Make it so. https://t.co/pwxoIOW8Do
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 31, 2018
GOOD MORNING OR WHATEVER TIME OF DAY IT IS IN YOUR PART OF THE WORLD
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker bellist: "What colors are in your kitchen and how did those colors come about?"
Blue, white, and grey, with dark brown cabinets. The kitchen was one of the reasons we fell in love with our house, and we haven't changed it since we bought the place.
Your Best Photograph
If you're a photographer, even if a very amateur one (like myself), and you've got a photo or photos you'd like to share, here's your thread for that!
It doesn't really have to be your best photograph—just one you like!
Please be sure if your photo contains people other than yourself, that you have the explicit consent of the people in the photos before posting them.
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Here's a picture I took recently from the car while we were headed to the gym:
I've always liked photos of the sky set behind the silhouette of power lines and other industry.
Shaker Thumbs
Shaker Thumbs is your opportunity to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a product or service you have used and that you'd recommend to other Shakers or warn them away from.
Today, I'm going to give a big ol' thumbs-up to the Flexible Plastic Cutting Board Mats Set!
This set is one of my favorite kitchen thingies is right now, all for the price of $5.45.
I make salads for dinner virtually every night, so I'm constantly chopping at dinnertime. Plus, I prepare and eat my breakfast and lunch at home, too, which means I might chop at more than one meal every day.
Because there's only two of us, we don't fill up the dishwasher daily, so I was having to wash my cutting board at least once a day and sometimes more. But now I can have one (or more) in the dishwasher and still have a clean one, and it makes me so ridiculously happy, lol.
It's just a nice little convenience for me, but may be especially useful for people who have to be extremely mindful while preparing meals for folks with food allergies and need multiple cutting boards at once, so I thought it might be worth passing along.
Anyway! Give us your thumbs-up or thumbs-down in comments!
[Just to be abundantly clear, I am not affiliated in any way with companies or products recommended in this series, nor am I receiving any form of payment from them. Anything I share here is just because I like it!]
What Did I Just Read?
[Content Note: Moving GIF at link] Ben Smith at BuzzFeed: I Helped Create Insider Political Journalism. Now It's Time for It to Go Away.
Let me just say as a person whose life was turned upside-down for awhile partially as a result of the hot-take fast-take who-cares insider political journalism of the aughts, there was never a time when it should have existed.
Also:
People who don't understand it was a luxury of their privilege that they were *ever* able to treat politics as a game cannot responsibly cover politics. It was evident then, and it is evident still. https://t.co/Mz4vySLWia pic.twitter.com/WMGgHm69zl
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018
If you can't view the image embedded in the tweet, it's a screenshot of the final two paragraphs of the piece, which read:
And yet, perhaps there's reason to be nostalgic for that amoral, tactical coverage of American politics. When I spoke the other day to one of the key figures of the old school, who declined to be quoted by name, he sounded a little wistful:Following my tweet, Eastsidekate and I had the following exchange (which I'm sharing with her permission):
"You almost long for the days when it was a game."
Love 2 B nostalgic about amorality
— eastsidekate (@eastsidekate) August 30, 2018
Right? The Good Old Days, when white dudes shaping the public conversation could be glib sociopaths and there wasn't a Nazi in the White House to make them feel bad about it.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018
It must be tough to have a case of the sads about Donald Trump making it so obvious that your immorality has consequences.
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 588
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.
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Earlier today by me: Good Morning Trump Is a Nightmare I'm Sorry and Trump Regime Questions Citizenship of Latinx Citizens and Trump's Relentless and Dangerous War on the Press.
Here are some more things in the news today...
[CN: Stochastic terrorism] Jill Colvin at the AP: Trump Stands by Warning of 'Violence' If Dems Win Midterms. "Asked Wednesday what he meant [when he said that, if Democrats win, they "will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently. And violently. There's violence. When you look at antifa, and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people."], Trump told reporters, 'I just hope there won't be violence. If you look at what happens— There's a lot of unnecessary violence all over the world, but also in this country. And I don't want to see it.'" The hell he doesn't. The whole reason he keep saying shit like this is because he wants "to see it."
This is (one reason) why the GOP is working overtime to rig the election. And, as a reminder, refusing to their jobs and hold foreign governments accountable for election interference (to their benefit), thus allowing more of the same, is itself collusion. https://t.co/ZCkpn3KZpW
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018
Eliana Johnson and Elana Schor at Politico: Trump Personally Lobbying GOP Senators to Flip on Sessions.
The willingness of Republican senators to turn on Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the result of a furious lobbying campaign from [Donald] Trump, who for the past 10 days has been venting his anger at Sessions to "any senator who will listen," as one GOP Senate aide put it.This is incredible. The president of the United States reportedly wants to remove his Attorney General because he's forever pissed that the Attorney General followed the law by recusing himself from an investigation of the president that the president wants him to obstruct, and the governing party is going along with it because they're pissed that they're not getting their way on a piece of legislation, so they're supporting the president, who has so thoroughly demonstrated his contempt for the law that, in less than two years, the idea that he would fire his Attorney General is met with a shrug because he's brazenly tried to obstruct justice since Day One. We are lost.
