Shakesville

Hurricane Harvey

Astronauts at the International Space Station captured stunning footage of Hurricane Harvey moving toward Texas, and it looks terrifying.

image from space of Hurricane Harvey

[Screencap from YouTube, care of NASA.]
I desperately hope that the effects of the hurricane are not as bad as is being predicted and expected.

Harvey is now centered 135 miles southeast of Corpus Christie, according to a recent update from the National Hurricane Center. While it isn't predicted to make landfall until later tonight or early tomorrow morning, tropical storm conditions are expected to reach residents of the middle and upper Texas coast by later this morning. Harvey is expected to be a major (Category 3+) hurricane at landfall, which would make it the first major hurricane landfall in the US since Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

A prolific fifteen to 25 inches of rain is predicted top drop up and down the cost, with isolated accumulation totals of up to 35 inches. The NHC warns of "life-threatening" coastal inundation from the storm surge, and urges residents to complete preparations to protect themselves and their property this morning. Widespread evacuation orders were issued along Texas's Gulf Coast yesterday.

As if the threat to coastal residents wasn't bad enough, Hurricane Harvey's track could also bring it perilously close to the enormous petroleum refineries encircling Galveston Bay. As Emily Atkin writes in the New Republic, Harvey has the potential to become a major pollution disaster.

The National Weather Service continues to issue serious warnings to residents in the area: "As Friday morning progressed, the National Weather Service said the coast only had a handful hours remaining to prepare for the storm, which began to strengthen. ...The weather service's latest warning at 7 a.m. warned residents near Victoria that 'now is the time to urgently high from the wind' and that properties remain subject to devastating to catastrophic winds."

Everyone should be on board with prioritizing everyone's safety, but of course the Border Patrol is going to make this situation as difficult as possible for undocumented people living in Texas.

Border Patrol keeping checkpoints open during #HurricaneHarvey. https://t.co/PG3kDhskvr Meanwhile, dozens of colonias are in path of storm. pic.twitter.com/cRIEWjvX09
— Teddy Wilson (@reportbywilson) August 25, 2017

Christ almighty. Undocumented Texans won't be able to get north of storm w/out threat of detention. https://t.co/50STCV9p46
— andrea grimes (@andreagrimes) August 25, 2017

Just despicable.

Be as safe as you can, friends in the path of the storm. Please feel welcome and encouraged to use this thread to share resources and information.

Trump Is the Ultimate Republican

Lots and lots of people will be falling all over themselves to praise former Senator John Danforth for penning an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he plays "no true Republican" in order to distance his party from Donald Trump — the Republican president who commandingly won a Republican primary and who sits in office despite violating the constitution since his first day in office because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Republican majority in the United States Senate have zero interest in holding a Republican president accountable if it means risking their Republican agenda.

"Trump Is Exactly What Republicans Are Not" proclaims the title of Danforth's opinion piece. Oh, but he is, sir. He is.

Danforth spends many paragraphs glorifying the history of the Republican Party, the "Party of Lincoln" — a moniker it has had no right to claim since the Southern Strategy.

And he soft-pedals some of his party's less upstanding moments. "We have seemed unfriendly to gay Americans," he writes. That's an extraordinary seven-word sentence that minimizes decades of hatred baked into his party's platform in the most breathtakingly insufficient manner. He fails entirely to mention the current hostilities his party directs at transgender Americans in state legislatures across the nation and from the White House. Naturally, he similarly fails to mention the misogyny that sits as the crown jewel in the center of his party's official bigotry.

After singing his party's praises and casually eliding his party's history of stoking and exploiting prejudices for electoral gain, Danforth then pivots to the point he so desperately wants to make: "Now comes Trump, who is exactly what Republicans are not, who is exactly what we have opposed in our 160-year history."

That's a sentence that only makes sense following hundreds of words defining the Republican Party's 160-year history as one of heroic defense of national unity and engaging in a sickening erasure of the divisive wedge-politicking against marginalized people.

Trump can only be "exactly what Republicans are not" if one carefully ignores that the Republicans are a party that privileges wealth (Trump is wealthy); a party that privileges being white and cishet and male (Trump is a white cishet man); a party that has long endeavored to cultivate ignorance (Trump doesn't know shit about shit); a party that has waged war on the "liberal media" (fake news); a party that has shamelessly trafficked in bias and scapegoating against people of color, women, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and non-Christians (Trump all day every day); a party hostile to the very idea of a social safety net (Trump has tried to destroy healthcare); a party intent on redistributing wealth upwards (Trump wants "tax reform" to do precisely that); a party that is institutionally hostile toward agency and consent (Trump is a serial sex abuser); and so forth and so on.

