On the Parkland School Shooting

[Content Note: Guns; death; injury; domestic violence.]

Yesterday in Parkland, Florida, a 19-year-old named Nikolas Cruz went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, from which he had been expelled, and began shooting with a semiautomatic rifle. He killed 17 people and wounded 14 others, 5 of them seriously.

Cruz escaped the scene by disappearing into the crowd of fleeing students, but was later arrested and charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

At this point, the names of those killed and wounded have not been made public. My sympathies to the families, friends, classmates and/or colleagues, and community of those lost. I am so sorry. I hope those who are injured or traumatized or both have access to the resources they need to begin healing. ETA. Here are the victims of the Parkland shooting.

I am so profoundly sad and so profoundly angry.

Details about Cruz are still thin, but the picture that begins to emerge is one of a troubled kid who became a dangerous adult; whose mother, who recently died, was overwhelmed and had very little structural support, because we have collectively decided that supporting parents isn't an investment our culture should be making; whose apparent threat to become "a professional school shooter" was investigated by authorities to seemingly no consequence; and who, like virtually every other mass shooter before him, has a history of domestic violence: "Student Victoria Olvera, 17, said Cruz had been abusive to his ex-girlfriend and that his expulsion was over a fight with her new boyfriend."

There were lots of flags. Cruz had reportedly been "getting treatment at a mental health clinic for a while, but hadn't been there for more than a year."

Which underscores a point I've made repeatedly, in response to the ubiquitous urge to greet every mass shooting with the same tired talking points about mental illness: Not all mass shooters can be helped by psychiatric care, even if they have access to it. This is The Thing we don't want to talk about at all — that there are dangerous people who can't be "fixed" by all the mental healthcare in the world.

And if Cruz could have been helped, it clearly wasn't possible, for whatever constellation of reasons, to keep him in treatment.

The only practical and reasonable solution is reducing access to guns. And yet that is the one solution the governing party of this country refuses to try. They won't even brook discussion of it, despite the fact that yesterday's massacre was the 18th school shooting in the United States in the first 44 days of 2018, and despite the fact that three of the deadliest mass shootings in modern American history have occured in just the last five months.

Things are only getting worse, not better. And the best solutions that the Republican Party has to offer are: 1. More guns! 2. Continue to treat mass shootings like a force of nature for which we all must just do our best to prepare, like tornadoes or earthquakes.

Well, here's how that's working out: More guns is clearly resulting in more violence, and obliging schools to respond to school shootings by instituting safety drills may be saving lives, or:

Listen to the last part of this interview where the interviewee says the shooter had been at the school drills. Think of that: Schools preparing for active shooter situations *train student shooters on what to expect*. https://t.co/SOPTtqZbya

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 14, 2018

That is not the fault of school administrators, who have no other choice but to prepare their students for mass shootings just like they prepare them for fires or natural disasters.

It's the fault of the governing party and the pro-gun organization to which they're beholden and their gun-loving base, who have unilaterally decided, because they are selfish and fearful and cruel, that it's fine to abandon all reason and decency, and to renege on our social contract to protect schoolchildren and their teachers.

Nearly 500 people have been killed in more than 200 school shootings since Sandy Hook. Anyone who is okay with that, anyone who continues to insist despite all evidence to the contrary that reducing access to guns isn't the answer, is abetting the next shooter. And the next. And every single one thereafter until they finally agree that protecting gun ownership isn't as important as protecting human lives.

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Open Thread

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Mama_Skywalker: "What simple thing would you like to be better at? I am terrible at eating alone."

Picking up additional languages. Some people would disagree that qualifies as a "simple thing," but simple is relative. I know people for whom picking up new languages is simple, so I guess the point is that I wish it were simple for me.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Woman's Best Friend.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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Storytelling: A Man, a Shopping Cart, and Why We Can't Have Nice Things

If you click the embedded sound file, you will hear me telling a story about something I saw recently and how it felt emblematic of the routine failures of responsibility and kindness that underwrite the erosion of democratic social infrastructure, in the vacuum of which authoritarianism thrives. A small thing, which represented something far more significant to me.

If you are unable to listen to audio, a complete transcript is below.

Transcript:

On a recent Saturday evening, Iain and I went for a late-night swim. It was an unseasonably warm winter night; we needed coats, but just barely. There was no rain, and the ground was dry, free of any snow or ice. These details are not intended just to paint a picture; they are important to this story.

After the gym, we went to a 24-hour grocery store, to pick up a few items for the next day. What we picked up is incidental. Those details do not matter.

What you need to know, however, about this particular grocery store is that it is an upscale chain whose patrons are (mostly) well-heeled, and that its cart returns in the parking lot are pretty fancy, at least by the standards I'm used to. They're covered with little roofs, to reduce the wear from sitting in rain and snow and blazing sunshine. And there are two kinds of carts, each with its own clearly marked lane in the covered cart return: Large shopping carts — the traditional kind — and upright carts. Smaller; two baskets on wheels, basically.

When we left the store with its sophisticated cart returns, into a midnight hour chilly and dry, in our line of sight across the virtually empty parking lot was a man. Here are the things I know about him: He was white, appeared to be in his mid-50s, was wearing an NFL franchise branded winter coat, drives a new-model white minivan with white stick figures of his family decaled on the rear window, and he had just finished shopping.

