This blogaround brought to you by the distant sound of a ringing telephone.
Recommended Reading:
Tauriq Moosa: [Content Note: White supremacy] Trump's Use of 'Law and Order' to Further White Supremacy Is Scarily Familiar
Fannie Wolfe: [CN: Homophobia] #Winning
Angela Chen: Are You Forgetful? That Might Just Be Your Brain Erasing Useless Memories
My Ngoc To: [CN: War; displacement; racism; misogyny] The Hidden Lives of Nail Artists
Vivian Kane: [CN: Moving GIF at link] DC Has No Idea What We Love About Wonder Woman; Introduces New Comic Arc About Diana's Brother
Rae Paoletta: We Just Got a Rare Look at Our New Overlord — the Flapjack Octopus
Sameer Rao: Mattel Introduces Ken Dolls with Various Races, Body Types
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
The Wednesday Blogaround
Shaker Gourmet
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!
Dear Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III: F#@k You. Sincerely, Your Employees
Every day, there are federal employees — career bureaucrats who have dedicated long or short parts of their lives to jobs in which they serve the government and its people — who are resisting the Trump administration from their desks (so to speak, and sometimes literally). We don't hear about many of these acts of resistance against the dismantling of the federal government and its services, but sometimes we do, and, when we do, it's pretty fucking great.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to rescind Obama-era guidance supporting the rights of transgender students is set to get a symbolic rebuke from Sessions' own employees next week.Gavin Grimm, as you may recall, is the Virginia teenager who has spent the last several years of his life locked in a lawsuit against his school system after he was denied access to the boys' restroom because he is transgender.
On the morning of June 28, the Justice Department is scheduled to hold its annual LGBT Pride Month Program in the Great Hall of the department's main building on Pennsylvania Avenue, in between the Capitol and the White House.
A notice about the program, obtained by BuzzFeed News, went out to employees on Tuesday. At the event, which was attended by former attorney general Loretta Lynch in 2016, the relevant work of the department is highlighted, a keynote speech is given, and awards are presented.
This year, DOJ Pride — the department's group for LGBT employees and their allies — plans to present Gavin Grimm with its Gerald B. Roemer Community Service Award at the event, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Grimm's case had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, where it "would have been heard earlier this year — had it not been for Sessions' decision to rescind the pro-transgender guidance. The justices had taken up the case in the fall, but sent it back to the appeals court for further consideration after Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded guidance issued by the Obama administration — delaying Grimm's challenge past his high school graduation date, June 10."
So, Sessions' maneuvering (in part) served to deny justice to Grimm.
And the Justice Department will soon give Grimm the Gerald B. Roemer Community Service Award at its LGBT Pride Month Program.
Which isn't justice. But it's a very strong message to the head of the Justice Department, about what his employees think about his priorities.
Congratulations (in advance) to Gavin Grimm. Well deserved, young man. ♥
[H/T to Eastsidekate.]
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 153
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:
Earlier today by me: Jeff Sessions Lawyers Up.
REMINDER: KEEP CALLING YOUR SENATORS TO TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON REPEALING AND REPLACING THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.
Joe Williams at Roll Call: GOP Might Buck Senate Rules to Pass Health Care Overhaul. "GOP leaders are sending signals that, if necessary, they plan to invoke a seldom-used rule included in the Congressional Budget Act that would allow Senate Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi to skirt a decision from the chamber's parliamentarian, a key gatekeeper for the budget maneuver known as reconciliation that Republicans are using to advance their health insurance measure. Such a decision would have ripple effects far beyond the tenure of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a careful practitioner of the chamber's procedural rules, and open the door for future leaders to more easily advance legislation under a 51-vote threshold." Reprehensible.
Charles P. Pierce at Esquire: The 'Moderate' Republican Senator Is a Dangerous Myth.
A bill is being crafted in secret that is going to disrupt the lives of millions of Americans and the intention of the Senate majority is that it will be presented possibly as early as tomorrow, that it will be subject to minimal (if any) real debate, and then it will be voted upon through a procedure that requires only 50 votes-and-a-Pence to pass. It will suck untold gallons of pondwater.Spot on. As always.
...At some point, the Congressional Budget Office will release its score for the bill, measuring precisely how many gallons of pondwater the bill sucks. Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill, McConnell and his leadership team will paint pretty flowers on the uglier parts of the bill and, one by one, enough of the "moderates" will pronounce themselves satisfied that their deep concerns have been satisfied most deeply, and that they no longer are as deeply troubled as they once were. A couple of them—Collins, say, or Lisa Murkowski—even will be allowed to vote against the bill, provided the winning margin of 50-plus-Pence is in the bag.
The tell in all this is how many of the "moderate" Republicans are complaining about the "process" now, rather than pointing out how many gallons of pondwater the bill will suck. True, this bill should not pass because of the blatantly undemocratic way it has been conceived and constructed. But it also should not pass because it very likely will immiserate countless vulnerable Americans due to the gallons of pondwater that it will suck. If your basic concern about it is the former, then you're already lost.
