Discussion Thread: Good Things

One of the ways we resist the demoralization and despair in which exploiters of fear like Trump thrive is to keep talking about the good things in our lives.

Because, even though it feels very much (and rightly so) like we are losing so many things we value, there are still daily moments of joy or achievement or love or empowering ferocity or other kinds of fulfillment.

Maybe you've experienced something big worth celebrating; maybe you've just had a precious moment of contentment; maybe getting out of bed this morning was a success worthy of mention.

News items worth celebrating are also welcome.

So, whatever you have to share that's good, here's a place to do it.

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Here is a very cool news item from earlier this month: Astronomers May Finally Have the First Picture of a Black Hole. The ninth image there. Wow.

And may we all be as joyful about something as this very excited dog chasing her ball:

[Video Description: A brown pittie named Rosie goes chasing after her ball on a beach and LEAPS! over a net/fence, doing a mid-air somersault.]

Don't worry—she was fine! Her owner told 9 News: "Even though it looks bad she was fine, brought the ball straight back for another go." Of course she did! Oh dogs. ♥

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On Liking the Unlikeable Hillary Clinton

The problem became clear early in my coverage of Hillary Clinton.

It wasn't that I had disclosed I was a supporter, although certainly there were people who objected to what they perceived as my bias, no matter how diligently I detailed my metrics for assessing the candidates.

It wasn't even that I respected her and her record (with some acknowledged disagreements), or that I believed she would make a competent president. There were plenty of Serious People who believed the same, so that was tolerated.

It was that I like her.

I like Hillary Clinton with unabashed enthusiasm. I like listening to her speak, I like looking at photos of her interacting with people, I like her resplendent jackets and colorful pantsuits, I like her loud laugh, I like her expressive face.

These things, one might note, are not about policy. They are about liking Hillary as a human being.

When I look at her, I don't see a stereotype of a nagging wife or mother, nor the caricature of a man-hating feminist, nor an extension of her husband (or his administration), nor an embodiment of some nebulous evil.

I see her.

This was not always the case. I've written previously about my own experience coming to like and admire Hillary, which required a journey past entrenched false narratives about her and past my own internalized misogyny.

Through that fog emerged the picture of a person whom I like very much indeed.

When I write about her, that comes through. It's not because I can't help it; it's because I want it to be clear, in the spaces between every letter and every line, that I am writing about a woman I like.

It's a thoroughly conscious rejection of the corrupt dynamic in the political press that requires a perceptible contempt of Hillary in order to establish credibility among the gatekeepers.

I refuse to perform disdain, or even an affected neutrality, in writing about her, in order that I might earn the plaudits of people who have spent four decades transmitting lies about her and burying her in thinly-veiled (or shamelessly overt) misogyny.

That I like her does not inhibit my commitment to facts, nor my willingness to dissent when I disagree with her.

But it renders me uncredible all the same. Because she is "unlikeable." This is treated as objective fact by the same people who spent the entirety of the campaign invisibilizing her enthusiastic supporters, to uphold their spiteful construct. Spiteful, but effective—which is why women were obliged during the campaign to write pieces with titles like "An All-Caps Explosion of Feelings Regarding the Liberal Backlash Against Hillary Clinton" and "I Like Hillary Clinton. Get Used To It."

"Unlikeable? Pffffft. Yeah, me and every other feminist broad on the planet."
And if she's unlikeable, what kind of a person likes her?

(Someone, perhaps, who knows they, too, are unlikeable, when held to the same standards.)

This is why the likeability narrative is so persistent: It is the basis from which all other discrediting flows. If you can be so wrong about liking a person who is objectively unlikeable, then your judgment is suspect on everything else.

Only a person who is an utter fool would like a woman so hated. Only a person who doesn't understand How Politics Works would be taken in by this loathsome charlatan. Only a person who is intractably compromised by their fealty to womanhood would overlook that she is a monster.

If you like her, you must not be very bright. Or decent. Or credible.

The first two are merely insults, bonus features to the main event. It's that last one—assailing credibility—which is the true objective.

Liking the world's most unlikeable woman is so very wrong; anyone who does can't possibly be trusted to get anything right. Don't trust their facts. Don't trust their figures. Don't believe anything they say at all. Ignore them. They are irredeemably stupid.

That's the goal. And people who like Hillary Clinton had this done to them—and watched it happen to others—over and over and over. It is happening still.

Don't listen to her. Don't listen to him. Don't listen to them. They like Hillary Clinton.

Up and down my Twitter mentions for the last two years, when I am talking about something altogether different than Hillary, I have seen variations on: "Heads up—you might want to take anything she says with a grain of salt. She is a Hillary supporter."

That is the power of the unlikeability narrative: 65,844,610 people cast votes for Hillary Clinton, millions and millions of them affirmatively, enthusiastically, not just as a vote against her revolting opponent. And yet to like her is to be rendered unilaterally untrustworthy.

To openly like Hillary Clinton, for a political writer, limits your career options, closes off opportunities. Because you are assumed to be foolish—and quite possibly mentally ill. That's how thick the stigma of liking Hillary is.

For the average person, it can mean ridicule and disdain, along with the hefty dose of stomach-heaving gaslighting that accompanies being treated as a lunatic for confessing you like a woman who has been chosen as Gallup's most admired woman of the year twenty-one times.

