[Content Note: Terrorism; mass violence; fearmongering.]
I've got a new piece at BNR about Donald Trump's ghoulish history of touchdown dancing after every act of terror:
Donald thrives on fear. He exploits death. And his campaign does not exist in a vacuum: It exists in a time of global darkness; in a time of division fomented by violent extremists at home and abroad. He has been used at least twice in terrorist recruitment media. While Donald did not cause global terrorism, his irresponsible and inflammatory policies and rhetoric also do not exist outside of it.
A person running for the United States presidency is given one of the most visible platforms on the planet. Donald has chosen to use that platform to respond to terrorist attacks not with measured statesmanship, but as though he's just run a football into the end zone.
Under the auspices of "concern" that the US is not being "smart" about terror, Donald implies that he is smart; that he alone has the capability to stop global terror. Under the auspices of "concern" for people, he warns that it's only going to get worse.
On the one hand, he feeds fear that more terror is to come. On the other, he promises to assuage that fear with his leadership. And embedded right in the middle is a sickening celebration that he's right about how dangerous the world is, and a revolting glee that more death has both proved him right and given him another reason to claim that he is.
His gruesome tweets—and commentary at his incendiary campaign rallies—create a feedback loop of catalystic terror.
In other Trump news: This morning he tweeted that his Never Trump political opponents "were crushed last night in Cleveland at the Rules Committe." As my colleague Peter Daou noted, the tweet "took his insensitivity to another level" and "should be taken down immediately." It won't be.
It would be cool if the national media could care about this grossness one millionth as much as they cared about a Pokémon joke.
So, as you may have heard BECAUSE IT'S VERY IMPORTANT, Hillary Clinton made a joke during a campaign event yesterday. I hope you are sitting down, because this is MORE PROOF that she is A DIABOLICAL FIEND.
—'cause we're gonna have a lot of jobs, jobs from building infrastructure to coding. Creating new apps. I don't know who created Pokémon Go [cheers] but I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon Go to the Polls. [applause]
Yesterday, during a celebration in Nice of Bastille Day (an important public holiday in France which is often compared to the 4th of July in the US), a truck plowed into and through the crowd, killing at least 84 people and wounding more than 100, 18 of whom are seriously injured.
The attacker drove for more than a mile down the Promenade des Anglais, which had been closed to traffic during the celebration. Witnesses report the driver was swerving and driving up onto the sidewalk, to try to harm as many people as possible. When he finally came to a stop, the driver reportedly then emerged and began shooting with a handgun. He was killed by police, who later determined the truck contained weapons and grenades, some or all of which were fakes.
He has been identified as a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, and was "known to the police for common crimes—including violence—but not to the intelligence services, a police source said."
It is being assumed that Bouhlel was motivated by radical jihadism, but that has not yet been substantiated.
It is not known if he was working as a lone wolf for IS; whether he had local assistance in committing this vile act; or whether he was orchestrated this deadly scheme entirely on his own. As of this writing, the Islamic State has not claimed responsibility.
Among the victims, all of whom have not yet been identified, are two Americans from Texas: Sean Copeland and his son Brodie.
My condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of those who died. My fervent hopes for recovery to those who were injured. My sympathies to the people who narrowly escaped, or who witnessed this horrific event, and to the community of Nice, and to anyone traumatized by this awful act of mass harm. My solidarity to Muslims to who will be tormented in the wake of this act, even though Muslims were among the victims; even though Muslims are more likely to die at the hands of jihadists than anyone else.
I want to caution readers that much of the coverage of the attack in Nice includes graphic images and descriptions of the events which may be upsetting or triggering.
As always, please keep this an image-free thread as you share updates and information. Thank you.
UPDATE 1: "Suspect was in the process of a divorce." I have said over and over and over that virtually every act of mass violence is preceded by domestic violence and/or discord. And every time, that pattern is ignored. Despite the fact that we wring our hands about how to identify these attackers and pretend that there are no indicators. There is one very big indicator. And it is not, by the way, religion or any other ideology they slap on top of their acts as justification.