The president, who has spent a year and a half fulminating against his attorney general in public, finally got traction on Capitol Hill thanks to the growing frustration of a handful of GOP senators with their former colleague — most importantly, Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, who have been irritated by Sessions' opposition to a criminal justice reform bill they support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen congressional GOP aides, Trump advisers, and Republicans close to the White House.
Trump raised the prospect of firing Sessions last week in a phone conversation with Graham, according to two Capitol Hill aides, who said that Graham pressed the president to hold off until after the midterm elections. The president has also complained loudly about Sessions to several Republican senators, according to a GOP chief staff.
..."There's the belief that if the president taking action with respect to Sessions is going to be an important part of the Mueller obstruction case, most of that case has already been made. Things that the president has already done privately that have been reported, but also things that the president has done publicly that could be characterized as bullying or intimidating, all of that case is already there ready to be made, such that firing him is almost like an afterthought," said one person familiar with the conversations among members of the president's legal team.
Nicole Lafond at TPM: Trump Denies Reports That Ivanka and Kushner Had Role in 'Pushing Out' McGahn. "While [Donald] Trump spent most of Thursday morning criticizing the media on Twitter, he was exceptionally exasperated by one chunk of New York Times reporting that suggested his daughter Ivanka Trump played a role in Don McGahn's departure. The President is likely referencing the chunk in the Times piece on McGahn's exit that said Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were among McGahn's biggest critics. Ivanka Trump reportedly lambasted McGahn to her father over the degree of his cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller." So, contrary to being a "moderating" presence, Ivanka is agitating her father to behave like an authoritarian. Huh!
"We’ve never had to worry whether a president would intervene in the relocation of a federal office in order to safeguard the profits he was getting from a hotel. But now we do." https://t.co/wOb5waLlhm
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018
Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times: National Enquirer Had Decades of Trump Dirt; He Wanted to Buy It All. "He and his lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Mr. Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s, according to several of Mr. Trump's associates. ...It is not known how much of the material on Mr. Trump is still in American Media's possession or whether American Media destroyed any of it after the campaign."
Bank of America freezing accounts of customers suspected of not being US citizens https://t.co/fR9D1qnURG
— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) August 30, 2018
Holy shit that is bad. Bad. For all the reasons discussed here, and but also because if you're actually a citizen and need to mount a legal fight, you don't have access to your own money. My god.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Lee Moran at the Huffington Post: Mike Pence's Wistful Tweet About 'a More Respectful Time' Does Not Go Over Well. "On Tuesday, Pence bemoaned the Democrats' attempt to block the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, [Donald] Trump's Supreme Court nominee... The Veep's comments did not go over well. Many Twitter users reminded him of how Republicans denied a Supreme Court seat to Merrick Garland, former President Barack Obama's nominee. They also highlighted the lack of respect [Donald] Trump shows to his rivals on an almost daily basis."
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Remember those exit polls that said a majority of white women voted for Trump? A new Pew analysis says that wasn’t true: “Trump did much worse with white women and white college-educated voters than what the exit polls found.” https://t.co/3in4HG0ykL
— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) August 30, 2018
If exit polls among white women were off by 5 points, it's because white women were afraid to say they voted for Hillary Clinton. Why is that, I wonder? Cough. (There is an established history of some white women married to white men lying about for whom they are going to vote or did vote when asked in proximity to their husbands.)
[CN: Climate change] Staff at the Daily Beast: Climate Change's 'Point of No Return' Is Now 2035: Study. "A new study says that climate change could reach the 'point of no return' in 2035. If governments around the world don't take decisive action to combat pollution and global emissions by then, it's 'unlikely' that global warming will remain below 2 degrees Celsius in 2100, the goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement, according to the study."
[CN: Climate change] Oliver Milman at the Guardian: Climate Change: Local Efforts Won't Be Enough to Undo Trump's Inaction, Study Says. "Individual cities, regions, and businesses across the globe are banding together determinedly to confront climate change — but their emissions reductions are relatively small and don't fully compensate for a recalcitrant U.S. under the Trump administration, a new study has found. A cavalcade of city mayors, regional government representatives, and business executives from around the world will convene in San Francisco next month for a major summit touting the role of action beyond national governments to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. But the greenhouse gas cuts offered up by these entities are relatively modest, according to new research, placing the onus on nations to raise their ambitions even as the U.S., the world's second largest emitter, looks to exit the landmark Paris climate agreement."
Inmates have been on a nationwide strike for a week now, protesting inhumane conditions and promoting ceasefires between prison gangs. Activists call it a success, but @MotherJones found that only two state systems acknowledge that it is even happening. https://t.co/zFvRru4bS9
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) August 29, 2018
They don't have to acknowledge it to feel the pressure, though... Vauhini Vara at the Atlantic: The Viral Success of a Strike No One Can See.
