Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
Shaker Gourmet
Weaksauce
My horseshit-o-meter had already reached maximum NOPE with the "Hillary Was a Weak Candidate" chorus (worst chorus ever—every song is the same one note) when I saw this item:
Intel chairman says Russia hired more than 1000 hackers to create fake, anti-Clinton news in key states, won by Trump. @jeffpeguescbs, now pic.twitter.com/mmRBcE4qCu
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) March 29, 2017
Only that, plus additional Russian interference, plus a hostile media who couldn't stop talking about her fucking emails, plus James Comey, plus a heaping fuckload of misogyny.
Tell me more about Clinton being a weak candidate. https://t.co/uGLqcbdKur
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 20, 2017
Actually, don't.
I Don't Like Bernie Sanders and I Don't Even Get What He's Talking About
Hey, ya crew of feminist howler monkeys! It's me, Butch Pornstache, here to lay down some totally trenchant man-wisdom for your brains. (YOU'RE WELCOME!)
I know last time I said I would talk about Donald Trump next time I graced you with my presence, but first I got some shit to get off my chest about Bernie Sanders.
Namely, I need this guy to stop being a tool, because I'm getting real tired of listening to my ex-wife/fiancée Tammy and my stepmom Cheryl screaming about him all the time like a bunch of angry feminist bats.
And before you all start screaming at me like a bunch of angry feminist bats, no, I do not mean tool like a euphemism for man-meat (LADIES), because I know that gendered insults are not allowed here. (And how I know that is because I really, really wanted to title this post "Bernie Sanders Is a Dick," but Liss wouldn't let me.)
I mean tool like an actual tool. Specifically, a broken plunger.
Because right now, based on my knowledge gleaned from all the high-volume complaining in my house, politics are pretty messed up for people who aren't in my straight white dude group. Like, Trump won, and he hates people with identities, and then he picked a bunch of straight white dudes who also hate people with identities to help him run the country (INTO THE GROUND), and now a bunch of liberal bozos who should know better are like WE HAVE TO HATE PEOPLE WITH IDENTITIES, TOO or something.
Basically, it's like a blocked-up toilet that just keeps overflowing with turds, and Bernie Sanders is like, "Hey, I can fix it!" but he doesn't fix it, because he's a broken plunger that doesn't unclog anything and just gets more shit everywhere.
(That analogy is elegant as hell. Sometimes I really impress myself.)
And, hey, we can't all be plungers, man. But there was a super dorky plunger that also WORKED REAL GOOD and Bernie Sanders screamed in its face about how it was an establishment plunger and now THERE ARE NO WORKING PLUNGERS and my entire bathroom is covered in butt-mud!
Anyways. As a reformed Tea Bagger who has become "moderately more sympathetic," as I heard Tammy telling her mom on the phone (I also give her fewer "terrible bargain days" now, whatever that means), and a proud white working class man who runs my own business (HAPPY 420), I am apparently the sort of dude that Sanders wants to bring into his revolution. COOL. It's nice to be wanted. Amirite, ladies?
But, for real, man, I hate the dude. Every time I see him, he's screaming about millionaires and billionaires, and I guess most millionaires and billionaires are assholes and whatnot, but what does that have to do with the fact that I gotta drive about a jillion miles next week so my cousin Sheila can get an abortion because her deadbeat boyfriend doesn't give her money for the two kids they already have?
I don't even understand what Bernie Sanders is talking about, and I sure don't like being yelled at by a grumpy fart who would probably turn up his nose if I offered him some of my homemade hotdog chili.
Why is he yelling all the time? Is he selling something? He makes me feel like I'm watching a late-night infomercial on breaking up the banks. "And if you call RIGHT NOW, you will get YUUUUUUGE savings! For a limited time only, we can break up TWO banks for the price of one!" God, break 'em up, just leave me out of it!
Or don't break 'em up! I don't know! I don't have any idea how that's supposed to help me, anyways!
And I'm pretty sure if I tried to ask him, it'd be like that time I asked a dude at the library where I might find a book about krav maga, and he got SUPER PISSED because he didn't even work there. Like I'm supposed to know which white-haired dudes with glasses work at the library and which ones are just there to check out Kathy Ireland: Total Fitness Workout on VHS so they can "do aerobics" to it.
I guess what I'm saying, to put it in language you snowflakes will understand, is that I just don't find Bernie Sanders very "accessible" or "relatable." Or "nice."
Forget his politics (I already have), the guy just seems like an ass. I bet if the tire on my BMX chubbed out on me and I was stranded on the side of the road, he wouldn't even stop to help. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who would pull over and definitely try to do something, even though I wouldn't want her to risk getting covered in road dust, because those coats of hers are fucking beautiful, man.
She'd probably whip a tire pump out of her pocket, or tell me IT TAKES A VILLAGE and rally 9,000 townsfolk to help blow up my tire, so I could make it home and get back to the important business of listening to my books on tape. (Yes, I READ.) (LADIES.)
Maybe that's unfair. Bernie might at least stop to tell me he'd give me some free college.
I just don't dig how he doesn't seem to like anyone or anything. It was pretty obvious that he hated the shit outta Hillary. And I am about ten thousand times stupider and ten million times more likely to spill nacho cheese on your couch than she is, so if he didn't like her, he definitely wouldn't like me.
Or pretty much anyone I know.
And, listen, Tammy and Cheryl hate it when I tell them I'm learning—and they want me to tell you that's not because they don't want me to learn, but because they want me to learn without telling them I'm learning, especially when I say it like GAWD I'M LEARNING every time I fuck up—but I am learning, in spite of my resistance (#RESIST) to all of you femifarts and your femifarty ways. And one of the things I've learned is that I don't know shit.
I thought I knew basically everything, but it turns out you can live a damn long time without knowing much about a lot of stuff that matters to a whole lot of other people if you're a straight white dude.
I bet you didn't even know that! Now YOU'RE learning something! The student has become the teacher!
And learning shit means listening to people (NOT A FAN) who know more than you do about their own lives. That is what I have discovered, after Tammy and Cheryl pointed it out to me on many different occasions.