* * *
Today, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson testified before the House Intelligence Committee as part of their Russia investigation, and he opened with a bang: "In 2016, the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election, plain and simple. Now, the key question for the president and Congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?"
Good question. Johnson further noted that the Russian interference in the election "was unprecedented" in "scale and scope." But, despite the issue being on his "front burner all throughout the pre-election period in August, September, October, and early November," the Obama administration made the choice not to publicly disclose the issue, because Trump's rhetoric about election rigging complicated the issue.
Jeh Johnson says Obama admin waited months to disclose Russian meddling bc "one of the candidates was saying the election was rigged."
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 21, 2017
Without judgment on Obama's decision, because I'm sure it was not an easy one, it unfortunately seems as though the attempt to avoid appearing like they were helping Hillary Clinton win could have ended up ensuring that she lost.
Meanwhile, at the Senate:
Election expert J. Alex Halderman tells Senate: Absolutely, voting machines can be hacked, and votes changed. "We must start preparing now."
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) June 21, 2017
He adds: “If we fail to act, I think it’s only a matter of time until a major election is disrupted or stolen in a cyber attack.” https://t.co/H1F85eSE7H
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) June 21, 2017
Fuck. As I have said before and will presumably be obliged to keep saying, the terrifying thing to me is that the investigation into election meddling should be just the start of investigations into Russia's plan to disrupt, well, everything they can. Frankly, I am hovering somewhere between profoundly concerned and scared shitless that even the Democrats aren't framing this investigation as a launchpad into broader scrutiny of Russia's objective to sow chaos via propaganda, turning assets, hacking of infrastructure systems, etc.
There are endless vulnerabilities inherent in a highly digitized world. So many things are potentially "only a matter of time" if we don't have serious discussions about them now.
* * *
Peter Beaumont at the Guardian: Kushner Arrives in Israel Tasked with Progressing Trump's 'Ultimate Deal'. "Donald Trump's son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser, Jared Kushner, has arrived in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories for a whistlestop visit aimed at restarting the long-dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Kushner's carefully managed visit — conducted far from media scrutiny and lasting less than a day — comes amid scant indication of any imminent breakthrough between the two sides in a peace process that has been moribund since 2014. The US president has tasked Kushner with the ambitious goal of laying the groundwork for what he calls the 'ultimate deal,' but deep divisions remain, clouding chances of a significant breakthrough in one of the longest Middle East crises."
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Meanwhile, an AP report filed by Josef Federman includes this detail: "Kushner did not speak to reporters ahead of his talks Wednesday, and Israeli security agents blocked AP cameramen from filming the arrival of his convoy. In one case, a cameraman was ordered to leave a sidewalk outside the government compound that houses Netanyahu's office, and in other case, a cameraman was ordered to delete his memory card of all images of the prime minister's office."
And then there's this:
Jared Kushner, a man who deals in questionable real estate, is going to peace talks in the Middle East. Don't we have a Secretary of State? pic.twitter.com/vgGBgnxiv2
— David Hoffman (@atDavidHoffman) June 19, 2017
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shawn Boburg at the Washington Post: Trump Seeks Sharp Cuts to Housing Aid, Except for Program That Brings Him Millions. "Trump's budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to private landlords. One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation's largest subsidized housing complex. Trump's 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure." He is absolutely bloody shameless.
Britain Eakin at Courthouse News Service: FBI Hammered in Court for Pre-Election Records on Trump. "Bashing the FBI for equivocating on whether it has pre-election records on [Donald] Trump, a government-transparency group brought a federal complaint to spur action. Ryan Shapiro filed the June 18 lawsuit in Washington with his group, Property of the People Inc., and with investigative reporter Jason Leopold. ...Calling the FBI's silence improper, Shapiro and Leopold argue that Trump's privacy interest is minimal, both as the president and his prior status as a celebrity real estate mogul. ...Shapiro and Leopold also call the public interest in such records enormous, saying it 'clearly outweighs any embarrassment [Trump] might suffer from his name being associated with FBI investigation.'"
Kelly Macias at Daily Kos: Cowardly Republicans Ban the Rev. William Barber from North Carolina Legislative Building. "The Rev. William Barber is an institution in North Carolina. A longtime civil rights activist and current president of the state chapter of the NAACP with an incredible body of work, he has worked hard over the last decade to intentionally build a progressive, interracial coalition of individuals and organizations determined to make North Carolina a more just and equitable state. He became well-known throughout the country for his leadership of the 'Moral Mondays' movement...Perhaps this is why Republicans desperately seek to silence him. After being arrested again on May 30 during a health care sit-in at the North Carolina Legislative Building, he was officially banned from the site, along with 31 other people."
[CN: Racism] Michael Harriot at the Root: Video of a White Woman Demanding a White Doctor Shocked Everyone...Except Black Doctors. "While the internet may be clutching its pearls, according to numerous studies and anecdotal examples, nonwhite doctors and nurses see this all the time. The Root spoke with 12 black medical professionals who all say they have encountered similar situations, some routinely. One of the medical world's open secrets is that patients routinely refuse treatment from nonwhite physicians and nurses." Such fucking garbage. (When I moved and thus had to find a new doctor, I explicitly searched for a fat woman of color. And guess what? SHE'S AMAZING.)
