As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 47
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things I've read today:
Scott Shane, Matt Mazzetti, and Matthew Rosenberg at the New York Times: WikiLeaks Releases Trove of Alleged CIA Hacking Documents. "WikiLeaks on Tuesday released thousands of documents that it said described sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers, and even Internet-connected televisions.If the documents are authentic, as appeared likely at first review, the release would be the latest coup for the anti-secrecy organization and a serious blow to the CIA, which maintains its own hacking capabilities to be used for espionage."
I'll just go ahead and turn it over to Malcolm Nance for the commentary on this one:
Russia to the rescue! Giving tools & ideas to terrorists & Pro-Trump hacktivists. @wikileaks is a Russian Intelligence Laundromat https://t.co/UBtiTsXtBo
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) March 7, 2017
Donald Trump has been busy tweeting bullshit again this morning, and one of his tweets reads: "122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!" This is just demonstrable bullshit. Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's Fact Checker columnist, replied to Trump: "Totally false! Data from DNI—which you oversee—says only 9 were released under Obama and 113 under Bush."
Michael Crowley at Politico: Kremlin-Backed Media Turns on Trump. "Kremlin-controlled news outlets used to root for Donald Trump's election. Now they're reveling in the chaos and division of his early presidency." Yes. Because complimenting a self-aggrandizing, brittle-egoed authoritarian is the Step One to earn his trust, and then abandoning him is Step Two in facilitating the insecurity and chaos his rival can then exploit. If I recall correctly (AND I DO), there were plenty of people with a passing acquaintance with Putin and authoritarian regimes who predicted exactly this would happen, if Trump were elected.
Matt Zapotosky, Sari Horwitz, and Sean Sullivan at the Washington Post: Top Justice Nominee Won't Commit to Special Counsel for Russian Influence Probe. "Deputy attorney general nominee Rod Rosenstein refused to commit Tuesday to appoint a special counsel to oversee investigations of Russian meddling in the presidential election—though he stressed that he did not yet know the facts of the matter. At his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Rosenstein said that he was 'not aware' of any reason he would not be able to supervise such probes—though since he was not yet in the No. 2 role in the Department of Justice, he did not know the particular facts of any case."
[Content Note: Islamophobia] Christine Grimaldi at Rewire: Trump's Revised Muslim Ban Is Still a Muslim Ban. "Donald Trump's newly revised decree 'protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States' amounts to the same unfounded Muslim ban that a federal appeals court blocked last month. ...The executive order again implements a 90-day ban on entry to the United States from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—six of the seven previously designated countries. ...Refugees from around the world won't be able to find safe haven on U.S. soil, as the newest Muslim ban—like the original—caps the number of refugees at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017."
[CN: Islamophobia] Patrick Wintour at the Guardian: UN Says Trump's Revised Travel Ban Will Worsen Plight of Refugees. "The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said refugees were not criminals but 'ordinary people forced to flee war, violence, and persecution in their home countries.' The secretary general, António Guterres, pointedly made an emergency visit to Somalia, saying people were dying in the country due to famine."
As Sarah Kendzior points out on Twitter, the Muslim ban has already negatively affected the travel industry. "This will only increase economic problems, affecting service industry as well." And researchers at Harvard Medical School and MIT have found the Muslim ban "could reduce the number of doctors in areas with high percentages of Trump supporters."
Jeremy Herb and Bryan Bender at Politico: Trump Plan Pays for Immigration Crackdown with Cuts to Coastal, Air Security. "The Trump administration wants to gut the Coast Guard and make deep cuts in airport and rail security to help pay for its crackdown on illegal immigration, according to internal budget documents reviewed by POLITICO—a move that lawmakers and security experts say defies logic if the White House is serious about defending against terrorism and keeping out undocumented foreigners." That's because the objective isn't actually safety. It's white supremacy.
Steve Benen at MSNBC: Following Sessions' Mar-a-Lago Appearance, New Ethics Questions Arise. "Over the last five weekends, the president has visited his luxury resort four times—each trip costs American taxpayers about $3 million—and as of [Sunday] night, Trump had spent 31% of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago. He's now played golf eight times since taking office six weeks ago. ...[And] we've reached the point at which the attorney general of the United States is a prop for members at the president's for-profit club."
Mallory Shelbourne at the Hill: White House Appears to Copy from Exxon Mobil Release. "A White House press release congratulating Exxon Mobil Corp. for its recent investment in U.S. manufacturing repeats an exact paragraph from the oil company's own release." The takeaway here is that the White House is just letting corporations write their press releases for them.
Caitlyn Stulpin at NJ.com: First Import of Russian Steel Arrives at New Paulsboro Port. "On Wednesday, Doric Warrior made its final leg of a long journey to Paulsboro from Russia. The ship, 230 meters long, carried the first shipment of steel to the Paulsboro Marine Terminal. ...Gary Stevenson, mayor of Paulsboro, was the last to speak and he said the port opening is the start of what will make Paulsboro great again."
[CN: Racism] Yessenia Funes at Colorlines: Confidential Memo Claims DAPL Route Doesn't Disproportionately Impact Poor Communities. "Robert Bullard, the unofficial father of environmental justice who has written and studied the issue since the 1980s, told InsideClimate News that the analysis and methodology 'was designed intentionally to somehow minimize and mask the impacts of this project on the Standing Rock community.'"
