This list o' links brought to you by friendly goblins.
Recommended Reading:
Sarah Kendzior at the Globe and Mail: [Content Note: Nativism; child abuse] The Unspeakable Cruelty of Trump's Child-Migrant Camps.
Elisha Brown at the Daily Beast: [CN: Sexual assault; exploitation; threats] Detention Officer Allegedly Sexually Assaulted 4-Year-Old Girl, Threatened to Deport Her Mom
Nick Lucchesi at Inverse: Trump Officially Calls for a New, Sixth Branch of the Military: "Space Force"
Andy Towle at Towleroad: [CN: Homophobia; anti-choicery] Pope Francis: Gay Couples are Not Families
Dustin Rowles at Pajiba: [CN: Abuse; sexual assault; gaslighting] Chris Hardwick Is a Gaslighting S.O.B.
Jessica Boddy at Gizmodo: Extinct Giant Panda Lineage Discovered Thanks to DNA From 22,000-Year-Old Skull
Evan Narcisse at io9: Andy Serkis Thinks Performance Capture Will Just Be How All Actors Work in 100 Years
Chelsea Steiner at the Mary Sue: Professor Alice Roberts Designs the "Perfect" Human Body and It's Here to Haunt Your Nightmares
Staff at ZooBorns: Meet Akeno the Baby Rhino at Chester Zoo
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Monday Links!
Shaker Gardens
Shaker Gardens is usually Aphra_Behn's beat, and there's a darn good reason for that—because, unlike Aphra, I have the ungreenest thumb that has ever thumbed! But here are a few things that have been going on in my garden recently. [Note: Image of toad at the very bottom of the post.]
As always, you are welcome and encouraged to share stories and pix of what's happening in your garden!
Trump Escalates His Nativist Rhetoric
[Content Note: Nativism. Note: If this item seems familiar, it may be because I dropped it into the comments of today's We Resist thread. But it's too important not to also mention on the main page, , since not everyone dives into comments.]
Lauren Gambino and Jamiles Lartey at the Guardian: Donald Trump Says U.S. Will Not Be a 'Migrant Camp'.
Donald Trump said the U.S. would not be a "migrant camp" as his administration defended its controversial practice of at the border.Absolutely chilling.
"The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility," Trump said during remarks at the White House on Monday.
"You look at what's happening in Europe," he continued, "you look at what's happening in other places — we can't allow that to happen to the United States. Not on my watch."
Even by his own execrable standards, Trump is becoming incredibly brazen.
And he is very, very determined to fell The New Colossus with an ancient hatred.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 515
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.
* * *
Earlier today by me: Monday Morning Reading on Trump's Nativist Abuse and "This is a public health issue." and I Write Letters.
Here are some more things in the news today...
Philip Oltermann and Julian Borger at the Guardian: Trump Says Germans 'Turning Against Their Leadership' over Immigration.
Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented attack on Angela Merkel's government, tweeting that "the people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition."Donald Trump is using his position as the United States president to try to facilitate the collapse of Merkel's governing coalition (which just got a two-week reprieve) specifically because it remains the strongest bulwark against an ascendant coalition of nativist, white nationalist, authoritarian leaders with ties to Vladimir Putin becoming the dominant political force across Europe and North America.
...In his latest tweet, Trump said "crime in Germany is way up." In May, Germany's interior ministry recorded the lowest crime levels since 1992.
"Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!" he added.
In a second tweet, Trump noted: "We don't want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!"
...The U.S. president's tweets come just as Merkel has managed to buy time in a tense standoff with her interior minister over new immigration curbs. She faces a two-week deadline to find a European solution or risk the collapse of her governing coalition.
Over the weekend, Trump spoke for the first time with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, one of Merkel's key antagonists in the European Union and a vocal critic of the proposal to distribute refugee across EU member states according to a quota system. In a phone call on Saturday, Trump congratulated Orbán on his reelection in April. According to a statement by the White House, the two leaders "agreed on the need for strong national borders."
Again: I wonder what will have to happen before U.S. statespeople speak the fuck up, no less start organizing to remove this nightmare from office.
* * *
[Content Note: Nativism. Covers entire section.]
Melanie Schmitz at ThinkProgress: DHS Secretary Rolls Out Preposterous New Claim About Child Separation Policy. "Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, directly contradicted her colleagues in a multi-tweet thread Sunday evening, claiming preposterously that the Trump administration had no child separation policy for families detained at the U.S. southern border. 'This misreporting by Members, press & advocacy groups must stop. It is irresponsible and unproductive,' Nielsen wrote... 'DHS takes very seriously its duty to protect minors in our temporary custody from gangs, traffickers, criminals, and abuse. We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.' On Monday morning, speaking to the National Sheriffs' Association in New Orleans, Nielsen doubled down, saying, 'We will not apologize for doing our job. We have sworn to do this job. This administration has a simple message: if you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you.'"