I know that last detail because we just caught him slamming down the van hatch and turning toward his empty cart. A large one. He was parked directly across the driving lane from a cart return. Maybe 15 yards, if that.

Now, at this point, you may be thinking: I bet this is a story about a person who didn't put his cart in the correct place in the cart return. That's a pretty good guess. Clearly, I am the sort of person who is annoyed by the seemingly endless number of wealthy, entitled drips who refuse to abide by the request to return carts into one of two lanes — lanes marked with both LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS and pictures of each cart shape, for anyone who may be illiterate or non-English speaking.

That I might have been irritated to distraction by a man lazily ignoring the store's simple and reasonable request, and instead just dumping his cart into the huge, chaotic jumble, seems very likely. But I assure you and regret to inform you: It was worse.

We were parked in the same row as the man — it was one of only two rows anyone was parked in, the closest spots to the front door, since it was quite late on this cool and arid weekend night — so we were walking toward him when we saw him grab the cart roughly, pull it toward him, then HEAVE it toward the cart return, lifting one of his legs up and behind him like a figure skater as he delivered the grand shove.

The cart careened in the general direction of the cart return — and also in the general direction of the car parked immediately beside it. I watched with horror as it nearly missed the bumper of the parked car and instead smashed, hard, directly into the outer rails of the cart return.

Never mind not putting his cart in the right lane; he didn't even get it in the cart return.

The man turned, satisfied, to get into his van. He caught me looking at him, open-mouthed and frozen in my tracks by the shock of what I'd just seen. He gave me a dirty look before hopping into his vehicle and pulling away — forward, naturally, and diagonally across empty spaces, breaking every rule of safely traversing a parking lot.

Perhaps I have mentioned that it was not a particularly cold night, nor a wet one. It was downright pleasant for midwinter. I don't know if the man was able-bodied, but I know he was able-bodied enough to walk the cart to the return, which would have been a less athletic feat than hurling it. Had he been in a desperate hurry, I doubt he'd have taken time to pause and smugly appreciate his fine flinging skills, nor to pause once more to give me a good glaring-at.

I am a person who presumes that people have decent or at least understandable reasons for doing the things that they do. I considered many possibilities, and I dismissed them all.

What I witnessed was just full-tilt shameless fuckery.

Iain and I loaded our items into the back of our car, then I walked our cart to the cart return. And then I got the man's cart and walked it to the cart return, too.

As I returned it to the correct lane, I pictured him hurling it and recalled his shitty face twisted into a self-satisfied grimace. And something in my brain just…broke.

I have been watching privileged people recklessly launch their fucking shopping carts and entirely missing the cart return my whole life. And I have been putting their fucking shopping carts where they belong my whole life, because I know if I don't do it, it will just be someone else's mess to clean up, so I might as well pitch in to the magnificent, sprawling campaign of cleaning up privileged people's fucking shopping carts, because they can't be bothered to stop making a goddamned mess with their fucking shopping carts.

I got in the car and began bitterly venting my spleen about this man and his fucking shopping cart, which Iain generously obliged. All the way home, I went on about this man throwing his fucking shopping cart just because he couldn't be arsed to walk it to the cart return, like his time is too bloody precious to participate in the social habits that maintain order.

His cavalier disregard for other people's property; his gross indolence; his sneering delight at his own hostility for the most basic decency.

This is why we can't have nice things. Like a functional democracy or social justice or world peace.

And many things far smaller than that.

Because there are too many people who can walk their fucking shopping carts to the cart return and put them in the correct lane, but won't.

Who think that those of us who do are suckers. Rubes. Sticklers. Nerds.

Losers.

And so we are. We are losing many things that I fear we will never get back. I shiver to contemplate the things we still have yet to lose, and the pain that it will cause.

He was just a man with a fucking shopping cart, behaving like an ass in a way that isn't even unfamiliar. But he was emblematic of something intolerable to me; of the throngs who are convinced beyond dissuasion that making an effort to do the right thing is not just unnecessary, but beneath them.

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We Resist: Day 391

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) 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: This Is Very Scary.

[Content Note: Nativism] Sabrina Siddiqui at the Guardian: DREAMers Deadlock: Congress at Impasse as Pressure Mounts to Act.

US lawmakers remained at loggerheads on Tuesday over an immigration overhaul as pressure mounted for Congress to act before the expiration of a program that protects hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The Senate was poised this week to begin a highly-anticipated debate on the issue, with Donald Trump seeking enhanced border security measures and other drastic changes to the immigration system in exchange for providing a pathway to citizenship to the so-called "DREAMers" — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children.

But even as varying proposals were floated by members of both parties, senators voiced doubts that any of the plans put forward had sufficient votes to pass.

...Although Democrats and Republicans have both said they support enshrining protections for DREAMers into law, a list of priorities outlined by the White House last month drove a wedge into bipartisan negotiations.

In the framework, Trump embraced a pathway to citizenship for roughly 1.8 million DREAMers, going beyond those covered under DACA. But in exchange, the president demanded funding for his promised wall along the US-Mexico border, an end to the lottery program which allocates visas to immigrants from underrepresented countries, and a scaling back of visas for the families of legal immigrants.

Democrats and immigration advocates balked at Trump's plan, deeming it a nonstarter. But in a sign of the brewing partisan lines, McConnell said Tuesday that he would support legislation that addressed Trump's immigration pillars.