[CN: Homophobia] Michael Fitzgerald at Towleroad: New Jersey Garden State Equality LGBT Rights Group Office Vandalized in Possible Hate Crime. "The offices of New Jersey LGBT rights group Garden State Equality were vandalized over the weekend while its director was on the premises. Executive Director Christian Fuscarino said he was inside the office on Saturday evening preparing for an event when two people smashed the building's glass front door, where a rainbow flag was draped."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Because Women Are Human
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Yesterday, I wrote this piece: "The Word That Shall Not Be Spoken: Misogyny." It's about my lingering anger and grief that we collectively continue to refuse meaningful conversations about the role misogyny played in the last election.
I wrote: "I need to talk about it, not just because it is an important and necessary conversation to fix what is broken, but also because the insistence that there is no need to talk about it is tacit acceptance. ...And then there is this: I think the lingering grief I feel would be easier if we at least talked about it."
That is all true. And so is this: I want to talk about it because I owe it to Hillary Clinton.
After everything that Clinton gave us in running for president, I feel indebted to her, even though I'm reasonably certain she wouldn't feel the same. She worked and asked for my support and my vote, and she got both.
But my feelings of indebtedness extend beyond the 2016 election. In 1995, I was 21 years old, and my First Lady said this:
"If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all. And among those rights are the right to speak freely, and the right to be heard."
The first part of that is well remembered. The second part, less so.
The right to speak freely, and the right to be heard.
Those, Hillary Clinton told the world, were rights that women have. To speak freely. To be heard. And because she said that radical thing, I owe her to speak, irrespective of whether I will be heard, about the misogyny to which she was subjected during her campaign for the U.S. presidency.
And I owe her reminding people that she, too, is human. Like she pointedly noted all women are.
For that reason, her humanity, I also need to talk about the misogyny during the campaign, because it was directed at her. Because misogyny is systemic, and it is also personal. Because I am angry about the way she was treated, as a human being.
Because misogyny was used to try to dehumanize her, over and over, whether casting her as an emotionless robot or a monster or the devil, or simply by concealing all evidence of her humanity.
I owe it to her for running, and to all the women who worked for her, and to all the women who publicly supported her, at the cost of unfathomable torrents of disgorged misogyny. I owe it thus to myself, as well.
We often talk about oppressions—misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, disablism, fat hatred, etc.—as though they exist only in the abstract; as though they aren't perpetuated by individual people and aren't directed at individual people.
And, in this way, even when misogyny is discussed in the context of the election, it is often done in that sort of framework. That misogyny "played a role." Rarely is anyone willing to say plainly that misogyny was used against Hillary Clinton and her supporters.
I am saying that plainly. I am saying that misogyny was used against Hillary Clinton. Because she is a woman.
And I am saying plainly, like Clinton did so many years ago, that women are human beings. And I am very angry that this human being, who ran for president, was treated like shit on the basis of her womanhood.
I am angry that people targeted her with misogyny.
And when we decline to speak about that fact, we are erasing her humanity. Again.
I just absolutely refuse to do that. And so should you.
Meanwhile...
In yesterday's We Resist thread, I mentioned that, days after the U.S. and South Korea started joint military drills, North Korea had launched four ballistic missiles which landed within 200 nautical miles of the coast of Japan.
Last night, Anna Fifield at the Washington Post reports: North Korea Says It Was Practicing to Hit U.S. Military Bases in Japan with Missiles.
Kim Jong Un presided over Monday's launch of the four missiles, "feasting his eyes on the trails of ballistic rockets," the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported in a statement that analysts called a "brazen declaration" of the country's intent to strike enemies with a nuclear weapon if it came under attack.This morning, the AP reported: "China says will take measures against U.S. missile system deployed in South Korea, says U.S. and Seoul will bear consequences."
"If the United States or South Korea fires even a single flame inside North Korean territory, we will demolish the origin of the invasion and provocation with a nuclear tipped missile," the KCNA statement said.
The four ballistic missiles fired Monday morning were launched by the elite Hwasong ballistic missile division "tasked to strike the bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan," KCNA said. The United States has numerous military bases and about 54,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, the legacy of its postwar security alliance with the country.
Is anyone at the White House paying attention to this, or nah?
I definitely know where Donald Trump stands on Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance on The Apprentice, but I have significantly less clarity on where he stands on a major foreign policy issue in East Asia.
The Republicans Unveil Their Obamacare Replacement Plan, and It Is Utter Garbage
Last night, House Republicans unveiled their Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) replacement plan, the text of which can be read here and here (PDF).
They also issued a summary document (PDF), titled "House Republicans Deliver on President Trump's Health Care Promise," which right from the start is a lie, because Trump's healthcare promise was "I am going to take care of everybody" and "The government's gonna pay for it."
Instead, the Republicans have delivered a devastatingly horrendous plan that relies on insufficient tax credits, health savings accounts, block grants to Medicaid, and promises that can't be kept without mandated coverage, e.g. no exclusion for preexisting conditions.
And instead of mandating coverage (which is what funds coverage for the people who need it the most), they are proposing an incredible 30% surcharge on premiums for a year on "anyone who goes without health coverage for two months or more." So, instead of incentivizing purchasing health insurance, they're proposing a steep punishment for anyone who doesn't/can't purchase it.
The one-third of Americans who don't know that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are the same thing are about to find out.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 6, 2017
Meanwhile, as Judd Legum notes, Republicans "released their Obamacare replacement without a CBO score which tells you: 1. How much the plan costs, 2. How many people would be covered." Because their plan is garbage, and they know it. They "delayed an earlier roll out because the CBO score was so bad. Instead of improving the bill, they just released it without a score."
They have zero facts on their side. They absolutely cannot promise that their plan will cover more people or control costs better than the Affordable Care Act. (Because it won't.) All they have is lies about the Affordable Care Act, which Trump continued to tell as he celebrated the replacement rollout this morning on Twitter.