Like literally everyone else who is part of this administration, Kirstjen Nielsen is a shameless liar with a heart of garbage. https://t.co/YaK4XWQkRJ
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 18, 2018
Matt Shuham at TPM: Sessions Defends Family Separation Policy, Characterizes It as a Deterrent. "Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday defended the Trump administration's recent policy of separating migrant families apprehended at the border. ...'We cannot and will not encourage people to bring their children, or other children, to the country unlawfully by giving them immunity in the process,' he said, asserting that families claiming asylum at designated ports of entry, rather than between them, would not be separated. However, officials at those entry points have often told asylum-seekers they are 'at capacity,' leading to days of waiting. And there are some cases of families being apprehended and separated even after approaching a port of entry asserting their asylum rights."
Anne Branigin at the Root: Ex-Shelter Worker Says New Staffers Received Just One Week of Training to Work with Traumatized Migrant Children. "A former staffer who called out conditions at an Arizona migrant shelter had more to say this weekend about the poor management of centers currently housing undocumented children. Antar Davidson spoke with MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian on Sunday... Davidson told the cable news outlet the Estrella del Norte shelter operated less like a humanitarian organization and more like 'a private prison.' He added that the shelter had trouble hiring people with the 'necessary skills,' and speculated that the low pay may have limited the shelter's ability to recruit adequate workers. 'This is a federal level of responsibility we're talking about, and the work undertaking this increasingly difficult task are not given federal level benefits and support,' he also said. 'So, the people are just being tossed out there unprepared.'"
And, presumably, without even thorough background checks, which take time to complete. There's no telling how many people who have a history of harming children are now working in close proximity with children at the border.
[CN: Anti-semitism] Yoka Verdoner at the Guardian: Nazis Separated Me from My Parents as a Child; the Trauma Lasts a Lifetime.
The events occurring now on our border with Mexico, where children are being removed from the arms of their mothers and fathers and sent to foster families or "shelters," make me weep and gnash my teeth with sadness and rage. I know what they are going through. When we were children, my two siblings and I were also taken from our parents. And the problems we've experienced since then portend the terrible things that many of these children are bound to suffer.Sob. I feel like I may never stop crying.
My family was Jewish, living in 1942 in the Netherlands when the country was occupied by the Nazis. We children were sent into hiding, with foster families who risked arrest and death by taking us in. They protected us, they loved us, and we were extremely lucky to have survived the war and been well cared for.
Yet the lasting damage inflicted by that separation reverberates to this day, decades hence.
Have you heard the screams and seen the panic of a three-year-old when it has lost sight of its mother in a supermarket? That scream subsides when mother reappears around the end of the aisle.This is my brother writing in recent years. He tries to deal with his lasting pain through memoir. It's been 76 years, yet he revisits the separation obsessively. He still writes about it in the present tense:
In the first home I scream for six weeks. Then I am moved to another family, and I stop screaming. I give up. Nothing around me is known to me. All those around me are strangers. I have no past. I have no future. I have no identity. I am nowhere. I am frozen in fear. It is the only emotion I possess now. As a three-year-old child, I believe that I must have made some terrible mistake to have caused my known world to disappear. I spend the rest of my life trying desperately not to make another mistake....In later life, I was never able to really settle down. I lived in different countries and was successful in work, but never able to form lasting relationships with partners. I never married. I almost forgot to mention my own anxiety and depression, and my many years in psychotherapy.
My grief and anger about today's southern border come not just from my personal life. As a retired psychotherapist who has worked extensively with victims of childhood trauma, I know all too well what awaits many of the thousands of children, taken by our government at the border, who are now in "processing centers" and foster homes — no matter how decent and caring those places might be. We can expect thousands of lives to be damaged, for many years or for ever, by "zero tolerance." We can expect old men and women, decades from now, still suffering, still remembering, still writing in the present tense.
* * *
"The court sidestepped a definitive ruling in both cases. It could decide soon to take up a new case from North Carolina." I hope they aren't waiting for the N.C. case to make the shittiest definitive ruling on that case. https://t.co/Tk9QoTSrbI
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 18, 2018
The Supreme Court, doing its best to obliterate the shreds of our democracy that remain.
[CN: Climate change] Oliver Milman at the Guardian: Flooding from Sea Level Rise Threatens over 300,000 U.S. Coastal Homes. "Sea level rise driven by climate change is set to pose an existential crisis to many U.S. coastal communities, with new research finding that as many as 311,000 homes face being flooded every two weeks within the next 30 years. The swelling oceans are forecast repeatedly to soak coastal residences collectively worth $120bn by 2045 if greenhouse gas emissions are not severely curtailed, experts warn. This will potentially inflict a huge financial and emotional toll on the half a million Americans who live in the properties at risk of having their basements, backyards, garages, or living rooms inundated every other week. 'The impact could well be staggering,' said Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)."