As I have noted previously: Trump is not an anomaly of Republican politics, but its inevitable endgame.

Trump did not emerge from a vacuum. The GOP laid the groundwork for Trump for decades. He's not an anomaly; he was an inevitability.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 17, 2016

Trump ascended as the uncensored id of the Republican base, which is why we were obliged to read story after story about Trump voters in Middle America commending him for "telling it like it is" and "just saying what everyone is really thinking."

He channeled and amplified the bigoted, fear-drenched rage that the Republican Party had carefully cultivated among their base for decades. Trump is not a betrayer of their values, but their most shameless promoter.

This is something Danforth would very much like us to ignore. He urges his fellow Republicans: "We cannot allow Donald Trump to redefine the Republican Party. That is what he is doing, as long as we give the impression by our silence that his words are our words and his actions are our actions. We cannot allow that impression to go unchallenged."

Even if that were true, too late. But it is not true: Trump has not redefined the Republican Party. He has simply refused to use the oh-so-civilized dogwhistles that the Republican Party has been using to create a thin veneer of claimed decency over the collection of vile policies and assorted bigotries the party patched together in their quest to pillage every last trace of treasure from the citizens of this nation.

Danforth concludes thus:

As has been true since our beginning, we Republicans are the party of Lincoln, the party of the Union. We believe in our founding principle. We are proud of our illustrious history. We believe that we are an essential part of present-day American politics. Our country needs a responsibly conservative party. But our party has been corrupted by this hateful man, and it is now in peril.

In honor of our past and in belief in our future, for the sake of our party and our nation, we Republicans must disassociate ourselves from Trump by expressing our opposition to his divisive tactics and by clearly and strongly insisting that he does not represent what it means to be a Republican.

Let me be blunt: This is a deeply cynical, profoundly dishonest, and aggressively gross misrepresentation of the Republican Party, the "illustrious history" of which includes relentless harm against vulnerable people.

The Republican Party has not been "corrupted" and imperiled by Donald Trump. It was corrupted by limitless greed and imperiled by an appalling lack of authentic patriotism, which centers empathy and community, not flags and sloganeering.

Trump is the very personification of that greed, of that empty flag-waving and sloganeering used to mask a void of compassion. He is the ultimate Republican.

And Republican leadership has, for decades, been nurturing a base that would deliver this ultimate Republican to the White House to represent his party in the most visible way. They don't get to "disassociate themselves from Trump" now. They own every goddamned part of his deplorable presidency.

Behold your roosting chickens, John Danforth.

Open Thread

image of a pink couch

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

Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Danikajaye: "If you were a character in a fantasy novel and anything was possible, what would you look like and what would you wear?"

I wouldn't wear anything, because, if anything were really possible, I would be a manatee!

image of a manatee with text reading: 'ME!'

A talking manatee who is also a very powerful witch, but a manatee nonetheless, my friends.

Throwback Thursdays

image of two sets of feet: a man's feet wearing shiny red shoes and a woman's feet wearing pink textured MaryJanes

Deeks and me in our going-out shoes. May 2016.
[Please share your own throwback pix in comments. Just make sure the pix are just of you and/or you have consent to post from other living people in the pic. And please note that they don't have to be pictures from childhood, especially since childhood pix might be difficult for people who come from abusive backgrounds or have transitioned or lots of other reasons. It can be a picture from last week, if that's what works for you. And of course no one should feel obliged to share a picture at all! Only if it's fun!]

The Swimming Thread

Since I've been sharing how swimming has become an important part of my self-care, I've gotten a ton of feedback, often in the form of incredibly moving emails, about how just talking about swimming — including and sometimes especially including how I am not a talented swimmer but enjoy it immensely all the same — has been inspiring to other people who have now taken it up themselves and/or rediscovered a love of swimming.

So I'm going to keep talking about it! And opening up space for other people to talk about it, too — whether it's sharing their own love of swimming or asking questions about how to dive in (literally).

I want to take a moment to note that access to public pools has a fraught, racist history in the United States, and there are still racialized community conflagrations over public pools and private community pools. There are also issues of access for disabled people, although more pools now, including the pool at which I swim, have assistance apparatus to aid people with physical disabilities. Transphobic locker room policies and fat-shaming can also serve as barriers for people who would like to swim.

Location and money can also be a problem: If you don't live in an area with any public pools or low-cost community gyms with pools, like the YMCA, you may struggle to find a place to swim. Sometimes low-cost chain gyms have pools, but many times the chain gyms with pools have more expensive monthly fees. And, strangely, hotel chains that offer gym memberships tend to only do so in urban centers, and not outside cities where access to a hotel gym could be very useful.