Our wonderful new Healthcare Bill is now out for review and negotiation. ObamaCare is a complete and total disaster - is imploding fast!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017
But perhaps nothing more pointedly reveals how despicable this healthcare plan is, and how cruel the instincts behind it, than this comment from Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz on CNN's New Day this morning:
GOP Rep. Chaffetz: Americans may need to choose between "new iphone... they just love" and investing in health care https://t.co/5Hxwn2uOl5
— New Day (@NewDay) March 7, 2017
Anchor Alisyn Camerota: But access for lower income Americans doesn't equal coverage.We already knew that Republicans don't regard healthcare as a right, but Chaffetz confirms that in the bluntest of ways. Healthcare is something in which people need to invest.
Chaffetz: Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said that they don't want. And you know what? Americans have choices. And they've gotta make a choice. And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they wanna go spend hundreds of dollars of that, maybe they should invest it in their own healthcare. They've gotta make those decisions themselves.
The thing is, investing is something that only people with discretionary (excess) income can afford to do. When people with limited income make choices about how to spend their money, it isn't between "that new iPhone" and the hot new tech IPO; it's between this necessary thing and that necessary thing.
And, not for nothing, but the cost of a new iPhone won't cover a year's worth of healthcare. Someone has to be spending a whole lot of money on things they don't need in order to cover healthcare costs under the GOP's plan. And, you know, sometimes people actually need a new cellphone, and the difference in cost between an iPhone and the cheapest smartphone is even less money to "invest."
Once again, Republican policy is predicated on this erroneous notion that everyone has enough money, if only they'd just spend it on the "right" things. That the only real problem is bad individual choices. And that systemic problems like the federal minimum wage not being anything close to a liveable wage (thanks to Republicans) are somehow irrelevant.
They are not irrelevant.
So now we come to the resistance. We've got to resist this legislative nightmare with everything we've got. There are already four Republican Senators who have taken issue with one part of the plan (the unwinding of the Medicare expansion), so if Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Cory Gardner (Colorado), or Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) is your senator, press them hard to reject this proposal. And if you've got a different Republican Senator, raise their concern with your senator.
Republicans and Democrats need to hear our objections to this horrendous plan. And they need to know that if they cast a vote for it, they'll lose our votes in the next election.
It is not hyperbole to say this is a matter of life and death. Republicans don't care about people's lives, but they do care about votes. Time to make a whole lot of noise.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Brenda A.: "Along the lines of 'I thought the darnedest,' how about: What song lyrics did you completely mishear?"
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by sesame seeds.
Recommended Reading:
Cary: [Content Note: Trans hatred] A Red State is "Detransitioning" State Employees—Like Me
Laura: [CN: Exploitation; abuse] Formerly Detained Immigrants File Class Action Lawsuit Against ICE Contractor over Alleged Forced Labor
Sydette: [CN: Nativism; abuse; white supremacy] To the Children of Refugees and Immigrants: You're Worth It
Felicia: [CN: Nativism; privilege] Don't Get Your Undocumented Friends in Trouble: A How-To
Barbara: [CN: Nativism; white supremacy] In Defense of "Bad Hombres": The Case of Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez
Sameer: [CN: Nativism; white supremacy] South by Southwest Deportation Clause Sparks Artist Backlash
Shay: [CN: Racism] When the Work of Change Becomes a Tiresome Burden, or Racial Justice Reality
Andy: 65 Percent Want Special Prosecutor to Investigate Trump-Russia Ties, Including 43 Percent of Republicans
George: This Year's Best Science Photos Are So Good They're Basically Art
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
This Really Happened
[Content Note: Racist revisionist history.]
Today, HUD Secretary Ben Carson actually said this shit (video via Tommy Christopher):
Right before he called slaves "immigrants," @RealBenCarson also fondly recalled a time when there was "no such thing as a minimum wage." pic.twitter.com/r5ldKiKqaI
— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) March 6, 2017
People who worked not five days a week, but six or seven days a week. Not eight hours a day, but ten, twelve, sixteen hours a day. No such thing as a minimum wage. They worked not for themselves, but for their sons and their daughters and their grandsons and their granddaughters, that they might have an opportunity in this land. That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less. But they, too, had a dream that, one day, their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity.Yes, he called slaves "immigrants," after waxing nostalgic about the days where there were no labor laws and no minimum wage.
I mean.
If only we could have predicted that Donald Trump would be a terrible president who would surround himself with terrible people. OH WELL.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 6, 2017
Donald Trump: The Inevitable Republican
[Content note: privilege, racism, anti-gay slur]
In October 2016, Melissa wrote a piece discussing how Donald Trump is not an anomalous Republican politician, but an inevitable one. Specifically:
"Over decades, [Republicans] developed and fine-tuned a strategy based on appealing to bigotry, to othering and scapegoating and victim-blaming. And then they dressed it up in cynical language about morality, patriotism, and nostalgia.This promise, of course, was and continues to be made by appealing to the days of yore in which straight white cis people, especially men, didn't have to leave their bubbles of privilege and care about people not like themselves.
Long before Donald Trump had the chutzpah to make it his actual campaign slogan, the Republican Party was promising to Make America Great Again."
In the lead-up to Election 2016, this rejection of empathy for others was widely expressed by Donald Trump's "Fuck Your Feelings*" brigade of supporters (*this was an actual t-shirt some Trump supporters wore). This rejection of what's commonly called "political correctness" is not new, but is a continuation of the long-time Republican strategy of using support for civil rights, affirmative action, LGBT rights, and other so-called "identity politics" as wedge issues to get people to vote against their own economic interests, against an "other" to be feared, and in support of continued white (cis, male, hetero) supremacy.