KFOR News: Valedictorian's Graduation Speech Cut Off by School Administrators.
One Pennsylvania valedictorian's graduation speech is grabbing national attention after he was stopped from finishing his monologue. ...Peter Butera started out his speech by thanking his family and several teachers who made a difference in his life.LOLOLOL! It sure was! Kids today, amirite? Get ON my lawn!
"Throughout my time at Wyoming Area, I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me. In addition to being a member of Student Council since I was a freshman, my classmates have elected me Class President the past 4 years, which has been the greatest honor and I would like to thank you all for that one final time, it really means a lot. I would sadly discover however, that the title of Class President could more accurately be Class Party Planner, and Student Council's main obligation is to paint signs every week. I'm not sure when actual student government at our school became extinct, but it must be brought back. Despite some of the outstanding people in this school, a lack of real student government and the authoritative nature that a few administrators, teachers, and a few board members have prevents students from truly developing as leaders. Hopefully in the future, this will change," Butera said, as his microphone was cut off.
Butera says it is actually ironic that school administrators chose to cut him off during that portion of the speech.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
I'm Sorry, Democrats in GA6
So, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost a surprisingly competitive special election in Georgia to fill the seat vacated by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.
My condolences to the Democrats in Georgia's sixth district, who are certainly feeling far worse than any of us looking in today. Amongst all the hot takes in the wake of Ossoff's loss, I've seen precious little acknowledgement that the biggest losers are the people who will now be represented by Karen Handel. This loss will personally and directly impact them in a way it never will the Democrats/leftists outside that district who cultivated a vested interest in the race to use it as a referendum on their ideas for the future of the Democratic Party.
I am sad that Ossoff didn't win, because the Democrats (or most of them, anyway) in his district very much wanted him to win. I don't have any hotter take than that.
I will only note that, as per usual, lots of Democrats seem to be taking precisely the wrong lesson from Ossoff's near miss. I've got a special heap of contempt for Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, the guy who challenged Nancy Pelosi for her House leadership position (and lost), who opened his yap to unleash this mess:
Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who has been a vocal critic of his party's overarching political strategy, said Democrats needed to recognize that they were "toxic" in huge parts of the country.Dude. They're running using misogyny against a woman in leadership and using homophobia, for which "San Francisco values" is an ancient dogwhistle. That isn't evidence that the Democratic brand is "toxic," and it sure as shit isn't evidence that it's "worse than Trump." It's evidence that the Republicans did what they do best in a district they've held for decades: They played to bigotry.
"Our brand is worse than Trump," said Mr. Ryan, who urged Democrats to make forging a clear economic agenda an urgent priority. "We can't just run against Trump."
Mr. Ryan, who tried to unseat Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, as House minority leader after the November elections, said she remained a political drag on other Democrats. Ms. Handel and Republican outside groups tied Mr. Ossoff to Ms. Pelosi in campaign events and television ads, casting him as a puppet for what they described as her liberal agenda and "San Francisco values."
"They're still running against her and still winning races, and it's still a problem," Mr. Ryan said.
And the reason that Ossoff got as close as he did is because that strategy isn't as broadly appealing as it used to be.
The solution, then, is not to replicate it, for Maude's sake.
"Automation" Is Still the Word Politicians Dare Not Speak
Buried at the bottom of a long New York Times piece by Nelson D. Schwartz on "The Decline of the Baronial C.E.O." is this passage (emphasis mine):
The staggering profitability of the tech giants provides their leaders with more than a little of the swagger the industrial executives once possessed.CEO jobs are safe because of the "efficiency" that means the same corporate revenues sustain one-tenth the number of jobs they did 25 years earlier. In other words: CEOs have a major incentive to automate.
In 1990, the revenues of Detroit's Big Three automakers totaled $250 billion while they employed 1.2 million people, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.
Silicon Valley's top three companies in 2014 had almost the same revenues before adjusting for inflation — $247 billion — but with 137,000 employees, they required a work force just one-tenth the size.
That kind of efficiency adds up to huge profits, soaring stock prices, and few complaints from investors. Or as Brooks C. Holtom, a professor of management at Georgetown, put it, "If your stock is doing well, your job is safe."
And it's not just to keep their jobs, of course. A huge portion of the revenue saved by workforce reductions has been redirected to CEO salaries, which have grown 90 times faster than workers' pay since 1978.
A reward for overseeing increased efficiency, natch.
As I've noted previously, when we hear a CEO talk about "efficiency," we know that it means one of two things (or both):
1. The "speedup," which is the ubiquitous corporate practice of not filling jobs when people leave and simply redistributing their work among remaining staff, who aren't compensated for the additional duties;
2. Automation, which is typically associated with the image of a giant robot in an automotive plant doing the job a person, or multiple people, used to do, but is much more ubiquitous.