[CN: Climate change] Christopher Flavelle and Allison McCartney at Bloomberg: Climate Change May Already Be Hitting the Housing Market. "Between 2007 and 2017, average home prices in areas facing the lowest risk of flooding, hurricanes and wildfires have far outpaced those with the greatest risk, according to figures compiled for Bloomberg News by Attom Data Solutions, a curator of national property data. Homes in areas most exposed to flood and hurricane risk were worth less last year, on average, than a decade earlier. ...Asaf Bernstein, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has studied the drop in home prices associated with sea-level rise, said it's not surprising that home values would be affected by other types of climate risk. 'It's not a question of if,' Bernstein said. 'It's a question of when.'"
Aparajita Saxena at Reuters: Wall Street Lower as U.S.-China Trade Tensions Mount. "The Dow and the S&P 500 fell after China's retaliatory action against U.S. tariffs rekindled concerns that the world's two biggest economies were headed toward a trade war, with losses limited by gains in energy shares. ...Boeing, the single largest U.S. exporter to China, fell nearly 1 percent, while construction equipment maker Caterpillar declined 1.4 percent. Intel was the biggest drag on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq on China tariff concerns and a downgrade by Northland Securities. A host of other chipmakers, which depend on China for a larger part of their revenues, also slipped. ...Nine of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower, led by a 1.5 percent decline in the telecommunications sector."
Despite telling OGE he'd fully divested, Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross kept stakes in companies co-owned by Chinese govt, a shipping firm tied to Putin's inner circle, a Cypriot bank Mueller is investigating, and a company in an industry Ross is investigating. https://t.co/TbsUPaKORp
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 18, 2018
This whole fucking administration of indecent crooks. Goddammit. They are all so rotten.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
I Write Letters
[Content Note: Nativism.]
Dear United States former Presidents, former First Ladies, former Secretaries of State and other cabinet members, former intelligence agency chiefs, and former (and current) ambassadors:
Where are you?
With a few notable exceptions, you are not showing up publicly, visibly, to name Donald Trump while objecting to his vile policies, and none of you, that I have been able to discern, have called for his swift removal from office.
Trump is observably and relentlessly leading this nation down a path of authoritarianism. He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated contempt for the rule of law. He is undermining trust in public institutions; he attacks the free press; he subverts democracy.
The motivating center of his vile agenda is malice, the latest sickening example of which is separating children from their parents at the southern border and detaining those children in makeshift jails and concentration camps euphemistically known as "tent cities" hastily constructed in the blazing summer heat of southern Texas.
Where are you?
I am terrified thinking what it will take to motivate you to speak out unreservedly against this president if subjecting children to such traumatic and potentially deadly horrors will not move you.
There is no reason — none — to hope that things will not get worse while you remain silent. To the absolute contrary, there is every reason to believe that Trump will continue to escalate, increasingly empowered to commit acts of atrocity against children in the vacuum of accountability abetted by that silence.
Where are you?
You have whatever platform you've got because you went into public service ostensibly because you are patriots who care about this nation. So why are you choosing to not use that platform now, when everything you presumably love and value is slipping away to the sound of children screaming for their parents?
It is now abundantly, painfully evident that some of you who should have said something before the election didn't, to our lasting regret. The nation's statespeople cannot double down on that mistake.
You must name Donald Trump — and Mike Pence, and Jeff Sessions, and Kirstjen Nielsen, and every other member of this horrifying administration — and detail the harm of his wicked agenda, and shame Congressional Republicans for being derelict in their duty to prioritize country over party.
You must call for Trump's swift removal from office, to preserve the republic, before it is too late. If it already isn't.
Where are you?
Your nation needs you.
With urgency,
Melissa McEwan
"This is a public health issue."
[Content Note: Gun violence; injury; death.]
A shooter is dead and 22 people have been injured, some seriously, during a shooting at an art event in Trenton, New Jersey:
An all-night arts and music festival turned deadly early on Sunday morning when gunfire erupted in a crowd, sending people stampeding and leaving one suspect dead and 22 people injured, authorities said.That's exactly right. This is a public health issue.
Seventeen people were treated for gunshot wounds, said Mercer county prosecutor Angelo Onofri. Four, including a 13-year-old boy, remain in critical condition late on Sunday morning.
Two suspects opened fire around 2.45am during the Art All Night Trenton festival that showcases local art, music, food and films. One of the suspects, a 33-year-old man, was killed, authorities said. Onofri said he believes police killed him. Another suspect was in custody.
Onofri said a "neighborhood beef" was behind the shooting inside the historic Roebling Wire Works Building.
...Trenton mayor Eric E Jackson said the violence could not be "discarded as just random violence. This is a public health issue."
A grave public health issue to which we're becoming so inured that a shooting which left 22 people injured is no longer front page news.
This country has lost its way.
Monday Morning Reading on Trump's Nativist Abuse
[Content Note: Nativism; white supremacy; child abuse; violence.]