This is a problem. And it's one with which we're going to have to reckon if the United States is ever going to have a feminist female president.

Because, despite the plethoric horseshit arguments that it's just Hillary Clinton who is uniquely unlikeable, we witnessed the hatred unleashed on Senator Elizabeth Warren after she endorsed Hillary, and we have seen very familiar narratives being used against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and we have watched as Rep. Maxine Waters has been demeaned with racism, as the groundwork is laid to deem impossibly "unlikeable" the woman who is leading the impeachment charge against the current occupant of the Oval Office.

The unlikeable label is so effective because it is contagious: Not only does it diminish the woman at whom it's directed, but it diminishes all the people who like and enthusiastically support her.

We must push back on this dynamic, unyieldingly. Part of that will be our willingness to keep liking "unlikeable" ladies without cringe or caveat.

It shouldn't be a radical thing to say, but it is, and here I am saying it (again): I like Hillary Clinton.

[Photo credit: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America.]

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Daily Dose of Cute

This face. ♥
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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We Resist: Day 97

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:

As I mentioned earlier, Trump's order to restrict federal funding to sanctuary cities was blocked by a California judge who "issued a nationwide injunction on Tuesday blocking enforcement of Trump's executive order targeting cities and counties across the US that have pledged to be a safe haven to the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants."

Naturally, the White House was not happy about it. They issued a gobsmacking statement (aptly described by the Atlantic's Matt Ford as reading "more like a Breitbart column than a professional response"), which is shocking even by the rock-bottom garbage standards this administration has set (emphasis mine):

Statement on Sanctuary Cities Ruling

Today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation. Federal law explicitly states that "a Federal, State or Local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual." 8 U.S.C. 1373(a). That means, according to Congress, a city that prohibits its officials from providing information to federal immigration authorities — a sanctuary city — is violating the law. Sanctuary cities, like San Francisco, block their jails from turning over criminal aliens to Federal authorities for deportation. These cities are engaged in the dangerous and unlawful nullification of Federal law in an attempt to erase our borders.

Once again, a single district judge — this time in San Francisco — has ignored Federal immigration law to set a new immigration policy for the entire country. This decision occurred in the same sanctuary city that released the 5-time deported illegal immigrant who gunned down innocent Kate Steinle in her father's arms. San Francisco, and cities like it, are putting the well-being of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens, and those city officials who authored these policies have the blood of dead Americans on their hands. This San Francisco judge's erroneous ruling is a gift to the criminal gang and cartel element in our country, empowering the worst kind of human trafficking and sex trafficking, and putting thousands of innocent lives at risk.

This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge. Today's ruling undermines faith in our legal system and raises serious questions about circuit shopping. But we are confident we will ultimately prevail in the Supreme Court, just as we will prevail in our lawful efforts to impose immigration restrictions necessary to keep terrorists out of the United States.

In the meantime, we will pursue all legal remedies to the sanctuary city threat that imperils our citizens, and continue our efforts to ramp up enforcement to remove the criminal and gang element from our country. Ultimately, this is a fight between sovereignty and open borders, between the rule of law and lawlessness, and between hardworking Americans and those who would undermine their safety and freedom.

Fucking WOW. There is a lot of disturbing stuff there, but the White House releasing a statement saying that a judge's ruling "undermines faith in our legal system" because that ruling went against their attempts to enshrine unconstitutional bigotry, is terrifying. This is the behavior of despots.

And, in addition to Trump being an authoritarian nightmare, he is also an embarrassing ignoramus.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and he doesn't even understand how the courts work. JFC.

* * *

Speaking of anti-democratic regimes, this massive piece at Politico by Ben Schreckinger and Hadas Gold on "Trump's Fake War on the Fake News" is really something. There is an awful lot to process, and I recommend reading the whole thing in its entirety, but I want to highlight this bit:

On top of the sloppiness, there is the lying. One veteran White House correspondent said he was warned by a transition official to be wary of good color emanating from the Trump camp on background. "They will screw with you," the correspondent was told. "They will feed you things that are not true."

Bannon, it is worth noting, is a devoted reader of the "neoreactionary" internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin, an advocate of the strategic benefits of spreading misinformation. But two people close to the administration say that White House staffers do much of their lying for sport, rather than to further any larger agenda.

"They all lie," said a conservative journalist with close ties to the West Wing, who described an informal contest to smuggle the biggest whoppers into print. "It's a game to them."

A conservative activist close to the administration said a member of the White House communications team recently divulged the same to him over drinks. According to the activist, the staffer described the attitude inside the press shop toward lying to reporters as: "They'll print what they want anyways, so we may as well have fun."

@TurtleTears Unreal. Just bragging about waging a disinformation campaign.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 26, 2017

Seethe.

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Robbie Gramer at Foreign Policy: Rex Tillerson Spurns Africa in Botched Meeting with African Union Chief.

Just months into office, the Trump administration has rattled allies and partners in North America, Europe, and Asia. Now you can add Africa to that list.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson invited the chairperson of the African Union to Washington for a meeting, then backed out on him at the last minute, infuriating African diplomats, several sources tell Foreign Policy.