If you can turn off The Big Bang Theory (HA HA NERDS) and listen for two seconds, as has been repeatedly recommended to me, you find out that people have a lot of interesting stuff to tell you, even if they didn't support Bernie Sanders.
Which seems like a weird litmus test (SCIENCE) to me, anyhow. It seems to me it should take more than that to be considered "a progressive." Like, if I said right now, "I love Bernie!" I would be a progressive, but all of you dorks wouldn't be? Zounds! Go directly to PROGRESSIVE and collect $200!
Something ain't right about that.
I don't know, man. Basically, Bernie just seems like a real jerkturkey to me. Plus he's making Tammy and Cheryl lose their shit on the daily, which is some crap I don't need in my life when I'm trying to improve myself so that I'm not the one making them lose their shit on the daily, so I really wish he'd just shut the fuck up and go away.
Pornstache: OUT.
Quote of the Day
"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power."—Attorney General Jeff Sessions, referring to a judge in Hawaii blocking Donald Trump's Muslim ban executive order.
Got that? The Attorney General of the United States just referred to Hawaii, a U.S. state since 1959, as "an island in the Pacific."
Holy lord.
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 91
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 in the news today:
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: The GOP Has a New Plan to Destroy Obamacare; It's Even Crueler Than the Last One.
Now Republicans are indeed set to introduce the new plan, multiple reports tell us. And judging by a new study set to be released today, it is even crueler than the last GOP plan: The study finds premiums would likely soar for the sick, probably pushing them off coverage.This is just unreal. They took a hideously cruel plan and made it even crueler.
...It allows states to seek a waiver to get rid of the Affordable Care Act's prohibition on charging higher premiums to people with preexisting conditions, on the condition that states set up or participate in high-risk pools that would help cover any of those people who lose insurance.
...But the waiver on prohibitions against jacking up premiums for people with preexisting conditions — which is called "community rating" — is a major problem. It would smack them with far more in premiums — potentially pushing them off coverage entirely.
The liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) conducted a new study — set to be released later today — on how much these premiums might soar for people with various preexisting ailments. The "surcharge" represents additional premium charges that insurers are projected to add to coverage of each condition, and the numbers are eye-popping.
...Meanwhile, the new GOP plan would keep in place the old plan's phase-out of the Medicaid expansion, which would itself result in 14 million fewer people on Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Estimated spike in premiums if you have...
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 20, 2017
Lung cancer: $73k
Breast cancer: $28k
Diabetes: $5k
Autism: $5k
Asthma: $4k
A pregnancy(!): $17k https://t.co/62b2I7RHEH
Trump is reportedly determined to get this done in the next ten days in order to have a major "first 100 days" accomplishment, and the Republicans in Congress are eager to deliver one for him. They're also undoubtedly keen to not have a second major failure on healthcare. So there's a lot of reason to believe this shit could pass.
I am very fearful and very angry. Prepare to start making lots and lots of calls to your reps. Again.
* * *
Ju-min Park at Reuters: North Korea Warns of 'Super-Mighty Preemptive Strike' as U.S. Plans Next Move. "North Korean state media warned the United States of a 'super-mighty preemptive strike' after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was looking at ways to bring pressure to bear on North Korea over its nuclear programme. ...The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party, did not mince its words. 'In the case of our super-mighty preemptive strike being launched, it will completely and immediately wipe out not only U.S. imperialists' invasion forces in South Korea and its surrounding areas but the U.S. mainland and reduce them to ashes,' it said."
Michelle Ye Hee Lee at the Washington Post: Trump's Claim That Korea 'Actually Used to Be a Part of China'. "Trump's inartful retelling of Sino-Korean history sparked widespread outrage among Koreans, who are particularly sensitive to the U.S. president's rhetoric amid heightened tensions between North and South Korea. Leaders across the political spectrum criticized Trump's characterization, calling it a clear distortion of history and an attempt to undermine Korean sovereignty."
"If that was a lie, then during Trump’s term, S. Korea will not trust whatever Trump says."—S. Korean prez candidate https://t.co/zgai3UfhzD pic.twitter.com/YvjPcH7u9w
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 20, 2017
Everything is fine.
* * *
Ned Parker, Jonathan Landay, and John Walcott at Reuters: Putin-Linked Think Tank Drew Up Plan to Sway 2016 U.S. Election. "A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters' faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters. They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, after the election. The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin's office."
Edward-Isaac Dovere, Eric Geller, and Matthew Nussbaum at Politico: Trump Blows His Deadline on Anti-Hacking Plan. "President-elect Donald Trump was very clear: 'I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office,' he said in January, after getting a U.S. intelligence assessment of Russian interference in last year's elections and promising to address cybersecurity. Thursday, Trump hits his 90-day mark. There is no team, there is no plan, and there is no clear answer from the White House on who would even be working on what." Of course there isn't. Because he doesn't give a flying fuck about the Russian interference that helped him get elected, except insofar as he definitely appreciates the assist.
Ed Kilgore at New York Mag: Trump's Ego Could Cause a Government Shutdown. "'The White House, under internal pressure to show legislative achievements ahead of the 100-day mark, is gearing up for a government shutdown fight to secure money for a border wall, more immigration enforcement officers, and a bigger military, according to White House and congressional sources familiar with the plan.' ...Border-wall funding is one of several 'poison pills' congressional Democrats have signaled might justify a Senate filibuster, gridlock, and a government shutdown."
[Content Note: War on agency] Teddy Wilson at Rewire: Texas GOP Uses Budget Tricks to Boost Funding for Anti-Choice Clinics. "Texas Right to Life, the state's most prominent and well-funded anti-choice lobby, reportedly collaborated this month with GOP members of the Texas House to funnel millions to fake clinics through the 'Alternatives to Abortion' (A2A) program, diverting funds for families with low incomes along the way. With the two-year budget passed April 7, the A2A program is now set to receive even more state funding than [Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R)] proposed, while critics accuse the program of funding organizations that use deceptive and manipulative practices to further a religious and ideological agenda." Seethe.