Video Description: Dudley is napping on the couch. "Hey, Dudley," I say. I whistle. "Dudley!" Kissy noises. "DUDZ!" He lifts his head, with his tongue lolling hilariously out of his mouth, looks at me, yawns, rolls onto his other side, and goes straight back to sleep.
Congratulations to Dr. Carla Hayden, who has been confirmed by the US Senate as the 14th Librarian of Congress. She is the first Black person and the first woman to hold the position!
[Content Note: War on agency] Welp: "Congress is about to leave for a seven-week vacation without giving the Obama administration any of the $1.9 billion it's seeking to battle the Zika virus." The House did manage to pass a sure-to-be-vetoed "dangerous, discriminatory" piece of anti-choice legislation on their way out the door.
[CN: Misogynoir; police brutality] "Black Lives Matter activists have held demonstrations this week in Waller County, Texas, to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland on Wednesday. Their message: 'Sandy still speaks.' ...Mirissa Tucker, a senior at Prairie View A&M University, told Rewire that the vigil was to give voice to Bland and other victims of racism and police brutality. 'Sandy still speaks,' Tucker said. 'Sandy speaks through us at the Waller County jail.' Activists played a recording of Bland speaking through a loudspeaker during the vigil. Bland had been outspoken about issues of racism and police brutality prior to her death. 'White people, if all lives mattered, would there need to be a hashtag for Black lives mattering?' Bland asks in a video she posted on Facebook, which was played at the vigil."
WOW: "As he heads for the Republican convention in Cleveland next week, Donald Trump's campaign infrastructure remains severely underdeveloped. In some places it appears to be non-existent. ...The Huffington Post attempted to call the contact phone numbers for the Trump campaign in all 50 states. A few of the state operations had no websites or no numbers listed. Many of the other numbers didn't work. When we left voicemails, we didn't get callbacks. On only six occasions did someone actually answer the phone. And in several of those instances, the person who picked up explained that a physical office would be opened up only after the convention. 'I'm sure the headquarters will open soon,' said the individual who answered Trump's Georgia number."
[CN: Racism; Islamophobia] Unfathomable: "During a CNN town hall last night, a student named Zachary Marcone asked House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) how he can morally justify his support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. 'I cannot and will not support Donald Trump, and it concerns me when the Republican leadership is supporting somebody who is openly racist and has said Islamophobic statements, wants to shut down our borders,' Marcone said. 'Can you tell me, how can you morally justify your support for this kind of candidate, somebody who could be very destructive for our nation.' Ryan's response? Hillary Clinton is worse, and like it or not, voters face a 'binary choice' when casting their ballot for president. Not supporting Trump 'basically means you're going to help elect Hillary Clinton, and I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to support any of the things that you stand for if you're a Republican.'" Ryan just conceded that anti-racism isn't a Republican value, and it's met with a national shrug.
Meanwhile: "The vast majority of Americans say they are afraid of at least one of the two major candidates—Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump—winning the White House, a remarkable finding that reflects an unsettled nation unhappy with its choice. Eighty-one percent of Americans say they would feel afraid following the election of one of the two polarizing politicians, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. That includes a quarter who say it doesn't matter who wins: they're scared of both." Good job to every fucking Hillary Clinton hater who has helped turn her into History's Greatest Monster in America's dark imagination.
Y'all. The video of former President George W. Bush dancing like a complete wanker at the Dallas Memorial Service makes me not miss him all over again. Laura Bush: "Calgon, take me away." Michelle Obama: "Someone take him away."