Months ago, inmates across the U.S. began planning a strike over prison conditions, including low or nonexistent wages. To start getting the word out, they didn't target big news organizations. Instead, organizers posted about the imminent strikes to their own social-media followers. And they contacted publications with an activist bent, like Shadowproof, a press organization focused on marginalized communities, and the San Francisco Bay View, a black-liberation newspaper.Dr. Jody Steinauer at the New York Times: Want to Protect the Right to Abortion? Train More People to Perform Them. "More than a third of ob-gyn residency programs don't offer routine abortion training. Some programs offer training only on treating someone who is managing a miscarriage, so those residents do not gain skills in counseling and caring for women who want to end their pregnancies. Most family medicine residency programs still have no abortion training at all, even though family physicians are critical for providing high-quality family planning within primary care services. And yet the need for qualified abortion providers has never been more urgent. Roe is hanging in the balance. It's time for a national commitment to training and supporting the next generation of providers to meet the needs of patients whose rights are under threat."
They worried, based on past experience, that mainstream outlets would emphasize that prisoners' often anonymous accounts of the strike couldn't be verified and the fact that the impact of the strike was hard to predict. But more radical publications, they believed, would focus on the strikers' message, about unjust prison conditions and what should be done about them. That message could be amplified online, and picked up by bigger publications. "We intentionally went from the bottom up," Brooke Terpstra, an organizer in Oakland with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a group that has been supporting the strike, told me.
...[T]he strikers' strategy, designed for the current media moment, has proved extraordinarily successful by the measures set by the strikers themselves. Following initial pieces in publications like Shadowproof and the Bay View, mainstream outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR started covering the protest. Social-media posts from the strike organizers and their supporters have gone viral. People are talking about the strike and, by extension, about poor prison conditions across the U.S. and prisoners' demands to see them changed. In an era in which most people experience public events by reading, hearing, and watching videos about them online, the inability to get an inside look at the current prison protest doesn't seem to have hampered its reach.
And, finally, some good news! Rowan Walrath at Mother Jones: California Is One Step Closer to Requiring Colleges to Offer Medication Abortions. "A bill that would require California's public universities to provide students with medication-based abortions is one step away from becoming law after passing the state Assembly today. It will head back to the Senate for a final concurrence vote this week before landing on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk. The bill, SB 320, applies to all University of California and California State University campuses, with an option for community colleges and private universities to take part. The first of its kind, the legislation started out as a resolution dreamed up by the UC-Berkeley group Students United for Reproductive Justice. ...'The movement to get medication abortion on campus began when students recognized our need for it,' [Adiba Khan, one of the group's cofounders] said in an press release. 'Now, we need Governor Brown to sign this bill into law to make abortion care on campus a reality for all students.'"
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Trump's Relentless and Dangerous War on the Press
[Content Note: Threats of violence.]
Earlier this month, after hundreds of news organizations published editorials criticizing Donald Trump's attacks on the free press, Trump tweeted a bunch of bullshit about it, singling out the Boston Globe, whose editorial board spearheaded the collective pushback.
Robert Chain, 68, then made dozens of threatening calls to the Globe's office, including making a bomb threat. Borrowing Trump's language, he warned, "You're the enemy of the people, and we're going to kill every one of you."
Chain has now been arrested and charged.
"A man was charged on Thursday with threatening to kill employees of the Boston Globe following the paper's decision to coordinate a national response to Donald Trump's attacks on the media, according to a release issued by the Justice Department." https://t.co/Tv29E4doK6
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018
This morning, Trump went on another Twitter rant in which he launched a fresh round of attacks on the free press. One of those tweets reads: "I just cannot state strongly enough how totally dishonest much of the Media is. Truth doesn’t matter to them, they only have their hatred & agenda. This includes fake books, which come out about me all the time, always anonymous sources, and are pure fiction. Enemy of the People!"
In July, I wrote a piece about the Trump Regime's reliance on stochastic terrorism: 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.
I noted that Trump would continue to disseminate "toxic bile from his Twitter account [and] let his base handle it."
He is relentless. And he is very dangerous.
Trump Regime Questions Citizenship of Latinx Citizens
In March of last year, I flagged that the Trump administration was signalling they would soon come after documented immigrants. As you may recall, it was something Steve Bannon said that raised the hairs on the back of my neck: "Don't we have a problem with legal immigration? Twenty percent of this country is immigrants. Is that not the beating heart of this problem?"
In the intervening year, Trump has empowered and institutionalized a nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda that I have long been warning will underwrite a targeting of U.S. citizens.
And here we are.
Kevin Sieff at the Washington Post: U.S. Is Denying Passports to Americans Along the Border, Throwing Their Citizenship into Question.
On paper, he's a devoted U.S. citizen."Significant incidence" is a relative term. It is a significant incidence compared to other parts of the country, where citizenship fraud is vanishly rare. But it is not objectively significant, meaning that it is not so widespread that it justifies universal suspicion.
His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol, and now as a state prison guard.
But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government's response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn't believe he was an American citizen.
As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.
In a statement, the State Department said that it "has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications," adding that "the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud."
The burden of this suspicion is placed on the person whose citizenship is being questioned to prove their citizenship — which isn't an easy task.