He said that “In the immigration context, the government has never taken a stand against the protection of kids in this country. For the first time, it is now formally taking a position that explicitly goes against the best interests of kids.”
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 1, 2018
There is a whole lot of stuff I want to recommend today, so I'm going to link all of it here. Please feel welcome to share additional links in comments and use the thread for discussion of this subject broadly.
Miriam Jordan at the New York Times: 'I Can't Go Without My Son,' a Mother Pleaded as She Was Deported to Guatemala. "The Border Patrol was waiting as they made their way from the border on May 26, and soon mother and son were in a teeming detention center in southern Texas. The next part unfolded so swiftly that, even now, Ms. Ortiz cannot grasp it: Anthony was sent to a shelter for migrant children. And she was put on a plane back to Guatemala. 'I am completely devastated,' Ms. Ortiz, 25, said in one of a series of video interviews last week from her family home in Guatemala. Her eyes swollen from weeping and her voice subdued, she said she had no idea when or how she would see her son again."
Nomaan Merchant at the AP: Hundreds of Children Wait in Border Patrol Facility in Texas. "Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips, and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she didn't know because the child's aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl's diaper."
I just went into the #Juarez Valley for the @TexasTribune to make photos, behind the border fence, of the #immigrant children who have been placed inside the new #tentcity at the CPB facility in #Tornillo. #BorderStories #OnAssignment pic.twitter.com/JmMevp4FUI
— Ivan Pierre Aguirre (@i_p_a_1) June 16, 2018
Nick Cumming-Bruce at the New York Times: U.N. Rights Chief Tells U.S. to Stop Taking Migrant Children from Parents. "United States immigration authorities have detained almost 2,000 children in the past six weeks, which may cause them irreparable harm with lifelong consequences, said Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. He cited an observation by the president of the American Association of Pediatrics that locking the children up separately from their parents constituted 'government-sanctioned child abuse.' 'The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,' Mr. al-Hussein said."
Nick Visser at the Huffington Post: DHS Secretary Says There's No Family Separation Policy 'Period'. "Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defended her agency's role at the U.S. border with Mexico on Sunday, saying there was no family separation policy. 'This misreporting by members, press and advocacy groups must stop,' Nielsen wrote in a series of tweets Sunday evening. 'It is irresponsible and unproductive. As I have said many times before, if you are seeking asylum for your family, there is no reason to break the law and illegally cross between ports of entry. We do not have a policy of separating families at the border,' she continued. 'Period.'" That is just a rank lie.
Nicole Belle at Crooks & Liars: Where Are the Girls Being Detained by the Trump Administration? "ICE made detention centers available for the media to tour... MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff described it as de facto incarceration for minors who did nothing but come with their parents to escape violence and persecution in their home country. But here's the thing: I've poured over these reports. I've scoured the photos. I've looked at every publication and every news outlets reporting. Not. One. Covers. Girls. Being. Detained. Where are the girls?"
Molly Hennessy-Fiske at the L.A. Times: Texas Border Patrol Center Where Immigrant Families Are Separated Draws Lawmakers, Protest. "The 72,000-square-foot facility was clean and spare, with bare concrete floors. Uniformed agents, some wearing masks, observed from guard towers and escorted migrants down corridors. Lopez noted with pride that the 42 portable toilets did not smell, although they were open at the top, due to security concerns. The center's two massive rooms were separated into 22 chain link-fenced spaces, many labeled 'cells' with netting on top to prevent escapes. They're cleaned three times a day. Lopez said they used fencing because it was cheap and see-through."
Shane Harris, David Weigel, and Karoun Demirjian at the Washington Post: Democrats Intensify Fight for Immigrant Children. "Against a notable silence on the part of many Republicans who usually defend [Donald] Trump, Democratic lawmakers fanned out across the country, visiting a detention center outside New York City and heading to Texas to inspect facilities where children have been detained. ...Trump remained silent on the issue for most of the day Sunday before tweeting that Democrats should work with Republicans on an immigration solution before the election 'because you are going to lose!'"
Marlow Stern at the Daily Beast: John Oliver Exposes Trump's Lies About His Border Child Separation Policy.
"That's right: Thousands of children have been forcibly taken from their parents after a policy shift was put into action last month by U.S. attorney general — and least fun thing to find in a Kinder egg — Jeff Sessions," said Oliver. "Sessions basically started a policy of incarcerating people who crossed the border illegally knowing full well that that incarceration would mean they were separated from their children — many of whom are less than 10 years old with no clear plan as to when they might be reunited."Former First Lady Laura Bush at the Washington Post: Separating Children from Their Parents at the Border 'Breaks My Heart'. "I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history."
Despite Sessions, chief of staff John Kelly, and immigration "expert" Stephen Miller all defending the Trump administration's policy, with Miller recently telling The New York Times, "It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law," [Donald] Trump has repeatedly attempted to blame the Democrats for his own policy.