Manufacturing jobs have indeed been lost to automation, but additionally: 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. Operators have been replaced with automated directories. Bank tellers have been replaced with ATMs and online banking. Cashier jobs are being lost to self-checkouts. Opportunities to make one's living as an instructor — a piano teacher, say — have precipitously dwindled with the advent of online (and often free) instruction videos.
And self-piloting vehicles will destroy entire sectors: Trucking, municipal driving jobs (garbage collection, street sweeping, leaf collection, snow plowing), delivery, driving services (taxis, Uber, Lyft).
This is the reality of our past, it is our reality now, and it is the reality of our future.
The jobs lost to automation over the past decades, and the jobs that will continue to be lost at an accelerating rate, are not "coming back." This is as serious, if not even more serious, a problem than wealth inequality. They are also inseparable problems. Any economic analysis at this point which isn't urgently and centrally addressing automation isn't a serious economic analysis at all.
Automation is coming for our jobs. There is no reversing the trend. There is only acknowledging this reality and crafting policy that reflects it.
Starting, immediately and loudly, with meaningful proposals for a universal basic income.
Jeff Sessions Lawyers Up
Julia Ainsley at Reuters: U.S. Attorney General Sessions Hires Private Attorney. "U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has become the latest senior Trump administration official to hire a private attorney, a Justice Department spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Sessions has retained Washington-based lawyer Charles Cooper, whom spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores described as a long-time friend of the former senator."
They're bigot besties, reports RawStory's Bob Brigham: "Chuck Cooper has been criticized for condoning discrimination during his long legal career, from support for Bob Jones' University's ban on interracial dating to supporting job discrimination against those with HIV/AIDS. Most recently, Cooper had a prominent role pushing legal discrimination against the LGBTQ community during the legal battles over Proposition 8 and marriage equality."
What a cool lawyer with such a cool client.
Anyway.
Sessions is now the fifth high-level member of the Trump administration to secure private counsel for the ongoing Russia probe.
People who've hired lawyers:
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 21, 2017
1. The Attorney General
2. The VP
3. The President
4. The President's Son-In-Law
5. The President's Lawyer
And, despite Donald Trump's caterwauling about "witch hunts" and "fake news," every day continues to yield another story about some peculiar ties to Russian officials, concealed contacts, or perplexing indifference to security against a foreign adversary.
To wit: The latest from Matt Apuzzo, Matthew Rosenberg, and Adam Goldman at the New York Times: Despite Concerns About Blackmail, Flynn Heard C.I.A. Secrets.
Senior officials across the government became convinced in January that the incoming national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had become vulnerable to Russian blackmail.Sounds like Mike Pompeo might want to consider being next on the list to lawyer up.
At the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — agencies responsible for keeping American secrets safe from foreign spies — career officials agreed that Mr. Flynn represented an urgent problem.
Yet nearly every day for three weeks, the new C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, sat in the Oval Office and briefed [Donald] Trump on the nation's most sensitive intelligence — with Mr. Flynn listening. Mr. Pompeo has not said whether C.I.A. officials left him in the dark about their views of Mr. Flynn, but one administration official said Mr. Pompeo did not share any concerns about Mr. Flynn with the president.
The episode highlights a remarkable aspect of Mr. Flynn's tumultuous, 25-day tenure in the White House: He sat atop a national security apparatus that churned ahead despite its own conclusion that he was at risk of being compromised by a hostile foreign power.
Bob Mueller's got a long list of people and incidents to investigate. I desperately hope that he is taking this investigation seriously and intends to move as swiftly as possible without leaving any stone unturned.
With Congressional Republicans using their investigations to run interference for Trump, and Congressional Democrats — Maude help us! — starting to sound like Trump by calling Russia a "distraction" (et tu, Chris Murphy?!), Mueller's investigation is truly our only hope of getting to bottom of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Which itself is only one part of a vast and complex strategy to destabilize the country.
The election investigation should merely be the starting point. Instead, I fear with each passing day that it will be the endpoint of investigating Russian meddling on many fronts. And then we'll find out in the worst possible way how not a "distraction" defending this nation against a foreign adversary hellbent on chaos is. Or was.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Carpe Librarium: "What Shakesville post do you just have to keep forwarding on to others?"
This is kind of a weird question for me, for obvious reasons, lol, but I have forwarded Aphra_Behn's Looking for Bernie series a lot.
Of the content I've written, I've heard most frequently that people have repeatedly shared The Terrible Bargain. That and Rape Culture 101.
Pack Your Bags and Fire Up Your Jetpacks!
Rachel Feltman at Popular Science: NASA Found a Bunch More Potentially Habitable Planets.
The new data analysis brings the total number of planetary candidates (possible planets that haven't necessarily been confirmed) to 4,034. Just over half of those have been verified using other telescopes. Of the 50 planets thought to be Earth-size and in their star's habitable zone (10 of which were announced in the new batch) just 30 are confirmed.Thirty sounds like good odds. What are we waiting for? LET'S FUCKING GO.