Trump also reiterated his aggressive stance on immigration during a roundtable with sheriffs at the White House on Tuesday.

"We're asking Congress to support our immigration policy that keeps terrorists, drug dealers, criminals, and gang members out of our country," Trump said.

"We want them out. We don't want them in."

[CN: Nativism] Samantha Schmidt at the Washington Post: An Immigrant Called 911 to Report a Crime; Police Took Him to ICE in Handcuffs.

At 5:30 a.m. Thursday, as Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno was getting ready for work, he noticed a stranger peering into his Tukwila, Wash., home.

Rodriguez, a carpenter and native of Honduras, had confronted a string of attempted intrusions to his home in recent weeks. He worried about his 3-year-old twins and 1-year-old son, his lawyer, Luis Cortes Romero, told The Washington Post. So the father decided to call 911 to report a possible trespasser.

Within minutes, police arrived at the home outside Seattle. They determined that the suspect had indeed trespassed onto Rodriguez's property, but they had no probable cause to arrest him, they said.

Then the officers asked Rodriguez for his identification. For about 14 years, Rodriguez had been living in the country illegally. He knew he lacked legal documents, but he agreed to give his name to the authorities, assuming it was for routine reporting purposes, Cortes said.

Moments later, the officers handcuffed Rodriguez and placed him into the back of a patrol car. A search for his name in the National Criminal Information Center database indicated an outstanding warrant against Rodriguez, police said.

Rodriguez overheard an officer discussing by speakerphone with someone on the other end of the line. It was Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Cortes said.

"Do you want us to bring him to you?" the officer asked, Rodriguez later recalled.

"That would be great," the voice responded.

Minutes later, the officers left Rodriguez at a nearby ICE field office. Rodriguez was shackled and later taken to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, one of the largest detention facilities in the nation.

Rodriguez remains in detention, awaiting a possible deportation to Honduras, which could take place in a matter of days.

Rage. Seethe. Boil.

I will say once again: This administration's (mis)treatment of undocumented immigrants is their canary in the coalmine. Their targeting is intolerable on its face, but understand that whatever they are doing to undocumented immigrants, they will target others in the same way eventually. We must resist their nativist strategies not only because they are cruel and indecent and unjust, but also because if we fail to resist them, they will proliferate.

* * *

Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Trump's Lawyer Says He Paid Stormy Daniels out of His Own Pocket. "Michael Cohen, the longtime lawyer for [Donald] Trump, said on Tuesday that he paid $130,000 to porn star Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage name Stormy Daniels, out of his own pocket. Clifford once claimed that she had an affair with Trump, though she denies it now. The Wall Street Journal previously reported in January that Cohen paid Clifford $130,000 as part of an agreement to keep her quiet on her affair with Trump. Cohen's Tuesday statement is the first time he acknowledged making the payment, but he did not say why he made the payment to Clifford. 'Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,' Cohen said in a statement first obtained by the New York Times. 'The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.'"

[CN: Sexual harassment] Christine Brennan at USA Today: As Shaun White Cements Legacy, Why So Little Attention Paid to Sexual Harassment Allegations? "Shaun White is an American cultural institution, winning the third Olympic gold medal of his pioneering career Wednesday at the 2018 Winter Olympics. But while we glorify him as an all-American athlete, consider this: In August 2016, Lena Zawaideh, the drummer in his band Bad Things, filed an amended complaint to a civil suit in San Diego alleging White had sexually harassed her, sending 'sexually explicit and graphic images' to her, text messages White later admitted to sending."

Erica Werner at the Washington Post: Trump's Military Parade Would Cost Between $10 Million and $30 Million, White House Budget Director Says. "Mulvaney offered the estimate during questioning at the House Budget Committee. He said the White House hasn't yet budgeted for the parade and would either rely on Congress to appropriate funds, or use money that already has been approved. ...It was the first cost estimate of the military parade Trump has directed the Pentagon to plan later this year. Democrats and some Republicans have questioned the need for such an event, suggesting it could have authoritarian overtones depending on how it's conducted."

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Scott Galloway at Esquire: Silicon Valley's Tax-Avoiding, Job-Killing, Soul-Sucking Machine. "Over the past decade, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google — or, as I call them, 'the Four' — have aggregated more economic value and influence than nearly any other commercial entity in history. Together, they have a market capitalization of $2.8 trillion (the GDP of France), a staggering 24 percent share of the S&P 500 Top 50, close to the value of every stock traded on the Nasdaq in 2001. How big are they? Consider that Amazon, with a market cap of $591 billion, is worth more to the stock market than Walmart, Costco, T. J. Maxx, Target, Ross, Best Buy, Ulta, Kohl's, Nordstrom, Macy's, Bed Bath & Beyond, Saks/Lord & Taylor, Dillard's, JCPenney, and Sears combined."

[CN: Bullying; harm] Victoria Ward at the Telegraph: Peter Rabbit 'Food Bullying': Film Studio Apologises over Scene Showing Animals Pelting Allergic Man with Blackberries. "Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories have enthralled generations of children with their tales of warm camaraderie and gentle mischief. But filmmakers behind a new adaptation of the much-loved tale have been forced to apologise after facing calls for it to be withdrawn from cinemas over a scene in which the protagonist and his furry friends deliberately pelt an allergic man with blackberries. ...Carla Jones, [Allergy UK]'s chief executive, said: 'Anaphylaxis can and does kill. To include a scene in a children's film that includes a serious allergic reaction and not to do it responsibly is unacceptable. Mocking allergic disease shows a complete lack of understanding of the seriousness of allergy and trivialises the challenges faced by those with this condition.'"