This is a space in which people can safely talk about the discouragements, intimidation, and official policing that have prevented them from or made them fearful of swimming. It's also a place to share resources and strategies in how to deal with these things.

On the subject of cost, let me note that now is a good time of year (in this hemisphere, anyway) to buy a suit! The closer to the end of summer, the better deals you'll find on swimsuits. I recently purchased a new suit for $20 which was originally $110 at the beginning of the season. Yowza!

For those of you who may be wanting to swim, but body consciousness is a difficult issue for you, let's talk for a moment about how many different kind of suits are now available for people of all sizes! Especially if you haven't looked at buying a swimsuit in awhile, you may be surprised by the lovely variation these days.

I have no body consciousness around swimsuits anymore. I own several suits, including a high-waisted bikini. That suit is great for lounging poolside and having a lazy swim, but it's not great for swimming laps. Hence the multiple suits, for different purposes.

My most covered-up suit is also my favorite for swimming laps. It's a high-neck razorback two-piece, with capri length bottoms.

image of me standing in my dining room wearing a two-piece striped bathing suit, a pink swim cap, and purple goggles

Chlorine Resistant Tahoe Capri Set from Swimsuits for All.
I love this suit. Not only does it wear well and make me feel like a dang dolphin in the water, but I've swum countless miles in it, and it's holding up beautifully. Highly recommended!

There are a ton of sites that now sell fashionable and functional suits for women (and men) of almost every size, and looking at swimsuits is one of my favorite bits of online window-shopping, so if you're looking for something specific and can't find it, I might be able to help.

I'm also, quite frankly, willing to answer any and all questions around being a fat woman who swims. How I navigate the locker room, what strokes I do, how I deal with shitty looks and comments, what's the best suit cut for what body shape to cover all the bits, anything.

I regret that I spent a lot of time not swimming because of various discouragements, so if I can help anyone else avoid or get past that, I will. Just holler.

Anyway. Have at it in comments!

Electing Donald Trump Was Not Progressive

[Content Note: White supremacy; homophobia; misogyny.]

John Sides at the Washington Post: Did Enough Bernie Sanders Supporters Vote for Trump to Cost Clinton the Election? A provocative question, without, frankly, a clearly definitive answer.

Two surveys estimate that 12 percent of Sanders voters voted for Trump. A third survey suggests it was 6 percent.

...There is no way to know whether 12 percent or 6 percent or some other estimate is The Truth, and there are enough differences among these surveys that we cannot easily pinpoint why the numbers differ. So we should take these estimates with some caution.

...Even if we assume that the overall percentage of Sanders supporters who voted for Trump was 6 percent and not 12 percent, and assume therefore that we can cut every state estimate in half, the estimated number of Sanders-Trump voters would still exceed Trump's margin of victory.

But again, attach a lot of caveats to that analysis.

Still:

Sanders -> Trump voters…
WI: 51k
MI: 47k
PA: 116k

Trump win margin…
WI: 22k
MI: 10k
PA: 44k

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/0buUsnsMA9
— G Elliott Morris📈🙂 (@gelliottmorris) August 23, 2017

But the following finding is what I really wanted to highlight, because it knocks down yet another variation on the "economic anxiety" narrative that was so pervasive in explaining lots of voting decisions in the 2016 election:

Schaffner found that what distinguished Sanders-Trump voters from Sanders-Clinton voters wasn't their attitudes about trade, but their attitudes about race. When asked whether whites are advantaged, Sanders-Trump voters were much more likely to disagree than were Sanders-Clinton voters.

...[I]n December 2011, 75 percent of Sanders-Trump voters agreed with this statement: "If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites." Only 16 percent of Sanders-Clinton voters agreed.

Similarly, when how they felt about whites and blacks on a 0-100 scale, Sanders-Trump voters rated blacks 9 points lower than Sanders-Clinton voters. But Sanders-Trump voters rated whites 8 points higher.

The same thing was true for other minority groups. Compared with Sanders-Clinton voters, Sanders-Trump voters rated Latinos 21 points less favorably, Muslims 21 points less favorably, and gays and lesbians 22 points less favorably.

Hmm. I wonder how they felt about women, and what that might have meant for Hillary Clinton. But let's continue to not explore that question.

Anyway.

Naturally, there will be the usual protestations and complaints about "relitigating the election," but this is important stuff to scrutinize given Sanders' determination to reshape the Democratic Party in his own image.

As Sides notes, "Sanders is still being discussed as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2020. New data is shedding light, however, on Sanders's role in the last election — and on how many Sanders voters ended up supporting Trump. It's a question many in the party will be asking about a candidate who may want to compete again for the Democratic nomination."

On that note, here's something from Roy Delfino you might want to read: Ten Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Must Be Stopped.