[CN: Misogyny] Matt Shuham at TPM: Senate Judiciary Chair: 'I Would Expect' a Supreme Court Vacancy This Summer. "The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that he expected a new vacancy to open on the Supreme Court within months. 'I would expect a resignation this summer,' Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said at a National Association of Manufacturers event in Muscatine, Iowa, the Muscatine Journal reported. Grassley made the comment in response to a question about the court during a Q&A at the event, according to the paper. He said a resignation was 'rumored,' and that he expected [Donald] Trump's next nominee to the high court to be picked from the same list as Justice Neil Gorsuch. 'I don't know about racial and ethnic divisions, but there's some very good females on there that would make good Supreme Court Justices as well,' he said, according to the paper." Females. JFC.
[CN: Racism; anti-Black slur] Jamil Smith at MTV: Systemic Racism, Still a Thing. "This kind of bigotry is both ethereal and tangible, and it is all around us. When racism shows up in our laws, that's worse than a thousand people calling us 'niggers.' The president's Muslim travel ban and harsh immigration enforcement are good examples of bigotry manifesting in our public policy, but for once, Trump isn't even the most worrisome politician in his own administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is putting in some real work at the moment to show just how racist a government can be in the modern era. The late civil rights activist Coretta Scott King warned us of Sessions's impulse to disregard the civil rights of African-Americans, and his tenure thus far shows that she was right: Whether it's withdrawing opposition to discriminatory state voter-identification laws or calling for a new War on Drugs (especially marijuana) to feed private and public prisons, Sessions has seized the power of the state to exacerbate racial inequality and stagnate progressive measures to fight it."
Andy Towle at Towleroad: Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock Visited Trump in the White House and Mocked Hillary Clinton's Portrait. And took pictures, which Palin posted to her social media accounts. Fuck all of these people. Deplorable.
Meanwhile, from the liberal side of the celebrity aisle and in good news resistance: Bruce Springsteen Releases New Anti-Trump Protest Song with Joe Grushecky. "Bruce Springsteen has reunited with longtime collaborator and Houserockers frontman Joe Grushecky for an anti-Trump protest song, 'That's What Makes Us Great.'" Boom.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Where's Obama?
Where in the world is President Obama? I don't mean where he is, literally. As far as I know, he's still on a beautiful island somewhere, writing a book, taking breaks to hang-glide through the arches of rainbows and ride a unicorn to a clear, temperate pool of restorative elixir that will return a dozen of the 20 years of life he lost trying to run this country while being haunted by the specter of a grim-faced Mitch McConnell mouthing the words "No chance" and reeking of sulfur.
I mean where he is in the discussions of the future of the Democratic Party. Three months ago, he left office a popular president with significant policy achievements under his belt, having made history and rescued the nation from the brink of economic collapse.
But, to listen to a number of the folks talking about the future of the Democratic Party, you'd think we'd been in the wilderness for decades. You wouldn't think we were three months past a successful, two-term Democratic presidency.
Where is the deservedly proud boasting about his accomplishments? Where are the (should be) incessant reminders of what a vastly superior administration he oversaw, compared to the current occupant of the Oval Office?
It seems a curious omission.
Until one considers the confounding decision among party leadership to elevate Bernie Sanders, who isn't even a Democrat and lost to Hillary Clinton in a primary, as the standard-bearer for the party, while treating Clinton, who beat Trump by 3 million votes in the general election, like she's radioactive.
Obama has become very inconvenient for a lot of Democrats. Because we all know Clinton was going to be a president very much like he was—and if they say anything positive about him or his presidency, it exposes that the primary objection to Clinton wasn't. fucking. policy.
They're effectively disowning the nation's first Black president in order to conceal their misogyny toward the party's first woman nominee.
And still they wonder why some of us are getting itchy about the direction the party seems to be headed. Ahem.
Trump's Deeply Dishonest Promise to the Working Class
This piece, "Fake Working Class," by Jamelle Bouie at Slate is so, so good. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing, but here is an excerpt:
Retail jobs aren't good jobs, per se; on average, they pay little, provide few benefits, and are notoriously unstable. But roughly 1 in every 10 Americans works in retail, which means millions rely on the industry for their livelihoods. As the Times notes, "The job losses in retail could have unexpected social and political consequences, as huge numbers of low-wage retail employees become economically unhinged, just as manufacturing workers did in recent decades."Trump cares so little about working class (and often working poor) retail workers, who are disproportionately women of color, that he doesn't even bother to offer them lipservice about "bringing back" their jobs, as they are lost in droves to online shopping.
Despite this ongoing challenge and threat to millions of ordinary Americans, Washington is silent. What makes this even more striking is it comes at a time when politicians—and a multitude of voices in national media—are preoccupied with the prospects of blue-collar whites and the future of the Rust Belt. That contrast exists for several reasons, not the least of which is a simple one: Who does retail work in this country versus who does manufacturing work.
For those in the latter group, mostly white and mostly male, Donald Trump made their anger, anxiety, and identity the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, promising restoration through better "deals" and aggressive action against foreigners and perceived others.
...In terms of attention, these workers punch far above their weight class. They constitute a small portion of the American workforce, and yet, elite journalists devote countless words to their lives and communities, while politicians use them and their priorities as a platform for performing authenticity. For those in and around politics, one's connection to "real America" is often judged by one's proximity to these workers and their concerns. Which raises a question: Why them and not those retail workers who face an equally (if not more) precarious future?
...Retail work in malls and shopping centers and department stores is largely work done by women. Of the nearly 6 million people who work in those fields in stores like Sears, Michaels, Target, J.C. Penney, and Payless, close to 60 percent are women. There's another issue to consider. A substantial portion of these workers—roughly 40 percent across the different kinds of retail—are black, Latino, or Asian American.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't disaggregate this data by race and gender, but it's likely that a large number of those nonwhite workers—if not a majority—are women too. By contrast, heavy manufacturing, industrial, and extraction work is overwhelmingly white and male.
Were he obliged to comment, he would almost certainly give them the same line of garbage that he gives to mostly white men in blue-collar jobs: He will make great deals! Their jobs are coming back!
This is a lie. It's a lie he only bothers to tell to the segments of the population who he believes deserve his recognition. But it is still a lie.