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

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This Is Very Scary

[Content Note: Food insecurity.]

I have been saying for a very long time that Republicans think people aren't entitled to food. I have been collecting receipts.

Trump is the inevitable endgame of modern Republicanism, so naturally he agrees that people aren't entitled to food. And that people aren't entitled to choices over their own bodies and lives.

So this hideous proposed reimagining of SNAP is a natural, terrible outgrowth of his contempt, at the intersection of treating nourishment as a privilege and denying marginalized citizens their agency.

The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits.

The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress.

Under the proposal, which was announced Monday, low-income Americans who receive at least $90 a month — just over 80 percent of all SNAP recipients — would get about half of their benefits in the form of a "USDA Foods package." The package was described in the budget as consisting of "shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans, and canned fruit and vegetables." The boxes would not include fresh fruits or vegetables.

...Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a hunger advocacy group that also helps clients access food-assistance services, said the administration's plan left him baffled. "They have managed to propose nearly the impossible, taking over $200 billion worth of food from low-income Americans while increasing bureaucracy and reducing choices," Berg says.

He says SNAP is efficient because it is a "free market model" that lets recipients shop at stores for their benefits. The Trump administration's proposal, he said, "is a far more intrusive, Big Government answer. They think a bureaucrat in D.C. is better at picking out what your family needs than you are?"

...It isn't clear whether the boxes will come with directions on how to cook the foods inside. "It could be something that [SNAP recipients] don't even know how to make," notes Miguelina Diaz, whose team at Hunger Free America works directly with families to help them access food aid. "We deal with different people of different backgrounds. Limiting them by providing them a staple box would limit the choices of food they can prepare for their families."

It also isn't clear whether it matters one whit to this reprehensible administration that the foods they are proposing for the boxes include many extremely common food allergies and/or intolerances: Lactose, gluten, and peanuts. If people have no choice over the food they're getting, they may go hungry for lack of safely edible options.

Which is just one problem among many with this proposal. But obviously it's a big one.

And I cannot be any more blunt about that than this: Governments who are willing to starve their citizens are unfathomably dangerous.

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On Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day in the United States and some other parts of the world. Some people love Valentine's Day, other people hate it, some people are indifferent to it; for other people it can be a difficult day, for myriad reasons.

On days like this one, when everyone is implicitly obliged to celebrate feeling a certain way, to not feel that way can be alienating. It can leave one feeling unseen. Which is an awful way to feel.

No matter how you feel about the day, it's valid. And whether you are feeling good, bad, or indifferent, I made a candy heart for you. True on this day, and every other.

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Open Thread

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I'm still feeling pretty rough, but I'll get some content up today. It will be a light day, as I try to ease back into it.

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Open Thread + Programming Note

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

I need another day. See you tomorrow.

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Open Thread + Programming Note

Hosted by a purple sofa. Have a seat and chat.
After a particularly tough couple of weeks for me personally, and a not-great weekend, I am really running low on emotional resources, so I am taking the day off.

(No well-wishing is needed or desired. Please just use the Open Thread for regular discussion.)

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The Virtual Pub Is Open

[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]

Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.

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Friday Links!

This list o' links brought to you by cucumber water.

Recommended Reading:

Nicole Knight at Rewire: [Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism] Indiana Man Faces Charges of Abortion Clinic Threats: 'I Will Blow You Up If I Have To'

Jeffry J. Iovannone at Medium: Nancy Pelosi: 30 Years an AIDS Advocate

Peter Hess at Inverse: [CN: Moving GIF at link] The Worst Is Yet to Come, Warns CDC Director in 2018 Flu Season Update

Katie Valentine at Earther: There's Growing Evidence That Climate Change Is Shrinking Animals

Sue Kerr at Pgh Lesbian Correspondents: [CN: Transmisogynoir violence] Tonya 'Kita' Harvey Is the 3rd Trans Person Murdered in 2018 #RIP

Cathy Dyson at the Military Times (via Good Black News): Gladys West Is One of the People to Thank for Your GPS

Sarah Sloat at Inverse: Ancient Canine Skeleton Reveals New Depths of Humanity's Bond with Dogs

Emma Baccellieri at Deadspin: Puerto Rico Caps a Disaster-Shortened Winter Season with Caribbean Series Title

Monica Roberts at TransGriot: National Geographic 'Gender Revolution' Cover Wins ASME Reader's Choice Award

Charline Jao at the Mary Sue: URGENT: Leslie Jones Is Live-Tweeting the Olympics and It Is Pure Gold

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

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Discussion Thread: Good Things

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

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

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

News items worth celebrating are also welcome.

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

* * *

Dudley is being extra silly today, which is so much exuberant silliness that I can't stop grinning and laughing, so that is a very good thing. One of the best things!

The other night, he was also being totes ridiculous, first running around the yard like a, well, like a greyhound, and dragging in clumps of muddy earth on his giant feet, then tossing around his plushy bunny in dramatic fashion while I was trying to clean up the carpet. And then he gave me an impossibly sassy wink!