Daily Dose of Cute

image of Zelda the Black and Tan Mutt sitting in the living room, looking out the dining room window

Thoughtful Zelly. I love this dog.
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 217

a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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: No YOU'RE Divisive! and Another Reason Trump Isn't Fit to Be President and This Seems Important.

[Content Note: Trans hatred] Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: White House to Direct Military to Bar Transgender People from Enlisting. "Nearly a month after [Donald] Trump announced in a series of tweets that he would ban transgender individuals from serving in the military, the White House is prepared to send guidance to the Pentagon on the implementation of the ban, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday night. Defense Secretary James Mattis will have six months to put the new policy in place, according to the Wall Street Journal. The memo directs the military to reject transgender people who apply to serve and orders the Pentagon to stop paying for medical services for the transgender troops already serving."

1. Are transgender service members feeling "much more proud than they were last year at this time" do you think?

2. In good news, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLADLaw) is already all over it.

We have already filed suit together with @NCLRights to stop this baseless #TransMilitaryBan https://t.co/wGxGNcEAy5
— GLAD (@GLADLaw) August 24, 2017

* * *

[CN: White supremacy] Addy Baird at ThinkProgress: Trump Retweets Bigoted Conspiracy Theorist. "Donald Trump retweeted a meme from an account Thursday morning that has pushed conspiracy theories, advocated violence against protesters, and seems to believe white Americans are under attack for being white. The retweet came in the midst of a tweetstorm ridden with basic grammar mistakes in which Trump attacked both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), as well as the 'Fake News' media." And the tweet that Trump decided was so important he just had to retweet it?

The President of the United States retweeted this. pic.twitter.com/puOsw21cvP
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 24, 2017

The image is of Trump "eclipsing" President Obama by slowly moving in front of him, accompanied by text reading: "THE BEST ECLIPSE EVER!"

I mean, apart from the fact that Trump (1) retweeted a white supremacist to (2) insult Obama yet again, he also (3) showed what a complete dipshit he is, as sharing this meme means he's proudly bragging about being a cold, lifeless body blocking out the sunshine, i.e. Obama. Good grief this guy.

* * *

Josh Dawsey and Elana Schor at Politico: Trump Clashed with Multiple GOP Senators over Russia. "Trump's chewing out of GOP senators, according to people briefed on the calls, reflected the president's frustration that fellow Republicans would make moves that could damage him, particularly on an investigation that he detests. Trump also complained about the Russian sanctions measure in a call with McConnell earlier this month that devolved into shouting. ...'It seems he is just always focused on Russia,' one senior GOP aide said." Very reassuring that there's nothing for investigators to uncover. Ahem.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Margaret Talev and Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: General Kelly Commands the White House, But He Can't Control Trump. That's...quite a headline. Some amazing parsing there. Anyway. "Trump's appointment of Kelly has imposed new order on a White House that had been riven with infighting among warring camps. But it hasn't been the political lifeline Republican allies had hoped for, as Kelly has so far been unable to perform one of the chief of staff's most basic duties: to stop a president from following his worst instincts. Trump's controversial initial response to the violence in Charlottesville, compounded by an off-the-cuff press conference days later and then defended again in a divisive, revisionist speech Tuesday in Phoenix, have laid bare the limits of Kelly's ability to manage his boss." Hahahahaha ya think?!

Eric Holthaus at Grist: A Texas-Size Flood Threatens the Gulf Coast, and We're So Not Ready.

In what could become the first major natural disaster of the Trump presidency, meteorologists are sounding the alarm for potentially historic rainfall over the next several days in parts of Texas and Louisiana. This is the kind of storm you drop everything to pay attention to.

The National Weather Service posted a hurricane and storm surge watch for most of the Texas coastline, and the governors of Texas and Louisiana have begun to assemble emergency response teams. Hurricane hunter aircraft are monitoring the development of the storm, which was just west of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday afternoon.

...The National Hurricane Center expects Harvey to stall out once it reaches the Texas coastline on Friday, and experts are worried about what might happen next. The official NHC forecast calls for the possibility of more than 20 inches of rain in isolated parts of Texas and Louisiana by next Wednesday, but some individual weather models predict twice that.

Has anyone even tried to talk to Donald Trump about this impending potential disaster? Or do they know that he won't care and won't instruct anyone to prepare? Is anyone in place to make sure that federal preparations are made, irrespective of the president's indifference? Are there even sufficient funds available to ensure sufficient federal disaster readiness and response? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. It took Trump six months to install a new FEMA chief, so Brock Long has only had two months to acquaint himself with the job.