"He's following laws, very simply, that were given to us and forced upon us by the Democrats. The Democrats gave us the laws," Trump told a press scrum Friday morning.
Cue Oliver: "Democrats did not give them these laws, because — and I cannot stress this enough — there is no law that suddenly required separating parents from their children. This is a result of a deliberate policy choice by Jeff Sessions."
In response to Laura Bush's op-ed, I have seen some members of the press saying they can't recall a former First Lady criticizing a current administration (example), which is a stunning erasure of Hillary Clinton, and I have a thread on that starting here.
Charles M. Blow at the New York Times: Trump and the Baby Snatchers. "I can't imagine being forcibly separated from my children for any reason. And yet, this has become Trump's policy of persecution. Attorney General Jeff Sessions even had the gall to invoke one of the same Bible verses used to justify slavery to justify the current policy. Trump keeps lying about it, trying to distort reality and claim that the separations are a result of a 'law' made by the Democrats. ...Trump is lying, as he often does. This barbaric policy is an outgrowth of his own personal cruelty. It's absolutely reprehensible and an absolute reflection of him."
Staff at KABB/WOAI: 5 Dead After SUV Being Chased by Border Patrol Crashes. "Authorities said five undocumented immigrants are dead following a chase involving Border Patrol agents Sunday afternoon. Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd said the crash happened off Highway 85 in Big Wells at about noon. Boyd said agents were chasing the SUV when it lost control and overturned. The vehicle was traveling at more than 100 miles per hour when it crashed. Fourteen people were inside, including the driver and passenger. Twelve immigrants were ejected and four died at the scene when the car crashed and rolled over, according to Boyd. A fifth person later died at the hospital. Boyd credited 'good police work' for the reason why deputies started pursuing the vehicle."
Gideon Resnick at the Daily Beast: Poll: Republicans Approve of Trump's Family Separation Policy. "The poll of roughly 1,000 adults aged 18 and over, and conducted June 14-15, asked respondents if they agreed with the following statement: 'It is appropriate to separate undocumented immigrant parents from their children when they cross the border in order to discourage others from crossing the border illegally.' Of those surveyed, 27 percent of the overall respondents agreed with it, while 56% disagreed with the statement. Yet, Republicans leaned slightly more in favor, with 46% agreeing with the statement and 32 percent disagreeing."
I am full of rage and grief.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
Friday Links!
This list o' links brought to you by Aughra's orrery.
Recommended Reading:
Roxana Hadadi at Pajiba: Happy Eid al-Fitr! Let Me Tell You About Eid al-Fitr!
Ayana Byrd at Colorlines: New Reports Confirm How Ill-Prepared Puerto Rico Is for Hurricane Season
David Shiffman at Southern Fried Scientist: I Asked 15 Ocean Plastic Pollution Experts About the Ocean Cleanup Project, and They Have Concerns
Kia Morgan-Smith at the Grio: Hillary Clinton Trolls James Comey Investigation with Brutal 3-Word Tweet
Anne Victoria Clark at Vulture: Amy Poehler Has No Time for This
Vivian Kane at the Mary Sue: Chrissy Teigen Got Donald Trump the Only Appropriate Birthday Gift
Miss Rosen at Bust: This Swedish Woman Created Some of the World's First Abstract Paintings — and Then Hid Them Away for Decades
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
#365feministselfie: Week 24
I am again participating in the #365feministselfie project, now in its fifth year, and promised a thread for others to share selfies and/or talk about the project, visibility generally, self-apprecation, and related topics. So here is a thread for Week 24!
A few of my selfies over the last week:
So, Eastsidekate sent me an article about the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a minor league baseball team in Delaware, introducing uniforms featuring "Mr. Celery," because the former general manager of the team wanted a zany mascot, but the team "didn't want to invest a lot of money in a new mascot costume for an idea that might be scrapped after a few weeks if it didn't work out," and they had "this beat-up old celery costume that had been sitting in a warehouse for years," so they "dusted it off, put a guy in it, and called it Mr. Celery."
Obviously this was the greatest thing I've heard in a minute, so I needed a Mr. Celery shirt immediately. And FYI the Wilmington Blue Rocks emailed me a FedEx tracking update every day of this beauty's journey. They were reeeeeeal excited about an out-of-state purchase, apparently! As Mr. Celery says, "WOO-HOO!"
Please feel welcome and encouraged to share your own selfies in comments, or share your thoughts on the project, or solicit encouragement or advice, or do whatever else feels best for you to participate, if you are inclined to do so!
Daily Dose of Cute
She can't stop thinking about him.
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 512
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.
* * *
Earlier today by me: Trump Wants a Meeting with Putin — and No One's Going to Stop Him and Trump Again Praises Kim; Chillingly Jokes About Executions.
Here are some more things in the news today...
[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse; self-harm] Molly Hennessy-Fiske at the LA Times: 'Prison-Like' Migrant Youth Shelter Is Understaffed, Unequipped for Trump's 'Zero Tolerance' Policy, Insider Says.