Retail jobs are being lost to automation via online shopping. Service jobs are being lost to automation via self-serve kiosks, even in restaurants, where touch-screen order interfaces are popping up where waitstaff used to be. Manufacturing jobs are being lost to automation via robots.
Automation is the word that Donald Trump dare not say. Because jobs that have been made redundant by technologies that are cheaper than paying human beings are never coming back.
Once upon a time, if you called any one of your utility companies, for example, a person would answer the phone. These operators, who were almost exclusively women, would talk to you, assess to whom you needed to speak, and connect you. Many years ago, they were replaced with automated directories, that eventually became the frustrating, labyrinthine series of selections we are obliged to make before we can speak to an actual human, if we ever even get there.
That people hated these automated directories, and bitterly complain about them still, has not inspired companies across the land to declare them a failed experiment and rehire human operators.
That is but one example of many. Trump isn't going to "bring back" operator jobs, and anyone who even made such a request would be laughed out of the room, because we all understand that they are well and truly obsolete.
Right now, millions of Americans are working in jobs that will succumb to that same obsolescence, sooner rather than later.
When Hillary Clinton acknowledged this reality, saying that coal mining jobs would have to be replaced with jobs in the renewable energy industry, she was attacked and obliged to apologize. For telling the truth.
Trump simply tells lies that people want to hear, and makes promises he can't possibly keep.
And meanwhile does nothing in order to prevent future job losses. Getting back to Bouie's article, that inaction will have catastrophic consequences for retail workers, who, by virtue of low wages, are incredibly more likely to be unable to weather long-term unemployment than workers in many other industries.
"Beautiful trade deals" won't save retail jobs. So what is Trump's plan for this significant portion of the American workforce?
Nothing but continued indifference.
Bernie Sanders, What Are You Even Doing?
The silver lining of the Trump administration is that millions of people are getting involved in politics for the first time to fight back.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 19, 2017
That is just a real thing that Bernie Sanders tweeted last night.
I have a number of problems with that sentiment, starting with this:
Let's all take a moment to appreciate that he is literally commending people who had the luxury to remain disengaged until now AND DID. https://t.co/McBvyKxTMy
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 19, 2017
A number of people responded to that tweet by letting me know that I'm an asshole for not being grateful that people are getting engaged. I mean, sure, better late than never—but, no, I am not grateful.
I have zero ounces of gratitude for people who weren't moved to "fight back" by police brutality, or an unprecedented erosion of reproductive rights, or a legislative assault on trans people, or mass incarceration, or the rollback of voting rights, or ICE raids, or environmental racism, or pay inequality, or housing discrimination, or predatory lending, or the death penalty, or rape culture, or school privatization, or the racial wealth gap, or endemic food insecurity, or drug testing welfare recipients, or disablist "wellness" programs, or lead contamination, or LGBTQ employment discrimination, or deadly fat hatred in healthcare, or any one of eleventy-seven other social justice issues that did not directly affect them so inescapably that they had no choice but to be politically active and "fight back."
If my insufficient gratitude to people who only decided to get in the game once a fascist was elected makes me an asshole, so be it. I'm an asshole.
I am also an asshole who is willing to work with people who are only now joining the fight.
But I'm never going to be grateful to people whose indifference until this point abetted the very horrors that now move them to action.
Especially since, in my experience so far, many of these newly-activated folks are: 1. Willing to compromise on many of the above-listed issues, dismissing them as "identity politics"; 2. Practicing purity politics using metrics that deprioritize commitment to social justice; 3. Uninterested in listening to activists and advocates who have been engaged for a very long time, and whose expertise includes best practices and tested strategies, particularly on the local level, where what works somewhere else may be counterproductive in another place.
The ubiquitous certitude of many of the newly-activated that they know best, the shocking willingness to shout down and lecture and dismiss out of hand people who have been here a minute, is not neutral. It is actively harmful to progress.
There has been very little public conversation about supporting existing organizations and communities, who have long been in the trenches. To the absolute contrary, Sanders has said that leadership of major existing advocacy groups are part of "the establishment" which has failed to achieve meaningful progress and must be upended. Suggesting that these groups are ineffective, as opposed to acknowledging that progress can take decades of dedicated and inglorious work, misdirects newly engaged people.
A number of existing local organizations across the country have suddenly found themselves in competition for resources with newly-formed orgs being run by people who don't know what they're doing and didn't bother to reach out to seasoned advocates to find out where they could be most helpful, instead assuming that, since progress hasn't been achieved yet, no one must be doing anything, or doing anything effective.
I am grateful for people who have become activated and take the time to find out how they can best support existing activism, before assuming it doesn't exist. I am not grateful for people who have been "woke" for a hot second, are armed with a hatred of some nebulous "establishment," and thus disdain anyone who has been engaged for a very long time.
And I'm certainly not going to agree that the Trump administration's visible and relentless assault on vulnerable people and our very democracy has some value in activating people who I'm meant to understand wouldn't have found inspiration in a female president breaking down the barriers Trump is busily reinforcing.
I don't find anything good in the message that harm is motivating, while harm mitigation is a fucking snooze.
That is a particularly curious message coming from Sanders, whose central argument for how he would govern, had he been elected, in spite of Republican obstructionism, was that he would bring with him a movement of millions of engaged supporters:
"I don't have any illusion that I'm going to walk in—and I certainly hope it is not the case, but if there is a Republican House and a Republican Senate—that I'm going to walk in there and say, 'Hey guys, listen. I'd like you to work with me on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.' It ain't gonna happen, I have no illusion about that. The only way that I believe that change takes place…is that tens of millions of people are going to have to stand up and be involved in the political process the day after the election."If Sanders believes that he could have and would have inspired millions of people to "stand up and be involved" after the election, then there is, quite literally, no silver lining to Trump doing the same.
If it would have happened either way, then the fact it is egregious abuses underwriting increased political engagement is a terrible shame, not a silver lining.
Blog Note
Following some recent Android updates, Shakesville's text had been rendering on mobile at an unreadably small size. So, with Space Cowboy's help—thank you, friend!—I have enlarged the text, and hopefully that will make reading on mobile easier again.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker monsterzero: "Aside from Shakesville, where is a good place to get action items for calling your Congresspeople?"