[CN: Image of rats] Emily Atkin at the New Republic: America Is on the Verge of Ratpocalypse. "Warmer weather is fueling a rodent surge, straining public health systems and the economy. It's time for the federal government to step in." Not good. Especially since it requires attention from the federal government, which is intractably dysfunctional at the moment and for the foreseeable future. (No jokes comparing Trump and/or his supporters to rats, please. Not only does comparing people to vermin have an ugly eliminationist history, but it's frankly an insult to rats, which are highly intelligent and sensitive creatures. It's not their fault they carry disease!)

Dana Liebelson at the Huffington Post: Infrastructure Advisers Quit; Say Trump's Actions Threaten Homeland Security. "Another White House council has taken a hit after [Donald] Trump's controversial response to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Seven members of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, which includes Obama appointees, resigned this week, citing Trump's Charlottesville response and other issues. 'Your actions have threatened the security of the homeland I took an oath to protect,' the resigning members wrote in a letter sent Monday and obtained by HuffPost. ...'You failed to denounce the intolerance and violence of hate groups,' the letter read."

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] David Edwards at Raw Story: White House 'Rapid Response' Director Quits — and It Takes Trump Staff Three Days to Admit It. [Insert your own jokes here.] "After three days, the Trump administration admitted this week that Andy Hemming, the White House director of rapid response, has quit. ...Although Hemming declined to comment on leaving, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the news. Sanders told Politico that there was a '[m]utual decision that he could best help promote the president's agenda on the outside. Andy is smart and very talented and we wish him all the best.'" I don't know what "on the outside" means, but I guess we should pay attention to see if he ends up working with Bannon.

[CN: Violence; transphobia] Nassim Benchaabane at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Driver Pushes into Protesters in St. Louis Street; 3 People Sustain Minor Injuries. There are competing accounts of what happened here. Witnesses say the driver accelerated his car into protesters at a vigil for Kiwi Herring, a trans woman who was fatally shot by police. Police say protesters were injured after jumping onto the car. To me, this seems very telling: "[Witness Keith] Rose said other drivers had turned off onto side streets rather than driving through the group." Mm-hmm.

In tentative good news...

James Barragán at the Dallas News: Federal Judge Blocks Further Implementation of Texas' Voter ID Law. "A federal judge in Corpus Christi blocked further implementation of Texas' controversial voter identification law, after finding for a second time that it intentionally discriminates against minorities. In a court order Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos blocked Texas from implementing portions of the 2011 voter ID law, which was considered to be one of the strictest in the country. And in a striking blow to the state, she blocked entirely a revamp to the law that the Texas Legislature passed earlier this year as Senate Bill 5. The legislation was an effort to appease Ramos and do away with the finding of discriminatory intent."

Rick Hasen has more at Election Law Blog, including information on what happens next.

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

This Seems Important

With all the focus on Donald Trump defending white supremacy and threatening to start a nuclear war with North Korea, it's easy to forget (read: it's possible that your overwhelmed, fried-out panic centers forced your brain to momentarily hit pause on being worried) that Trump is a traitor who probably colluded with Russia to get elected and may be colluding with them still.

So here's a timely reminder about that!

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Manu Raju and Marshall Cohen at CNN: Top Trump Aide's Email Draws New Scrutiny in Russia Inquiry.

Congressional investigators have unearthed an email from a top Trump aide that referenced a previously unreported effort to arrange a meeting last year between Trump campaign officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

The aide, Rick Dearborn, who is now [Donald] Trump's deputy chief of staff, sent a brief email to campaign officials last year relaying information about an individual who was seeking to connect top Trump officials with Putin, the sources said.

The person was only identified in the email as being from "WV," which one source said was a reference to West Virginia. It's unclear who the individual is, what he or she was seeking, or whether Dearborn even acted on the request. One source said that the individual was believed to have had political connections in West Virginia, but details about the request and who initiated it remain vague.

The same source said Dearborn in the email appeared skeptical of the requested meeting.

Sources said the email occurred in June 2016 around the time of the recently revealed Trump Tower meeting where Russians with Kremlin ties met with the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

Two things:

1. Rick Dearborn was Jeff Sessions' chief of staff when he was a Senator. He "was involved in helping to arrange an April 2016 event at the Mayflower Hotel where Trump delivered a major foreign policy address," which was attended by former Russian Ambassador (and top spy recruiter) Sergey Kislyak, as well as Sessions — which Sessions failed to disclose.

2. The unnamed individual from West Virginia may be West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who recently switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican, which he announced at a rally with Trump. He is also the owner of a coal mine that he sold (for cash) to a Russian coal company owned by a Russian oligarch who's a friend of Putin, and then repurchased from him several years later. Sarah Kendzior has a good thread with more information on Justice and his dealings with the Russians.