This dog! 😆 And he ends by giving me a wink, because he's so proud of dragging mud in the house and then making a silly ruckus while I'm in the middle of cleaning it up! Good grief, he is hilarious and ridiculous and I love him. pic.twitter.com/4eXXMVBq4b

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 9, 2018

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Daily Dose of Cute

Sophie
Look at that wee face of thunder because I woke her from hour four of her daily 23-hour nap! 😆

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

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We Resist: Day 386

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) 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: The Government Shut Down Overnight; Is Back Open and This Is a Constitutional Crisis.

Ayana Byrd at Colorlines: What the Budget Deal Means for Puerto Rico. "According to The New York Times, 'The deal includes $4.8 billion to replenish dwindling Medicaid funds, $2 billion to restore the shredded power grid, and $9 billion for housing and urban development projects.' It gives the island a total of $16 billion of the $90 billion allocated for disaster relief in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida, and Texas — all of which are still recovering from hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey. The $16 billion, notes The Washington Post, is only a fraction of the $94 billion that Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló said was necessary for recovery, which includes $17 billion to repair the electrical grid alone." What will matter most is the management of these funds and whether Congress is willing to give Puerto Rico additional funds in future as required.

Who needs the PDB when you've got Fox & Friends? https://t.co/U51kwpnMaX

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 9, 2018

[Content Note: Domestic violence] Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: White House Officials at First Blamed Porter Abuse Allegations on His Enemies. "Two White House officials told Sen. Orrin Hatch's (R-UT) office that a forthcoming story from the Daily Mail with abuse allegations was the product of a 'smear campaign' against Porter. The officials laid some of the blame on former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and claimed that he had been researching Porter's past, per the Daily Beast. Porter is dating White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, according to CNN and CBS News. Lewandowski also reportedly dated Hicks."

But since blaming Lewandowski hasn't taken the heat off John Kelly, now the administration has decided to blame...Hope Hicks!

He's blaming Hope Hicks ... "The president feels that Hope Hicks has allowed her romantic relationship with Porter to really cloud her judgment and her decision-making ... that Hope Hicks put her own priorities above his and above the White House's." pic.twitter.com/ahPjkyxszI

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 9, 2018

Absolutely incredible.

So what does the president feel John Kelly allowed to cloud his judgement and decision-making, since he wasn't dating Rob Porter? https://t.co/4ljmiJrhaR

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 9, 2018

Hope Hicks should catch hell for defending an abuser, whether or not she was involved with him. But this is emblematic of how diseased Trump's thinking on gender and sexual violence is. Unsurprising, given his own allegations, of course—but here he is blaming women first, again. https://t.co/INcuKm3arz

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 9, 2018

Meanwhile, in Russia investigation news...

Kyle Cheney at Politico: FBI Surveillance of Carter Page Might Have Picked up Bannon. "The FBI was monitoring Carter Page when the former Trump campaign adviser says he spoke with Trump adviser Steve Bannon about Russia in January 2017, raising the strong possibility that the FBI intercepted a conversation between the two men. Page told Congress in November about the call. But it has been cast into a new light by last week's release of a Republican memo revealing that the FBI was monitoring Page's communications at the time. ...The significance of a possible FBI recording depends on the exact content of the conversation between Bannon and Page, about which Page has been vague. But it means the FBI's surveillance of Page — which has been the subject of intense partisan anger in Washington — may have touched one of the highest-ranking figures in Trump's incoming administration just days before inauguration."

Over at TPM, Allegra Kirkland takes note of something I've been observing (and which has led me to speculate that Pence has been quietly cooperating with Mueller): 'A Bit of a Mystery': Why Is Mueller Keeping His Distance from Pence? "[I]t's puzzling that Mueller appears to have made no attempt to talk to the administration's second-highest-ranking official. Pence's lawyer met with Mueller last year to offer Pence's full cooperation. 'It's a bit of a mystery to me that Pence's name hasn't really surfaced at all,' Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Mueller in the Justice Department's criminal division, told TPM. 'There are things that Pence seems to be relevant to. So I'm surprised.' ...Notably, public reports have offered little indication that Pence is a target of the obstruction of justice, collusion, or money laundering arms of the Russia investigation. 'The reporting so far has revealed not much detail about Pence's involvement in key events,' Bob Bauer, White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, told TPM in an email."

That last bit is certainly very troubling. If Mueller is actually disinterested in Pence because the political press has failed utterly to connect the dots on this guy, that might legitimately make my head explode into a million pieces.

Which is why I am so grateful that reporter Ashley Parker, at least, seems to be catching on:

WOW. Watch Pence visibly *gulp* when the female reporter asks why he's repeatedly claimed to be out of the loop on major WH issues.

Like I've been telling you, "I just learned from the media" is a ploy he used multiple times in Indiana. Glad to see the press finally catching on. https://t.co/F9WFRF1EQI

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 8, 2018

Thanks to everyone who let me know it was @AshleyRParker asking the question! And thank you, Ashley, for asking it!

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 8, 2018

In other Pence news... Melanie Schmitz at ThinkProgress: Pence Criticizes North Korea for Throwing Military Parade; Praises Trump for Doing the Same. Of course he did.

* * *

[CN: Nativism. Covers entire section.]

Email subject line from the White House: "Immigration Crime Stories Round Up: Week of February 4th”

I guess that’s where we’re at now.