Antar Davidson said he became disillusioned after the Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' policy began sending the shelter not only children who had crossed the border unaccompanied by adults, but also those separated from their parents.Meanwhile, of course there are defense contractors lining up to line their pockets by facilitating those very immoral practices. Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast: Defense Contractors Cashing in on Immigrant Kids' Detention. "Virginia-based MVM Inc., seeks a compliance coordinator to help in San Antonio with the 'rapid deployment of an Emergency Influx Shelter for unaccompanied children.' ...MVM appears to believe its business is growing. A job posting on Indeed.com from 20 days ago advertises for youth care workers 'in anticipation of a contract award.' ...The defense contracting giant General Dynamics is advertising a data-entry position within ORR's case-coordination program for undocumented children that will, among other things, monitor youths' cases as they move through the system." Fucking hell.
The caseload is straining a facility he described as understaffed and unequipped to deal with children experiencing trauma... During his time at the shelter, children were running away, screaming, throwing furniture, and attempting suicide, Davidson said. Several were being monitored this week because they were at risk of running away, self-harm and suicide, records show.
...Davidson saw more and more confused and upset children, most from Latin America. There also were more of what staff call "tender age" children, those under 13. Some were as young as 4, he said.
"What was once a transient facility with a staff that was strained and struggling is now becoming a more permanent facility," and more "prison-like," Davidson said.
..."I can no longer in good conscience work with Southwest Key programs," he wrote. "I am feeling uneasy about the morality of some of the practices."
An observation:
If you want to know how little Republicans truly care about detained migrant children, consider this: They could have (cynically) criticized Obama for his own crappy policies re: detaining migrant children, but instead just literally *made shit up about him* to criticize.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 15, 2018
Republicans *invented* things about which to criticize Obama before they even made a valid criticism of treatment of migrant children during his administration. They relentlessly harangued him about *everything*, disingenuously, opportunistically. But never about migrant kids.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 15, 2018
When you really stop to remember how they went at him for 8 years, and then contemplate they didn't use something legitimately worthy of criticism, woo.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 15, 2018
Instead, they indulged birther lies about him, which paved the road to their current nativist, white supremacist agenda.
Relatedly:
Thread. Again, this is exactly what I said would happen. They are coming for U.S. citizens who they think don't belong. The justifications will expand. People who never expected to have to provide proof of their citizenship, will. If they even can. https://t.co/IX7ywoh0o8
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 15, 2018
* * *
Dominic Rushe at the Guardian: Trump Announces $50bn in China Tariffs, Escalating Possibility of Trade War. "Donald Trump has announced a 25% tariff on $50bn of Chinese goods, escalating trade tensions a day after Beijing officials warned China was preparing to retaliate. The move, after a long war of words, escalates the possibility of a full trade war between the world's two leading economies."
And this despite the fact that his previous round of tariffs are a complete flop. Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: Trump's Tariffs Are Already Backfiring. "Those metal tariffs have left steel prices more than 50 percent higher in the United States than they are in China or Europe. This is bad news for U.S. companies that purchase steel — including to manufacture washing machines, which are essentially big steel boxes. Perhaps worse, our furious trading partners are now striking back by placing new tariffs on U.S. goods. Among the products that both the European Union and Canada have targeted for retaliation? You guessed it: U.S.-made washing machines."
Meanwhile...
Minimum wage doesn't cover the rent anywhere in the U.S. https://t.co/4YcmYIeYFc
— LeslieMac (@LeslieMac) June 15, 2018
Stephanie Nebehay at Reuters: U.S. Expected to Retreat from Main U.N. Rights Forum. "Talks with the United States over how to reform the main U.N. rights body have failed to meet Washington's demands, activists and diplomats say, suggesting that the Trump administration will quit the Geneva forum whose session opens on Monday. A U.S. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the withdrawal appeared to be 'imminent' but had no details. Diplomatic sources said it was not a question of if but of when the United States retreats from the Human Rights Council." Of course.
"The actions taken by Pence & his staff as a result of lobbying are not disclosed in federal filings & more than a dozen companies that hired people to [lobby him] declined to comment on the role of the v.p. or what their lobbying spending accomplished." https://t.co/Ba7ygROArH
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 15, 2018
Sam Levin at the Guardian: Police Worked with Violent Pro-Trump Activist to Prosecute Leftwing Group.
A pro-Trump demonstrator who admitted hitting protesters at a far-right rally received help and support from California police, who worked with him to prosecute leftwing activists, records show.Fucking hell.
Documents and testimony in a trial surrounding a rightwing demonstration in Berkeley reveal that police and prosecutors pursued charges on behalf of Daniel Quillinan, a conservative activist who has posted fascist memes and came to the event with Kyle Chapman, now a celebrated figure amongst the "alt-right." The authorities consistently treated Quillinan as a victim even though he was visibly armed with a knife, a wooden "shield," and a "flagpole" — and had told law enforcement that he "hit someone in the head," according to court files.