Tillerson invited African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki to Washington the week of April 17, after Faki ended meetings at the United Nations in New York. Several sources close to the matter say Faki scheduled his trip to Washington on April 19 and 20 while waiting for the details to be sorted out. But then Tillerson's office went radio silent for several days, and left the head of the 55-nation bloc in the lurch and fuming, the sources said.

Tillerson's team eventually got back to Faki's entourage as he was about to depart New York and offered a meeting with lower-level State Department officials, but Faki cancelled his Washington visit entirely.

Oh my goddddddd. If Tillerson had only "backed out" on Faki, that would be bad enough. But to ignore him for days, only to then offer a meeting with Tillerson's flunkies? Horribly insulting. This is the antithesis of diplomacy.

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Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post: Zinke to Review More Than 2 Dozen National Monuments 'to Make Sure the People Have a Voice'. Yeah, that's just as chilling as it sounds. "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Tuesday evening that [Donald] Trump has authorized him to review any national monument created since Jan. 1, 1996, that spans at least 100,000 acres 'to make sure the people have a voice' in which lands receive the highest level of federal protection. ...The secretary praised the Antiquities Act but suggested that some of Trump's predecessors had stretched its meaning in recent years to put 'millions of acres' of land and sea off limits to development. 'By and large, the Antiquities Act and the monuments that we've protected have done a great service to the public,' he said, although citizens in Western states 'would probably say it's abused. My position is, I'm going to be looking into it and evaluating it on a legal basis.'"

David Nather at Axios: Trump Administration Won't Promise to Keep Making Insurer Payments. "The Affordable Care Act insurer payments are in trouble again, as Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney is reportedly not promising that the Trump administration will make the payments next month. He told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last night that the administration hasn't decided whether to pay insurers for the cost-sharing reduction subsidies they have to provide to low-income ACA customers, according to an aide familiar with the conversation."

Lisa Rein at the Washington Post: Slow Pace of Trump Nominations Leaves Cabinet Agencies 'Stuck' in Staffing Limbo. "Trump's Cabinet secretaries are growing exasperated at how slowly the White House is moving to fill hundreds of top-tier posts, warning that the vacancies are hobbling efforts to oversee agency operations and promote the president's agenda, according to administration officials, lawmakers and lobbyists. The Senate has confirmed 26 of Trump's picks for his Cabinet and other top posts. But for 530 other vacant senior-level jobs requiring Senate confirmation, the president has advanced just 37 nominees, according to data tracked by The Washington Post and the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service's Center for Presidential Transition. These posts include the deputy secretaries and undersecretaries, chief financial officers, ambassadors, general counsels, and heads of smaller agencies who run the government day-to-day."

[Content Note: Death penalty] Jessica Mason Pieklo at Rewire: With His First Vote, Gorsuch Has Already Changed the Supreme Court. "Late Thursday night, Gorsuch cast the deciding vote that would put to death eight men in Arkansas over the course of 11 days. Within minutes of the Court releasing a series of orders denying a stay of the planned executions, Arkansas executed Ledell Lee, a Black man who maintained his innocence and claimed his attorney was drunk during his trial." Sob.

Yessenia Funes at Colorlines: Two Recent Climate Change Studies Paint a Grim Picture. "Researchers at Stanford University released a study online yesterday (April 24), which was published in this week's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This first-of-its-kind study examines how climate change is impacting extreme weather events around the world. ...The Arctic Council's Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme published the Snow, Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) assessment today (April 25). In two decades, the Arctic Ocean may see ice-free summers, according to the report."

Dominic Rushe at the Guardian: Trump's Plan to Overturn Net Neutrality Rules to Face 'a Tsunami of Resistance'. Let's fucking hope so! "Trump's newly appointed Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai is set to address internet regulation at a speech in Washington later today. Pai has vowed to 'fire up the weed-whacker' and cut Obama-era rules meant to enforce an open internet where all traffic is treated equally online—the so-called Net Neutrality rules."

[CN: Violent homophobia; eliminationism] Adam Rhodes at Towleroad: More Than 30 Men Arrested for 'Sodomy' in Iran Face Death Penalty if Convicted: Reports. "More than 30 men were arrested after a private party in the Bahadoran region of Isfahan, Iran was raided by the police, Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees reported Thursday. Their charges are sodomy, drinking alcohol and using psychedelic drugs and they face the death penalty if found guilty. The men, between the ages of 16 and 30, the Canadian charity reports, were rounded up late April 13 amid gunshots and beatings from police." Global LGBTQ rights is one of the areas where many lives will be lost because too many people believed Trump was "good on gay rights," and didn't care that Hillary Clinton has centered LGBTQ rights in her foreign policy approach for more than a decade. This makes me ill.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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Discussion Thread: Trump Despair

We've had three previous Trump Despair threads, first during his transition period, again during his cabinet nomination process, and then midway through his first 100 days.

Now that we're closing in on his first 100 days in office, I thought maybe some of us could use another one.

I am feeling profoundly overwhelmed by the onslaught of troubling news. Every day brings a fresh new hell. With each reminder that Trump's objective is to utterly destroy the federal government, decades of diplomacy, the economy, and everything we value, I feel deeper despair.

And I feel very concerned about the creeping normalizing of all of it.

I am figuring I'm (still) not alone in that. So here is a thread to talk about it, again, for anyone and everyone who needs it.

