Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker bellist: "What do you expect to experience after you die?"
Coincidentally, I was just talking to a friend about this the other day, and he expects a consciousness of some description after death and I expect nothingness, and each of us was horrified by the other's expectation, lol.
He can't imagine just blinking out, and I can't imagine having to stay aware.
Either one of us is going to be very disappointed, or maybe we all get what we want after we die. He can be a ghost, and I can get a nap!
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!]
Betsy DeVos Is Terrible
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is terrible. Just the absolute worst. A real asshole. Her only qualification for her job is her eminent willingness to destroy the department she's ostensibly tasked with leading. She has horrendous ideas about public education. She is catastrophically compromised by unexamined white privilege, the uniquely breathtaking greed of the obscenely wealthy, zero expertise in the work she is meant to be doing, and an aggressive lack of decency. She is filled with seemingly undiluted malice for students from marginalized populations and survivors of sexual assault and victims of fraud, which makes her unfit for her position — except as it has been reimagined by the Trump Regime, to orchestrate chaos and destruction. I don't like her one bit, and I find her politics abhorrent, and I am disgusted by the fact that she even holds any position in the federal government, no less one with so much power and influence. What a disaster. What a cruel wreck of a person. She never should have been nominated and she never should have been confirmed and she should be removed immediately, for the sake of the nation's children.
On a related note: It's possible to criticize Betsy DeVos without using misogyny.
Shaker Gourmet
Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
* * *
I didn't take a photo of it, because it slipped my mind FOR SOME REASON, but the dish on which I burned my hand the other night was one I'd made for a friend who had joined us for dinner, who is the son of a German immigrant and a Polish immigrant. He gave two big thumbs up to this very simple but tasty dish, so I figured I'd share the recipe.
I always hesitate to offer a number of servings, because everyone eats different portion sizes, but this made enough to fill me and two very hungry men, plus there was enough leftover to send a hearty helping home with our friend.
He mentioned, by the way, that his mother used to make a very similar dish, but added white beans to it. I'm definitely going to try that next time!
Ingredients:
Four medium sized knackwurst (precooked)
One large smoked polish sausage (precooked)
One 16 oz. jar of Bavarian style sauerkraut
1/3 cup water
Directions:
Cut sausages into 2-inch long pieces. Puncture each piece with a fork. Place in bottom of dutch oven. Pour water and sauerkraut on top. Cover and let marinate for two hours.
Preheat oven to 375. Cook covered for 75 minutes. Stir halfway through. Let rest for a few minutes before serving.
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 553
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: The Trump Regime Wanted to Break up Immigrant Families and Today in
Here are some more things in the news today...
Michael Harriot at the Root: Evidence Shows Hackers Changed Votes in the 2016 Election But No One Will Admit It.
U.S. officials will admit that Vladimir Putin interfered with the 2016 election. They don't specifically deny that Russian operatives altered votes. They will only say they cannot confirm that fact. They will say that there is no conclusive evidence to support it.And there will never be any direct evidence in part because Republican state legislatures have ensured that any and all potential evidence was destroyed.
That is simply not true.
When one dissects the publicly available information on Putin's state-sanctioned campaign to elect Donald Trump, the same evidence that supports the intelligence community’s assertion that Russia wanted to elect Donald Trump also points to the inescapable fact Soviet actors most likely changed votes.
...Every single source agrees that Russian could have changed votes. We know it is not a difficult task. We know it is so easy, even a 16-year-old could do it. Every single shred of publicly available evidence says Russian hackers would have altered voter rolls and votes.
Yet, we are supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin concocted this vast, Soviet-sponsored effort that included propaganda, computer experts, spies and an international ring of hackers, but when he was actually successful at breaking into voting systems, all they did was look around and change nothing?
We are supposed to believe the circumstantial evidence that shows Russians interfered but not the circumstantial evidence that shows they changed votes? There will never be any direct evidence. The only other alternative is to believe that the entire plot was an exercise.
Also, by way of reminder, when Rod Rosenstein announced new indictments related to 2016 election cyber-operations against 12 Russian intelligence officers two weeks ago, I noted: "Rosenstein made clear that there was no allegation in the indictment that Americans conspired with the Russian intelligence officers, nor that any vote totals were affected as a result of the cyberattacks. Note the careful language there: Many folks' takeaway will be that no Americans did conspire, and that no vote totals were affected, but that is not what Rosenstein said. He said only that the indictment alleges neither of those things. I'm angry that Rosenstein went to such great lengths to imply that there was no vote tampering, while not actually saying that (because he can't). That's certainly the impression with which most people will be left, though."
Ask yourself why it is that the man who is the gatekeeper for Bob Mueller's investigation into Russian interference is taking great pains to empower the mendacious narrative that Russia could not possibly have altered vote totals in the 2016 election. There is no reassuring answer to that question.
I wrote at length on Tuesday about the grim reality that we are very unlikely to have free and fair elections in November. And let me add this equally troubling thought: The very public failure to hold Russia accountable for election meddling not only means that Russia feels empowered to interfere in the midterms, but certainly so does every other state with the capacity and desire to do so. I fully expect that Russia will not be the only foreign state attempting to interfere and/or successfully interfering in the midterm election.