[CN: Animal endangerment] Now this is a drone program I can get behind (provided it won't harm the birds!): "Scientists may have found the perfect weapon in the fight to save the critically endangered black-footed ferret: drones outfitted to shoot vaccine-spiked, peanut butter-flavored bait pellets. The vaccine snacks, however, aren't for the ferrets, but the burrowing rodents the animals rely on almost exclusively for food and shelter: prairie dogs. As it turns out, protecting their prey could prove key to recovering ferret populations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies have been experimenting for several years with a vaccine to protect prairie dogs from sylvatic plague, a devastating bacterial disease that fleas transmit. Now proven effective in small populations, the agency has turned its attention to management. It is exploring alternative delivery methods, including the use of all-terrain vehicles and unmanned aircraft."
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] And finally! LOL WHUT: "The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in Colorado got a call about the bear who managed to get into a Subaru wagon without breaking any windows. The car's owner even said all the doors were closed. The bear got trapped in the car, leaving a pair of deputies to find a way to get it out. One deputy, who recorded the escapade on his cellphone, decided to open the hatch, while the other stood guard nearby with a shotgun. The bear bounded out, leaving behind some snout marks on a window, a shredded interior and questions about how the animal got into the vehicle."
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at second link.]
I originally posted this way back in 2009, when Mike Pence was merely the worst congressman from Indiana and not the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Have a look at then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handing Pence his ass (and I hope you will particularly enjoy his righteous indignation about Presidents and dictators, given Donald Trump's recent comment that the world would be "100 percent" better off if dictators like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi were still in power):
Pence: Isn't it true that having the President of the United States be seen on the world stage warmly greeting a virulent, anti-American, socialist dictator, that, intentionally or unintentionally, our president was used for propaganda purposes, to borrow the phrase that you used. And isn't it also true that, as Natan Sharansky observed memorably in his book, The Case for Democracy, there's almost nothing more demoralizing to people that are fighting for freedom in their own country than to see the leader of the free world in friendly association with the very people that are oppressing them? Sharansky said we could, quote, "never fully prepare ourselves for the disappointment that came from seeing the free world abandon its own values in that context."
And so, in a very real sense, I wanted, I wanted to invite, in a very respectful way, your thoughts about that, recognizing that you serve this president, but also expressing to you my profound concern, uh, that this administration allowed itself, intentionally or unintentionally, to be used to prop up and promote, uh, the image and the interests of a virulent anti-American, a socialist dictator, in Venezuela.
Chair: I'm going to give the Secretary, uh, a little bit of time to, 'cause you characterized an earlier comment that she made, to respond.
Pence: Thank you, chairman.
Clinton: Well, Mr. Pence, I have lived a long time now. I grew up at the height of the Cold War, when we were on the hair-trigger alert of nuclear war; I remember virulent, anti-American communist dictators threatening our country on a regular basis; and I remember our presidents meeting with them, shaking their hands, and negotiating. They did not do so without conditions, or without strong principles, but they did so.
I've also seen us establish normal relations with Vietnam; I have seen the thirty years of normalized relations with China; and I don't think there is any contradiction between standing strongly for our principles and our values and pursuing the give-and-take of diplomatic encounter and negotiation where appropriate.
I think that, uh, you're strong feelings about, um, Hugo Chavez are certainly, um, understood, because he has clearly been someone who has behaved in ways that don't accord with our values and our principles. But so were the Soviet leaders. And so did so many others with whom we eventually created an environment in which we could see some changes that benefited the United States of America.
That is my bottom line, Mr. Pence. My bottom line is: I am here to serve my country, which I have loved ever since I was a little girl.
And I'm going to support my president, because he is committed to doing whatever he can in the time he is given to serve to make this a better, safer, more secure world.
There are different approaches. I respectfully say, we spent eight years trying to isolate Chavez, and what has been the result? I don't think it's been in America's interests. So we're gonna try some different things!
And I respect your disagreement; we want as bipartisan a foreign policy as possible. And we have, wherever we can, reached out, and will continue to do so, to members of this committee and others. We want your constructive criticism; we want your feedback. But President Obama won the election. He beat me in a primary, in which he put forward a different approach. And he is now our president, and we all want our president, no matter of which party, to succeed, especially in such a perilous time.