(To be clear: You don't actually need to head to comments to pedantically lecture me on why up and moving to another planet is not feasible. I know. I'm joking.)
This Is Incompatible with Democracy
[Content Note: Guns.]
Republican U.S. Representative Brian Babin of Texas has introduced legislation [pdf] "to allow Members of Congress to carry a concealed handgun anywhere in the United States, with exceptions," the exceptions being the White House, "or wherever the United States Secret Service is prohibiting the possession of a firearm," and airplanes, "unless the Secretary of Homeland Security finds that the Member of Congress has successfully completed the training program established" in the bill, which would naturally be funded by taxpayers.
A press release from Babin's office explains: "This bill would...direct the USCP to grant Members of Congress the ability to concealed carry in nearly every conceivable scenario — including federal parks and buildings, the national mall, to and from their offices, at schools and military bases — with only a few limited restrictions."
The emphasis is original. His office really wanted to highlight how Members of Congress could definitely be carrying concealed weapons "in nearly every conceivable scenario," should his proposed legislation be passed.
In case you didn't get the message, Babin is also quoted in the press release: "The tragic events of last week make it clearer than ever that we need to take steps to enable Members of Congress to protect themselves. We also know that an even greater tragedy was averted only because of the brave actions by two armed Capitol Police special agents who happened, mercifully, to be on site. My bill would ensure rank and file Members of Congress have the opportunity to defend themselves by providing them the ability to concealed carry in nearly every scenario with only a few restrictions."
Cool.
So, here's the thing: This is incompatible with representative democracy.
I don't want any member of Congress to be harmed. I also don't want a country in which constituents can't approach their elected representatives without fear of being shot over a disagreement.
And, no, I don't believe that is a far-fetched possibility, given that a number of Republicans, including the president, have physically assaulted members of the media for asking them questions they don't like. There is an escalating war on anyone who seeks accountability from elected officials in the Republican Party, and I don't believe for a moment that's irrelevant when considering whether Members of Congress should be allowed to carry concealed weapons "in nearly every scenario."
We the People (especially marginalized people) already increasingly exist in violent opposition to the police who are supposed to protect and serve us. We don't need to exist in violent opposition to the officials we elected to represent us, too.
And if the Republican Congressional majority wants to do something about the threat of violence in the hands of someone with a grudge and a gun, then the solution is working with Democrats on some sensible gun reform.
Like, for example, making a history of domestic violence a disqualifier for gun ownership. Had that been a federal law, the man who shot their colleague would have been prevented from owning a gun.
Averting attacks altogether seems like a better strategy to me than making the case for more public shoot-outs.
[H/T to Eastsidekate.]
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 152
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:
Earlier today by me: Trump Is So Awful, He Almost Makes Me Feel Sorry for Sean Spicer. Almost.
REMINDER: KEEP CALLING YOUR SENATORS TO TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON REPEALING AND REPLACING THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.
Aaron Rupar at ThinkProgress: McConnell Signals Senate GOP Will Jam Through Trumpcare After a Few Hours of Debate.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried to get an assurance from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that he'll allow the public to scrutinize Senate Republicans' secret health care bill for more than 10 hours before the Senate is forced to vote on it.Absolutely unconscionable.
McConnell wouldn't make any promises.
"Will we have time — more than 10 hours, since this is a complicated bill — to review the bill?" Schumer asked. "Will it be available to us and the public more than 10 hours before we have to vote for it? Since our leader has said — our Republican leader — that there will be plenty of time for a process where people can make amendments. You need time to prepare those amendments."
"I think we'll have ample opportunity to read and amend the bill," McConnell replied.
"Will it be more than 10 hours?" Schumer said.
But McConnell wouldn't stray from his talking point, reiterating, "I think we'll have ample opportunity to read and amend the bill."
Tierney Sneed at TPM: Senate GOPer Previews Timeline for Obamacare Repeal Vote in Next 10 Days. "On the heels of reports that McConnell is pushing forward with the fast-track process, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) previewed the timeline as he understood it on MSNBC Tuesday morning. According to Corker, GOP senators will receive a rundown on the bill at a closed-door meeting Wednesday and then see legislative text on Thursday. That gives them just one week to review it for a vote planned before the end of next week, ahead of lawmakers' July 4 recess. 'We will work around the clock to make sure that we understand what's in it and we'll just see,' Corker said."
13 male Senators from 10 states representing fewer than 1 in 4 Americans are secretly drafting health legislation affecting 1/6th of economy pic.twitter.com/5tbcjfvaw5
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 19, 2017
As fast as they possibly can.
* * *
Andy Greenberg at Wired: How an Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab for Cyberwar.