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Trump's Tax Plan Is a Disaster, Of Course

Donald Trump is desperate to have a legislative victory. His first 100 days have been marked by failure, his only "success" coming thanks to Antonin Scalia dying 14 months ago.

Healthcare reform is uncertain at best, and, even if the Republicans manage to pass something, it will go over like a lead balloon with the public. A pyrrhic victory in the making.

Trump has all but given up on his tall, beautiful border wall, and his signature executive orders around immigration keep getting tossed out by the courts. Last night, his order to restrict federal funding to sanctuary cities was also blocked by a federal judge.

So his next gambit is tax reform. And, naturally, his constellation of proposals is a total disaster.

As I mentioned yesterday, Trump has proposed reducing the corporate tax rate to 15%, which is a terrible idea and would cause the deficit to balloon by trillions of dollars, which naturally would be used to enact devastating austerity policy.

Trump is also fixing to propose "a significant increase in the standard deduction people can claim on their tax returns, potentially putting thousands of dollars each year into the pockets of tens of millions of Americans, according to two people briefed on the plan. ...White House officials think these changes will give Americans and companies more money to spend, expand the economy and create more jobs."

Which Americans? Mostly the already-rich ones, natch.

If you're thinking, "That sounds like some trickle-down economic shit!" well, you're not wrong. Yes, Trump is pursuing yet another iteration of a long-discredited economic theory that rests firmly in the Republican fantasy that tax cuts solve everything.

The kicker, as Alice Ollstein reports at TPM: Trump's Trickle Down Tax Plan Is Already in Trouble in Congress.

Trump will unveil Wednesday a proposal to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 to 15 percent—a change that would balloon the federal deficit by an estimated $2 trillion dollars over a decade. The plan will reportedly include additional cuts to the income tax rate paid by high earners and a tax credit for child care that would mostly benefit the wealthy, at further cost to the federal budget.

While some Republican lawmakers cheerfully echoed to TPM the White House line that the tax cuts will "pay for themselves" by spurring massive economic growth, both official government analyses and conservative economists are much more skeptical.

"There's no pure tax cut that pays for itself," Alan Cole, an economist at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told the Associated Press.

...Despite assurances of dynamic scoring and record growth, some Republicans are balking at the depth of the proposed tax cuts. Having railed for years against the ever-growing federal deficit, they are mindful of supporting a plan that would push the government far deeper into the red.

It remains to be seen whether it's enough Republicans to stop this horrendous upwards wealth redistribution masquerading as tax reform. Significant public pushback could make a difference (again). So get ready to make some noise.

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GOP Presses Ahead on Healthcare; Public Unthrilled

Late last night, Robert Costa and Paige Winfield Cunningham at the Washington Post reported that Republicans are moving closer to a healthcare reform deal on which their caucus can agree:

White House officials and several Republican lawmakers claimed Tuesday they were nearing a deal on health-care legislation with the House Freedom Caucus, with at least three leading figures in the hard-line group ready to support an overhaul after the dramatic collapse of talks last month.

Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho) — all leaders of the Freedom Caucus and central figures in the latest discussions — signaled Tuesday they are ready to support a new plan, according to two White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. A lawmaker close to the Freedom Caucus later confirmed that those members were close to or ready to support the tweaked bill.

...Rep. David Brat, (R-Va.) a Freedom Caucus member who previously opposed the GOP health-care plan, said he is "looking forward" to supporting it with the new changes giving states more options.

"A lot of people like it," Brat told reporters Tuesday night.

A lot of people in the Freedom Caucus like it, perhaps, but the public they represent is decidedly unthrilled with this entire garbage disaster: "In strategy and substance, the American public disagrees with the course that [Donald] Trump and congressional Republicans are pursuing to replace the Affordable Care Act with conservative policies, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. ...[M]any Americans appear leery in general about a major overhaul to the health-care law often called Obamacare, with 61 percent preferring to 'keep and try to improve' it, compared with 37 percent who say they want to 'repeal and replace' it."

Naturally, Republicans don't care what the people who elected them think, and care even less about the people who didn't vote for them. They want a win, and they want to give the horrendous gremlin in the Oval Office a win—while sticking it to the guy who just left said office, by destroying his signature policy.

Imagine being the sort of person who will casually condemn people to death in order to settle a grudge with the guy who saved their lives.

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Open Thread

Hosted by a red sofa. Have a seat and chat.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Drazil: "If money were no object, where would you go on vacation, and for how long?"

Somewhere warm near water, where I could swim and read and be very lazy. For six months.

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A Shakespearean Sonnet, for 'Splainers

Dear brother pale, possessing such a wealth
Of civil words designed to change my mind:
If as you claim you value women's health,
I beg you do this thing for me so kind:
Please take the endless 'splaining you expel
And shove it in the orifice you prize.
I'll not be hostage to your hot take hell
On rights of ours you're keen to compromise.
The unity you pout that we prevent
Will never happen, sir, 'til you relent.

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Recommended Reading

Two bits of recommended reading...

1. Sarah Lerner at Dame Magazine: A Tale of Two First Daughters. What's also interesting about this piece, in addition to everything Sarah has written in it, is that it's a month old, and it is depressingly evergreen.

2. Preston Mitchum at The Root: What Happened to Your Revolution, Bernie Sanders? Such a wonderful, thoughtful piece. I particularly like the distinction he makes between promising revolution and promising good governance.