I Will Keep Writing About Hillary Clinton
There is another reason I won't stop writing about Hillary Clinton, in addition to my resistance against gaslighting and my urgent drive to document a history I do not want my country to repeat.
It is a much more personal reason, although I am keenly aware that this is a feeling shared by many of her supporters.
Writing about Hillary Clinton and her historic candidacy was one of the most meaningful highlights of my professional life. And I am not yet ready to let it go.
I started this site just before the 2004 election. This was the fourth election I have covered; the seventh in which I voted. It's the eleventh since I was born. Every one of the major-party nominees, in every one of those elections, has been a man. All but one of them has been a white man.
It was exhilarating to write about a woman. And not just any woman, but Hillary Clinton—a feminist, a progressive, the woman who said, when I was 21 years old and needed desperately to hear it, "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. But there has never been a woman who has been allowed to speak freely, and to be heard, from the office of the U.S. presidency.
I want that. I want it like the cracked earth of the desert wants rain.
And then came the promise of spring showers. I had always dreaded that the first woman with a shot at the presidency would be one I would have to vote against, a conservative woman—acid rain determined to scorch the earth. But, to my delight, I had the opportunity to cast my vote for that history-making candidate.
A Democrat. A woman with whom I had wide policy agreement. Hillary Clinton.
I loved writing about her. I loved writing about a woman, in a way I'd never had the opportunity to write about a woman before. To spend my days crafting essays about her history, her record, her policies, her speeches—it was a gift.
And I looked forward to writing about her presidency, prepared to defend her, and prepared to get angry at her, to vehemently disagree. To do my job, but with a woman as my president.
It was not fated to be. Instead, I spend my days writing about a man whom I can barely stand to look at. There will be no personal essays about what he means to me, only profanity-laced reporting on his abundant abuses and ignominies.
That is a loss to me personally, and it is a loss to me professionally. Along with the security, decency, and progress her presidency would have provided, the gift of writing about Hillary Clinton was snatched away.
Which is more significant than merely the opportunity to write about a candidate I supported vs. one I did not. The 2004 election results devastated me, for political reasons. But, while I have an abiding fondness for John Kerry, the thought of not writing about him for the next four years did not break my heart.
Because, when I wrote about John Kerry, I wasn't also writing about myself.
I wasn't writing, in part, about my own obstacles; about the barriers that had been put in my way by people who want to see women fail; about being a woman in a field dominated by men. I wasn't writing about a person who understands what it means to be defined by your decision to have children or not; who understands the steep cost of the expectation to perform emotional labor; who understands, intimately, what it feels like to be more qualified than a man and still not be good enough.
And lots and lots of other little and big things many women share in common, because we are women.
These things are not incidental. They are defining features of who I am, because my womanhood and my personhood are inseparable. I loved being able to write about a presidential candidate who could understand these pieces of me in a way no other presidential candidate ever could.
And I am profoundly sad that I won't get to write about a president who does.
At least not for a long while. Maybe never.
People who admonish me to stop writing and talking about Hillary Clinton don't realize what they're asking—which is for a feminist progressive political writer to ignore the only feminist, Democratic, female presidential nominee about whom I've ever been able to write.
She didn't win. That doesn't mean I must let go of her. I won't.
Hillary Clinton is still the woman who went the farthest. She is still a politician with something to say, and things to do. She will forever be the first woman for whom I cast a vote for president, through tears.
She deserves to be written about. There are millions of people who still want to read about her. And I want to write about her.
I want to write about her.
One of the things Hillary Clinton and I have in common is this: We are not easily deterred.
Her tenacity is one of the reasons I started writing about her, and my tenacity is the reason I will continue.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by cookies.
Recommended Reading:
This Twitter thread by L. Joy Williams is a must-read.
Christina: "Shattered" or Contorted? What a New Book Gets Wrong About the Clinton Campaign
Caroline: On Fearless Girl, Women & Public Art; Or, No, Seriously, the Guy Does Not Have a Point
Chauncey: The Kremlin on the Potomac: Trump's White House Makes Americans into Strangers in a Strange Land
Ijeoma: [Content Note: Racism; appropriation] The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black
Kath: [CN: Fat hatred] Aspire to Be More, Not Less
Vivian: [CN: Violence; spoilers] Chris Pratt Seems to Know Defending Passengers Isn't a Great Idea: He's Gonna Try Anyway, Though
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Bernie Sanders Needs to Stop "Helping" Democrats, Part Whatever
Bernie Sanders, who was a Democrat for six minutes or so until he wasn't anymore, had some cool, cool things to say about Jon Ossoff, who came very close to winning the Georgia 6th district last night, and will now compete in a June election against Republican Karen Handel. Per Reid Epstein and Natalie Andrews in the Wall Street Journal:
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in an interview Tuesday in Louisville, Ky., said he didn’t know much about Mr. Ossoff, a 30-year-old former House staffer. Mr. Sanders said he isn’t prepared to back Democrats just because of a party label.“If you run as a Democrat, you’re a Democrat,” he said. “Some Democrats are progressive and some Democrats are not.”
Asked if Mr. Ossoff is a progressive, Mr. Sanders, an independent who challenged Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, demurred. “I don’t know,” he said.
I have a few problems with this.
First, I have a problem with the fact that a guy with Bernie Sanders' track record on guns, immigration, and saying shitty things about women gets to be the arbiter of what's progressive. I have a problem with the fact that he's happy to enthusiastically endorse as "progressive" a guy who once sponsored a mandatory ultrasound bill, and endorse him as a real "progressive," and still touts himself as the ultimate decider of what's progressive. I have a huge, huge problem with that.
I also have a problem with this slagging of a very viable Democratic candidate.
Bernie Sanders has been elevated to co-chair of Democratic outreach. Democratic. As in the Democratic Party. Not the "Bernie Sanders-Approved Party" outreach.