And, at this point, even countries that previously might have expected to be called out because they don't hold the U.S. president in their pockets surely feel more brazen, because it's unlikely Donald Trump will ever call out any election meddling at all, collusion notwithstanding, given that he doesn't want to acknowledge election interference that undermines his own legitimacy. Or his party's, with regard to the midterms.
The one possible exception he might be willing to call out is if one of our allies interfered with the objective of protecting our democracy. In fact, he just laid the groundwork for it the other day.
Trump has created a situation in which our enemies know they can interfere with impunity and our allies know they cannot interfere even to help.
That should be a significant concern to all of us, and a real wake-up call about the state of the U.S. democracy.
And if that doesn't do it, maybe this will:
NEWS, per John Bolton: “The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.”
— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) July 25, 2018
Oh.
Meanwhile... [Content Note: Racism] Michael Wines at the New York Times: New Emails Show Michigan Republicans Plotting to Gerrymander Maps. "Newly disclosed emails show Michigan Republicans angling to give their party a dominant position through gerrymandered maps and celebrating the plight of their Democratic rivals. ...The emails, disclosed in a filing on Monday, boast of concentrating 'Dem garbage' into four of the five southeast Michigan districts that Democrats now control, and of packing African-Americans into a metropolitan Detroit House district. One email likened a fingerlike extension they created in one Democratic district map to an obscene gesture toward its congressman, Representative Sander M. Levin. 'Perfect. It's giving the finger to Sandy Levin,' the author of the message wrote. 'I love it.'"
* * *
No White House logs. No readouts of calls w/foreign leaders. 2 hours w/Putin w/no one else present. No press conferences. Two days a week at his private club. No tax returns. Close family members as senior advisers. Trump has successfully privatized the Presidency. https://t.co/nuTLp7WDSd
— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) July 25, 2018
Jon Swaine at the Guardian: Maria Butina: Ties Emerge Between NRA, Alleged Spy, and Russian Billionaire. "Senior members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) met the wife of the Russian billionaire who allegedly gave financial support to a woman accused of being a secret agent for Moscow in the U.S. The NRA members met Svetlana Nikolaeva, who is the head of a gun company that supplies sniper rifles to the Russian military and intelligence services, during a trip to Moscow during the 2016 election campaign. Nikolaeva's husband, Konstantin Nikolaev, allegedly provided funding to Maria Butina, a young Russian woman charged with carrying out an illicit spying operation in Washington. Nikolaev reportedly once invested in his wife's gun company. The finding sheds further light on the links forged in recent years between America's powerful gun lobby and well-connected Russians. U.S. prosecutors allege Butina's activities were directed by Alexander Torshin, a senior Russian state banker and an NRA member."
Russia Deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Kozhin said Russia is demanding the release of Russian spy Butina. How about we demand Russia stop sending spies. pic.twitter.com/vvNKOCflmG
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) July 26, 2018
[CN: White supremacy] Kelly Weill at the Daily Beast: American Racists Look for Allies in Russia. "While [Donald] Trump pals around with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the U.S.'s racist right is making open overtures to Russian white supremacists. One day after Trump's disastrous summit with Putin last week, the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group, announced that it would launch a Russian-language site. The southern secessionist group's crush on Russia is the latest appeal by U.S. white supremacists to Russia and Putin — an alliance that has strengthened during the Trump presidency."
Oh come on. https://t.co/O19tFiH6Mi
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 26, 2018
Nahal Toosi, Bryan Bender, and Eliana Johnson at Politico: Cabinet Chiefs Feel Shut out of Bolton's 'Efficient' Policy Process.
National security adviser John Bolton's effort to simplify the administration's decision-making process is frustrating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis and causing confusion about the United States' position on major issues including Russia, according to officials familiar with the situation.Just to be clear: This, too, is a sign of blazing authoritarianism in the White House.
Mattis has gone so far as to draft a letter to Bolton requesting that he hold more gatherings of agency and department chiefs "to smooth the bubble" on thorny issues ranging from U.S. policy in Syria to North Korea, according to one senior administration official. In particular, senior officials are concerned about the dearth of "principals committee" meetings scheduled by Bolton, officials say. Principals committee meetings are traditionally key forums for relevant Cabinet bosses to prepare and recommend policy options for the president.
Of special concern is the U.S. relationship with Russia, especially since Trump's July 16 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin with only translators present. Officials across U.S. agencies have been trying to figure out what Trump and Putin discussed. Russian officials, meanwhile, have taken advantage of the U.S. confusion to make a series of announcements about what they say Trump and Putin agreed upon. Bolton did not convene any principals committee meetings to discuss the Trump-Putin summit ahead of time, and hasn't held any such meetings on the issue since the event took place.
* * *
[CN: War; death. Covers entire section.]
Louisa Loveluck and Zakaria Zakaria at the Washington Post: Death Notices for Syrian Prisoners Are Suddenly Piling Up; It's a Sign Assad Has Won the War.
