presidency to put extra money in their pockets. This naturally includes promoting their products on television, which naturally includes allowing their staff to promote their products on television. It doesn’t matter if they do it “without nefarious motive”; it matters only if they do it. They are not allowed to do it. Corruption is a no-no. I don’t know how much simpler it’s possible to make it.

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Give Trump a chance (jk)

Mar 1st, 2017 10:13 am | By

I hear Trump did a talk last night, and did a fair job of reading the script. I hear that a surprising number of people are announcing that this means he is “presidential” and that we should “give him a chance.”

This makes no sense to me. He’s had hundreds of thousands of chances, his whole life. People give him a chance all the time. He’s had nothing but chances. He had chances after the election, and more chances after the inauguration. Why should we be giving him more of them now? It’s not as if he’s left us in any doubt about what kind of person he is. He barfs out evidence every day. Why would his ability to do something children learn to do in first grade be a reason to give him yet more chances? Especially when he already has those chances anyway – he’ll have them for four years, unless he’s impeached or otherwise expelled.

Also – that whole thing with the war widow? I haven’t watched it and hope to be able to avoid watching it forever, but anyway – how revolting can you get.

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What Happened to Tom

Feb 28th, 2017 4:51 pm | By

The feminist philosopher Peg Tittle has written a novella that expands on Judith Jarvis Thompson’s famous thought experiment in “A Defense of Abortion”:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation?

In Peg’s What Happened to Tom things aren’t even as polite as that. No Society of Music Lovers is involved, and the doctor who attaches Tom to Simon the violinist is not a bit apologetic.

Tom’s an Everyman type, and not particularly likable. He’s a young architect rising in his firm, he has a posh car, a nice flat, a girl friend; he goes drinking with the guys one evening and wakes up in a hospital bed with this tube surgically attached to him – and Simon behind the curtain – in such a way that he can’t yank it out. He’s outraged, and the doctor is indifferent to his outrage. The doctor is a woman.

“I don’t need to think about this. I don’t want…this! How can I put it any more plainly?” His rage was palpable.

“Once your MTS subsides a bit…”

He caught that. “MTS?” Had he contracted some disease?

“Male Testosterone Syndrome.”

“You – you bitch! I’ll show you Male Testosterone Syndrome!” He started flinging his body from side to side against the rails. She had the sedative ready.

He tries to escape. He calls the police, he calls a lawyer, he researches and then calls groups that perform “nephrodesis reversal” – but such groups are few and dwindling and far away.

His life falls apart. He’s stuck in the hospital so he can’t keep up with his work; his girlfriend gets tired of his boring obsession with this connected-to-the-violinist thing, his car is repossessed. His whole life is taken out of his hands such that he can’t control any of it any more.

He didn’t consent to any of it. He doesn’t want any of it. No one cares.

After a few months the violinist wakes up, so Simon the violinist gets the chance to make his case. It’s all very interesting and entertaining, especially if you like thought experiments.

One insight brought me up short. Toward the end of the tethering the two go to Tom’s firm to attend a meeting, because Tom is desperate to hold on to the standing he’d had. Afterward, alone with Simon again, he realizes it was a mistake.

“You don’t get it,” he turned to Simon. “It’s because I let them see me like this. Now, no matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, or even how good or successful I am, they’ll always see me like…a fucking invalid.”

Oh. Ouch. That’s probably all too true of a lot of bosses and colleagues.

Recommended.

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To celebrate the flag’s heritage

Feb 28th, 2017 3:44 pm | By

In July 2015, a month after the murders at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, some racists in pickup trucks terrorized people at a child’s birthday party near Atlanta.

A Georgia judge has sentenced Kayla Norton, 25, and Jose “Joe” Torres, 26, to spend a combined 19 years in prison for their role in a group’s racist rampage at an 8-year-old’s birthday party — an assault that included shouting racial slurs, making armed threats and waving Confederate battle flags.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Norton told the family that endured the assault, weeping in the courtroom at Monday’s sentencing. “I am so sorry.”

It didn’t “happen” to them. People did it to them. Norton was one of the people who did it to them.

The assault occurred in July 2015, one month after a racist gunman killed nine worshippers at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C. Prosecutors say Norton, Torres and other members of a group that called itself “Respect the Flag” went on an alcohol-fueled racist spree in Douglas and Paulding counties, west of Atlanta.

With Confederate battle flags affixed to the beds of their pickup trucks, the group gathered for a ride that was purportedly meant to celebrate the flag’s heritage.

“However, Paulding County 911 began immediately receiving calls that members associated with this group were threatening African American citizens at various locations in Paulding County and hurling numerous racial slurs in the process as well,” according to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office.

After threatening black motorists, the group headed to Douglasville, where they happened upon an outdoor birthday party that included a cookout and bouncy castle.