The resulting criminal trial against five anti-fascist protesters — who are accused of assaulting Quillinan during a roughly 15-second altercation — is, according to activists, the latest example of U.S. law enforcement aggressively targeting leftwing demonstrators and favoring members of the far-right after violent clashes. In another California case, police have worked directly with neo-Nazis to go after counter-protesters, including a black activist stabbed at a white supremacist rally.
I lived in Russia in the early 2000s, the early days of Vladimir Putin’s rule. There were plenty of stories like this back then, little warnings. Russian society didn’t react, and so here we are. https://t.co/w0ZFHcsa62
— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) June 15, 2018
Kira Lerner at ThinkProgress: This Is How Florida Makes It Nearly Impossible for Ex-Felons to Get Their Voting Rights Restored. "Florida has one of the strictest felon disenfranchisement laws in the country, requiring anyone with a felony conviction to apply for clemency from the governor in order to restore their right to vote. The process has become even more difficult since Scott took office in 2011 and instated a five to seven year waiting period before people like Johnson could even petition for their rights. The board meets just four times a year, and just a small fraction of the thousands of people who apply for clemency are even considered."
Data Propria, a new voter targeting company, "has quietly been working for Donald Trump's 2020 re-election effort, The Associated Press has learned. The AP confirmed that at least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria." https://t.co/BYclrn6D4B
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 15, 2018
And finally...
So everyone was worried about politics and no one was worried about the republic. https://t.co/aipo2KE6N0
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 14, 2018
Sob.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Discussion Thread: How Are You?
I am feeling extremely overwhelmed this week. I'm very angry, very sad, and very scared about what is happening in the United States — and, of course, spilling over our borders.
The things I feared would happen are happening.
The things I urgently warned, over and over, would happen if Donald Trump weren't taken seriously, if he got the Republican nomination, if he got the presidency, if Congressional Republicans made no effort to contain him at all, if the press failed utterly to hold him accountable, if everything went wrong in precisely the way it looked like it was going wrong, are happening.
And I am sick about it. I am grief-stricken. I have a pain sitting in my chest that I don't even know how to describe.
All of this was foreseeable. All of it was preventable. All of the people who saw it and said it were dismissed, discounted, discredited.
I am listing into an emotional slump. My eyes are permanently puffy from crying.
And I am fucking glad for this community, in this moment. Anyone who wants to join me in an enormous virtual group hug is welcome.
How are you?
Trump Again Praises Kim; Chillingly Jokes About Executions
Yesterday, I argued that Donald Trump's effusive praise of Kim Jon Un was the biggest news of the day, even bigger than the IG report. I stand by it — and I'll reiterate it: His trajectory into full-tilt despot is enormously important.
It is, in fact, the context in which every other news story should and must be discussed.
Because this is where we are: In another interview this morning with Fox News' Steve Doocy, Trump again spoke of Kim admiringly and aspirationally: "Hey, he's the head of a country, and I mean he is the strong head — don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."
The interview then continued with Trump joking about how Kim may have executed his own generals, further defending having saluted a North Korean general, and insisting that "it's great to give [Kim] credibility" on the global stage.
Trump dismisses controversy surrounding his salute to a North Korean general.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 15, 2018
"I'm being respectful to the general. We have a very good relationship with North Korea... we have a really great relationship... I think it's great to give [Kim Jong Un] credibility." pic.twitter.com/yfCZDC0Z1K
Trump: He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.This is the news. This is the news today and every day, all day. Trump is an authoritarian who hates democracy and is overseeing a comprehensively obscene agenda of nativism, white supremacy, misogyny, queer hatred, and disablism that has already reached the point of making plans to detain children in concentration camps.
Doocy: Right. Well, just before you met with him, he cleaned house. Three of his top generals, some of the hardliners, he fired—
Trump: Yeah, that's what I heard.
Doocy: —then you go over there and you took some heat over saluting one of the generals.
Trump: I think he fired at least. [smirks] Okay?
Doocy: Three that we know of.
Trump: When you say he "fired," I think maybe fired at least.
Doocy: [chuckling nervously as it dawns on him what Trump is saying] Right.
Trump: "Fired" may be a nice word. That's right — I met a general; he saluted me; I saluted him back; and I guess they're using that as another sound bite. I mean, you know, I think I'm being respectful to general. We are — we have a very good relationship with North Korea. When I was talking to President Obama, he essentially was ready to go to war with North Korea. He felt you almost had to go to war. And I did ask him: "Have you spoken to him?" He goes, "No." I said, "Do you think it would be a good thing to speak to him, maybe?" Okay? 'Cuz, you know, if you go to war there, you're not talking about a hundred thousand lives, which is a lot. You're talking about thirty, forty, fifty million lives.
Doocy: Sure.