The Syrian government has begun issuing death notices for political detainees at an unprecedented rate, according to groups that monitor the prisons, in an effort to resolve the fate of thousands of missing Syrians as the regime prevails in its civil war.Daniel Byman at Foreign Affairs: How the U.S. Is Empowering Iran in Yemen. "The United States' own policies have at times advanced rather than hindered Tehran's regional ambitions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Yemen. U.S. support for a brutal Saudi-led military campaign in the country has created a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions, while offering an opening for Iran to expand its influence in the country. Military intervention has made insurgents more reliant on support from Tehran and is turning civilians against U.S. partners. If Washington wants to counter Iranian influence, it needs to reverse course — ending its disastrous support for the Saudi-led coalition and throwing its weight behind peace talks. Doubling down on the military effort will serve only to further Iran's regional ascendance."
Since the spring, government registry offices have released hundreds of these notifications. Many of the notices report that prisoners have been dead since the early years of the conflict.
While officials have not publicly explained the increase, it could offer a rare window into the mind-set of Syrian leaders, who are notoriously hard to read, at a pivotal point in the war.
Human rights experts and other observers believe the disclosures reflect the growing confidence of President Bashar al-Assad's government as his forces overrun final pockets of rebel-held territory. Authorities no longer fear they will provoke fiercer resistance by revealing the multitude of deaths in regime custody, experts say.
They also suggest that Assad now feels secure enough that he is starting to close the book on the seven-year war, with the death notices signaling to Syrians that it is time to move on while underscoring in grim fashion that he is firmly in control.
The message is that "the war never happened, the regime is back in charge, and everything will be processed through the system," said Faysal Itani, a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. "I think the word that encapsulates this best is normalization — the Syrian version of it, at any rate."
And that is only one of many problems with the intervention in Yemen. Sudarsan Raghavan at the Washington Post: U.S. Allies Have Killed Thousands of Yemeni Civilians from the Air; After 22 Died at a Wedding, One Village Asks, 'Why Us?' "More than three years into Yemen's civil war, over 16,000 civilians have been killed and injured, the vast majority by airstrikes, the U.N. human rights office estimates, adding that the figures are likely to be far higher. The deaths are continuing unabated, with as many as hundreds of casualties per month, despite assurances by a U.S.-backed regional coalition to better protect civilians amid mounting criticism within the United States and the international community."
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan... James Mackenzie at Reuters: U.S. Military Says Investigating Afghanistan Air Strike. "The U.S. military is investigating an air strike near the northern city of Kunduz last week following reports that as many as 14 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the attack, a statement said on Wednesday. Last week, Afghan officials confirmed the deaths, which occurred during an operation on July 19 by Afghan security forces backed by U.S. air strikes, but said the causes were unclear. A separate U.S. statement last week confirmed that U.S. aircraft had carried out strikes in support of the operation but said there were no indications they had caused any civilian casualties. On Wednesday, the U.S. military issued a second statement saying that the incident was being investigated."
What are we even doing. Here, around the world, everywhere.
* * *
[CN: Misogyny; carcerality; criminalization of need] Nusrat Choudhury at Ms.: How Modern Debtors' Prisons Are Using Fees to Tear Apart Families. "Every day, families across the country are ripped apart as loved ones are thrown in jail for the 'crime' of not being able to afford fines and fees imposed by courts for traffic offenses, civil infractions, and misdemeanors. We're incarcerating people because they live in poverty, effectively landing them in a new form of debtors' prison. For single mothers — who are far more likely to live in poverty — the consequences are nothing short of devastating."
[CN: Homophobia; Christian supremacy] Andy Towle at Towleroad: Married Gay Couple of 40 Years Denied Housing in Senior Living Community Because the Bible Says No. "Mary Walsh, 72, and Bev Nance, 68, a married Missouri couple who have been together for more than 40 years, were denied housing in a senior living community because the Bible says marriage is 'the union of one man and one woman, as marriage is understood in the Bible,' according to a federal lawsuit filed by the couple. ...Said attorney Julie Wilensky in a press release: 'Mary and Bev were denied housing for one reason and one reason only — because they were married to each other rather than to men. This is exactly the type of sex discrimination the Fair Housing Act prohibits. Their story demonstrates the kind of exclusion and discrimination still facing same-sex couples of all ages.'"
[CN: Racism; police brutality] Blue Telusma at the Grio: NYPD Arrest and Drag Unconscious Black Man as Neighbors Go Off. "[T]he clip shows community members having a shouting match with police over the July 16th arrest of Keith Woody, whose limp body can be seen being dragged from a house, then dropped on the street next to a police cruiser. ...'You don’t knock nobody out like that,' one woman pleads. 'He's out unconscious in 100 degree weather.'...Even though police assured the public that an ambulance would be arriving, this ultimately was untrue. Woody's limp body was thrown in the back of the police care, which quickly drove away."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Capitulating to Conservatives Is What Got Us Here
Bill Adair, the progenitor of PolitiFact, has written a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review in which he details why he believes it's "time to move beyond" the site's iconic Truth-O-Meter.