When Juan, the former soldier, received a letter from the State Department telling him it wasn't convinced that he was a U.S. citizen, it requested a range of obscure documents — evidence of his mother's prenatal care, his baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when he was a baby.There are, of course, countless people who do not have access to any such documentation; who could not possibly prove that they were born in the United States, except for their birth certificate. If the government can challenge the veracity of a birth certificate without evidence of its falsification, lots of people are going to be left in a legal limbo which could eventually result in their legal citizenship being stripped from them, simply because they are unable to establish it to satisfy a government whose explicit objective is to challenge it.
He managed to find some of those documents but weeks later received another denial. In a letter, the government said the information "did not establish your birth in the United States."
At the moment, this nativist trash is being directed at Latinx people born along the southern border at a time in which midwives sometimes created fake birth certificates to credential babies as U.S. citizens. We have no earthly reason to believe that the Trump Regime won't expand this sickening campaign to any population they don't like.
We have every reason to believe that this nativist authoritarian president will come after anyone he feels doesn't belong here — like athletes who protest during the national anthem — and demand "proof" of one's citizenship, with the adequacy of that proof determined by the very people who are demanding it for sinister reasons.
This is deeply frightening. Most of all because this march of vile Othering continues apace, with most of this nation's citizens totally unaware of what's happening now — and what's coming, swelling in the nurturing incubator of their inattention.
Good Morning Trump Is a Nightmare I'm Sorry
One of the things with which I constantly struggle is how much to talk about Donald Trump's tweeting, and how to talk about his tweets when I do.
I don't think "ignore him" is useful advice, despite its ubiquity. He is the president of the United States, and he has an enormous amount of influence via his Twitter account.
I also don't think that rushing to breathlessly publish every single thing he tweets is the way to go, either — especially sans context and analysis.
So I try to strike a balance, somewhere in between the two.
Some days, his morning tweetshitz go so off the rails that it warrants comment. Today is one of those days, and I'm grateful to MSNBC's Kyle Griffin for providing a summary so that I don't have to reward the president by embedding all of his individual tweets.
Trump tweets as of 8:30AM:
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 30, 2018
• Attacks CNN
• Attacks CNN/NBC and falsely claims the interview where he said he fired Comey over "this Russia thing" was fudged
• Calls media "enemy of the people"
• Financial markets
• Attacks media on McGahn
• Comey
• Attacks media on McGahn
I do, however, want to share my comment on one of the more spectacular (not in a good way) tweets in this already remarkable collection:
He is just inventing alternate realities now and broadcasting them to his cultists via Twitter. https://t.co/2Ejj4uFLCE
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018
We need to understand and acknowledge what's happening here. It's scary. And there is very little any of us can do about it. This is a president using his bully pulpit and modern technology in a way that the founders never could have anticipated, and we have no remedy as long as we insist on being constrained by a historical document that was supposed to live and breathe, but is being suffocated by our precious disposition to originalism.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker eyeballsmccat: "What is a particular piece of wisdom that your community knows well but the larger world does not? (For community, read any social group that's important to you.)"
That being kind is way better than being cool.
Wednesday Links!
This list o' links brought to you by cerulean hues.
Recommended Reading:
Rebecca Solnit at Lithub: [Content Note: Descriptions of many examples of Trump Regime malice and bigotry] Why the President Must Be Impeached
(You may wonder why I am linking this piece, given my feelings about impeaching Trump only to hand over the keys to Pence, and it is because Solnit is smart enough to realize that we cannot settle back into familiar grooves of indifference if that were to happen: "The path to impeachment is one of engaging civil society in taking back our country from the crooks, in pressing politicians to take a clear stand on this regime, and in setting a precedent that we will not accept a corrupt, unaccountable administration, not this one, not any that may follow.")
Lucas Niewenhuis at SupChina: [CN: Human rights atrocity] China's Re-Education Camps for a Million Muslims: What Everyone Needs to Know
Jazmine Ulloa at the LA Times: California Gov. Jerry Brown Signs Overhaul of Bail System, Saying Now 'Rich and Poor Alike Are Treated Fairly'
Tasneem Nashrulla at BuzzFeed: [CN: Sex crimes] Several Women Say Airlines Don't Take Their Complaints About Men Masturbating Next to Them Seriously
Michelle Allison at the Fat Nutritionist: [CN: Discussion of disordered eating] The Unbearable Vulnerability of Eating Enough
Brian Gallagher at Nautilus: Forget Everything You Think You Know About Time
James Crugnale at Earther: [CN: Animal harm] A Fight over Killing Bobcats Is Raging Across the Midwest
E. Alex Jung at Vulture: The Protagonist: After Decades in Supporting Parts, Emmy Nominee Sandra Oh Plays the Hero in Killing Eve
Kia Morgan-Smith at the Grio: Kerry Washington Releases Second Makeup Collection with Neutrogena and We Want Everything
Knvul Sheikh at Inverse: Therapy Dogs Have an Important Role on College Campuses, Says Expert
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Louis CK's Return Shows He Has Learned Nothing — and Neither Have Lots of His Fans
[Content Note: Rape culture; sexual assault.]