As being labeled a bigot has become something that many people fear more than actually being bigoted, Republicans have also long employed dog-whistle politics. These are the coded appeals to bigotry that serve as a wink-and-a-nod that allow the base and politicians alike plausible deniability to feign outrage when "oversensitive" offended parties "uncharitably" call out bigotry.
For instance, think of the way many Republicans referred to President Obama as Barack Hussein Obama. What? they'd say. That's his full name, what's the big deal? The defense is stripped of the context in which there's an entire birther movement, predicated in part on his middle name, to deny President Obama's religious beliefs and US citizenship. Or, think of the way some anti-gay people call gay rights "fashionable" or "decadent." Because, get it, gay men are fashion queens and equality is a trivial matter, like the latest trends. What's the big deal? they'd say. It's not like we're saying fag?
And, on top of the dog whistles are layers of tone respectability. That is, the notion that as long as any number of bigoted statements are whistled in a sufficiently polite manner—no cursing, no vulgarity, no obvious slurs—then the substance itself is polite. Think of the massive fawning over Trump for appearing "disciplined" and "presidential" for giving a speech without, say, referencing the size of his genitals.
And now, here we are.
For those keeping score at home, Republicans currently hold 52 seats in the US Senate.
If Trump were an outlier with respect to Republican values, an anomaly so to speak, Republican Senators could exercise their powers to stop him on matters over which they had diverging opinions and had authority to do so.
Thus far, they have shown little inclination to do so.
The Senate has now held 18 confirmation votes on Trump's Cabinet nominees. Per The New York Times' ongoing tally, 45 Republicans have voted "yes" on every nominee. Three Republicans have voted "no" once. Only one Republican has voted "no" twice.
Notable confirmed Cabinet members include Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price who has repeatedly sought to repeal the ACA, Attorney General Jeff Sessions whose nomination was celebrated by white supremacist David Duke and who was deemed too racist to serve on the federal bench in the 1980s, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt who believes the debate on climate change is "far from settled" and has advocated against the EPA, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a billionaire political donor who seems to have no clear plan on how to improve public schools.
Republican Senator John McCain, whom the media often breathlessly reports as being variations of "mad as hell" about Trump, only voted "no" on one of Trump's Cabinet picks.
Republicans have also indicated their support for Trump's Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch, whom they see as "the intellectual heir to the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia." Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has even referred to the evening Trump announced his pick of Gorsuch as "one of the happiest of [his] Senate career," coming as it did after McConnell led the Republican stonewalling of President Obama's pick, Merrick Garland, for a year.
It is no surprise, particularly to those on the receiving end of Republican retrograde policies, that Republicans would widely support Trump's Cabinet picks or a deeply-conservative jurist. What can be a surprise is when the mask of respectability slips. Remember, if you will, a couple of weeks ago when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell referred to those protesting outside of his office as "losers."
To witness a leader of one of the major political parties in the US refer to people exercising their constitutional rights as "losers" is to witness language that is Trumpian in both tone and substance.
It's within the realm of possibility that McConnell has long thought of those who don't support him as "losers," but to hear him say it .... welp! I'll just say that I don't view this apparent contempt with which McConnell holds the populace as something that Trump has uniquely ushered in. Rather, Trump's electoral college win has demonstrated that open contempt, rather than dog-whistle contempt, is a winning strategy.
Trump is not transforming the Republican Party into something it was not before. He is revealing what it has long been. And so, I would call Trump a mainstream Republican, not because he is not extremely regressive. But rather, because the Republican party widely is. Trump fits into it as a retrograde inevitability. He says out loud what cowardly Republicans think but don't dare say. To his fans, he represents what they want: to speak bigotry without consequence.
Meanwhile, many unanswered questions about Trump's ties to Russia, and his own potential collusion with both Putin and Wikileaks in helping secure his electoral college win, continue to linger. These questions have deep implications for the integrity of our electoral process, our political system, and our sovereignty.
Also meanwhile, Republican politicians appear to have the back of this man, a man who treats 60-some-million of us as "losers" and "enemies." Republicans have long marketed themselves as Team Real America and yet how on Earth can we trust any of them to support a fair, independent investigation, especially when their own political interests so clearly converge with Trump's?
Too True to Be Funny
[Content Note: Misogyny; predation.]
In case you missed it, Saturday Night Live aired a digital short this weekend called "Girl at a Bar," and it was pretty amazing. It's not really a comedy sketch so much as it is a straight-up documentary about lots of progressive women's experience with an enormous number of men who purport to be feminist allies.
Video Description: A young thin white woman is at a crowded bar, speaking into her cellphone. She leaves a message for a friend, telling her she'll wait for her at the bar. She takes a seat at the bar and looks around for her friend. A young thin white man in a checked button-down shirt and grey hoodie asks her if the seat beside her is taken. "I'm not like a gross guy trying to hit on you or anything," he assures her. "Believe me, I know this place is filled with skeezy guys."
"I think the whole world is," she responds. "I think one is our president," he says. She laughs and tells him not to remind her. They introduce themselves and he compliments her t-shirt, which reads "The Future Is Female." He opens his button-down to show he's wearing the same t-shirt. She says, "On behalf of all women, we thank you so much for your support."
He asks her if she'd maybe want to hang out sometime. She politely says, "No thank you." To which he responds by yelling, "Okay, bitch! I wear this shirt and you won't even let me—" Another young thin white guy interrupts him by yanking him away. He takes the guy's seat. "What a nightmare!" he says. She agrees. He asks her if she's okay and she says she's fine.