Trump: Seoul is thirty miles off the border. They don't even need nuclear weapons to Seoul. And they have thousands of cannons — they call them cannons; they have the big [gestures at own chest?] guns — thousands pointed right at Seoul. We have a really great relationship for the first time ever. No president's ever had this. So I get hit by these fakes back here [gestures over his shoulder at members of the press] — not all of them; some are phenomenal — but I get hit, because I went there; I gave him credibility. I think it's great to give him credibility.
Doocy: Right.
Trump: Here's what we got: Everything. [mimes running down a list of items] Point after point after point.
Doocy: One point — I think it was in the last week, ten days; things are going fast here in Washington, just saying — but...
Trump: You're having a lot of fun, right?
Doocy: [laughing] We're having a—
Trump: So supposing Hillary got elected instead of Trump. You think it would be so exciting? Your ratings would be way down.
THIS IS THE NEWS.
And guess what? That has always been the news about Trump.
Trump Wants a Meeting with Putin — and No One's Going to Stop Him
Like I keep saying: The collusion is right out in the open. And as we all wait interminably for Special Counsel Bob Mueller to methodically compile evidence of what we can witness with our own eyes every damn day, Donald Trump is insisting on a summit with Vladimir Putin, to be arranged by Austria's new chancellor, nativist hardliner Sebastian Kurz.
Susan B. Glasser at the New Yorker reports:
Fresh off his closely watched Singapore summit with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, [Donald] Trump is pushing his team to arrange another dramatic one-on-one meeting, this time with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, as soon as this summer. Negotiations with the Kremlin have been under way for weeks. "There's no stopping him," a senior Administration official familiar with the internal deliberations said. "He's going to do it. He wants to have a meeting with Putin, so he's going to have a meeting with Putin."There is much more at the link, and I recommend reading the whole thing.
...With the Russia allegations swirling, Trump never had the formal meeting he wanted with Putin last year — settling for just two brief encounters on the sidelines of international gatherings — but he has clearly never given up on his campaign vision of closer ties with the Russian strongman, whose autocratic rule he has often praised.
The North Korea summit this week, which Trump jubilantly declared a "historic" encounter that will lead to the end of Pyongyang's nuclear program, has likely sealed the deal for an equally high-profile Putin meeting. Now Russia experts inside and outside the U.S. government are bracing themselves for a formal announcement of the summit, which is likely to happen as early as July, when Trump will be in Europe for the annual meeting of the nato alliance that Putin considers his country's mortal enemy.
Negotiations began in earnest, the senior Administration official told me, after Trump disregarded his aides' "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" warning in his post-election phone call with Putin, in March. During the conversation, Trump both congratulated the Russian leader on his election — which Western election observers said had failed to offer voters a real choice — and issued Putin an invitation to the White House. After the call, the Kremlin quickly released word of the invite and began publicly lobbying to pin down a date for a summit, but, privately, the Russian President balked at the Oval Office as the meeting's venue.
"Putin doesn't want to come to Washington. Putin wants to meet in a third-party location," the senior Administration official told me. "Originally, Trump didn't want to do that,” but the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Putin asked Austria's new hard-right populist Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, to arrange the summit for Vienna, and the White House is considering the proposal.
Two former senior U.S. officials told me that they had also been briefed on Trump's orders to his staff to plan for the Putin summit soon. One of them said it could even occur on the first leg of Trump's trip to Europe next month, before Trump attends the annual nato meeting. Getting together with Putin before the allies would be "breaking every rule we've ever had," the former U.S. official said, a flagrant breach of protocol sure to upset Europeans already jittery over Trump's criticism of the nato alliance and his public embrace of Putin.
A couple of points:
1. "There's no stopping him." I mean, yes, there is. Just because no one empowered to do that is willing to do it doesn't mean that no way exists. This is a very dangerous narrative, and I am getting very frustrated with the political press for continually repeating it uncritically.
2. That Kurz, a right-wing anti-immigrant extremist, has been solicited to arrange this meeting and Trump is going along with it is absolutely appalling. (Though entirely unsurprising.)
3. Meeting with Putin at all is bad enough, for eleventy different reasons — but if Trump meets with him during the same foreign trip as the NATO conference, it will be an extraordinarily offensive gesture to our allies. Which one imagines is precisely the point.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Carpe Librarium: "How do you avoid procrastination? Or are you a person who rarely faces that temptation?"
This is probably going to sound like a weird answer, but I avoid procrastination by just doing stuff. I have to think consciously about how I'm starting to procrastinate, and then I have to think consciously about how I'm going to regret procrastinating, and then I sometimes have to say out loud to myself, "Just fucking do it!", and then I have to make myself do it, lol.
Nothing else works. Not promising myself a reward if I get something done, not trying to guilt myself into it, not whipping up a motivating anxiety over possible consequences. There are no effective tricks. The only thing that works for me is just doing it!
And when I fail to just do something? Procrastination galore.
Throwback Thursdays
[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!]