Thread on Jim Justice Russia deals in light of "WV" source in Trump campaign email https://t.co/Gb0zYmZ1zo
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) August 24, 2017

Bob Mueller's investigation continues.

Another Reason Trump Isn't Fit to Be President

Yesterday, I dropped a tweet into the comments of the We Resist thread:

Trump on vets he met backstage: "They’re so proud once again. I must say, much more proud than they were last year at this time."
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) August 23, 2017

That quote didn't get much attention. And in the barrage of daily indecencies and indignities that define Donald Trump's despicable presidency, it's understandable that his boasting about how he has Made the Troops Proud Again registered as a mere blip on the radar.

But I have been thinking about that quote ever since I read it.

It's not that I believe it's impossible some military veterans are prouder now that Donald Trump is the president. Of course that's possible. (Especially since there are white supremacists in or veterans of the U.S. military, including neo-Nazis.) And it bothers me that some veterans are pleased to have an authoritarian white supremacist as their Commander-in-Chief.

But it bothers me even more that Trump bragged about it.

Trump often makes incredible claims about things people have told him, which no one else seems to have ever heard anyone say. So we have no idea if there are actual, living, breathing veterans of the U.S. military who looked their president in the eye and told him they are much prouder these days, or if Trump asked some vets he met an inappropriate question about their levels of pride and they murmured whatever they thought they should, or if he made up the whole thing altogether.

But it doesn't really matter — because more important than whether it was a lie is the fact that he would say it at all, even if it were true.

Because Trump isn't just flattering himself here; he's insulting President Barack Obama (again). Implicit in his comment is that U.S. military veterans couldn't be proud of the former Commander-in-Chief. (There's also the parallel implication that they wouldn't have been proud if Hillary Clinton had won.) They weren't so proud "last year at this time," but now they're "so proud once again."

This is just an extraordinary thing to say. It is something that Presidents of the United States just don't say. Ever. I cannot recall a sitting president ever saying anything even close to the suggestion that veterans did not respect their predecessor.

It is aggressively disrespectful to insult a former president this way, and it is aggressively disrespectful to use veterans to do it, and it is aggressively disrespectful to the office he holds.

There are so many reasons that Trump is unfit to be president, and here is yet one more. He has no respect for his office, which has always been abundantly clear, and further no respect for the discretion regarding its other inhabitants required to ensure the continued respectability of that office.

It's not that presidents are disallowed from criticizing other presidents — although, truthfully, that is very rare outside of campaigns. But what Trump is doing is not "criticism." It is a smear.

It is a smear designed to suggest that the military did not respect its first Black Commander-in-Chief, and wouldn't have respected its first female Commander-in-Chief, and only now that they are once again being commanded by a white man has their pride truly been restored.

That is ugly. That is not presidential. It is sinister.

No YOU'RE Divisive!

Poll: 62 percent of voters say Trump is doing more to divide country https://t.co/gNaBWwgnSb pic.twitter.com/lFgeH7gKza
— POLITICO (@politico) August 24, 2017

And 38 percent of voters say TRUMP IS NOT DIVISIVE! YOU ARE! YOU'RE STEALING OUR CULTURE! BUILD THAT WALL! LOCK HER UP! FAKE NEWS! https://t.co/ABCRukTdL9
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 24, 2017

Open Thread

image of a yellow couch

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

Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Drazil: "Would you prefer to live with pets or without? Cats, dogs, or...?"

I think we all know my answer to that one, lol.

The Wednesday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by a gold crown.

Recommended Reading:

Bellamy Shoffner: [Content Note: Discussion of police brutality; racism; gun violence] Why I Didn't Call the Cops When I Saw a Teen with a Gun

Rhett Jones: [CN: Violence; death; descriptionso of violence] Torso Identified as Missing Journalist Who Was Allegedly Killed by Submarine Designer

Aya: [CN: Racism; appropriation] On Being the Black friend

Charline Jao: State Department Science Envoy Resigns with Letter That Spells "IMPEACH"

Michael Fitzgerald: Katie Sowers Just Came Out and Is the First Openly Gay NFL Coach

Sameer Rao: [video content] Issa Rae, Maxine Waters, Solange Pay Tribute to Greatness of Black Women at "Black Girls Rock!"

[CN: White supremacy; eliminationism; racist violence; death.] The following is not a blog post; it's a long-form piece by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, but it is a must read. Settle in and take the time to read the whole thing. The last few paragraphs in particular are breathtaking.