And outreach is exactly what Jon Ossoff needs in GA-6. Over at Daily Kos, user trafficmac has a few notes from the ground in GA-6. And one of the points is that Ossoff won't be able to win the election just by turning out identifiable Democrats. (It's not easy to even identify Democratic voters in Georgia, since voters don't have to register with a party. The only way to identify someone as a Democrat is if they have voted in a Dem primary before.)
Bernie Sanders has claimed that he's some kind of miracle man who can reach out to Republican voters via a message of economic populism and white supremacy a lack of "identity politics." So I guess that's why anyone cares abut his opinion on Ossoff. But his one-size-fits-all approach has never looked worse.
The Georgia 6th has not elected a Democrat since 1978. Its GOP representatives have been Newt Gingrich, Johnny Isakson, and Tom Price. You can click through their records here, or you can just trust me that their politics are garbage. Isakson is now a Georgia Senator. Price, God help us, is now Secretary of HHS.
Does anything about these men smack of "economic anxiety" or populism? Price is a wealthy surgeon, who has probably made himself wealthier by dirty insider trading. Tom Price is the 18th wealthiest member of the Senate. The GA-6 is a suburban district. It's pretty safe to say that economic populism has probably not been the main thrust of their GOP support in the 6th.
Yet somehow, Sanders, and those who support him, view Ossoff with suspicion, as illegitimate because he's not their brand of progressive. Jamie Peck published a piece in the Guardian last week condemning support for Ossoff, because he's a "centrist, establishment shill" whose sins include:
Although he is young, he’s an acolyte of the Democratic establishment, having worked for Representatives John Lewis and Hank Johnson, and he endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary. He went to Georgetown followed by the London School of Economics and speaks fluent French. He has the support of several Hollywood celebrities.
HE SPEAKS FLUENT FRENCH. Get thee hence, francophones! We don't need your snooty non-progressive kind here.
I have a fun fact for Peck: Newt Gingrich, the former West Georgia University professor who won the district in 1978, wrote his dissertation on Belgian education policy in the Congo. Using Belgian records. Which are in French. Somehow, the people of the 6th got over his command of French and elected him anyway.
(Also: if you think it's some kind of disqualifier to be an "acolyte" of John Lewis, then your progressivism needs a tune-up. You might be confusing it with racism. )
It's almost as if the Democrats know they can't be a one-size fits all party if they want to get anything done.
Which brings me to my next point: Bernie and his fans, who seem to think that rural Montana and suburban Atlanta are interchangeable, need to start listening to red state voters.
So let me tell a story.
Once upon a time, I lived in a district represented by a Conserva-Dem. He didn't vote for the party's bills all the time, just most of the time. I didn't care for his stances on many issues. But he did defend key voting rights measures, immigration rights, gender pay equity measures, and approximately 80% of Democratic agenda.
Despite repping a fairly conservative district, he kept winning. He was great at constituent services and communication—holding job fairs, sending letters, and letting his constituents know his door was open. So of course, the GOP-controlled legislature released the Gerrymander Monster, which gobbled up part of his district and pooped it elsewhere. And he lost his seat.
So the district came to be represented by a Conserva-GOP. And no, Bernie Sanders, the parties are not interchangeable.
This man votes with Democrats approximately ZERO percent of the time. This man opposes voting rights, immigration rights, and recoils from gender equity like a vampire from garlic. He views constituent services as optional, and only communicates with his district to let folks know how much Democratic legislation he's obstructing. Naturally, he's held no town halls since the election, so he doesn't have to face the local Indivisible chapter. And sadly, thanks to the fire-breathing Gerrymander Monster, he's probably safe in his seat for the time being.
My experience in this district is proof that yes, the R or D makes a difference. The choices weren't between a conservative Democrat and a liberal-moderate Republican. They were between a conservative Democrat and a garbage nightmare of toxic white supremacist patriarchy hell bent on destroying the country's social safety net and regulatory structure.
See the difference?
Maybe by Vermont standards, Jon Ossoff is some corporatist shill, but not by the standards of GA-06. I suspect he'll be a reasonably reliable progressive vote, if not on every single thing. If he's smart, he'll provide top-notch constituent services and be responsive to local concerns. I suspect he will make a big difference for the more marginalized members of his district, especially on civil rights issues. He is a very viable candidate.
Bernie isn't obliged to support Democrats just because they are Democrats. He has that right. But then why did he agree to do Democratic outreach? He should know by now how party politics works. In fact, he very obviously does—he is perfectly willing to sacrifice pro-choice positions to win a seat in Montana. And indeed, that guy might have a great chance of winning there. This isn't about, winning, though. It's about forcing the Democrats to use the Bernie Sanders Straight White Men Progressive Measuring stick.
And he must know that this campaign to re-make the Democratic party in his mold, without actually giving a shit about whether that will result in winning races, is a vainglorious ego project. It is hostile to civil rights. It is also simply piss poor politics. It could set back the progressive agenda in this country by decades. Instead of insisting that, from his high perch in Vermont, he can see what's best for every district, how about paying attention to the very real differences—even among red states, and within red states?
I know you'd rather eat fossilized dinosaur eggs than follow Hillary Clinton's example on anything, Bernie, but try listening.
Listening to the people actually in the districts goes a long way towards winning. Winning elections gets the votes in Congress. Winning the votes changes policy. It's that simple.
Democrats, what are you even doing with this man?
Bernie, what are you even doing to this country?
Daily Dose of Cute
This is what it looks like when a very excited greyhound is running toward you at 40mph. pic.twitter.com/wZTJmJ6r5j
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 6, 2017
Wheeeeeeeee! pic.twitter.com/gUPbjFZko0
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 6, 2017
BYE. pic.twitter.com/adtlbwkV0M
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 6, 2017
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 90
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 in the news today:
Mike Mariani at Vanity Fair: Is Trump's Chaos Tornado a Move from the Kremlin's Playbook?
Everything happening in Crimea and eastern Ukraine passed through the Kremlin's prism, so that by the time any news reached Europeans, Americans, or Russia's own citizens, it had been transformed into falsehoods supporting an alternative reality favorable to Russia. This was the futuristic non-linear warfare Surkov had slyly telegraphed in his dystopian story. It is a strategy, he has said, that uses "conflict to create a constant state of destabilized perception, in order to manage and control."The whole thing is absolutely worth your time to read. One of the primary takeaways for me is this: That we cannot be certain whether any single bit of Trump fuckery is attributable to incompetence or the deliberate fomenting of chaos is itself extremely telling. And extremely worrisome.