So I appreciate your strong feelings, but I think that, ah, we are pursuing a course that, uh, may very well open up some additional opportunities that we hope will be in our interests and advance our values and protect our security.
In anticipation of this very event, I wrote a piece for BNR this morning on Indiana Governor Mike Pence and don't you all feel special that you already knew about his heinous campaign against Glenda Ritz:
Glenda Ritz, a Democrat, was elected in 2012 to be Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction. She was a huge underdog–but defeated the incumbent because a majority of Hoosiers, both progressive and conservative, supported her willingness to challenge Republican proposals that would destroy public education in Indiana.
Ritz was the first Democrat to serve as Superintendent in 40 years.
Governor Mike Pence was elected during the same election. One of his first acts as governor was to remove Ritz from the union-centered Educational Employment Relations Board. The Republican-controlled House Education Committee then proposed a bill to "strip the superintendent's position as chair of the State Board of Education. …The bill would allow Republican Gov. Mike Pence's 10 appointees to the 11-member board to elect their own chair."
In other words, as soon as a Democrat was elected to an influential state position (with 53% of the vote, higher than Pence received), the Republican governor and legislature set to rendering her office utterly without power and empowering themselves to oust her and prevent the reforms she was elected to champion.
The Republicans claimed their power grab, with Pence leading the charge, was merely intended to "clarify control of education policy."
Which is quite an extraordinary euphemism for "seize unilateral control of education policy, in direct contravention of the will of the voters."
Hillary Clinton's campaign has debuted a powerful new advert titled "Role Models." Though it's about what children are absorbing during this campaign, it's really a message for us all.
Video Description: Rueful piano music. Video of diverse children in different settings, watching TV. Audio of various clips of Donald Trump speaking: "I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. ... And you can tell them to go [bleep] themselves! ... I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's like incredible. ... When Mexico sends its people, they're bringing drugs; they're bringing crime; they're rapists. ... You know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes; blood coming out of her wherever. ... You gotta see this guy [mocks a physically disabled man] 'Ahhh I don't know what I said! I don't remember!'" Text onscreen: "Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?" Cut to video of Hillary Clinton speaking at a campaign event: "Our children and grandchildren will look back at this time, at the choices we are about to make, the goals we will strive for, the principles we will live by, and we need to make sure that they can be proud of us." Text onscreen: "Stronger together." In voiceover: "I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message."
We have a choice to make. The choice seems pretty clear to me.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton delivered a terrific address at the Old State House in Springfield, Illinois—the site at which President Abraham Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech. She spoke at length about racial justice, then segued into a blistering attack on Donald Trump, and made it abundantly clear that these two things, because of Trump's incessant and unapologetic bigotry, are intimately related.
Following is video of her address, and the complete transcript is below the fold.
I know saying "Trump's the worst" is like saying water is wet at this point, but still. He really, really is.
I've got a new piece at BNR about a particularly odious chapter in Donald Trump's history: The time he orchestrated a campaign of harassment against tenants of a rent-stabilized building he'd purchased for the purpose of tearing it down and erecting luxury condos in its place.
For five years, Donald mercilessly harassed the residents of the 14-story building near New York City's Central Park, whose only "fault" was calling home a place that Donald wanted to demolish for his own profit.
Lawsuits brought by the tenants report that Donald engaged in the typical scurrilous behavior of profiteering landlords trying to oust tenants—instituting absurd and onerous rules, attempting to find reasons to break leases, refusing to do necessary repairs—but Donald went above and beyond even the usual contemptible tactics.
Just a few months later, on New Year's Eve, several tenants received identical "lease violation" warning letters. The previous building owner had given renters permission to knock down walls and renovate their apartment units. But Trump was reversing that exception, and renters had only 12 days to rebuild the walls — or face eviction.
Tenants, many of whom were elderly, also alleged that Donald cut off both their hot water and heat during the winter. He took out a newspaper ad inviting homeless people to take up residence in the building. Work crews kicked up dust into the apartment of a tenant with emphysema.