The Cyber-Cassandras said this would happen. For decades they warned that hackers would soon make the leap beyond purely digital mayhem and start to cause real, physical damage to the world. In 2009, when the NSA's Stuxnet malware silently accelerated a few hundred Iranian nuclear centrifuges until they destroyed themselves, it seemed to offer a preview of this new era. "This has a whiff of August 1945," Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, said in a speech. "Somebody just used a new weapon, and this weapon will not be put back in the box."Me, just last week: "Earlier this month, I shared a Politico article by Ali Watkins which opens with a story about Russian diplomats, presumed to be Russian intelligence, 'waging a quiet effort to map the United States' telecommunications infrastructure, perhaps preparing for an opportunity to disrupt it.' I wanted to remind you of that before sharing this new piece by Ellen Nakashima at the Washington Post: Russia Has Developed a Cyberweapon That Can Disrupt Power Grids, According to New Research. 'Hackers allied with the Russian government have devised a cyberweapon that has the potential to be the most disruptive yet against electric systems that Americans depend on for daily life, according to U.S. researchers. The malware, which researchers have dubbed CrashOverride, is known to have disrupted only one energy system — in Ukraine in December. In that incident, the hackers briefly shut down one-fifth of the electric power generated in Kiev.'"
Now, in Ukraine, the quintessential cyberwar scenario has come to life. Twice. On separate occasions, invisible saboteurs have turned off the electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. Each blackout lasted a matter of hours, only as long as it took for scrambling engineers to manually switch the power on again. But as proofs of concept, the attacks set a new precedent: In Russia's shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society has become a reality.
And the blackouts weren't just isolated attacks. They were part of a digital blitzkrieg that has pummeled Ukraine for the past three years—a sustained cyberassault unlike any the world has ever seen. A hacker army has systematically undermined practically every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military, politics, energy. Wave after wave of intrusions have deleted data, destroyed computers, and in some cases paralyzed organizations' most basic functions. "You can't really find a space in Ukraine where there hasn't been an attack," says Kenneth Geers, a NATO ambassador who focuses on cybersecurity.
In a public statement in December, Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, reported that there had been 6,500 cyberattacks on 36 Ukrainian targets in just the previous two months.
And we have a president who doesn't give two fucks that this is happening. Except inasmuch as he may be actively ignoring it as an assist to Russia.
Holy fucking shit. Is the only correct response to that.
* * *
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Andrew Kaczynski at CNN: FBI Director Nominee Removed Reference to Case Involving Russian Government from Law Firm Bio. "Donald Trump's nominee to be the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, represented an American energy executive in 2006 who was being criminally investigated by the Russian government. The detail, which was included on Wray's biography on the website of the law firm King and Spalding dating back to 2009, was removed in 2017, according to a KFile review of the Web Archive. ...The line appears to be the one of few bits of information ever removed from the page since 2009, with most of the changes since then consisting of minor word changes and additions." What a coinkydink!
The following two items make for an interesting juxtaposition:
#1. Jonathan Swan at Axios: The Prosecutor Trumpworld Fears and Loathes. "Reuters is out with an interesting piece on Andrew Weissmann, the veteran federal prosecutor who's now working on Bob Mueller's investigative team: 'Weissmann, who headed the U.S. Justice Department's criminal fraud section before joining Mueller's team last month, is best known for two assignments — the investigation of now-defunct energy company Enron and organized crime cases in Brooklyn, New York — that depended heavily on gaining witness cooperation.' Behind-the-scenes: Trumpworld has been worried about Weissmann since they first got wind that Mueller added him to his team. ...Weissmann is known for his skill at 'flipping' witnesses — persuading them through high-stakes pressure to turn on friends, colleagues, and superiors."
#2. Paul Barrett at Bloomberg: The New Face of Trump's Legal Team Is the Christian Right's Pit Bull. "What may be even more weird is that [Jay Sekulow] is on Trump's legal team at all. The 61-year-old lawyer has an unusual professional and personal profile — one that doesn't include experience with white-collar criminal cases, which would seem to be what Trump needs at the moment. Sekulow formerly served as the general counsel for the organization Jews for Jesus. In the late 1980s, he became the leading U.S. Supreme Court advocate for the Christian right. While appearing regularly on Fox television as a legal analyst and hosting a syndicated radio show, he also runs interlocking Christian nonprofits that raise tens of millions of dollars a year and employ several members of his family. Asked about Sekulow's qualifications, Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump's outside legal team, didn't directly answer the question. 'Jay is a member of the president's legal team in the fullest sense of the word,' Corallo said. 'He is also authorized to speak on television or otherwise.' Corallo said he didn't know how Trump came to hire Sekulow."
I'm going to hazard a guess that Trump "came to hire Sekulow" because he saw him on TV.
So, to recap: The Special Counsel investigating Trump — or at least members of his inner circle — has hired as part of his team a highly skilled federal prosecutor with specific experience in turning witnesses. Trump, meanwhile, has hired as part of his team a TV lawyer and professional showboater for the Christian right who may be running a charity nepotism scam not unlike the one Trump was running. Cool.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus, Kabir Khanna, and Anthony Salvanto at CBS News: Trump's Handling of Russia Investigations Weighs on Approval Ratings. Hahahahahaha no way! Do tell. "Trump's job approval rating has dipped in recent weeks, pushed down by negative reaction to his handling of the Russia investigations, and he's seen some slippage among Republicans as well. A third of Americans say his approach to the issue has made their opinion of him worse, and his handling of that matter gets lower marks than any of his others, like the economy or terrorism, for which he rates higher."