He asks her if she's from "around here," then quickly adds, "Sorry, I didn't mean that in, like, a skeevy, where-do-you-live sort of way." She says she's from D.C. and he says he was just there for the Women's March. He says he rented a bus and went down with a bunch of people: "It was honestly one of the best days of my life."
She says he's very nice and he asks if she wants to come to his place. "Oh, uh, no thank you," she responds politely. "Bitch," he says. "What?!" she exclaims. He jumps up and humps at her: "I freaking marched for you and you won't get down on this?!" She cried out, "Eww!" and another young thin white guy removes him and takes his place.
"Guys like that," he says, "are why we need a woman in the White House. Enough of us men, right? We had our shot." She chuckles. He says he worked for Hillary, and she says she loves Hillary. "Hey, can I ask you a question since we both love Hillary?" he asks. She says sure. "Would you wanna look at my balls?" he says. "Eww no!" she exclaims. "Bitch," he says, pointing at her. "What?" she says. "Bitch," he says, pointing at her. "What? she says. "PLEASE!" he yells. "BUT IT'S NOT FAIR!"
Another young thin white guy tells him to move along and then takes his place. This guy is wearing a crocheted pussy hat and a vest covered in feminist buttons. "I'm so sorry about my fellow man," he says. She doesn't even have time to respond before he asks if she follows Kamala Harris on Twitter. "Yeah I do," she says. "Do you wanna eat my butt?" he asks. "No!" she says. "BITCH!" he screams.
Her friend, a young fat white woman, shows up and removes him and takes his seat. She says she's so glad to see her. "I love you." "You do? Touch my tit!" "No!" "BIIIIIIITCH!"
* * *
The end is weak, although I get the attempt at absurdity.
It will never cease to be amazing to me how dudes who wrap themselves in feminism in order to prey on women, and who feel entitled to attention and sex from women in exchange for little else than bragging about their supposed feminist credentials, imagine themselves to be somehow different from pick-up artists who use some other collection of deceits in order to try to bed women on false premises.
I don't know if any of my closest male friends, including my husband, have ever said: "I'm a feminist." If they have, it's been rare enough that I don't remember it. They don't have to say it. They show me, by making themselves trustworthy and practicing feminism, every day.
[Related Reading: Feminism 101: Helpful Hints for Dudes, Part 8.]
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 46
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things I've read today:
[Content Note: Islamophobia; nativism; white supremacy] Donald Trump signed another Executive Order today, which is a minimally revised do-over of the previous Muslim ban. The full text of the new EO is here. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a statement on this mess, fallaciously arguing that it was a necessary measure to keep the country safe.
Sec. of State Rex Tillerson: With new immigration order "Pres. Trump is exercising his rightful authority to keep our people safe." pic.twitter.com/2yUZOKZzxR
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 6, 2017
The Executive Order, signed by the president earlier today, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, is a vital measure for strengthening our national security. It is the president's solemn duty to protect the American people, and, with this order, President Trump is exercising his rightful authority to keep our people safe.No, he isn't. Because this order will not protect us and will only make us less safe. Further, it is aggressively indecent.
But none of this is about decency or safety. It is about white supremacy. To that end, Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger have a must-read piece at the Huffington Post: "This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains the World." Read that, and then understand the Muslim ban in that context.
[CN: Racist violence] In regrettably related news: "NRI businessman Harnish Patel from Vadodara shot dead in South Carolina."
Barely two weeks after an Indian engineer became victim of hate crime in Kansas in the US, another NRI businessman of Gujarati origin has been shot dead in Lancaster in South Carolina. Harnish Patel, who ran Speedee Mart in Lancaster had closed his shop on Thursday, and was close to his house when an unidentified assailant opened fire at him, killing him on the spot. Harnish, 43, who originally hails from Avakhal village in Sinor taluka of Vadodara district had been living in the US with his family for over 14 years.My condolences to his family, friends, and community. Patel's murder, like Srinivas Kuchibhotla's, did not happen in a vacuum.
...According to reports, officials of Lancaster police say that they are yet to ascertain a motive behind Harnish's killing, which appears to be 'racially motivated'.
* * *
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] J.J. Gallagher at ABC News: US Condemns 'Unacceptable' North Korea Missile Launches. "The South Korean military confirmed four missiles were detected to have flown more than 600 miles and landed in waters within 200 nautical miles of the coast of Japan, an area Japan's government claims as its exclusive economic zone. It was not immediately clear what type of missiles were launched, the South Korean Ministry of Defense announced at a press briefing on Monday. The launches are seen as a reaction by North Korea to joint U.S.-South Korea military drills that kicked off on Friday."
[CN: Sexual harassment/abuse] Thomas Gibbons-Neff at the Washington Post: 'I'm Never Reenlisting': Marine Corps Rocked by Nude-Photo Scandal. "The Marine Corps is looking into allegations that an unknown number of potential Marines, as well as current and former service members, shared naked and compromising photos of their colleagues on social media, Marine officials said Sunday. ...The War Horse's report focuses on one Facebook group with more than 30,000 members called Marines United. In January, a link to a shared hard drive containing photos of numerous female Marines in various states of undress was posted to the group, according to the War Horse's report. The hard drive contained images, as well as the names and units of the women pictured. Many of the photos were accompanied by derogatory and harassing comments." And the current commander-in-chief of the US military is himself a serial sexual abuser. Which is one of many reasons why his history of abusive misogyny should have disqualified him from the presidency.
Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, and Ashley Parker at the Washington Post: Inside Trump's Fury: The President Rages at Leaks, Setbacks, and Accusations. "At the center of the turmoil is an impatient president increasingly frustrated by his administration's inability to erase the impression that his campaign was engaged with Russia, to stem leaks about both national security matters and internal discord, and to implement any signature achievements. This account of the administration's tumultuous recent days is based on interviews with 17 top White House officials, members of Congress and friends of the president, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly." This is the portrait of an abusive and brittle man, who has never had to deal with meaningful criticism or accountability, because he has surrounded himself with sycophants his entire life.
This is a real tweet from a sitting Republican Congressman:
Calling for a "purge" of "leftists." That is literally what authoritarian regimes do.
[CN: Misogyny] Meanwhile, his Republican colleague North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer has doubled down on his ridicule of female Democrats who wore white to Trump's address to Congress, to honor women's suffrage. He said "there is a disease associated with the notion that a bunch of women would wear bad-looking white pantsuits in solidarity with Hillary Clinton to celebrate her loss," and accused them of making "vulgar" hand gestures at Trump while he was speaking and of "hissing" at him. Holy shit.
Tania Kohut at Global News: US Funding for Great Lakes Cleanup Could Be Slashed by 97%, Leaked Document Shows. "The budget measures would cut funding for algae bloom reduction and other water pollution problems in the lakes, The Oregonian reports. 'The scale at which these cuts are being discussed would be devastating,' Jordan Lubetkin, spokesperson for the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition told the Detroit Free Press. ...The Great Lakes contain roughly 20 per cent of the Earth's fresh surface water. The lakes provide drinking water for 10 million Canadians, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. 'The Great Lakes are a vast shared resource containing a significant portion of the world's fresh water,' the agency notes."
NRDC: The Real Lowdown: The Trump and Congressional Republican Assault on Our Environment, Vol. 3. "Nearly halfway through his first 100 days, President Donald Trump is on track to set a record for putting Americans' health and our environment at risk. In recent days, we've seen Trump issue an order to keep streams and rivers flowing with toxic chemicals, add a trio of polluters' allies to his cabinet, hint of eviscerating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and telegraph he'll soon start to try to unravel our country's best chance to curb dangerous climate change: the popular Clean Power Plan."
[CN: Trans hatred] Adam Liptak at the New York Times: Supreme Court Won't Hear Major Case on Transgender Rights. "The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear a major case on transgender rights after all, acting after the Trump administration changed the federal government's position on whether public schools had to allow transgender youths to use bathrooms that matched their gender identities. In a one-sentence order, the Supreme Court vacated an appeal's court decision in favor of a transgender boy, Gavin Grimm, and sent the case back for further consideration in light of the new guidance from the Trump administration."
[CN: Racism] Esme Cribb at TPM: People Walk out as Alabama Official Pushes Voter ID at Selma Anniversary Service. "The service at Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Alabama was held to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of the 'Bloody Sunday' march that erupted in police violence on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, according to a video posted to Rev. William Barber's Facebook page. Barber, who is president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, and church-goers walked out after [Alabama's Secretary of State John Merrill] spoke in support of Alabama's voter ID law, according to the video's caption. 'We can't be polite about this. We can't be casual or cavalier,' Barber told a reporter."
[CN: War on agency] Teddy Wilson at Rewire: Texas Could Join States Allowing Doctors to Lie to Pregnant People. "Texas lawmakers have advanced a bill that would allow doctors to lie to pregnant patients by withholding information about fetal abnormalities. ...Margaret Johnson, a member of the Texas League of Women Voters, told the committee that the bill would create an 'unreasonable restriction on the constitutional right' of a pregnant person to make an informed decision about a pregnancy, reported the San Antonio Current. 'SB 25 is a not-so-subtle way to give medical personnel the opportunity to impose religious beliefs on women,' Johnson said."
Rebecca Shapiro at the Huffington Post: Arkansas Lawmaker Introduces Bill Banning Howard Zinn Books. "Republican state Rep. Kim Hendren brought forth HB1834, a one-page bill that would halt the use of any book or other material authored by Zinn between the years of 1959 and 2010 in public schools and open-enrollment public charter schools. With these parameters, Zinn's bestselling 1980 book, 'A People's History of the United States,' would be banned. The collection is a groundbreaking and controversial work that analyzed American history from the perspective of the poor and marginalized, or as Zinn put it, 'the people who have been overlooked in the traditional history books.'"
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Shaker Gardens Thread: March
Hey Shakers! Spring is rolling around again in the Northern Hemisphere! I got out this weekend for the first bit of garden time. I'm pretty busy right now with Women's History Month events on my campus, but I got a little bit done.
I really didn't get too much accomplished this fall in terms of bulb planting, so... spring blooms are courtesy work done in years past. The blooms above are species tulips that came back looking great! Here's a different angle, with some bonus flowering rosemary:
I also had some good luck with daffs coming back and, to my surprise, Dutch iris. They usually are annuals. I did nothing with them, and they surprised me! Pardon the fuzziness here; it was windy yesterday.
I planted some radishes, lettuce, and peas--actually a bit late for here in the US Southeast. I hope to get at least one crop before it gets too hot. Meanwhile we also brought some of the plants outside that had to be moved in for winter. And hey, they're bearing fruit too! Here's the pineapple plant with fruit coming along:
Do you have garden plans, or are you gardening right now? (Southern Hemisphere readers, tell us about your fall!) Please feel free to share in this thread. Whether it is a pot on a rooftop apartment, a multi-acre farm, flower beds or a single plant in the windowsill, this is the place to talk about it. As ever, please be respectful of the fact that different gardeners have different priorities, whether that be yield per foot, water conservation, organic gardening, economical gardening, or something else! As a closer, here's my Knockout Rose, a gift from my spouse for this Valentine's Day. What's growing, Shakers?