One of the tenants, Dr. Michael Richman, said bluntly that Donald was "willing to resort to any device or tactic to drive out the tenants from the building."
In other Trump news, Josh Marshall writes about Trump just bald-faced lying in order to stir up racial resentments and foment division (emphases original):
Everybody took note when Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that American Muslims across the river in New Jersey celebrated and cheered as the Twin Towers fell on 9/11—an entirely fabricated claim. Last night on Bill O'Reilly's show and then separately at a rally in Westfield, Indiana he did something very similar and in so doing cemented his status an impulsive propagator of race-hatred and violence.
The details of the rapid-fire fulmination are important. So let's look at them closely.
Trump claimed that people—"some people"—called for a moment of silence for mass killer Micah Johnson, the now deceased mass shooter who killed five police officers in Dallas on Thursday night. There is no evidence this ever happened. Searches of the web and social media showed no evidence. Even Trump's campaign co-chair said today that he can't come up with any evidence that it happened. As in the case of the celebrations over the fall of the twin towers, even to say there's 'no evidence' understates the matter. This didn't happen. Trump made it up.
The language is important: "When somebody called for a moment of silence to this maniac that shot the five police, you just see what's going on. It's a very, very sad situation."
Then later at the Indiana rally: "The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage. Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!"
A would-be strong man, an authoritarian personality, isn't just against disorder and violence. They need disorder and violence. That is their raison d'etre, it is the problem that they are purportedly there to solve. The point bears repeating: authoritarian figures require violence and disorder.
And let's be clear: This is a direct response to President Obama having given a much-publicized address at the memorial service for the Dallas police officers in which he said: "I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem."
The President reassures the country that our divisions are not as deep as they appear; Hillary Clinton urges the country to listen to one another to work toward meaningful unity; and Trump responds by making shit up out of whole cloth in order to undermine those messages, because he is empowered by exploiting fear.
This man is dangerous. He will gleefully rip the country apart in service to his own ego.
I've had bad allergies combined with the wooooorst sinus headaches the past couple of days, and not getting much sleep as a result is catching up to me. So I'm going to take it easy the rest of the day. If anything major with the election (or anything else) happens, I will post something, but otherwise I'm going to try to keep it to a dull roar.
So, last night, Donald Trump campaigned in Indiana with its governor, Mike Pence. I may have mentioned once or twice or eleventy thousand times that I do not like Mike Pence!
I wasn't going to watch their joint garbage rally, but I ended up watching it because of course I did. And it was just as terrible as you'd expect! Very terrible and very boring.
So it's reportedly down to Pence and Gingrich. I don't know what happened to Chris Christie, but I can only presume he's been kicked to the curb because he's too sycophantic even for Donald Trump, whereas at least Gingrich has talked shit about him and Pence endorsed Ted Cruz.
Trump has promised to make his veep announcement on Friday, but it could come sooner. It would be just like Trump to try to surprise us with the super boring announcement of whichever virtually indistinguishable dirtbag he chooses.
This statement is not being put together by people who unilaterally agree with each other. Some of us have criticized each other in the past — thoroughly. Though the recent incidents seem to have corresponded to the Democratic primary, the people actually harmed include enthusiastic supporters of Senator Sanders, Secretary Clinton, and possibly even Jill Stein. We disagree on tactics. We disagree on issues. Some are socialist, some are not. Some call themselves "progressives," some "leftists," some simply "liberal." Each of us has a slightly different idea of what an ideal "progressive" agenda would look like in practice; each of us has developed our own priorities and threshold for compromise in the name of that agenda; each of us has disagreed with other progressives on these things.
What we do not do, however, is send each other sexually explicit or violent images, inveigh against each other with slurs, make claims about each other that we know to be untrue and inflammatory, respond to any discussion of oppression with personal insults, follow each other around the Internet leaving nasty comments on each other's pieces, set up fake social media accounts to harass each other, monitor each other's communications, coordinate pile-ons, send explicit or implicit threats, dox, defame, discredit, or degrade each other.
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