— Elise Foley (@elisefoley) February 9, 2018

Alfonso Serrano at Colorlines: Is ICE Punishing Immigrant Rights Activists for Their Political Activity? "Immigration advocates say the Trump administration has unleashed a wave of vengeance against activists vulnerable to deportation. Besides Ragbir, other cases include the initiation of deportation proceedings by ICE against Maru Mora Villapando, a Mexico native and prominent immigration activist in Washington state who has organized protests at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. ...On January 11 ICE detained Eliseo Jurado in Westminster, Colorado, citing 10-year-old driving infractions as reasons for his arrest. A native of Mexico, Jurado is the husband of Ingrid Encalada Latorre, a Peru native who is claiming sanctuary at a Boulder, Colorado church to avoid deportation." There is much more at the link.

NB: This administration is targeting undocumented dissidents. That is intolerable on its face. But also understand that treatment of undocumented immigrants is their canary in the coalmine. They will target others this way next. https://t.co/5pppQwTWPO

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 9, 2018

* * *

“Whether they intend to or not, the FBI is slowly becoming the tool of partisan warfare that its defenders claim it must never be,” @AdamSerwer writes. “Which is just how the president who ran a campaign promising to imprison his political rival wants it.” https://t.co/eE7qPZ8RTW

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 8, 2018

[CN: White supremacy; Nazism; police misconduct] Sam Levin at the Guardian: California Police Worked with Neo-Nazis to Pursue 'Anti-Racist' Activists, Documents Show. "California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists in an effort to identify counter-protesters and sought the prosecution of activists with 'anti-racist' beliefs, court documents show. The records, which also showed officers expressing sympathy with white supremacists and trying to protect a neo-Nazi organizer's identity, were included in a court briefing from three anti-fascist activists who were charged with felonies after protesting at a Sacramento rally. The defendants were urging a judge to dismiss their case and accused California police and prosecutors of a 'cover-up and collusion with the fascists.'" Rage. Seethe. Boil.

Not incidentally, this story is a perfect example of why I absolutely refuse to tolerate shit-talking about "flyover states" in this space. There is, regrettably, collusion with fascists all over this country.

[CN: War on agency] Christine Grimaldi at Rewire: Trump Administration's Global Gag Rule Review 'Ignoring the Evidence' on Policy's Danger. "Under the global gag rule, also known as the 'Mexico City Policy,' foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive money from the United States can't provide or even discuss abortion care. Past Republican administrations applied the rule to about $575 million in U.S. family planning aid, according to Human Rights Watch figures. [Donald] Trump, however, expanded the policy to all U.S. foreign aid, to the tune of $8.8 billion. Trump's version even extends to George W. Bush's previously excluded President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to the consternation of at least one former Bush-era official who surmised that the overall expansion was a backlash to the Women's March. ...The U.S. Department of State's six-month review of the anti-choice 'global gag rule' elevates political ideology over evidence-based public health, according to advocates working in the arena."

Four Pinocchios for Devin Nunes claim that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians: "The initial FBI counterintelligence probe was prompted not by Steele’s reporting but by the loose lips of a Trump campaign staffer." https://t.co/r0GlBMzS0n

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) February 9, 2018

[CN: Racism] Christopher Brennan at the New York Daily News: White House Misspells Frederick Douglass in MLK Niece Nomination. "The White House misspelled the name of Frederick Douglass, and continued a string of awkward moments around the famed 19th century abolitionist. A release from administration said that [Donald] Trump had nominated three people, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece Alveda King, to be members of the Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission. However, the name of Douglass was misspelled as Douglas. The Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission, created in a bill passed by Congress last year, will create programs to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth."

As Parker Riley noted at NewsOne: "Also, no word on why Alveda King received this 'nomination,' outside of being a Trump worshiper. She was the same person claiming Trump wasn't a racist on MLK day."

[CN: Sexual assault]

This is a very long and very good read by @dansolomon. And you know what it comes down to? Just another set of assholes who decided that tolerance of sexual assault was crucial to a business centered around a male-dominated fandom. https://t.co/AT9cJJOeGk

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 8, 2018

"Three former employees of the famed Cato Institute say they were sexually harassed by Ed Crane, the 73-year-old co-founder and president emeritus of the think tank and one of the most recognizable figures in the libertarian movement." https://t.co/vdm7qlixfP

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 8, 2018

[CN: Christian Supremacy; white supremacy] Rose Hackman at the Guardian: The Michigan Town Where Only Christians Are Allowed to Buy Houses. "In Bay View, only practicing Christians are allowed to buy houses, or even inherit them. Prospective homeowners, according to a bylaw introduced in 1947 and strengthened in 1986, are required to produce evidence of their faith by providing among other things a letter from a Christian minister testifying to their active participation in a church. Last summer, a dozen current and former resident members filed a federal lawsuit against the town, its ruling Bay View Association, and a real estate company, claiming the Christian litmus test was illegal and unconstitutional. Is Bay View a religious community simply seeking to practice its own beliefs, in peace, as it has always desired? Or is it, as the lawsuit claims, a community in clear violation of constitutional, civil, and religious rights — to say nothing of federal housing rights?"