And his reasoning is profoundly disturbing.
I have come to realize that in our polarized environment, the meter I invented is not reaching everyone, and not reaching conservatives in particular.But the problem isn't that fact-checkers are alienating conservatives. The problem is that conservatives have learned, precisely because of shit like this, that by rejecting facts, truth, and reality — and then accuse anyone who respects them of bias — they can bully the press and politicians into abandoning the expectation that we all agree on what is demonstrably factual, as well as the calculation that anyone who refuses is alienating themselves.
Studies show a sharp partisan divide over our unique form of journalism. A 2016 study by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler found Republicans have less favorable views of fact-checking than Democrats. A 2017 Duke Reporters' Lab study that I co-authored with Rebecca Iannucci found a similar split: Liberal publications were likely to cite fact-checking favorably and use positive descriptions like "nonpartisan" and "watchdogs" while conservative outlets tended to be critical and use terms such as "left-leaning" and "biased." We found conservatives often put the phrase in snarky quotes — "fact-checking" — to suggest it is not legitimate.
...I suspect conservative readers' concern about ratings is magnified by their long-held suspicion of the news media. The political fact-checking movement was born in the 1990s and picked up steam over the past decade when conservatives became increasingly distrustful of the mainstream media, a group they often reduced to an abbreviated snarl, "the MSM." In the eyes of many conservatives, fact-checkers are no longer just lefties providing the news, they're now self-proclaimed authorities deciding who is lying.
Needless to say, fact-checkers can't afford to alienate conservatives — our nation can't have a healthy political discourse if the two sides can't agree on facts.
Conservatives never have to own any of the responsibility for rejecting facts and being fucking assholes to everyone else using mendacious justifications rooted in hatred and fear, not in reality.
I'm so tired of the entire world have to shift to accommodate a movement of spoiled, entitled, hateful, destructive brats.
And the fact that we are all in a worse place because of that relentless shifting is manifestly evident. I cannot begin to imagine why anyone would argue that it is worth doing even more of at this point. For fuck's sake.
[H/T to Eastsidekate.]
Today in Creeping Blazing Authoritarianism
Yesterday, a group of Congressional Republicans introduced articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; the White House banned a reporter who had the unmitigated temerity to ask Donald Trump questions about Michael Cohen and Vladimir Putin; and the Fayette Advocate "obtained emails from a whistleblower from inside the Columbus Police Department that outline the arrest of Stormy Daniels earlier this month may have been pre-planned days before she ever arrived in town."
War on the law. War on the press. War on dissidents.
In reporting and discussion of each of these stories, I have seen people using words like "stunning" and "shocking." None of these things should be stunning or shocking anyone at this point, with the possible exception of people emerging from multiyear comas. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have told us over and over and over and over and over that this is who they are, and to assert surprise at this point is to confess that one has been affording them good faith for far longer than they deserved.
We need a lot more informed anger, and a lot less fucking surprise from people who should damn well know better.
The Trump Regime Wanted to Break up Immigrant Families
[Content Note: Nativism; abuse.]
I have said many times that at the center of Trump Regime policy, on any issue, is malice. Harm is ever the objective, because Donald Trump is a resolute believer in the idea that harming people is the most efficient and effective way to accomplish his goal to "Make America Great Again."
Immigration is a striking case in point. He uses lies about the dangers that undocumented migrant workers and asylum-seeking refugees pose to the citizenry, targeting them with dehumanizing and eliminationist language — and his regime enacts policy explicitly designed to do maximum damage to people arriving at or crossing the southern border without immigration papers.
There was no actual need for the Trump Regime's "zero tolerance" policy, and even less actual need to enforce it by separating children from their parents. But the policy was chosen and executed to maximize cruelty, as a "warning" to people escaping violence or life-threatening need, who have nowhere else to go.
As more information regarding how the "zero tolerance" policy was enforced becomes public, it becomes abundantly clear that malice was built in by design.
1. Noah Lanard at Mother Jones: New Data Shows How Trump Administration Prosecuted Migrant Parents with Children Instead of Adults Traveling Alone. "The Justice Department couldn't prosecute all unauthorized migrants, and federal officials needed to choose who to target. Newly released government data shows that the Trump administration prosecuted thousands of parents instead of prosecuting adults traveling without children. Those zero-tolerance prosecutions caused the family separation crisis by placing parents in the custody of the Justice Department and turning their children into 'unaccompanied' minors. ...Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 24,000 adults traveling without children who crossed the border in May, meaning that the Justice Department could have increased prosecutions for illegal entry without prosecuting any parents and separating families."
2. Tal Kopan at CNN: [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Justice Department: Use 'Illegal Aliens,' Not 'Undocumented'. "The Justice Department has instructed US attorneys offices not to use the term 'undocumented' immigrants and instead refer to someone illegally in the US as 'an illegal alien,' according to a copy of an agency-wide email obtained by CNN. ...'The word 'undocumented' is not based in US code and should not be used to describe someone's illegal presence in the country,' the email states."