He rates higher on the economy and terrorism. And he is terrible on both of those things! Maude save us.
* * *
Federal judiciary, in trying to protect cooperating witnesses, considers sealing public records https://t.co/7CLy9ZEABw
— Joe Palazzolo (@joe_palazzolo) June 20, 2017
Wait, WHAT? -- If you haven't used it, PACER lets ppl access court records. Really, really useful. (How I got Gitmo filings when blogging.) https://t.co/rMdK8ZT6ou
— hilzoy (@hilzoy) June 20, 2017
Yikes.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Zachary Hansen at USA Today: It's So Hot in Phoenix, They Can't Fly Planes. "The extreme heat forecast for Phoenix on Tuesday has caused the cancellation of 20 American Airlines flights out of Sky Harbor International Airport. According to a statement from American Airlines, the American Eagle regional flights use the Bombardier CRJ aircraft, which has a maximum operating temperature of 118 degrees. Tuesday's forecast for Phoenix included a high of 120 degrees."
So if Donald Trump's indifference to and/or collusion with Russia to destroy every system doesn't doom our transportation infrastructure, his refusal to address climate change will!
Lisa Needham at Rewire: The First Amendment Is in Increasing Danger Under a Trump Administration. "We live in an era of increasing crackdowns on public protests and whistleblowing: real, and increasingly effective, attacks on the First Amendment. The First Amendment, of course, promises us the right to free speech, but it also promises us the rights to assemble and to associate. In practical terms, this generally means that you can associate with whomever you choose to, assemble together in any fashion, and speak out against the government in whatever way you see fit. One of the best ways to ensure people don't exercise their First Amendment rights is to make it far too dangerous and costly to do so. That is what is happening right now."
[CN: Murder; Islamophobia] Sameer Rao at Colorlines: Darwin Martinez Torres Charged With Killing Nabra Hassanen. "The Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) announced a murder charge against Darwin Martinez Torres yesterday (June 18) for allegedly killing 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen. Police attribute the killing to 'road rage,' but the Muslim teen's parents blamed Islamophobic racism in statements to The Guardian and The Washington Post. ...Mahmoud Hassanen, the slain teen's father, told The Guardian...that he believes the killer targeted his daughter and her friends because of their clothing, which identified them as Muslim: 'He followed the girls, and all of them had headcloths, meaning they are Muslim, and he had a baseball stick.' Hassanen's mother Sawan Gazzzar echoed that sentiment to The Washington Post. 'I'm sure the guy hit my daughter because she's Muslim and she was wearing the hijab,' she said."
[CN: Addiction] Mona Chalabi at the Guardian: Opioid-Related Hospital Visits up 99% in Less Than a Decade, US Data Shows. "Opioid-related hospital visits in the US rose 99% and inpatient stays increased 64% in less than a decade, according to government data released on Tuesday. Each day, US hospitals received 3,500 people for opioid-related issues in 2014, compared with 1,800 in 2005, a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reveals." Does Donald Trump have a plan for this? No. Did Hillary Clinton? Yes. Will the GOP healthcare bill make it worse? Absolutely. Do they care? Nope.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Please Support Shakesville
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Your Principles Are Trash
At Politico, Ben Schreckinger has written a profile of 2016 Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, who continues to be just as aggressive an asshole as she was before the election.
So does Stein, with the benefit of hindsight, have any regrets? "I don't think so," she tells me by phone from her home in Lexington, Massachusetts. Decrying "fake news," citing the "sabotage of Bernie Sanders," and talking up the "tremendous" campaign she could have run with more money, Stein is projecting a Trump-worthy level of defiance. "I consider it a great honor that the party and our prior campaign for president is suddenly being attacked outside of an election season," she says.There is a lot more where that came from, including Stein dismissing serious questions about her own possible collusion with Russia as just one of the Democrats' "pathetic excuses" for losing.
And she continues to insist that there isn't more than a slim stream of daylight between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: "There are differences between Clinton and Trump, no doubt, but they're not different enough to save your life, to save your job, to save the planet. We deserve more than two lethal choices."
That is a truly incredible contention from the Green Party candidate, given that one of the supposedly insignificant and not-lifesaving differences between Clinton and Trump is that Clinton gives a shit about climate change and Trump does not.
Maybe it helps Stein sleep at night to assert that there would have been no discernible difference between a Clinton presidency and Trump's presidency, or maybe she's just too actually stupid to understand how very different they would have been, but, either way, this oft-repeated assertion is not principled, the way she and so many of her dead-ender compatriots believe it is. To the absolute contrary, it is pompous as hell.
It is the height of self-aggrandizing bullshit to claim to have voted one's "conscience" to justify a vote that will cause harm to millions of people.
I am no stranger to making principled choices, even and especially when they have meaningful and material consequences for my life (like earning less money). A choice that would soothe my conscience but have deleterious consequences for millions of other lives isn't a principled choice. It's a shitty, vainglorious, harmful choice.