[CN: White supremacy; image of man pointing gun at link] Breanna Edwards at the Root: White Man Told Police That 2 Black Men Tried to Rob Him at Gunpoint; Surveillance Footage Told Another Story. "It took one particularly insistent mother — and the surveillance video she pushed police to review — to stop her sons from being jailed on false robbery charges after they were set up by a white man whom cops chose to believe over them. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Patrick John Owens was the one who lied to police, telling them that the two brothers, Christopher and Jerry Tate, had robbed him at gunpoint last summer. It is instead Owens who was finally charged on Wednesday as the culprit in the armed robbery. ...Before, it had looked grim for the brothers, who believe that their story would not have been taken seriously if not for their mother, who pushed for police to look over surveillance footage. 'My mother kept telling them that there was video all through that area,' Jerry Tate, 23, recalled. It was thanks to that video that a case was built against Owens, 29. Owens has since been charged with attempted robbery, armed criminal action, second-degree assault. and making a false report — three felonies and a misdemeanor, respectively."

Good news in the end. But goddamn if it weren't for a tenacious mom!

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

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Tweet of the Day

And the week, and the month, and possibly the year...

Last week one of my art teachers suggested I 'dial down the feminism.' Today I showed him my newest piece: pic.twitter.com/VrnB4oJ8Cz

— AlexBertulisFernande (@alexbertanades) February 7, 2018

The image embedded in the tweet shows text reading 'Dial Down the Feminism' above a dial with either end of its spectrum labeled "Complicit in my own dehumanisation" and "Raging feminist." The dial is tuned to the latter.

I tweeted this a couple of days ago, but figured I'd share it here, too, for everyone who isn't on Twitter and/or who missed it.

Because we all need some RAGING FEMINIST in this day.

And every day.

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This Is a Constitutional Crisis

Today in Our Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Constitutional Crisis, in three parts:

One. Heidi Przybyla at NBC News: Senator Tim Kaine Demands Release of Secret Trump War Powers Memo.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine is demanding the release of a secret memo outlining [Donald] Trump's interpretation of his legal authority to wage war.

Kaine, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, sent a letter Thursday night to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seeking a 7-page memo the administration has kept under wraps for months.

Kaine has been leading the charge for Trump to outline his legal rationale for a U.S. bombing campaign in Syria last April in response President Bashar al-Assad's chemical attacks on civilians in that country. The Virginia Senator and others worry that such action compromises congressional oversight over military action.

There is a new urgency to obtain the memo given increasing U.S. involvement in Syria and recent Trump administration rhetoric on North Korea. Shortly after the 2017 bombing raid, several members of Congress called on Trump to justify it under U.S. and international law. Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.

"The fact that there is a lengthy memo with a more detailed legal justification that has not been shared with Congress, or the American public, is unacceptable,” Kaine said in the letter to Tillerson, obtained by NBC News.

"I am also concerned that this legal justification may now become precedent for additional executive unilateral military action, including this week's U.S. airstrikes in Syria against pro-Assad forces or even an extremely risky 'bloody nose' strike against North Korea," wrote Kaine.

...Kaine's bid for more disclosure is part of a broader controversy over how legislation passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks is being used for an open-ended battle against Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, that are not covered under the current version of what's called an AUMF, or authorization to use military force.

Kaine, like any sensible citizen of the United States, is concerned that Trump is not only distressingly inclined to start a war, but that he will start one without the consent or oversight of Congress. Because that's what Trump has repeatedly indicated he would do, like the dictator he clearly seeks to be.

Two. Walter Schaub at the LA Times: Trump's Ethics Office Has Blessed an Unethical Legal Defense Fund for the President's Associates.

Under cover of last week's feverish reaction to the FBI memorandum released by Rep. Devin Nunes, the Office of Government Ethics quietly dumped documents revealing a new low point in the agency's 40-year history. In a letter signed Jan. 29th, but withheld from public view until the memo frenzy was peaking, the agency's Trump-appointed acting director, David Apol, blessed a shockingly permissive arrangement for funneling cash to White House appointees and others linked to Trump.

The fund, which will reimburse legal fees stemming from the Russia investigations, represents a radical and dangerous departure from established practice for government-employee legal defense funds. It's formulated under, of all things, an IRS designation for political organizations. Even its name, the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust, echoes the tribal politics of our time. The name may suggest something more sinister still, that the cash is for "patriots" loyal to the president.

...Despite its name, it is set up not as a trust but as a limited liability company — an LLC — and its funds can go to any of the White House staffers, campaign workers or other Trump associates who get caught up in the Russia investigations. The fund's charter is largely silent as to the selection process except to grant absolute power to the fund manager, who alone passes judgment on who is worthy or unworthy of support.

...The manager isn't required to individually screen each donor to check for ethical conflicts. Instead, the Patriot Fund relies mainly on an honor system. Donors complete online forms to self-certify that their gifts comply with the rules.

...According to the charter, the Patriot Fund won't strictly refuse money from prohibited sources. Instead, it allows the manager to track bad and good donations separately. Money from prohibited sources would count only toward distributions to recipients outside the government, who aren't subject to federal ethics rules. This is a shell game. For legal purposes, any bad money taints the whole fund because money is fungible: Every dollar the fund accepts from a questionable source and pays to a nongovernmental beneficiary frees up a dollar for those who do work for the government. All the book-cooking in the world can't remove the taint.

Finally, the charter includes a provision authorizing distributions from the Patriot Fund to Trump's reelection campaign. This is unprecedented in my experience — legal defense funds are not also campaign fundraising tools. And depending on the tax status of the Patriot Fund LLC — whether it is a partnership or a corporation — distinct election law rules either prohibit or limit direct campaign contributions. How exactly the fund will reconcile itself with these laws is a mystery.