I have been groomed by predators.
The first time, I was 15 years old, and he was only a year older, but he already knew what to do to convince me to trust him. He knew how to exploit my vulnerabilities, and how to appeal to both my needs and desires. He knew exactly how to flatter me, and how to get me alone. And he knew how to make what he did to me seem like maybe it was what I wanted, or supposed to want.
What stands out to me now about the days and months leading up to that moment is how he so carefully probed my boundaries. How he'd push me just a little too far and I'd back away, and he'd retreat — only to replace the sinister I'd felt with the sweetness I wanted. In the moments of sweetness, he was so sweet that it was easy to believe that I'd imagined the sinister altogether, and that there was something broken in me that I'd be suspicious of someone who was good.
This recollection will surely feel familiar to other people who have been groomed. The specific details of our experiences might be different, but what is always the same is the probing — the insidious search for the edge of boundaries and how they may be slowly eroded, or obliterated altogether in a single, brutal moment.
The memory of that toxic dynamic, which lives in my body and reappears as tiny hairs standing up on their ends, lifting away from my goosebumped skin, is all I could think of reading the account of two women who were in the audience at Louis CK's "surprise set," where he was warmly welcomed back to the stage by many audience members, following a brief break after being accused of, and confessing to, sexual assault.
CK's particular brand of assault (that we know of) was masturbating in front of women without their consent — and I am certainly not the first person to observe that showing up onstage unannounced at a comedy show, in the audience of which were people would be troubled by his sudden appearance, bears a striking and disturbing parallel to his acts of sexual abuse.
The women were at the Comedy Cellar that night to see another comedian on the lineup when C.K. appeared onstage after a brief introduction from the night's emcee. "It felt like he was being thrust upon the audience without telling them," one woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told Vulture.And just like victims of predators like CK often feel as though it may not be safe to leave, audience members who were uncomfortable by CK's presence may have felt as though they couldn't get up and leave safely. Which would not be without precedent: Daniel Tosh once incited rape against a female audience member who challenged him during a show, for instance.
At CK's unannounced appearance, it was not just the possibility that he would single out anyone inclined to leave, but that members of the audience might turn on anyone who left, too.
"The audience was very loud when Louis C.K. walked in. They were clearly supportive and surprised when he showed up, but there were a number of women sitting in the front row," the woman said. From her seat to the left of the stage, she could see a pair of women sitting stone-faced. Her friend, who asked be identified with the initials S.B., noticed the same reaction: "There were at least four to five females that I could see, and three or four of them were not having it. They were just looking at him, deadpan, straight, not having it."Had I been in the audience, I would have been afraid to leave — not because I couldn't withstand people shouting at me, or even CK shit-talking me from the stage (because I could have, not that anyone should be expected to), but because I would've been scared that someone would have filmed my leaving and posted it online, then called for the Reddit Detectives to assemble, identify, and doxx me.
S.B. said the audience was mostly white, with lots of couples. Both women say the set was awkward, but the first woman was particularly upset by it. "It was an all-male set to begin with. Then, it's sort of exacerbated by [C.K.'s] presence," she said. "If someone had heckled him, I think they would've been heckled out. It felt like there were a lot of aggressive men in the audience and very quiet women. It's the kind of vibe that doesn't allow for a dissenting voice. You're just expected to be a good audience member. You're considered a bad sport if you speak out."
So audience members who felt uncomfortable were obliged to stay and watch CK. (Again, which sounds a lot like the sexual assaults he committed.) And once he had them trapped, he told a joke about a rape whistle.
The women say C.K.'s set was similar to his usual material, and included a joke about the phrase "clean as a whistle," which built up to a joke about how rape whistles are not clean. "When he said 'rape whistle' people were laughing, and I was just sitting there like oh my fuck. This is so uncomfortable and so disgusting. Everyone around me was laughing. That was just depressing."That is what a predator probing to see what he can get away with looks like. Will they tolerate my being here? Will they tolerate this rape joke? Will they...
Naturally, CK would deny that this was his intention. That's because he's a liar.
It's because all predators are liars: "Dishonesty comes with the territory. Vanishingly few accused rapists are inclined to be honest about their crimes, for what ought to be evident reasons, and, further, rapists know they can rely on a breathtaking scope of rape apologia to contextualize and excuse their behavior. It is accusers, survivors, who sound like the liars, the fantasists, as they stammer and fume in the face of an entire culture primed to disbelieve them. And even if they are credible, and taken seriously, adjudicators (official and amateur) shrug their shoulders and murmur phrases like 'he said, she said.' Impossible to know."
If you're getting the feeling that this entire event was the rape culture encapsulate, that's because it was.
Regarding the gilead of men cheering for a sexual harasser's big return, this account is rape culture in miniature, implicitly pressuring women's complicity and silence. https://t.co/UmBJKHwWpt
— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) August 29, 2018
Keep that in mind as you read the outpouring of minimizing apologia, the scornful harangues that CK deserves a second chance, the excoriating 'splaining that CK has rehabilitated himself.