The Department of Justice insists U.S. attorneys use the dehumanizing and othering language "illegal alien" to refer to undocumented immigrants. https://t.co/QtzP2QRbXW
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 26, 2018
3. Adolfo Flores at BuzzFeed News: Separated Parents Were "Totally Unaware" They Had Waived Their Right to Be Reunified with Their Children. "Immigrant parents who were separated from their children at the border told attorneys they were misinformed, coerced, or tricked into waiving their rights to be reunified with their kids. ...The declarations from attorneys working with detained parents who were separated from their kids describe people who don't speak English being pressured into signing documents; being forced to make a decision in a room full of dozens of people with only a few minutes to decide whether to leave their kids in the US; or incorrectly believing they were signing a form that would reunite them with their children."
4. Ted Hesson, Renuka Rayasam, and Dan Diamond at Politico: Most Deported Migrants Were Not Asked about Leaving Children Behind, Trump Official Says. "Homeland Security officials may have neglected to give a choice to as many as three-quarters of all migrant parents removed from the United States about leaving their children behind, contradicting repeated public assurances from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The Trump administration failed to document consent in most such cases, an administration official told POLITICO. ...The revelation threatens to delay reunifications and renews questions about the administration's original intent one day ahead of a court-ordered deadline to return most migrant children to their parents."
These are all stories from the last two days.
The Trump Regime wanted to break up immigrant families to send a message, and they found a way to do it. Malice was the point.
We must understand that this is the horrible reality with which we are faced and proceed accordingly. Appeals to decency will never be effective when resisting an administration with a comprehensive void of decency.
Open Thread
No update to report after the doctor's appointment. My hand is blistered but healing. As for the cluster headaches and the pain in my side, I've just been sent for more tests over the next couple of weeks.
Open Thread + Programming Note
Well, I burned the eff outta my hand last night, and it's still sore like a mofo this morning. It was already going to be a half-day for me, since I have a doctor's appointment, so I'm just going to take the whole day off, and I'll see you tomorrow. Sorry again for the interruption. It's been a really rough couple of weeks.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker meanlawyermom: "What are your strangest fears/phobias (not serious political concerns, but just weird quirks)?"
As you've probably noticed by now, I have a love of all creatures great and small. This extends to most insects. (I mean, I have a bee and a beetle tattooed on me.) I don't kill spiders (although I do remove egg sacs, because I don't need a gazillion spiders in the house); I gently return moths and lightning bugs and crickets to the great outdoors with my bare hands; even the things I do kill, like stink bugs and scout ants, don't bother me.
There is one exception.
Centipedes.
I HATE CENTIPEDES WITH THE FIERY PASSION OF TEN THOUSAND SUNS AND THEY FREAK ME THE FUCK OUT!!! If I see a centipede anywhere in the house, I immediately scream for Iain to deal with it.
It didn't used to be this way, but, once upon a time, about 22 years ago, I saw a centipede on the wall of my apartment. I balled up some tissue to crush it, and hit it smack in its middle. And then both sides ran off in opposite directions.
OMGGGGGGGGGG EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT MAKES ME WANT TO FAINT!
It was so goddamned gross and terrifying that I have refused to deal with centipedes ever since, lol.
What I'm Watching
This is a thread to share all the good things you're watching at the moment, or have recently watched. Serialized shows on broadcast or streaming; films; digital shorts; stand-up; documentaries; performances — whatever! Tell us what you're watching and enjoying these days.
I just finished season 2 of GLOW, and I loved it so much! I will repeat what I wrote last July, when I started the first season: "Anyone else watching GLOW on Netflix? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE, BECAUSE IT IS AMAZING. It's a series about the 1980's phenomenon 'Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,' and it is: 1. A show with so many women omg!!! and 2. Absolute 80's perfection."
The show itself is not perfection — the storylines with the dudes are...not great. I have never liked Marc Maron, and I don't especially like him here, and I really don't enjoy his character and story arc, in particular.
But I came for the women, and I stayed for the women, and, if there is a season 3 you-know-where, I will keep coming back for the women.
Anyway! What are you watching these days?
YES! Pence Met with RESISTANCE in Philly
Taking a cue from Texas badasses, protesters turned up in Philly to send a pointed message to Vice President Mike Pence:
Right fucking on.
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.
* * *
I am seeing a therapist who is really great. She is kind and smart and challenging in the best way, and she sort of (I think!) gets what I do for a living, so I can talk about it without having to waste entire sessions explaining it, and that is a very good thing.
I've never had that in 14 years (not for lack of trying), and there are a lot of aspects of this work with which I don't want to burden the people close to me, so it's been a lot to carry on my own. And it's good to feel like I don't have to anymore.
We Resist: Day 551
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: Russia Is Planning an Attack on U.S. Utilities and The Trump Regime and Stochastic Terrorism and Jeff Sessions Laughs at High School Conservatives Chanting "Lock Her Up!"
Here are some more things in the news today...