“Victims and witnesses from the party, who were predominantly African-American, testified to observing the group of trucks whose passengers were hurling a litany of racial slurs at them as they passed by,” prosecutors said.

Several members of the group — some of whom are now serving prison terms of their own — got out of their trucks and approached the partygoers, threatening to kill them all. According to their fellow defendants and witnesses, it was Norton who retrieved Torres’ shotgun — a tactical 12-gauge with a pistol grip — and loaded it before giving it to him.

Ugly.

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It’s all a plot to make Trump look bad

Feb 28th, 2017 3:29 pm | By

Trump was asked about that whole anti-Semitism thing today. He said it’s bad, but, BUT – watch out, because it could be people trying to make Someone look bad. (I think Someone might=Trump.) Osita Nwanevu at Slate tells the story:

On Tuesday, President Trump responded to the recent wave of anti-Semitic threats around the country in comments to a group of state attorneys general that suggested they had been orchestrated by unknown parties to make him look bad. From BuzzFeed:

“He just said, ‘Sometimes it’s the reverse, to make people — or to make others — look bad,’ and he used the word ‘reverse’ I would say two to three times in his comments,” [Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh] Shapiro said. “He did correctly say at the top that it was reprehensible.”

Asked for further information about the purpose of the president’s comments, Shapiro only said, “I really don’t know what he means, or why he said that,” adding that Trump said he would be speaking about the issue in his remarks on Tuesday night.

The Anti-Defamation League swiftly responded to Trump’s comment in a statement. “We are astonished by what the President reportedly said,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote. “It is incumbent upon the White House to immediately clarify these remarks. In light of the ongoing attacks on the Jewish community, it is also incumbent upon the President to lay out in his speech tonight his plans for what the federal government will do to address this rash of anti-Semitic incidents.”

Yes but what if they’re not actually anti-Semitic incidents, but rather FAKE anti-Semitic incidents meant to make Trump look bad. WHAT THEN, HUH?

Trump’s comment fits in well with the conspiratorial view of protests and other events that have emerged in the first month of his presidency. In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired today, Trump said of the demonstrations, “I think that President Obama’s behind it because his people are certainly behind it.” And this morning, Anthony Scaramucci, a man Donald Trump nominated to head the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, accused Democrats of inciting violence at Trump rallies and warned that the anti-Semitic threats, which forced evacuations at schools and Jewish community centers in over a dozen states Monday, could also be their handiwork.

Because Trump is so perfect and benevolent and embracing of all humanity that no form of racism or xenophobia (or while we’re at it misogyny or homophobia) could possibly be inspired by anything he says.

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Trump has offered no words of condolence

Feb 28th, 2017 12:55 pm | By

Adam Purinton was in court yesterday. It appears he thought those two Indian guys he shot were Iranian.

Less than five hours after a man shot up a Kansas bar, killing one Indian man and wounding two other people in an apparently racially motivated attack, an Applebee’s bartender 70 miles away made a 911 call.

The woman on the phone told the dispatcher that a man had come into her bar and told her he “had done something really bad and he was on the run from the police.”

The man wouldn’t tell her what he did but kept asking her to allow him to stay at her house. The bartender persisted, persuading him to tell her what happened. “He said he shot and killed two Iranian people in Olathe,” the bartender said.

Indian, Iranian – Yemeni, Sudanese – whatever. They’re all bad hombres, right?

This is another one Trump hasn’t bothered to say anything about, as the Kansas City Star observes.

Nearly a week has passed since two India-born engineers were singled out and shot at an Olathe bar, presumably because they were immigrants, darker in skin tone and possibly viewed by the shooter as unwanted foreigners.

People around the world were immediately and rightfully horrified.

But our president?

Mum. Not a word has been spoken, tweeted or prepped for Trump’s teleprompter.

Trump has offered no words of condolence for the grieving widow of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who died from his gunshot wounds.

The president has expressed no sympathy for Kuchibhotla’s best friend, Alok Madasani, who continues to recover from bullet wounds and the trauma.

Trump usually loves to celebrate all-American heroes. But he’s passed on commending Ian Grillot, a bystander who leapt to take the gunman down before anyone else was harmed. Grillot was shot, too.

I guess complaining about “fake news” and sucking up the flattery of Fox and Friends takes up all his time.

During such moments of crisis, people look to the president for strength and guidance.

They need to hear their moral outrage articulated, the condemnation of a possible hate crime and the affirmation that the U.S. values everyone’s contributions, whether you’re an immigrant or native-born.

Ordinarily I don’t, really, but I guess that turns out to be because I take it for granted. Now? It’s impossible to take it for granted, so the silence is deafening.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has faced questions about the president’s response to the Olathe shootings. Spicer termed the murder “tragic.”