Go read 'em both!

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An Observation

I guess I'd be more concerned about President Obama supposedly (according to Fox News) earning a $400,000 speaking fee if I weren't keenly aware that he—like Hillary Clinton, also criticized for drawing big speaking fees—uses his personal wealth to help people.

It seems to me that earning lots of money in and of itself isn't the problem, but earning lots of money at the expense of other people's basic needs being met (which he isn't here), and/or using that money to harm people (which he won't).

That isn't a defense of capitalism (which sucks) (especially when it's unregulated), but an acknowledgement of the fact that we do currently operate within a capitalist system, and the fees themselves may be "unsavory," but I can't (or won't) just ignore that the person getting them will use them well (by my estimation).

(So many parentheticals!)

I've also noticed that most of the commentators who are taking issue with these speaking fees never seemed to have a problem with them until it was a woman and a Black man collecting them.

Huh.

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Daily Dose of Cute

"Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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We Resist: Day 96

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:

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Peter Martin and Kanga Kong at Bloomberg News: U.S., North Korea Flex Military Muscles as Tensions Simmer.

The U.S. and North Korea both showed off their military prowess on Tuesday as nations in the region stepped up diplomatic talks to defuse a brewing crisis over Kim Jong Un's nuclear program.

The nuclear-powered USS Michigan, one of four Ohio-class guided-missile submarines capable of launching cruise missiles, arrived at the South Korean port of Busan, U.S. Naval Forces Korea said in a statement. South Korea's navy said it had no plans for a joint military drill with the submarine.

Yonhap News reported that Kim attended North Korea's largest-ever live-fire artillery exercise east of Pyongyang, prompting South Korea's defense ministry to monitor developments in the area. The report came amid expectations that North Korea might seek to mark the anniversary of the Korean People's Army with its sixth nuclear test.

Meanwhile, in Japan...

Nervous over North Korea, Japan issues guidelines for what to do in the 10 minutes before a missile lands https://t.co/dlmjQxwaC4 pic.twitter.com/HKkypCTcjI

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) April 25, 2017

ICYMI, further updates on the concerning goings-on here: Everything Is Fine. (Everything Is Not Fine.)

* * *

Allegra Kirkland at TPM: Report: Flynn Lobbied for Turkish Businessman with Business Ties to Russia. "The Turkish businessman who paid Michael Flynn's consulting firm almost $600,000 while he was serving as a top adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign has extensive business ties to Russia, Politico reported Tuesday. Ekim Alptekin, who runs Dutch firm Inovo BV, has since 2015 worked closely with Ukraine-born businessman Dmitri 'David' Zaikan to coordinate Turkish lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., according to the report. Both Alptekin and Zaikan have negotiated business deals with Vladimir Putin's government, according to court records obtained by the news site."

Michael C. Bender, Richard Rubin, and Nick Timiraos at the Wall Street Journal: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%. "Donald Trump has ordered White House aides to draft a tax plan that slashes the corporate tax rate to 15%, even if that means a loss of revenue, according to people familiar with the directive. During a meeting in the Oval Office last week, Mr. Trump told staff he wants a massive tax cut to sell to the American public, these people said. He told aides it was less important to him that such a plan could add to the federal budget deficit, though that might make it difficult to sell to GOP lawmakers..." POPULISM!

Aaron Rupar at ThinkProgress: State Department Uses Government Website to Promote Trump's Private Country Club. "An official State Department website is promoting [Donald] Trump's private club in Florida, with help from a number of State Department Facebook accounts. An April 4 post on U.S. Department of State: Economic & Business Affairs' Facebook page characterizes Mar-a-Lago as the 'winter White House' and links to an article on the State Department's Share America site. That article—entitled, 'Mar-a-Lago: The winter White House'—explains that the club 'has become well known as the president frequently travels there to work or host foreign leaders' and provides some history about the property." That is straight-up illegal. As many people pointed out. Which is probably why the article has now been removed.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Christina Wilkie at the Huffington Post: Trump Inauguration Admits Errors, Vows to Correct Numerous Faulty Donor Records. "Donald Trump's Presidential Inaugural Committee acknowledged late Monday that a final report it filed with the Federal Election Commission this month was riddled with errors, many of which were first identified through a crowdsourced data project at HuffPost. ...The inaugural committee raised more than $100 million for Trump's Jan. 20 festivities, which included two inaugural balls that drew a combined total of about 30,000 guests. The fundraising set new records. But according to Brendan Fischer, counsel to the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, 'it doesn't seem that any real effort was made to collect the information that is very clearly required by law.'"

* * *

Ana Swanson and Damian Paletta at the Washington Post: 'Another Bad Act on the Part of the Canadians': Trump Administration Launches Punitive Tariffs on Canadian Lumber. "The Trump administration announced on Monday that it is planning to impose a roughly 20 percent tariff on softwood lumber imported from Canada, a new escalation of trade tensions with America's northern neighbor. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in an interview that his department had reached a preliminary decision to impose the tax, the administration's first major trade action against Canada. Ross portrayed the action as a tough measure to punish Canada after [Donald] Trump declared last week that 'we can't let Canada or anybody else take advantage and do what they did to our workers and to our farmers.' ...The tension between the United States and Canada is only expected to worsen."