As I've been documenting under the label "The Russia Reversal" for about nine months, Donald Trump has been peddling the narrative that it was actually Hillary Clinton and the Democrats who colluded with Russia and/or who committed crimes during the last election and/or whom Vladimir Putin was trying to assist.
Today, four months out from the midterm election, and hours after headlines that the Democrats' odds to take back the House have improved, Trump tweeted this:
I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2018
Wow. This is extraordinary — and incredibly dangerous.
Trump is repeating the same strategy he employed ahead of the 2016 election. This needs to be pointed out in every news story about this tweet. It is a strategy; it is deeply sinister; & the objective is to invent "cause" for overturning the results if they don't go in his favor.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 24, 2018
Right. But all Trump needs to do is give his supporters a narrative. This bullshit about Russia interfering to help the Democrats is something he's been peddling for a very long time now, to deflect accountability and because he can't help but engage incessantly in projection.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 24, 2018
Absolutely. Putin only wants "chaos" so much as he can exploit it. It's not the objective; it's one of the means to the objective. And even then, it's only the appearance of chaos, which is why Trump is quite happy for people to believe he is erratic and incapable of strategy.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 24, 2018
And yet: HERE IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF HOW TRUMP IS STRATEGIC.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 24, 2018
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
[Content Note: Voter suppression; racism] Michael Harriot at the Root: Millions of Black Voters Are Being Purged From Voter Rolls, Often Illegally: Report.
Voter Purges [PDF], a new report by the Brennan Center, highlights the systematic purging of voters from rolls by state and local officials around the country. These are not random, isolated cases. It is a methodical effort that disproportionately affects minority voters. Even worse, no one seems to care.Voter suppression is a reason this election won't be fair, regardless of Russian meddling.
...Between 2014 and 2016, 16 million registered voters were removed from state rolls, 33 percent more than were moved between 2006 and 2008. For the election of 2012 and 2016, the Brennan Center estimates that two million fewer voters would have been purged if those states had to apply by the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
...Almost every type of voter purge disproportionately affects black voters and voters of color. Some states purge rolls based solely on names but non-whites are more likely to have the same names. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16.3 percent of Hispanic people and 13 percent of black people have one of the 10 most common surnames, compared to 4.5 percent of white people.
Black and Hispanic voters are more likely to move, often in the same jurisdiction, but voter purges based on address eliminate them from voting. Officials also use "voter caging" which intentionally sends mail to verify addresses in a format that cannot be forwarded, leading to the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.
African Americans are also more likely to have felony convictions, and elderly and minority voters are more likely to be incapacitated, all reasons for which someone can be purged from a voter roll.
Almost every study ever done on this issue shows that in-person voter fraud is almost nonexistent. Instead, these purges are intentional efforts to restrict voting rights.
And yet... Despite racist, disablist, ageist, and classist voter suppression by the Republican Party, despite almost certain intervention by the Russians, and despite the sitting president's implicit threat to disregard the midterm election result if it does not go in his favor, virtually everyone is behaving as though we are going to have a free and fair election in November.
We are not. That is manifestly apparent. And still there has not emerged a better plan than pretending like everything is normal when it clearly isn't.
It would be terrific if we could all agree to do something about that now, instead of waiting until after the election and then tearing our hair out when Trump uses the result to consolidate power no matter what the result.
At this point, I feel like "blue tsunami" is functioning the same way as Mueller's investigation: Giving people unwarranted hope and keeping them complacent, waiting for a solution that can't possibly materialize.
I know that people will scream at me for saying that and accuse me of discouraging people from voting. But I fucking refuse to not acknowledge reality. I got enough people gaslighting me; I'm not going to gaslight myself.
And personally, I would argue that having a president who is laying the groundwork to disregard the election result is more discouraging than my pointing it out, but what the fuck do I know.
I'm going to vote. I am going to vote in every race. I am going to encourage everyone I know to vote and offer to help people get to the polls if they need it and answer every question people throw at me about the elections. Just like I always do.
But I am going to do a lot more between now and then. And if we don't all commit to addressing this reality honestly and meaningfully before Election Day, we might as well not even show up.
And that's the truth. No matter how much it sucks.
* * *
Carrie Dann at NBC News: NBC/WSJ Poll: Support for Roe v. Wade Hits New High. "A new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal finds that 71 percent of American voters believe that the decision, which established a [pregnant person]'s legal right to an abortion, should not be overturned. Just 23 percent say the ruling should be reversed. That's the highest level of support for the decision — and the lowest share of voters who want Roe v. Wade overturned — in the poll's history dating back to 2005." Arm yourself with these numbers for the battle to resist the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court!
Yikes. https://t.co/RX3yFzAdSM
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 24, 2018
It's hard to see how this isn't political theater, given this Russian-brokered deal a few days ago. I don't have a great handle on what's happening in Syria, but it looks as though Syria is a pawn as Russia, the U.S., and Israel consolidate power together.