...What if all the Trumpian chaos that the "mainstream media" have come to take for granted as pugilism and vanity was part of a more cunning plan? What if Trump and chief strategist Steve Bannon were actually drawing from a sophisticated postmodern propaganda model developed by none other than Vladimir Putin, Vladislav Surkov, and their political technologists at the Kremlin? While Trump may not have state-controlled media at his disposal, as Putin does, to serve as 24-7 propaganda organs both domestically and abroad, his team is finding ways to shrewdly approximate Putin's capacity to shape narratives and create alternative realities.
...In recent years, major Kremlin-run media organizations like RT and Sputnik have become an increasingly powerful tool in spreading propaganda and maintaining managed democracy in Russia. "Nowadays, we don't actually have a Kremlin message most of the time," says Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations, in Prague, and an expert on modern Russia.
Instead, he explains, Russian propaganda has become decentralized. The various state-run or -influenced media platforms offer an opportunistic landscape where everyone is looking for a spin to delegitimize the West. "It's a case of the local initiative of individual journalists and presenters and diplomats and spies and all the other agents of the state coming up with things that they think will please the Kremlin," Galeotti says.
While westerners like to think of Moscow's propaganda machine as a great white shark, he says, a single ravenous predator unleashed on its political foes, it's actually more like a shoal of piranhas: "You can deal with one news story, but meanwhile the rest of them are eating the flesh off your back." Sound familiar?
* * *
Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker: The Continuing Fallout from Trump's and Nunes' Fake Scandal.
The binder of secret documents is at the center of the bizarre scandal created by what may be the most reckless lie [Donald] Trump has ever told. On March 4th, he tweeted, "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" The White House made several efforts to justify Trump's claim...Although I'm guessing no one reading this is remotely surprised to hear that the White House scrambled to find justification for Trump's heinous and mendacious tweet, it's rather remarkable to have confirmation that they did. This is big, and it won't even warrant more than a blip on the radar, amidst the cacophony of wrongdoing emerging from the White House every single day.
The intelligence source told me that he knows, "from talking to people in the intelligence community," that "the White House said, 'We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the President's tweet that he was being surveilled.' They put out an all-points bulletin"—a call to sift through intelligence reports—"and said, 'We need to find something that justifies the President's crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.' And I'm telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be." (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)
* * *
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Rebecca Shabad at CBS News: Adam Schiff Warns Trump Will Probably Face Serious Crisis with North Korea in First Term. "'I can say that probably the most serious national security crisis this president is going to face is when the regime gets to the point of when it can miniaturize a nuclear device and put it on an intercontinental ballistic missile. That point will probably come during this four-year term of the president,' Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in an interview on CBS This Morning. 'That challenge is coming if something doesn't change,' he warned, adding that China is the key to this issue but even that may not be enough to deter North Korea." That "challenge" is also likely being hastened by Trump's and Pence's aggressive bravado.
Kelsey Sutton at Politico: Lindsey Graham Heaps Praise on Trump: 'I Am All In'. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham enthusiastically praised [Donald] Trump on Wednesday for his foreign policy, a continued departure from his sharp criticism of Trump during the 2016 presidential race and even after the election. 'I am like the happiest dude in America right now,' Graham said on Fox & Friends Wednesday, beaming. 'We have got a president and a national security team that I've been dreaming of for 8 years.'" You may have noticed that I haven't been keen to give much credit to Graham, when he's criticized Trump. That's because I'm old enough to remember who Lindsay Graham really is.
Some NFL player "surprised" Sean Spicer by interrupting his presser today, and everyone had a good ol' laugh! And why not? It's not like we're on the brink of nuclear war or anything.
New England Patriots TE Rob Gronkowski briefly interrupts WH press briefing, asks if Spicer “needs some help” https://t.co/dN6W4H6dkJ
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 19, 2017
Why are White House press corps reporters laughing merrily at this fucking shitshow of unseriousness? JFC. https://t.co/ChlspeUqVz
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 19, 2017
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Cristian Farias at the Huffington Post: Neil Gorsuch Could Cast Decisive Vote in Biggest Church-State Case in a Long Time. "All eyes will once again be on the court's newest member Wednesday, as he and his colleagues wrap their brains around what's arguably the most explosive church-state case the justices have heard in decades. And where Gorsuch could, conceivably, cast the tie-breaking vote. ...The Trinity Lutheran case has all the elements of a blockbuster: a sympathetic religious school, claims that Missouri discriminated against it, and a tug-of-war between the federal Constitution and the state's own charter, which prohibits that public funds be given to 'any church, sect, or denomination of religion.'" Ughhhhhh.
[CN: Rape culture] Kate Samuelson at Motto|Time: All-Male Panel Failed to Pass Maryland Law Barring Rapists' Parental Rights. "An all-male panel in Maryland has failed to pass the Rape Survivor Family Protection Act, a piece of legislation that would have allowed women who have children from rape to block rapists' parental rights. ...Maryland remains one of seven states without a law that protects women from being forced to share custody with their rapists, the Daily Beast reported." Rage. Seethe. Boil.
[CN: Terrorism; image of gun at link] David Edwards at Raw Story: FBI Busts Texas Rightwing Extremist Planning Mass Shooting with 1,000 Rounds of Ammo. "The FBI arrested an alleged right-wing extremist who had amassed 1,000 rounds of ammunition and was said to be plotting a mass shooting. A complaint filed in federal court and obtained by the Statesman on Monday stated that a search warrant was executed on the home of 50-year-old Steven Thomas Boehle after a confidential informant said that he was planning a shooting spree. According to the complaint, Boehle 'exhibits sovereign citizen extremism ideology.' Although Boehle is prohibited from owning firearms due to a 1993 assault on a intimate partner, three guns were found in his home." So, a history of domestic violence and "sovereign citizen extremism ideology." How'd he get radicalized, I wonder.