JFC. Let's just alienate every one of our allies as quickly as possible. Listen, I don't want U.S. workers harmed by unfair trade practices, but there are multiple ways of doing this, and Trump is, naturally, going with the way that stands to cause maximum offense.

Further, remember what I was just saying yesterday about the retail crash? "We're careening headlong into a major retail crash, which is going to send the economy into a tailspin, and there is no discussion or preparation for the fallout. Fast food is being automated. Service jobs are being automated. Manufacturing jobs are being automated. And retail is being automated via the internet. Also: Construction collapses with no retail spaces to build and no one able to afford new homes. Retail construction is what saved the industry during bad housing markets."

Guess what happens to the lumber industry when construction declines? Yeah. So trade imbalance is the least of lumber's long-term worries. This is an awful lot of bluster, with a potentially serious diplomatic cost, with zero recognition of a quickly-moving major economic crisis the solution to which isn't tariffs.

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Speaking of struggling industries... Molly Walsh at Seven Days: Border Hassles Keep Would-Be Tourists—and Loonies—in Canada. "A federal proposal to implement biometric screening such as fingerprinting and eye scans could bring longer lines and wait times when merchants are already worried about losing Canadian shoppers. It's important for border crossings to flow smoothly, said Homeport co-owner Frank Bouchett, who doesn't see the need for biometric screening. 'Anything they do like that,' he said, 'doesn't help our business.' The new layer of screening is a little-discussed side provision of [Donald] Trump's controversial revised executive order on immigration. The same order that would restrict travel from six Muslim-majority countries also calls for border security using biometric checks."

See also Annie Sciacca at the Mercury News: Under Trump, Bay Area Tourism Could See a Decline, Travel Leaders Say. "[S]earch traffic for booking travel to the U.S. from other countries has already taken a hit, according to Hopper, which analyzes billions of flights to help people find the best deals and times to buy. ...Hopper's data shows that 103 of 122 countries showed a drop. China, which is one of the biggest sources of Bay Area tourism, is among the largest decreases, with searches to the U.S. down more than 40 percent. San Francisco International Airport is the most impacted airport, with flight searches from international origins to SFO dropping 45.6 percent following the travel ban announcement."

That first story is from a Vermont outlet. So, from literally one side of the country to the other, people are concerned about how Trump's policies are going to affect the tourism sector of the economy.

If tourism continues to decline, that is inevitably going to cost people their jobs.

* * *

[CN: Homophobia; video may autoplay at link] Eliza Collins at USA Today: Republicans in Congress Push for Religious Liberty Executive Order.

Dozens of Republican lawmakers are asking [Donald] Trump to scale back Obama-era protections for gays and lesbians in order to make good on a campaign promise to protect religious liberty.

In early February, Trump was reportedly considering an executive order that would reverse former president Barack Obama's orders prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in the federal workforce or by federal contractors. But the order was never signed.

A group of 51 members of the House wrote to Trump this month to "request that you sign the draft executive order on religious liberty, as reported by numerous outlets on February 2, 2017, in order to protect millions of Americans whose religious freedom has been attacked or threatened over the last eight years." The letter has not been publicly released but was obtained by USA TODAY.

In February, the White House said Trump had no plans to sign such an order: "The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump.”

But on Monday, a senior White House official told USA TODAY that some sort of policy to protect religious liberty is still in the works, but that the president is trying to find middle ground. The official did not want to publicly discuss a policy that is still under development.

Absolutely vile. Republicans don't care about Russian interference in the election, but they do care that Trump isn't hating queer people hard enough. (Which is a particularly disgusting irony, given the violent eliminationism being directed against queer people in Chechnya.)

And Trump won't stand his ground on keeping protections intact. Instead, he's "trying to find middle ground." FUCK THAT. This whole administration is such despicable garbage.

* * *

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: Workers Who Really Do 'Support Our Troops' Are Getting Their Wages Slashed. "For at least the third time in two years, the National Guard Bureau has awarded a contract for military family services to a lowball bidder. For the third time, that bid was based on plans to cut workers' pay by about a third on average, and in some cases by half. These pay levels are so low that they may not be legal, according to a complaint filed Monday with the Labor Department. And for the third time, these sudden wage cuts have led to mass resignations, leaving few workers available to help prepare military families for deployment, reintegration into civilian life, and the financial and psychological stresses that can come with both."

Dan Carden at the Times of Northwest Indiana: Indiana to Take DNA Sample from Every Person Arrested for Felony. "Indiana law enforcement is entering a brave new world where police can obtain and test any Hoosier's DNA profile against crime scene evidence, so long as a prosecutor can show the person probably committed a felony. Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb on Friday signed into law Senate Enrolled Act 322 requiring police to take a cheek swab DNA sample from every person arrested for a felony, starting in 2018. Currently, only individuals convicted of felonies have their DNA records permanently entered into a state police database. State Sen. Erin Houchin, R-Salem, the sponsor of the new law, said she expects police will catch more criminals once they have a bigger pool of DNA records to check against blood, fluids and other detritus gathered at crime scenes. She also refused to rule out someday expanding the DNA collection mandate to include those arrested for misdemeanors or traffic infractions."