If that were true, he would not have shown up unannounced at a comedy club to tell a rape joke.
We all know that.
We all know that Louis CK leveraged the rape culture — the disbelief of victims; the metric fucktons of ready-made rape apologia reflexively employed on behalf of any man alleged to have assaulted women; the mob rule used to keep survivors and critics in line — to facilitate his return to the stage.
We all know that none of this behavior reflects the thinking of a reformed predator. Even people who insist that CK "deserves" a comeback, a second chance; who insist that he should be able to pick up his career right where it left off before his astonishingly brief vacation, ignoring that his abuses were also workplace violations; who insist that he is sorry and unaccountably believe that everything will be fine now; even those people know, if they are being honest, that this was a fucked-up way to make that comeback he supposedly deserves.
There is no valid argument that it was okay. There is only ignoring the reasons why it wasn't, because your fave dude is more important than the safety of the women he harms.
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!
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My favorite summer salad for dinner last night: Mixed greens, green pepper, green onion, cucumber, radish, tomato, avocado, walnuts, and bran buds. Yum!
Daily Dose of Cute
this past last weekend, lol. I MEAN. This dog. ♥
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 587
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.
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Earlier today by me: Election Thread and Today in This Corrupt Oligarchy and TV Corner: The Americans.
Here are some more things in the news today...
[Content Note: Racism] Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: Florida's Republican Gubernatorial Nominee: My Black Opponent Will 'Monkey' up the State. "Hours after winning the Republican nomination for Florida governor on a 'Pitbull Trump Defender' platform, Rep. Ron DeSantis used racially charged language in a Fox News interview to attack his Democratic opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Asked how he would defeat Gillum, DeSantis first conceded that his opponent is an 'articulate spokesman for the far left views and a charismatic candidate.' He then warned that Florida has been going in a good direction and 'the last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by' embracing Gillum's 'socialist agenda.'" This fucking guy.
[CN: Stochastic terrorism] Yesterday's Quote of the Day was Donald Trump projecting that the Democrats would take away "everything" from conservative evangelicals if Dems won the midterms. It turns out that Trump also said (projected) that there would be violence. Lois Beckett at the Guardian reports: "At a state dinner for evangelical Christian ministers on Monday night at the White House, Trump urged religious leaders to use the power of their pulpits to make sure that 'all of your people vote' in November, the New York Times reported. 'You're one election away from losing everything you've got,' Trump reportedly told them. If Republicans lose Congress, 'they will end everything immediately,' the president said, seemingly referring to congressional Democrats. He went on: 'They will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently. And violently. There's violence. When you look at antifa, and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people.'" Seethe.
Trump announced by Twitter (of course) that White House Counsel Don McGahn will be leaving soon, and it's interesting, ahem, timing:
White House Counsel Don McGahn will be leaving his position in the fall, shortly after the confirmation (hopefully) of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. I have worked with Don for a long time and truly appreciate his service!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Announcement that WH Counsel Don McGahn to step down, comes 11 days after it was reported he submitted to 30 hours of questioning by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller over the past 9 months.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 29, 2018
Huh.
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John Wagner at the Washington Post: Trump, without Citing Evidence, Says China Hacked Hillary Clinton's Emails. "Trump asserted early Wednesday, without citing evidence, that Hillary Clinton's emails were hacked by China, and he said the Justice Department and the FBI risked losing their credibility if they did not look into the matter. Writing on Twitter, Trump alleged that much of the former secretary of state's emails that was hacked contained classified information and called it 'a very big story.' ...Trump provided no details about the alleged hacking, but his tweets came shortly after the online publication of a story by the Daily Caller asserting that a Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington area hacked Clinton's private server while she was secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails."
This was the United States president: 1. Taking another swipe at the U.S. intelligence community; 2. Taking another swipe at his political opponent; 3. Publicly accusing a foreign state of espionage without evidence.
The latter while simultaneously provoking that nation via a trade war.
ALARMING: China breaks w/ precedent & withholds influenza samples from US. If trade war worsens, tariffs could also entangle vaccines, which should be global goods. Worrying clash of shortsighted Trump policies & China’s dangerous strong-arming https://t.co/cZaHI6rOaj
— Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower) August 28, 2018
Steven Lee Myers at the New York Times: With Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific. "A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest. While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea. That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the United States and its allies."
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[CN: Nativism. Covers entire section.]
Shannon Najmabadi at the Texas Tribune: Across the Country, Basements, Offices, and Hotels Play Short-Term Host to People in ICE Custody.
The basement of a federal building in downtown Austin, 10 floors below U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's office. Space in a "fashionable" South Carolina office park. Branches of major hotel chains in Los Angeles, Miami, and Seattle.Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: Immigrants in Washington Detention Center Join National Prison Strike. "One week into the national prison strike, a movement led by incarcerated people demanding an end to 'prison slavery' and improvements that recognize their humanity, immigrants in detention have launched a strike of their own in solidarity. ...This morning, Maru Mora Villalpando, a spokesperson for the undocumented-led immigrant rights group, NWDC Resistance, told Rewire.News the number of immigrants participating in the strike is fluctuating. She said that she could confirm six hunger strikers at NWDC had been placed in solitary confinement by ICE and that the strike may spread to Oregon and California." I take up space in solidarity with their protest and I angrily grieve that it's required in the first place.