Damian Paletta at the Washington Post: White House Readies Plan for $12 Billion in Emergency Aid to Farmers Caught in Trump's Escalating Trade War. "The White House has searched for months for a way to provide emergency assistance to farmers without backing down on Trump's trade agenda, and the new program will extend roughly $12 billion through three different mechanisms run by the Department of Agriculture." So Trump starts a trade war, then uses taxpayer dollars mostly from people who didn't vote for him, to bail out people who mostly did? Cool. It's not that I don't want to help farmers! Especially small family farmers! I do! I just don't want to help farmers because our president created problems for them with horseshit policies!
* * *
[CN: Nativism; abuse. Covers entire section.]
Nick Miroff at the Washington Post: Government: 463 Migrant Parents May Have Been Deported without Their Children. "The Trump administration said in a court filing Monday that 463 parents of migrant children are no longer present in the United States, indicating that the number of mothers and fathers potentially deported without their children during the 'zero tolerance' border crackdown could be far larger than previously acknowledged. ...Immigrant advocates say migrant parents were pressured into signing voluntary deportation forms out of desperation to be released from immigration detention once their sons and daughters were taken from them and sent to government shelters."
Teresa Wiltz at Pew Trusts: Why Crackdown Fears May Keep Documented Immigrants from Food Stamps. "It's that time of the week — food pantry day — and before the doors even open at the Spanish Catholic Center, the patrons begin queueing up, lugging roller carts and empty grocery bags, the line stretching out onto the hot sidewalk. Immigrants all, they hail from the Congo and Costa Rica, from Nicaragua and El Salvador, from Togo and Vietnam. Most are seniors. And all of them, they say, are afraid. 'I feel like a rabbit in a cage,' said Marta, 62, who moved to the United States from El Salvador 16 years ago, and didn't want her surname used because she is living here illegally. Added Maria Monestel, an 81-year-old babysitter from Costa Rica, 'Everyone is scared. They think they don't have any rights.' That keeps many from signing up for food stamps and other public assistance even when they're eligible, said Monestel, who has lived here for decades as a legal permanent resident. 'They're afraid if they do anything, they'll be deported,' Monestel said."
Brenda Medina and Douglas Hanks at the Miami Herald: An Undocumented Immigrant Who Was Turned over to ICE after an Accident Sues Miami-Dade.
The first plaintiff, identified only as "C.F.C." in court papers, is described as the mother of eight children who is a member of WeCount!, an immigrant advocacy group, and owner of a local produce business. She was arrested on May 12 after being involved in a minor accident in the parking lot of a B.J.’s in Homestead.This is very concerning not only because it may further discourage immigrants from seeking help in emergency situations, but also because it's another example of ICE targeting an immigration activist, which is where the Trump Regime's war on dissidents began.
The suit said occupants of the other car yelled "Go back to Mexico!" to the woman, who was with her youngest son, age 5, and a pregnant daughter. Homestead police arrived and arrested the woman for driving without a license. The woman's family posted her bail later that day, but Miami-Dade's Corrections Department held her for an additional 48 hours until agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked her up on May 14, according to the suit.
And there can be no remaining doubt that this is an eliminationist campaign against undocumented residents of this country, when they are being discouraged from seeking emergency assistance and food.
In a bit of tentative good news... Nate Raymond at Reuters: U.S. Judge Allows Lawsuit over End of Immigrant Protections to Proceed. "A federal judge in Boston on Monday rejected a bid by the Trump administration to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that its decisions to end temporary protections for immigrants in the United States from Honduras, Haiti, and El Salvador were racially motivated. ...The lawsuit cited statements it said showed Trump's 'dislike and disregard for Latino and black immigrants,' including reported remarks in January by Trump saying immigrants from Africa and Haiti come from 'shithole countries.' 'Plaintiffs have successfully made out their prima facie case,' [U.S. District Judge Denise Casper] wrote." Indeed.
* * *
[CN: Wildfires; death] Helena Smith, Sam Jones, and Martin Farrer at the Guardian: Greece Wildfires: Scores Dead as Holiday Resort Devastated. "At least 74 people have been killed and scores injured and more than 700 survivors have been rescued from the sea after a wildfire swept through a small resort town near Athens. Huge flames trapped families with children as they tried to flee from Mati, 18 miles (29km) east of the Greek capital, on Monday afternoon. Among the dead were 26 people found huddled tightly together close to the beach, a Red Cross official said on Tuesday morning. ...'Greece is going through an unspeakable tragedy,' the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said as he appeared on television to declare three days of national mourning."
[CN: Drought] Yessenia Funes at Earther: European Drought Might Mean No French Fries for You. "The German Association of the Fruit, Vegetable, and Potato Processing Industry BOGK announced it expects fewer and lower-quality potatoes this season and a 25 percent loss in revenue across the agricultural and potato-processing industries. That includes larger potatoes necessary to mass produce our beloved french fries. 'Due to increasing dryness and heat, the individual potato plants are increasingly under stress and stop the growth of the plant,' the association wrote. 'Irrigation — if it is even possible or permitted — is of little use in this situation, according to experts from the potato producers.'"