The Word That Shall Not Be Spoken: Misogyny
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Spending my days immersed in the cavalcade of impending constitutional crises and reprehensible bigotry emanating from the Trump administration is a colossal, heartbreaking drag.
It always would have filled me with despair and grief and rage, but there is the additional heartbreak of juxtaposing it against where we could have been. As I expressed to Iain in a particularly low moment last week: "I was supposed to be writing about the Hillary Clinton administration."
I am still not over Hillary Clinton not being president. I never will be.
One of the things that makes that loss—not just the election loss, but the loss of a future which would have looked vastly different—even tougher is the oppressive silence about the role misogyny played in this election.
The misogyny that was directed at Clinton herself, by the media and by her opponents, embedded in the narratives they used against her and centered shamelessly in the chants they led about her.
The misogyny of voters who couldn't say what exactly it was they didn't like about her, but just couldn't bring themselves to vote for her.
The continuing misogyny of Occam's Big Paisley Tie-ing every conceivable explanation, no matter how unlikely, for Obama voters flipping to Trump, without even the merest mention of the possibility that a person who has always voted for men before just wanted to keep on doing it.
There is no meaningful public conversation about the role misogyny played in the election, in which the first ever major-party female candidate lost to a confessed serial sexual abuser, while simultaneously winning by 3 million votes. There is no discussion of how the media covered her email for 600 days, nor how a photo of her reading the headline about Mike Pence's email has been treated more like a punchline than a cause for national grief.
You guys, my friend is on the same plane as Hillary Clinton. Zoom in on the title of the article she's looking at. pic.twitter.com/356oE9uT0s
— J👏🏻O👏🏻H👏🏻N (@thelastwalt) March 3, 2017
There has been not the slightest attempt from the mainstream political press to engage in robust self-reflection about the misogyny in which they engaged, implicitly and overtly, treating her differently in subtle ways and brazenly convening panels to discuss her voice, her tone, her clothes.
In the middle of writing this piece, I read Sady Doyle's terrific essay about misogyny as a unifying political force. I also saw Donald Trump advisor and close friend Roger Stone's misogynist tirade against Caroline O. There has been little public discussion about these things, and what it means that powerful men are not merely vessels of rank misogyny, but are animated and motivated by rank misogyny.
That misogyny is an organizational center for large swaths of the American electorate—on both the right and the left.
Every woman experiences misogyny virtually every day of her life, in big and small ways. In ways that we sometimes understand only instinctually and have difficulty putting into words. From strangers, from men we trust, from other women. Every woman, irrespective of whether she acknowledges it, is subject to misogyny—because that's how institutional oppression works.
And yet. We are supposed to accept that misogyny didn't play a role in this election. Or played a part so minor it isn't even worth comment. We are meant to believe that when all the sexists who direct sexism at women every day went into a voting booth, they left their sexism on the other side of the curtain.
I don't believe that.
That isn't to suggest that misogyny is the only reason a person could have conceivably failed to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. But just because there exist potential other reasons categorically does not mean we get to ignore that misogyny was a big fucking reason.
Especially when the "other reasons" aren't really separate from gender at all.
I want to talk about the role misogyny played in electing Donald Trump. I need to talk about it, not just because it is an important and necessary conversation to fix what is broken, but also because the insistence that there is no need to talk about it is tacit acceptance. I don't accept it. And I don't accept the cultural gaslighting implicit in ignoring or silencing women (and men) who saw what happened and are now dismissed like cranks or fools or sour-grapes hysterics.
And then there is this: I think the lingering grief I feel would be easier if we at least talked about it.
Many people have observed Clinton's loss felt like a death. It feels like that to me, in the way that death also breaks the promise of a future. So not talking about it feels as though my friend died, but I'm not allowed to talk about what killed them.
I want to talk about what killed this future I wanted so much. All of the things that derailed it, but especially this one.
Denying it is replicating it. And I suspect, for many of the people who engaged in or chose to ignore misogyny in the first place, that is precisely the point.
Which is perhaps the most compelling argument for this conversation.
Trump Accuses Obama of Wiretapping Trump Tower
Trump launched his political career by accusing Obama of being born outside US. Now he starts his presidency by accusing him of lawbreaking.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 4, 2017
Feeling under siege from further revelations about members of his team having met, and subsequently concealed those meetings, with Russian envoy Sergey Kislyak, Donald Trump headed down to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend (again), where he spiraled frighteningly on Twitter before heading off for a round of golf. The thrust of his rant was to accuse President Obama of having wiretapped Trump Tower.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
The President does not have the authority to legally order wiretaps on anyone, so Trump was making an explosive charge against Obama. The presumption was that Trump was actually referring to surveillance under a FISA warrant, which would not have been ordered by President Obama, and certainly not for political reasons, but by an intelligence agency monitoring contacts with foreign governments.
But representatives of the Obama administration had no idea to what Trump was referring, and neither did intelligence officials.
A senior US official tells @NBCNightlyNews' Pete Williams that he and others in a position to know have no idea what Trump is talking about.
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) March 4, 2017
Snr. US official also tells Pete Williams: Trump apparently did not consult with people in the government who would know, before tweeting.
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) March 4, 2017
The question then became: How did Trump "find out" (as he said in his tweet) this information? If it wasn't from an intelligence briefing, where did it come from?
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went on Meet the Press Sunday morning to publicly state that he had no knowledge of any FISA order for surviellance on Trump Tower.
At this point, it had become clear that Trump's source was a story in Breitbart News, the white supremacist media outlet formerly run by Steve Bannon, now White House chief strategist.
Per Clapper, logical conclusion is Trump used the weight of his office to tar his predecessor with a scurrilous claim he read on Breitbart.