These facilities rarely appear together on government lists, but they all have something in common: They're nodes in a little-known network of holding areas where people in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spend hours or even days on their way to other locations.
The government's [family separation] policy drew attention to the country's vast and often obscured immigration detention apparatus, particularly to a billion-dollar private contracting industry and to U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing centers that migrants call "ice boxes."
But hidden in plain sight across the country, hotels, federal buildings, and office space are used by ICE as way stations for immigrants — and their existence often comes as a surprise to the unsuspecting civilians who work or live nearby.
...All told, at least 80 hospitals and 150 holding locations — scattered across the country — have played host to people in ICE custody over the last decade, records show. Some of the facilities are unmarked processing areas where migrants transferred from local jails under detainers, or picked up by ICE, are kept until the agency can bus them to longer-term detention facilities.
Colum Lynch at Foreign Policy: U.S. to End All Funding to U.N. Agency That Aids Palestinian Refugees. "Months after scaling back financial support for the United Nations agency that provides humanitarian aid to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees, the Trump administration has decided to end funding altogether, several sources told Foreign Policy, in a decision that analysts said would cause more hardship and possibly unrest in Gaza, the West Bank, and other parts of the Middle East. The decision was made at a meeting earlier this month between [Donald] Trump's advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the sources. The administration has informed key regional governments in recent weeks of its plan." This is not only a reflection of Trump's nativist agenda, but it has major foreign policy implications.
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Holger Roonemaa and Inga Springe at BuzzFeed: This Is How Russian Propaganda Actually Works in the 21st Century. "The Russian government discreetly funded a group of seemingly independent news websites in Eastern Europe to pump out stories dictated to them by the Kremlin, BuzzFeed News and its reporting partners can reveal. Russian state media created secret companies in order to bankroll websites in the Baltic states — a key battleground between Russia and the West — and elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. ...The websites presented themselves as independent news outlets, but in fact, editorial lines were dictated directly by Moscow. ...The revelations about the websites in the Baltic states provide a rare and detailed inside look into how such disinformation campaigns work, and the lengths to which Moscow is willing to go to obscure its involvement in such schemes."
Julie Bykowicz at the Wall Street Journal: The New Lobbying: Qatar Targeted 250 Trump 'Influencers' to Change U.S. Policy. "The professor also didn't know he was on a list of 250 people Mr. Allaham says he and his lobbying-business partner, Nick Muzin, identified as influential in [Donald] Trump's orbit. The list was part of a new type of lobbying campaign Qatar adopted after Mr. Trump sided with its Persian Gulf neighbors who had imposed a blockade on the tiny nation. Qatar wanted to restore good relations with the U.S., Mr. Allaham says. Win over Mr. Trump's influencers, the thinking went, and the president would follow. ...Qatar's lobbying operation over the next year was an unconventional influence plan to target an unconventional president — and shows how much Mr. Trump has changed the rules of the game in the influence industry."
Marianne Levine and Lili Bayer at Politico: Trump Lawyer Giuliani Got Paid to Lobby Romanian President. "Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was being paid by a global consulting firm when he sent a letter to the president of Romania last week that contradicted the U.S. government's official position. Giuliani's letter to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis appears to take sides in a fight at the top of the Romanian government over how to rein in high-level corruption. The former New York mayor's letter criticizes the 'excesses' of Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), contrary to U.S. State Department policy, which has been supportive of the agency's efforts. Although the missive does not claim to have been sent on [Donald] Trump's authority, Romanian politicians seeking to blunt the power of the DNA have already used it to sow doubt about the U.S. government's position."
Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier at BuzzFeed: "Suspicious" Transactions at Russian Embassy Sparked Deeper Bank Probe Than Previously Known. "American bank examiners delved deeper into the [Russian] embassy's financial activity than was previously known — and reveal why they flagged two of the transactions as suspicious. The first, made just 10 days after the U.S. presidential election in 2016, was a $120,000 lump-sum check to then-ambassador Sergey Kislyak that was twice as large as any payment he'd received in the previous two years. The second, just five days after [Donald] Trump's inauguration, was a blocked attempt to withdraw $150,000 in cash that a bank official feared was meant for Russians the US had just expelled from the country."
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Libby Watson at Splinter: Why Are Democrats Poised to Let 7 Trump-Nominated Judges Slide to Confirmation? "Since he took office, Trump has appointed more federal appeals court judges than former Presidents Obama and Bush had at the same point in their administrations combined. As the Pew Research Center noted earlier this year, Trump had trailed his predecessors in appointing district court judges until today, when Senator Chuck Schumer helpfully struck a deal with the Republicans to confirm seven district court judges, plus four other federal appointees. ...What is the deal? I mean, literally — what did Democrats receive in return for dropping their filibuster of these nominees? Is it simply so they can go home and resume campaigning for the midterms over Labor Day weekend? Is that where the Democrats are today, so utterly defeated that they'll accept 11 lifetime conservative judges for a few extra days of campaigning?"