But when Spicer was asked about any correlation between the shootings and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, the White House press secretary proclaimed the assertion “absurd,” shutting down further discussion.

Those are your bad hombres right there.

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No method, really

Feb 28th, 2017 12:11 pm | By

Not so funny. From the same conversation with Fox & Weasels:

KILMEADE:   Let’s talk about you Tweeting, if we could.  You’ve attacked, recently, McCain, the FBI, Democrats. Is there a method to the attacks or is it just venting?

TRUMP:  No method, really.  It’s just — it’s not venting either.  But, you know, I felt badly when a young man dies and John McCain said that was a failed mission.  According to General Mattis, it was a very successful mission.  They get a lot of information, a lot of — a lot of different things that they really wanted to get.  And I thought it was inappropriate and I thought it was inappropriate that he goes to foreign soil and he criticizes our government.  I just think that’s just inappropriate. And, you know, people have to be careful with that.

This is the guy who spent years insisting that Obama was not a US citizen. While Obama was president, Trump insisted that. Very publicly, very noisily, very adamantly. I don’t know if he did it on “foreign soil” or not, but he did it. Is that “inappropriate”?

Is it “fake”?

 

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When it’s justified

Feb 28th, 2017 11:44 am | By

Now for a little humor. Donnie from Queens talked to Fox & Friends this morning, to tell them how awesome he is and how awesome his chat to Congress tonight will be. It’s all funny but this bit is hilarious:

DOOCY:  Mr. President, you announced via Twitter the other day you’re not going to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

How come?

TRUMP:  Well, I am not a hypocrite.  And I haven’t been treated properly.  And that’s OK, which is fine.  You know, let…

DOOCY:  Well, some…

TRUMP:  — everybody treat me…

DOOCY:  — some of the left say you just can’t take a joke.

TRUMP:  Maybe we’ll have a small — oh, no.

Do they say that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:   Yes.

TRUMP:  Well, I’ve taken it.

You know, one of the great misconceptions, when President Obama was up — was — now, a long time ago, five years ago or whatever, I loved that evening.  I had the greatest time…

DOOCY:   You were there.

TRUMP:  I was there.

KILMEADE:   You were there — you were there target of the hit.

TRUMP:  I was the target.

DOOCY:   You were the pinata.

TRUMP:  And can I be honest?

I had the greatest time.  Now, I can’t act like I’m thrilled because they’re telling jokes.  I mean he was telling jokes I’m going to change (INAUDIBLE) the White House, the Trump House and other things.

And he was very — I thought he did a good job.  And he was very respectful and it was fun.  And I enjoyed it.  And I left and I told the press, they were all said, did you have a good time?

And I said it was fantastic.

The next day I read Donald Trump felt terrible about the evening.  I loved the evening.  I had a great time.

KILMEADE:  You said before, I can take hits when it’s justified.

TRUMP:  Correct.

KILMEADE:   Right.

TRUMP:  One hundred percent.

KILMEADE:  Can you give me an example of a time when someone was critical of you and you thought to yourself, I deserved that hit, I deserved that column, I deserved…

TRUMP:  No, probably I could never do that.

Comedy gold.

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The intent is so evil and so bad

Feb 28th, 2017 11:29 am | By

Trump yesterday told Breitbart that the New York Times is evil.

Well he would, wouldn’t he. It’s like Hitler and Mussolini getting together to agree that Roosevelt is evil. It’s like Dylann Roof and Elliott Rodger calling their victims evil.

President Donald Trump lashed out at The New York Times on Monday, claiming it reports with “evil” intentions and publishes lies.

“If you read the New York Times, it’s — the intent is so evil and so bad,” the president told Breitbart News in an interview Monday. “The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent.”

I wonder what Trump’s intent is in constantly demonizing the press.

While Trump largely focused his fire on a familiar foe in The New York Times, he also blasted what he called “fake media” at large.

“There’s a difference,” the president said. “The fake media is the opposition party. The fake media is the enemy of the American people. There’s tremendous fake media out there. Tremendous fake stories. The problem is the people that aren’t involved in the story don’t know that.”

Trump didn’t identify what differentiates real media from fake media — he frequently highlights organizations and stories that are either critical of him or that he disagrees with as fake news — but White House aide Hope Hicks agreed with her boss. “Just the fact that they didn’t report that accurately proves your point,” she said during the interview, adding that reporters simply said the press, not fake news media, was the enemy of the American people, as he tweeted last week.

But it’s her boss who calls major mainstream news outlets “fake,” and doing that does pretty much amount to saying that the (mainstream) news media in general are fake. If he’s calling the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN “fake” then he’s broadly hinting that all media outlets are fake except the ones that fawn on him. So yes: he is busily engaged in demonizing the press in general, except for the extreme right-wing press such as Breitbart and Fox.

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