A Most American Terrorist: The Making Of Dylann Roof https://t.co/5lEMP9ISZa by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah pic.twitter.com/0Z0vJIr7lu
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) August 21, 2017

I urgently hope that white editors in particular will read this and understand that only a Black woman could have written it.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 23, 2017

Diversify your writing staffs. There are things we need to read that white men will never be able to write.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 23, 2017

Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!

Back to School

A number of Shakers are heading back to school this week (I won't name any names on the main page without permission, but please feel welcome to raise your hands in comments, if you like!), some of whom are starting new programs; some of whom are returning to school after a long absence; some of whom are just heading back after summer break; and some of whom are starting not as students but instructors.

I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you well. Hope the year is good for you. For those of you who have been anxious about heading (back) to school, I hope your anxiety subsides quickly as you get into your routine.

Please feel free to use this thread to talk about all Back to School related subjects. Parents who are seeing kids off to school for the first time, or to a new school; teachers who are excited to go back or dreading going back; students at any level of their education... Have at it in comments!

Discussion Thread: Self-Care

What are you doing to do to take care of yourself today, or in the near future, as soon as you can?

If you are someone who has a hard time engaging in self-care, or figuring out easy, fast, and/or inexpensive ways to treat yourself, and you would like to solicit suggestions, please feel welcome. And, as always, no one should offer advice unless it is solicited.

Daily Dose of Cute

image of Matilda the Fuzzy Sealpoint Cat lying beside me on the couch, reaching her paws out toward me

FUZZY LITTLE CUDDLE MONSTER! ♥
Matilda was lying next to me just purring away, reaching her paws out beneath the pillow to find my leg and knead and knead and knead, while I rubbed her head and belleh (except for a wee break to snap this photo, natch).

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 216

a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

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 Doubles Down in Phoenix and Deplorable Dispatches.

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Kellie Hwang and Garrett Mitchell at AZ Central: Fake News? Trump Supporters Circulate Photo of Phoenix Rally Crowds...But it's Not. "Social media is a glorious place. You see something, it looks cool, and so you retweet it. And sometimes that gets you into trouble. Such was the case Tuesday night, when Tennessee Republicans and other supporters of [Donald] Trump started sharing an image of what was purportedly a massive crowd gathered in the streets of Phoenix ahead of his speech. Only problem? The photo is actually an aerial shot from the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers parade. And frankly, anyone who is at all familiar with Phoenix should have known better. It's a desert, people."

LOLOLOLOLOL! The fake news is coming from inside the house!

Indeed, despite the caterwauling about the haters and losers of the fake news media concealing Trump's massive support in Phoenix, the crowd was startlingly sparse.

Trump appears to be extremely agitated about his crowd size in Phoenix.

It'd be shame if everyone retweeted to show his actual crowd size. pic.twitter.com/rqGCRryG3M
— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) August 23, 2017

And as Jenna Johnson reports at the Washington Post: As Trump Ranted and Rambled in Phoenix, His Crowd Slowly Thinned.

Trump spent the first three minutes of his speech — which would drag on for 75 minutes — marveling at his crowd size, claiming that "there aren't too many people outside protesting," predicting that the media would not broadcast shots of his "rather incredible" crowd and reminiscing about how he was "center stage, almost from day one, in the debates."

...But as the night dragged on, many in the crowd lost interest in what the president was saying.

Hundreds left early, while others plopped down on the ground, scrolled through their social media feeds or started up a conversation with their neighbors. After waiting for hours in 107-degree heat to get into the rally hall — where their water bottles were confiscated by security — people were tired and dehydrated and the president just wasn't keeping their attention.

Come for the racism; stay for the fact that it feels safer to face shouting anti-racist protesters in a group if you leave all together.

One person who did love Trump's speech last night? Steve Bannon. Obvs.

Bannon loved Trump's speech last night, a couple Breitbart sources tell @swin24 and me https://t.co/o5UpIRHLYR
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 23, 2017

And one person who, like all other people with a modicum of sense and decency, really didn't care for the speech is former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Rachel Chason at the Washington Post: James Clapper Questions Trump's Fitness, Worries About His Access to Nuclear Codes. (Someone at the Washington Post is killing it with their headline game!) Clapper questioned Trump's "fitness for office following his freewheeling speech in Phoenix on Tuesday night, which Clapper labeled 'downright scary and disturbing.' 'I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,' Clapper told CNN's Don Lemon early Wednesday morning. 'I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it — maybe he is looking for a way out.'"

I don't think he's looking for a way out — he's far too egomaniacal and loath to admit failure for that — but I sure hope someone is fixing to give him a way out all the same. And soon.