Schaub, who resigned as Director of the Office of Government Ethics early in Trump's presidency, ends the piece by lamenting: "Acting Director Apol's decision to bless the bizarre charter of the Patriot Fund is a heartbreaking breach of applicable laws and the executive branch's ethical norms."

Trump has consistently demonstrated contempt for the law, and this is no exception. But it is quite a notable exception, in that the Orwellian-named Patriot Fund is being established in a way that tacitly allows money from foreign governments to be used to defend the president and his pals against charges that they received material support from foreign governments.

The Patriot Fund is quite literally a way for foreign conspirators to fund the defense of traitors.

In the White House.

Three. Josh Dawsey, Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett, and Ellen Nakashima at the Washington Post: Dozens at White House Lack Permanent Security Clearances.

Dozens of White House employees are awaiting permanent security clearances and have been working for months with temporary approvals to handle sensitive information while the FBI continues to probe their backgrounds, according to U.S. officials.

People familiar with the security-clearance process said one of those White House officials with an interim approval is Jared Kushner — the president's son-in-law and one of his most influential advisers.

The issue of clearances has become a major area of concern since White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned after allegations surfaced that he had been violent toward his two ex-wives — accusations he has denied.

...Kushner's situation has drawn intense scrutiny, in part because his conduct is under investigation as part of the probe into possible Russian coordination with Trump associates and because he has repeatedly amended disclosure forms to add new information.

It is unusual for senior White House personnel to wait more than three months for a permanent top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance though it has happened, said a former senior White House official in the Obama administration familiar with the process.

One senior official in the Obama administration had to wait two years for a variety of reasons, the former official said, but that was a rare case.

"If you're on the speed track, it can be a matter of four to six weeks," he said.

...Law enforcement officials say the biggest red flags in clearance reviews tend to be when investigators catch a person lying — either on disclosure forms or in face-to-face interviews with agents.

Dozens of members of this administration, including one of the president's chief advisors, still don't have security clearance after more than a year, and they aren't honest enough to get that clearance, but the White House has nonetheless decided to trust them with the highest levels of classified information, even when they are under investigation for foreign collusion, and why not since the president himself is under investigation for foreign collusion, too.

Nothing matters anymore. Not ethics rules, not the law, not national loyalty, not the separation of powers, and certainly not the Constitution.

Not to the United States president, anyway.

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The Government Shut Down Overnight; Is Back Open

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:

➡️ Sen. Rand Paul protested the spending bill
➡️ The government shut down
➡️ After 1 a.m. ET Friday, the Senate voted for it
➡️ After 5 a.m. ET, the House voted for it
➡️ Before 9 a.m. ET, Trump signed it

ICYMI ➡️ https://t.co/EwcWjbhuPK

— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) February 9, 2018

There is a lot of anger at the Democrats for not forcing a shutdown over DACA. I will just reiterate what I said yesterday: That is misdirected ire. The anger should be directed squarely at the Republicans and their despicable president, who talk about undocumented immigrants like vermin, have zero compunction about tearing people from their homes and ripping families apart, and utterly refuse to exhibit an infinitesimal trace of compassion or decency, preferring instead nativist malice.

The fact is, the Democrats are in the minority. There is nothing they can do legislatively if the Republicans don't want a DACA deal, and they don't.

What the Democrats did do: Nancy Pelosi did something truly extraordinary, something historical, to try to convince her Republican colleagues to give a fuck about DREAMers. Her party went for a shutdown the last time, and polling showed that there was not widespread support for that strategy. To the contrary, public support was moving away from the Democrats, threatening their electoral chances in November.

They were left with the choice to force a shutdown now to try to get a DACA deal that the Republicans were never, ever, going to give them anyway (in no small part thanks to a media who both-sides everything to the Democrats' disfavor), or call it a loss now and bank on trying to win in November, and stop the onslaught against undocumented immigrants from a majority position.

Those are two terrible choices, because neither of them help DREAMers who need help now.

But there simply isn't some secret third choice the Democrats could have made and just refused. That doesn't exist.

Too many people expect the Democrats to do something by magic. They are the minority party. Republicans hold the executive branch, the legislative branch, SCOTUS, most state governments, and increasingly the federal courts. And the reason is because Republicans have been cheating their way to total dominance for five decades, because they have undiluted contempt for democracy.

Be angry at that. And if you haven't paid attention to politics or protested the Republicans' cheating until now, be angry at yourself for checking out as a citizen. Be angry at the media that failed to inform you about what was happening to your country.

But don't be angry now at the Democrats for not having any good options.

We are living in an authoritarian state with one-party rule. The Democrats aren't perfect — I wish, for example, that they would stop hesitating about leaking critical documents, because it's pointless to keep playing by rules that don't matter anymore — but they are hardly the target for our ire in this moment.

It feels better to direct our anger and disappointment at them, because they are the only ones who still care about it. It feels futile to direct it where it actually belongs — at a party of indifferent sociopaths, off of whom our frustrations and fears bounce without even leaving a mark.

I am incandescently angry that this nation is not merely failing but harming undocumented immigrants. I hate it. It makes me shake with fury, and it makes me scared.

I am part of an immigrant family and I am full of fucking rage. And that rage is directed at the governing party and its disgusting president.

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Open Thread

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

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