Emphases mine. Bad news for Indiana, and bad news for everyone else, since Indiana is the Conservative Legislation Lab. If this shit, which will certainly be challenged in court, passes constitutional muster, get ready to see laws like this passed across the entire country.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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Of Course

Ashley Parker and Robert Costa at the Washington Post: 'Everyone Tunes In': Inside Trump's Obsession with Cable TV.

During a small working lunch at the White House last month, the question of job security in [Donald] Trump's tumultuous White House came up, and one of the attendees wondered whether press secretary Sean Spicer might be the first to go.

The president's response was swift and unequivocal. "I'm not firing Sean Spicer," he said, according to someone familiar with the encounter. "That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in."

Trump even likened Spicer's daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers.

Who cares if Spicer is a dissembling disaster? He gets great ratings!

That says as much about the kind of shallow, unserious person that Donald Trump is than just about anything else one could ever read about him.

The entire article is worth your time to read in its entirety, but I want to highlight one more passage:

Trump turns on the television almost as soon as he wakes, then checks in periodically throughout the day in the small dining room off the Oval Office, and continues late into the evening when he's back in his private residence. "Once he goes upstairs, there's no managing him," said one adviser.

It's terrifying that the President of the United States needs to be "managed" in the first place—though we all knew that would be the case if Trump were elected. Even his campaign surrogates addressed this obvious concern by assuring us he'd surround himself with moderating influences. But apparently their magical powers of moderation are rendered inert by Trump simply walking up a flight of stairs.

"There's no managing him." No shit.

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On Who Gets to Be Likeable

Throughout her entire political career, the media has been obsessed with Hillary Clinton's "likeability." Specifically, the alleged lack thereof. And one of the things I have read over and over in election postmortems, is that a significant part of the reason she lost is that people just don't like her.

No matter how many people who have worked with or for her speak about how kind she is, no matter how many average people publicly share stories of the ways in which she's generously gone above and beyond to help them, no matter how remarkably few negative interpersonal stories there are about a person with a decades-long political career, no matter how perfectly pleasant and decent a person she seems in her public appearances, the assumption is always that she is secretly a monstrous she-devil.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is demonstrably a deeply malicious man, about whom there are abundant stories of his abuse, exploitation, and cruelty. His behavior is repellent, his policies are malignant, and countless people who have interacted with him personally or professionally report that he is an aggressively awful human being. He has a historically low approval rating, and that's clearly more than just about the terrible job he's doing.

Virtually the only people who give him high praise are his own children and media types who want continued or restored access to him.

Joe Scarborough: [starting at 3:03] I hope that Donald Trump becomes the Donald Trump that—and we'll say it—that we've known privately. A guy that's a hell of a lot more gracious in private than the sort of reality TV show president that he plays on TV. Because that's the thing: You talk to Hillary Clinton, you talk to Nancy Pelosi, you talk to Chuck Schumer, you talk to the biggest, like, Democrats that have known him for a long time—they will tell you, off-camera, he can be a charming guy, he can be an engaging guy, and instead of— Like, for instance, we invite him, you know, we used to invite him to our book parties. He never talked about himself. He'd come in and go [Trump voice] "Hey, Mika Brzezinski's book, Knowing Your Value, the greatest book since the Gutenberg Bible."

Mika Brzezinski: It is, by the way.

Seth Meyers: [to Mika] You know he didn't read it, right? I don't wanna break your heart. [laughter]

Brzezinski: It's okay! It's okay! It's branding.

Scarborough: Which makes it even kinda— But it is very interesting. We actually could tell a lot of stories about how this guy was genuinely kind, helped immigrants actually that Mika knew, did all of these things, but for some reason, he can't show it on TV, and—

Meyers: It's such a weird thing. Everybody else in show business are nice on television and then assholes behind the camera, and he's like, "I'm gonna let the public know—" [crosstalk] "I'm gonna switch it up!"

Scarborough: You know, I always tell people the story that actually tells you what Trump can be behind the scenes—as long as you're not doing business deals with him, or you loan him money; other than those two areas—I remember one time saying like five years ago, "You know, you got the nicest kids." And I judge people by their children, because that talks about their character. With nobody looking, behind closed doors, with nothing to gain by it—you know what? He said, "Anything that you see in my children that's good, it's because they've got a great mom. They've got a tough mom. They've got somebody that raised 'em right. I owe that all to Ivana." And I sat there and I think, you know, what a [inaudible] guy! We were telling him that story about a month ago, and he said [Trump voice] "Hey, that's a great story. I gotta remember that one."

I don't think that anecdote reveals about Trump what Joe Scarborough seems to think it does, but okay.

This is a pretty standard "Trump is actually a nice guy" defense. Riddled with caveats, featuring a story that still makes him sound like a jackass, relying heavily on saying his kids are nice so he must be nice, and conceding that he doesn't show this side of himself publicly. Ever.

There is no observable evidence that Trump is either kind or likeable, but because people with a vested interest in saying he is shockingly say that he is, it's taken as truth.

Hillary Clinton is unlikeable, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Donald Trump is likeable, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Huh.

I wonder if that had anything to do with the election result. Oh well. Just another mystery lost to the sands of time, I guess.

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Trumpty Dumpty Promised a Wall. Trumpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall.