* * *

Eric Levitz at New York Magazine: GOP Mulls Paying for Tax Cuts Through Shameless Lying. "Permanent tax cuts are probably still out of the GOP's reach, regardless of their budgetary gimmickry. But if the Trump administration is to pass any major legislation, it will need to follow the lead of these House Republicans, and concentrate on their party's strengths: Passing tax reforms that disadvantage powerful interest groups isn't one of them; drafting fraudulent budgets is." Seethe.

Jessica Mason Pieklo at Rewire: Lawsuit: Trump's Election Commission Is Hiding Public Information. "Trump in May signed an executive order creating the 'Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,' led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kris Kobach... The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School and the Protect Democracy Project filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court in New York to compel the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Management and Budget to answer requests and disclose public information related to the commission. ...'This administration has a troubling pattern of keeping public information from the public—a pattern that is continuing with this commission,' Wendy Weiser, director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. 'The government's obligation to share this information is especially important when there are so many reasons to be skeptical of this commission.'"

JUST IN: Secret Service to stop deleting White House visitor log information https://t.co/6nrzMVcKRU pic.twitter.com/8rjEOwKCIE
— The Hill (@thehill) August 23, 2017

Uhhh.

[CN: White supremacy; anti-Black racism; Nazism] Jay Dow at Kirstin Cole at PIX11: Nazi Propaganda and Jim Crow Graffiti on Building Terrifies Sunnyside Neighbors. "Residents say they will rally Wednesday because they are fearful and intimidated by Nazi propaganda, Jim Crow-era images, and a condo board president allegedly donning a [Donald] Trump mask. Elevator surveillance video allegedly shows Neil Milano, wearing a mask of the president, plastering the door with Trump stickers in a would be attempt to 'menace' his neighbors in Sunnyside at a building on 39th Place. ...Milano is the condo board president of a building around the corner, where he's put up other references to [Donald] Trump, and a lot more. From provocative Jim Crow-era images, to banners of Adolf Hitler, all framed around what Milano's lawyer calls a historical display." Fucking hell.

Haroon Siddique and Oliver Laughland at the Guardian: Charlottesville: United Nations Warns U.S. over 'Alarming' Racism. "A UN committee charged with tackling racism has issued an 'early warning' over conditions in the US and urged the Trump administration to 'unequivocally and unconditionally' reject discrimination. The warning specifically refers to events last week in Charlottesville, Virginia, where civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed when a car rammed into a group of people protesting against a white nationalist rally. Such statements are usually issued by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) over fears of ethnic or religious conflict. In the past decade, the only other countries issued with an early warning were Burundi, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, and Nigeria." Welp.

Kenrya Rankin at Colorlines: A Rabbi Asked Paul Ryan If He Supports Censuring Trump for His Comments on Charlottesville. Here's What He Said. "[D]uring a town hall in Racine, Wisconsin, Rabbi Dena Feingold asked House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) what 'concrete steps' he would take to hold the president accountable 'when his words and executive actions either implicitly or explicitly condone — if not champion — racism and xenophobia. For example, will you support the resolution for censure?' Ryan's response: 'I will not support that; I think that will be so counterproductive. If we descend this issue into some partisan hack fest, into some bickering against each other and demean it down into some kind of political food fight, what good does that do to unify this country? We want to unify this country against this kind of hatred and this kind of bigotry.'" Asshole.

[CN: Sexual assault] Elizabeth McLaughlin at ABC News: Fort Benning Drill Sergeants Suspended Pending Sexual Assault Investigation. "The Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, along with the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, were investigating a recent charge of sexual assault by a female trainee against a drill sergeant when [additional allegations of sexual misconduct between trainees and drill sergeants] were discovered, the center said in a press release Wednesday. Now, the drill sergeants under review have been suspended pending the expanded investigation. The Army said they will have no contact with trainees while the investigation is carried out."

Sexual assault in the U.S. military has long been a problem in desperate need of meaningful attention. Advocates were just beginning to finally make some headway when the nation decided to elect a confessed sexual abuser as Commander-in-Chief. So here we are.

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

Deplorable Dispatches

Oh, terrific. YET ANOTHER profile of Trump supporters. *jumps into volcano* https://t.co/rG6BX1Bn6U
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 23, 2017

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH STOP STOP STOP PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU STOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP STOP AHHHHHHHHHHH NO

Enough already. These people made a terrible, destructive, dangerous decision in voting for Donald Trump. And now the media wants to continually give them a platform to talk about that decision, as if they might have made it out of ignorance about who Trump is (nope!) or as if there is some value to letting them speak endlessly about their choice to cast a vote for a corrupt, bigoted, serial sex predator (also nope!) or as if there is something to be gleaned from mining the thoughts of people who insistently support an authoritarian bully who they have convinced themselves doesn't hold them in utter contempt (a third time nope).

There is no value in any of it. Enough.