In good riddance resistance news...
Alexis Levinson at BuzzFeed: Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz Will Not Seek Re-Election. "Since late 2003 I have been fully engaged with politics as a campaign manager, a chief of staff, a candidate, and as a Member of Congress. I have long advocated public service should be for a limited time and not a lifetime or full career. Many of you have heard me advocate, 'Get in, serve, and get out.' After more than 1,500 nights away from my home, it is time. I may run again for public office, but not in 2018."
(Sounds reasonable. Except for the fact that it's more likely Chaffetz is simply unwilling to do his job holding Trump accountable, given that he has flatly refused to investigate Trump's conflicts of interest or Russian interference in the election.)
Gabriel Sherman at New York Mag: Sources: Fox News Has Decided Bill O'Reilly Has to Go. "The Murdochs have decided Bill O'Reilly's 21-year run at Fox News will come to an end. According to sources briefed on the discussions, network executives are preparing to announce O'Reilly's departure before he returns from an Italian vacation on April 24." Twenty-one years too late. But okay. Bye, Bill. You reprehensible sack of shit.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Please Support Shakesville
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First DREAMer Deported, as Trump Reverses Course
In January, during [video may autoplay at link] an interview with ABC's David Muir, Donald Trump said that DREAMers, undocumented immigrants who were protected by the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, need not worry about being deported, because "I do have a big heart."
MUIR: When people learn of the news of this wall today there are gonna be a lot of people listening to this. And I wanna ask about undocumented immigrants who are here—in this country. Right now they're protected as so-called DREAMers—the children who were brought here, as you know, by their parents. Should they be worried—that they could be deported? And is there anything you can say to assure them right now that they'll be allowed to stay?Trump never made an explicit promise, but he did say DREAMers "shouldn't be very worried" and that only "really bad people" were his priority.
TRUMP: They shouldn't be very worried. They are here illegally. They shouldn't be very worried. I do have a big heart. We're going to take care of everybody. We're going to have a very strong border. We're gonna have a very solid border. Where you have great people that are here that have done a good job, they should be far less worried. We'll be coming out with policy on that over the next period of four weeks.
MUIR: But Mr. President, will they be allowed to stay?
TRUMP: I'm gonna tell you over the next four weeks. But I will tell you, we're looking at this, the whole immigration situation, we're looking at it with great heart. Now we have criminals that are here. We have really bad people that are here. Those people have to be worried 'cause they're getting out. We're gonna get them out. We're gonna get 'em out fast.
It was bullshit. This administration is coming after immigrants across the board with a gross, white supremacist, nativist agenda. There is no "looking at it with great heart." There is only relentless pursuit.
And so yesterday, 23-year-old DREAMer Juan Manuel Montes [video may autoplay at link] was deported to Mexico, within three hours of being unable to produce his ID, because he'd left his wallet in a friend's car and was not allowed to retrieve it.
After spending an evening with his girlfriend in Calexico, Calif., on Feb. 17, Juan Manuel Montes, 23, who has lived in the U.S. since age 9, grabbed a bite and was waiting for a ride when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer approached and started asking questions.Nothing should have happened. Montes has only known the United States as his home since he was 9 years old. He was not doing anything wrong when he was approached by a CBP officer, and he did not break the law by leaving his wallet in a friend's car.
Montes was twice granted deportation protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by President Barack Obama and left intact by [Donald] Trump.
Montes had left his wallet in a friend's car, so he couldn't produce his ID or proof of his DACA status and was told by agents he couldn't retrieve them. Within three hours, he was back in Mexico, becoming the first undocumented immigrant with active DACA status deported by the Trump administration's stepped-up deportation policy.
"Some people told me that they were going to deport me; others said nothing would happen," Montes told USA TODAY in his aunt and uncle's home in western Mexico where he's been staying. "I thought that if I kept my nose clean nothing would happen."
This is a sickening abuse. It sends a sinister message to other DREAMers, to undocumented immigrants, and to recent immigrants, especially if they are people of color. And it sends a hostile message to people considering immigrating to the United States.
The "America First" white supremacist isolationism masquerading as "populism" has always been ugly, each time it's reared its despicable head. But in 2017, in an era of globalism in every way, from interconnected economies to interconnected individuals whose relationships span borders, it's as foolish as it is cruel.
Trump's nativism is a self-inflicted wound to the nation. And the longer it festers, the harder it will be for us to recover.
This is not the way I want my country to treat immigrants and refugees. It is bad policy, and, most importantly, it is colossally indecent.
Pence Rattles the Saber
Yesterday, Mike Pence delivered remarks to U.S. and Japanese troops aboard the USS Ronald Reagan at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, during which he doubled-down on the Trump administration's saber-rattling.
Mike Pence: US "sword stands ready" pic.twitter.com/aA6ljmUt8t
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 19, 2017
[To patriotic music, Pence, clad in a bomber jacket, walks onto a stage on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan, surrounded by cheering military folks. He waves and takes his place at a podium. Cut to Pence, mid-remarks, where he speaks to a huge crowd and stands in front of a group of seated service members clad in fatigues.]There is a lot to unpack here.
The United States of America will always seek peace, but, under President Trump, the shield stands guard and the sword stands ready. [edit] And those who would challenge our resolve or our readiness should know: We will defeat any attack and meet any use of conventional or nuclear weapons with an overwhelming and effective American response! [applause]
First, there's the image of the vice-president of the United States standing in military garb on a military ship in front of members of the military, saying the United States "will always seek peace, but." But.
Then there's Pence saying "the sword stands ready," which is a dogwhistle to North Korea, whose Foreign Ministry refers to their nuclear program as "the treasured sword of justice."
Then there's the warning of an "overwhelming and effective" response to challenges to "our resolve or our readiness." Let's carefully examine that: Pence is not saying that there will be a response to threats to our safety or sovereignty, or to the safety or sovereignty of our allies, but is essentially threatening: "If you disrespect us, we'll show you who's boss."
The entire thing sounds like a dare: Just give us an excuse.
That sort of belligerence is terrifying. And it is deeply at odds with a foreign policy that centers diplomacy or "seeks peace."