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) March 5, 2017
WH officials with whom I spoke said POTUS got the info about wiretap from media - Breitbart, Levin - not from govt sources.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 5, 2017
As it became clear that Trump had made a gross accusation against the former president, and that accusation could not be substantiated, his various spokespeople and surrogates tried to spin it as though Trump was calling for an investigation of the possibility. (That is clearly not at all what he did.) Deputy White House Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried this tactic with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, and it did not go well.
Sarah Sanders Huckabee just got schooled by Martha Raddatz on how semantics work. "If, if, if..." 😂😂 #Brilliant pic.twitter.com/dP7ZUhGUxy
— Truth Reigns (@FrReigns) March 5, 2017
RADDATZ: These are extremely serious charges the president is making. Where is he getting this information?Incredible. Also note Sanders describing the wiretapping story as "something that's positive in this administration." That is an incredible passing admission: The Trump White House views accusing the former president of an illegal abuse of power as a "positive." It was a fleeing moment, but a very revealing one. Remember it. This administration's objective is not governance; it's destruction. That's why Trump's unsubstantiable accusation against Obama is a "positive" for them. They have successfully further eroded public trust. Because now, no matter what, a substantial number of Americans will always believe Obama tapped Trump Tower.
SANDERS: Look, I think there have been quite a few reports. I know that Jonathan and others earlier in the program mentioned that it was all conservative media, but that's frankly not true. The New York Times, BBC have also talked about it and reported on the potential of this having had happened. I think the bigger thing is, let's find out. Let's have an investigation. If they're going to investigate Russia ties, let's include this as part of it. And so that's what we're asking.
RADDATZ: Was the principal source the Breitbart story, which links to the New York Times? But the New York Times doesn't say anything definitive. Donald Trump does. There is nothing equivocating about what he says. "I just found out that Obama had my wires tapped." That's not looking into something. He says it happened.
SANDERS: Look, I think the bigger thing is you guys are always telling us to take the media seriously. Well, we are today. We're taking the reports that places like the New York Times, FOX News, BBC, multiple outlets have reported this. All we're saying is let's take a closer look. Let's look into this. If this happened, if this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal—
RADDATZ: But you're not saying let's look into this! The President of the United States is accusing the former president of wiretapping him.
SANDERS: I think that this is, again, something that, if this happened, Martha—
RADDATZ: If, if, if, if!
SANDERS: I agree.
RADDATZ: Why is the president saying it did happen?
SANDERS: Look, I think he is going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential. And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that I think we have ever seen and a huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to know if this took place.
RADDATZ: Okay. The president, let me say again, the president said it did take place. Why does he believe these articles that you say you cite and I'm saying, they are not definitive—the Breitbart brings them all together, a Heat Street, they have two sources with links to the counterintelligence community. That's it. Anonymous sources. The president constantly says he doesn't like anonymous sources, and he doesn't like leakers!
SANDERS: I love how anonymous sources don't count when it's something that's positive in this administration and against the former one. You guys use anonymous sources every single day.
RADDATZ: Is that the bar? Yes, yes, we do. Yes, we do. But the president believes this is—but what's the bar there? What does the president believe?
SANDERS: Look, I think he's made very clear what he believes. And he's asking that we get down to the bottom of this. Let's get the truth here. Let's find out. I think the bigger story isn't who reported it, but is it true? And I think the American people have a right to know if this happened, because if it did, again this is the largest abuse of power that I think we is have ever seen.
Anyone who cared about this country and wanted to protect it would not view that erosion of trust as a "positive." And that's the whole point: This administration neither cares about this country nor wants to protect it.
This morning, Sarah Huckabee Sanders again appeared on ABC News, this time with George Stephanopoulos. By this time, FBI Director James Comey had said Trump had made a false claim, too. Stephanopoulos challenged her point-blank: "That has been denied by President Obama, by the former Director of National Intelligence, and now we know as well by the FBI Director. They are all saying it did not happen. So is the president calling all three of those individuals liars?"
Sanders responded: "Not at all," then went on to say he's asking for a Congressional investigation. But he is implicitly calling them liars, and he is further asking Congress to investigate some bullshit he read in Breitbart News.
This is where we are. And it is not good.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by coffee.
Recommended Reading:
Rick: [Content Note: White supremacy] Peter's Choice
Sarah: [CN: Misogyny] The Future Is Female—and Still Unrelentingly Misogynist
Eliza and Nelufar: [CN: Misogynoir] Meet the Activists Fighting to Keep Pregnant Black Women from Dying
Vivian: [CN: Misogyny] No Matter What You Think of Kellyanne Conway, Here's How You Don't Talk About Her
Angry Asian Man: [CN: Racism] Congressman Compares Holding Town Halls to Getting Yelled at by "Orientals"
Joshua: [CN: Nativism; white supremacy] Trump's VOICE Program Could Take Us Back to Darker Times
Rae: NASA Spacecraft Avoids Very Embarrassing Collision with Mars' Moon
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Discussion Thread: I've Never Tried...
Recently, when Deeky was visiting for the weekend, he asked what kind of breakfast cereals I had. I went to the pantry and read out a list of various unexciting multigrain and granola cereals, to which he responded with enormous contempt. "No Count Chocula? No Cap'n Crunch? What the fuck?! No Lucky Charms?!" On and on, until I was crying with laughter.
I explained that my mom had never bought sugary cereal when I was a kid—Honey Nut Cheerios was as wild as it got—and that I'd never even tried the more popular kids' cereals.
He was horrified, lol.
So: That's my tale of having never tried something that most people have, for no reason other than I just haven't! What's yours?