Yesterday morning, we were hearing that Donald Trump was willing to risk shutting down the entire government to get funding for his border wall—a central promise of his campaign.

But, by the end of the day, Trump was already throwing in the towel on one of his signature policies.

But with a Friday deadline looming to pass a new spending bill, the Trump administration projected confidence that a shutdown would be avoided. In the face of fierce Democratic opposition to funding the wall's construction, White House officials signaled Monday that the president may be open to an agreement that includes money for border security if not specifically for a wall, with an emphasis on technology and border agents rather than a structure.

Trump showed even more flexibility Monday afternoon, telling conservative journalists in a private meeting that he was open to delaying funding for wall construction until September, a White House official confirmed.

Oh dear! The Loser President is afraid of another spectacular failure, so he's just caving in and betraying all the people who voted for him to fight for that lousy, despicable wall because of their economic insecurity. Sorry, folks! You're always going to lose if Trump's ego is at risk!

As Josh Marshall notes, this is an "abject surrender," as Trump is "giving in and will either accept non-wall money and pretend it's like a wall or just give the whole thing up entirely and try again in the fall, which likely means never."

His last desperate gambit is sending out his surrogates to redefine his once-promised "tall, beautiful wall" as a metaphor.

"There will never be a 2,200-mile wall built, period," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a supporter of immigration reform who challenged Trump in the 2016 primaries. "I think it's become symbolic of better border security. It's a code word for better border security. If you make it about actually building a 2,200-mile wall, that's a bridge too far — but I'm mixing my metaphors."

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a key appropriator and member of Senate leadership, said that "there could be a wall in some places and technology in other places," implying that there would not be funding for the wall sketched out in campaign rhetoric. "I think you're going to get a down payment on border security generally," he said.

So much winning.

Trump is collapsing because he is a coward. And, don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the chances a ginormous wall will be built along the southern border are crumbling.

But while Trump being a craven president with no firm principles for which he's willing to fight is good news on domestic policy, it is terrifying to contemplate what that means for foreign policy. Powerful cowards are very dangerous. Especially powerful cowards who have only earned praise for dropping bombs.

As he concedes this battle, as healthcare reform stalls, as Sally Yates is scheduled to testify in the Senate Russia probe, as his approval rating swirls in the bowl, he will desperately wanting a new, more flattering message.

And as North Korea [video may autoplay] continues to escalate, I am very nervous about the reckless measures he will take to change the conversation.

So: The good news is that Trumpty Dumpty's wall is probably off the table. The bad news is that every win for decency is accompanied by the cold shiver of knowing that Trump's failures make him ever more dangerous.

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My Point, Here It Is

Last night, Chelsea Clinton was trending on Twitter, in part because she was obliged to respond (again) to male journalists insisting that she was running for office, despite the fact that she has not said that she has plans to run for office.

I'm not running for anything*

*Apparently periodic reminder may mean twice a day reminding https://t.co/xJrYI30j39

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) April 25, 2017

Goodness gracious! I've no plans. How much clearer can I be (since you ask for clarity)?*

*Apparently twice a day reminder was optimistic https://t.co/PBm9eQUbs4

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) April 25, 2017

I had a few thoughts about that.

The disparate treatment of Chelsea Clinton vs Ivanka Trump is a perfect example of the movement against smart women. https://t.co/cROdOpTp41

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2017

As @iamjohnoliver detailed last night, Ivanka is presumed to have positive qualities & competencies for which there are no evidence.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2017

By contrast, the absolute worst that can be assumed and asserted about Chelsea Clinton always is.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2017

Also: When I say women aren't even allowed to be authorities on our own lives, this shit is exactly what I mean. https://t.co/GZTCQ9zprk

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2017

If we can't be trusted to know our own minds, how can we possibly be trusted to know anything about anything else?

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2017

This is simultaneously the most basic and most devastating subversion of respect for women's knowledge. We can't even know ourselves.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 25, 2017

That is not to suggest, naturally, that Ivanka Trump is not intelligent. But she is not knowledgable, and she is not keenly concerned with facts and reality.

People can be intelligent, and still not be very smart—or wise, if you prefer.

Certainly, central to Ivanka Trump's personal branding is that she is a "brilliant" businesswoman, savvy and cunning, but decidedly not central to her personal branding is that she is a wonky nerdlady armed with solid facts and earned expertise.

To the absolute contrary, central to the entire Trump brand is being "business geniuses" while routinely claiming a lack of knowledge on an array of policy subjects to rationalize their tremendous fuck-ups.

Of course the movement against smart women doesn't target women whose innate intelligence doesn't threaten the status quo, who are armed with talking points and never facts, but instead targets women whose knowledge is used to agitate against privilege.

And whose competency itself indicts the status quo, by highlighting the cavernous disparity of opportunities between the smart women who are outside power centers looking in at the mediocre men running them.

Which is why no matter what indefensible horseshit comes out of Ivanka's mouth, there are large swaths of the political press who will either give it cursory scrutiny or none at all, or actively defend her—while Chelsea Clinton can insist all day every day that she's not running for office, and there are members of the political press who will effectively call her a fucking liar. Because they assert to know her better than she knows herself.

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Open Thread

Hosted by a turquoise sofa. Have a seat and chat.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Yankee Transferred: "What's the best job you ever had?"

This one! Yes, even despite all the shit.

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