And that fact doesn't change no matter how many lies one tells about the sameness of Hillary Clinton's policies to Donald Trump's.
It also doesn't change no matter how much one insists that the horror show of the Trump presidency has a "silver lining" for leftist activism.
I thought I might be able to find some daylight between Stein and other Green Party leaders, who I expected might be troubled at any role they might have played in helping elect a man who once claimed climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.What an asshole.
I was wrong.
"In some ways, Trump is one of the best things to happen to this country because look at how many people are getting off their posteriors," says Sherry Wells, the Green Party's Michigan chairwoman. "So part of me is giggling."
One really has to be safely ensconced in a bubble of privilege to "giggle" at the thought that Trump's being one of the worst things to happen to this country is somehow one of the best things to happen to this country.
I know quite a number of long-time activists who have been off our posteriors, and not a one of us is feeling "energized" by Trump. Perhaps that's because we know how fucking hard this is going to be, from years of fighting for progress inch by precious inch.
I don't have the luxury of believing that a leftist utopia will rise from the ashes of Trump's presidency. As I've written previously: "Let him tear it down and then we'll build something better than we ever had" was always an incredibly dangerous gambit. And an incredibly foolish one.
I will never stop being angry at the people who thought that was a risk worth taking, at the cost of millions of people's safety and lives.
They're giggling many of us right into the fucking grave.
Two Facts
1. David Brooks is still being employed by the New York Times to write a garbage column.
2. David Brooks is a terrible journalist.
You might imagine that second fact is actually just my opinion, but I assure you it is not. Brooks confesses that he is a terrible journalist right in the opening paragraphs of his latest garbage column, which is all about how the Russia investigation is overblown, and has been filed under the headline "Let's Not Get Carried Away." It begins thus:
I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces "raising serious questions" (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas.Because Brooks is a terrible journalist, it isn't clear what the actual nature is of the pieces that confused him. Were they "investigative pieces" or were they "essays"? I'm not professor of garbage columns, but I'm pretty sure that "investigative essays" aren't a thing.
Now I confess I couldn't follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport.
One might argue that Brooks' inability to follow the allegations made in his paper's "investigative essays" rendered him unfit to oversee its op-ed section, which was the playing field on which the national sport of speculation was played at the professional level.
One might further argue that Brooks' inability to understand details of presidential investigations renders him unfit to continue writing a column for the paper of record. Because, terrible journalist that he is and admits being, he does not make clear that the investigation of Team Trump's possible collusion with Russia is an outgrowth of an investigation into Russia's interference in our election, which is not in doubt. Ostensibly, the investigations are meant to tease out the various ways in which that interference was accomplished.
The investigation may or may not find evidence of collusion among the president's campaign staff and/or administration. But that's just part of a much bigger whole. And only a very, very terrible journalist would advise against "getting carried away" when there is so much at stake.
But maybe he just can't follow all the allegations being made. Perhaps the Times should hire someone who can.
Trump Is So Awful, He Almost Makes Me Feel Sorry for Sean Spicer. Almost.
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at first link.]
Yesterday, arrived this headline at Bloomberg: "Trump Communications Shake-Up May Start With New Role for Spicer." Aw geez. Donald Trump, the report said, was fixing to move Spicer away from the press podium and hire a new press secretary.
That's not surprising, of course. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has occasionally been showing up at the podium in Spicer's stead, and there have long (long in Trump-Time, where every one of his 152 days has seemed like an entire month) been rumors that Trump is unhappy with Spicer, for his abject failure to convince the White House Press Corps, virtually every journalist in the nation, and most citizens of the world that the transparently dishonest garbage he is obliged to disgorge are "facts" which definitely won't be undermined by his boss the president within hours or minutes or nanoseconds.
And not only does Trump make Spicer's already ridiculous job infinitely more difficult; he's also such a vengeful bully that he continually humiliates Spicer in the most cringe-inducing ways.
I mean, here is a headline at Politico this morning: "Spicer Searching for Candidates to Take Over White House Briefing." Oh godddddd!
"White House press secretary Sean Spicer is leading a search for his own replacement on the briefing room podium as part of a larger plan to shake up the White House communications operation, according to two people with knowledge of the effort." Mortifying.
It's not like we didn't already know that Trump is a fucking horrible human being, but this is just another exhibit in the overwhelming evidence file. Spicer is the most craven, sycophantic wreck, who has cast aside any semblance of integrity or dignity doing the dirty, humiliating work of spinning for Trump every day, while Trump constantly makes Spicer look foolish, and the way Trump thanks him is to further demean him by tasking him with finding his own replacement and probably ordering the leak.
Spicer has made his lie and now he can bed in it, but it really speaks to how awful Trump really is that I almost feel sorry for Spicer. Almost.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker RachelB: "What fictional character would you most like to spend a week with? Bonus: What would you do?"
Wonder Woman. And we'd spend our week sorting some shit out.