[CN: Environmental harm] Kyla Mandel at ThinkProgress: Thousands of Scientists Warn Trump's Border Wall Will Threaten Biodiversity. "[A]s the authors of the paper explain, the wall will 'threaten some of the continent's most biologically diverse regions' — even if in some areas it's a fence rather than a solid barrier. This is because the U.S.-Mexico border spans a variety of different regions, from desert and grasslands to temperate forests, which include conservation hotspots. The border currently bisects land home to 62 species listed as either critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
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.
Jeff Sessions Laughs at High School Conservatives Chanting "Lock Her Up!"
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was giving a speech at the Turning Point USA Student Leadership Summit, which is basically Trump Youth or whatever, when the crowd of high school conservatives started chanting "LOCK HER UP!" And because he is a massive shitwheel, the nation's top law enforcement officer had a good old laugh at the call to imprison a private citizen who has committed no crime.
Here's the video. Jeff Sessions—the nation's top law enforcement officer—laughs and says "lock her up" at a high school leadership summit in Washington D.C. (via ABC) pic.twitter.com/XnACf9F3o0
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 24, 2018
Sessions: I like this bunch. I gotta tell ya. You're not gonna be backing down. Go get 'em! Go get 'em! [shouts from audience] Rather than moaning— [more shouting; Sessions chuckles; the crowd starts chanting "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!"] Lock her up! [Sessions laughs; the chanting increases] Well, so, I heard that a long time, over the last campaign.This, after Hillary Clinton continued her unyielding criticism of Donald Trump's fealty to Vladimir Putin over the weekend, and after Trump started his war on dissidents in earnest yesterday, threatening to yank the security clearances of Obama officials who have been critical of him.
This is not funny. It is incredibly serious.
The Trump Regime and Stochastic Terrorism
[Content Note: Incitement; violent bigotry.]
After writing yesterday about untraceable plastic guns and anti-choice terrorism, and after including a link in the round-up about the racist "Stand Your Ground" shooting in Florida, it became clear to me that the Trump Regime is going to rely on stochastic terrorism in order to enact their eliminationism.
Stochastic terrorism is "the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf."
That is: Leverage visibility and influence to dehumanize your enemies and cast them as threats, then sit back and wait for your most radical and/or unstable supporters to take violent action. It helps significantly if you've also leveraged your power to give access to deadly weaponry to as many people as possible.
The anti-choice movement is the perfect example of stochastic terrorism at work in the United States. Anti-choicers from the sidewalks outside clinics to national political leaders talk about abortion as "murder," say that abortionists "kill babies," talk about abortion-seeking women as "mothers who kill their children," and other profoundly dishonest and equally incendiary language. Then clinics get bombed and doctors get killed, and we are all expected to pretend that the latter has nothing to do with the former. It's just "lone wolves" who were acting on their own. Their bootstraps made them do it.
Donald Trump knows how stochastic terrorism works. He engaged in it during the 2016 campaign — targeting his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
In August of 2016, he bellowed at a rally: "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick— [boos from audience] If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."
His point, to anyone without a cynical agenda, was unambiguous.
Feminist law professor and reproductive rights activist David S. Cohen wrote that Trump was engaging in stochastic terrorism: "Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn't know which dog."
It was an invitation to anyone who might be listening and inclined to take action.
Stochastic terrorism is a perfect strategy for a person like Trump, who loves to boast about how tough he is, but is in reality a simpering coward. He is, after all, a man who became famous for uttering the phrase "You're fired!" on television every week, but forces other people to do the actual firing in his White House.
For Trump, disseminating toxic bile from his Twitter account and legalizing untraceable weapons is the ideal strategy for "taking care of" the portions of the population he finds undesirable. He'll let his base handle it.
Which is not to say, of course, that there will not be state violence. There certainly will be; there already is at the border and in prisons, and this will continue.
But the Trump Regime is doing everything they can to empower their base to commit eliminationist violence, against marginalized people and dissidents — and to do so legally, thus avoiding the pitfalls of genocidal regimes: No state-sanctioned mass killing centers; no mass graves. Just Trump loyalists murdering "undesirables," to probably very little media attention, between a population which has become inured to reports of mass shootings and a press whose increasingly consolidated corporate ownership will function primarily as propaganda for the administration.
I'm quite certain there are people who will find that totally implausible. And yet: The mainstream media has been largely ignoring social terrorism for decades.
Most incidents of anti-choice terrorism are not widely reported. Most homophobic and transphobic murders are not widely reported. Most modern lynchings of Black people, in their various iterations, are not widely reported. Even when this violence is widely reported, it's rarely connected to organized hatred against people who share the victim's identity — and certainly not connected to modern conservative politics.
It doesn't have to go this way. It can be prevented. But that requires a collective will to hold Donald Trump, and his entire party, accountable each and every time they use incendiary, dehumanizing, and eliminationist rhetoric. It requires a zero tolerance policy on that language, from every quarter, including and especially the political press. It requires never giving him the benefit of the doubt that he really meant something else.
I am not optimistic that will happen. But I would love to be wrong.