Whatever the reason, Adam Jentleson, former Deputy Chief of Staff to retired Senator Harry Reid, is not fucking impressed (and I agree):
This comes down to leadership. Senate Dem leaders could take a stand and station one senator on the floor at all times to object, forcing McConnell to jump through interminable hurdles & produce 51 votes - twice - for each nominee, likely resulting in fewer lifetime Trump judges. https://t.co/iX9LcQrp1F
— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) August 29, 2018
To be clear, doing this would *not* block all of the judges confirmed under this agreement.
— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) August 29, 2018
But it *would* force McConnell to run through the time-consuming "cloture" process for each nomination, and produce 51 recorded votes twice for each nominee. This has a few advantages:
Second and more importantly, Dems would have a real shot at blocking some of these Trump judges.
— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) August 29, 2018
As is, McConnell doesn't have to produce a single vote to confirm a single one of these Trump nominees. In effect, Dems are letting them all be confirmed by acclamation.
I just want to emphasize the asymmetry here. Dems would only need to have *one* senator on the floor. McConnell would have to produce 51 votes.
— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) August 29, 2018
Rather than organize this, the Senate Dem leader gave McConnell consent to instantly confirm 7 Trump judges to lifetime appointments.
There is more to Jentleson's thread, which is worth reading in its entirety.
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[CN: Climate change; extreme weather. Covers whole section.]
Dan Whitcomb at Reuters/Yahoo News: Hawaii Residents Hit by Floods from Hurricane Lane as New Storm Forms. "Flash flood warnings were issued on Tuesday for the Hawaiian island of Kauai, with residents on the north coast told to evacuate and others left stranded by high water as the remnants of Hurricane Lane drenched the archipelago and a new storm brewed in the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii was spared a direct hit from a major hurricane as Lane diminished to a tropical storm as it approached and then drifted west, further from land. But rain was still pounding the island chain, touching off flooding on Oahu and Kauai. ...The advisory urged residents near Hanalei Bridge on the north side of the island to evacuate their homes due to rising stream levels. A convoy that had been used to escort residents over roads damaged by historic floods in April between was shut down, leaving many cut off. 'Heavy pounding and hazardous conditions are being reported island-wide. Motorists are advised to drive with extreme caution. Updates will be given as more information is made available,' the Kauai Emergency Management Agency said."
Yessenia Funes at Earther: Puerto Rican Government's New Hurricane Maria Death Count Is Nearly 50 Times Higher Than Original. "A long-awaited study the Puerto Rican government commissioned to determine the number of deaths attributable to Hurricane Maria is finally here. To no one's surprise, Puerto Rico's official death toll of 64 was a serious understatement. Researchers from George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health and University of Puerto Rico concluded the hurricane resulted in the deaths of 2,975 people. This estimate varies from the death tolls estimated in previous reports conducted by other scientists using different methodologies. ...The study is sure to note that while Hurricane Maria impacted everyone on the island, those in lower-income neighborhoods were 60 percent more likely to be at risk of dying over this period."
Christopher Flavelle at Bloomberg: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon; Its Drinking Water Could Go First. "Miami-Dade is built on the Biscayne Aquifer, 4,000 square miles of unusually shallow and porous limestone whose tiny air pockets are filled with rainwater and rivers running from the swamp to the ocean. The aquifer and the infrastructure that draws from it, cleans its water, and keeps it from overrunning the city combine to form a giant but fragile machine. Without this abundant source of fresh water, made cheap by its proximity to the surface, this hot, remote city could become uninhabitable. Climate change is slowly pulling that machine apart. Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. ...If Miami-Dade can't protect its water supply, whether it can handle the other manifestations of climate change won't matter."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
TV Corner: The Americans
The Americans, the popular and critically acclaimed series starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Russian spies living and operating in America during the Cold War, finished up its six-season run earlier this year. I didn't even begin the show until after it had already ended — Iain and I binged the entire series quickly once we started it — but it's still recent enough that I thought there might be some folks who wanted to talk about it.
So here's a thread!
I won't include any spoilers from the series here on the main page, for anyone who is considering watching the show or is in the midst of watching it, but beware that there will be spoilers in comments.
I will, however, offer a few notes about the content, for consideration: It is a very violent show. There are scenes of sexual assault, the most graphic in the pilot episode. Given the content, there are also many scenes of coercion, emotional manipulation, and emotional abuse.
It was the latter of the three that was always the hardest to watch for me.
It was hard watching Elizabeth and Philip Jennings coerce and manipulate and abuse other people, including their own children — and it was hard watching them be coerced and manipulated and abused by their employer.
I hated them, and I mourned for them. It was nothing short of extraordinary that the writers created characters so complex, and that Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys imbued them with complicated humanity in such exquisite measure.
And although Russell and Rhys carry the show, the entire cast is unbelievable. There wasn't a single character that was miscast. If I tried to name stand-outs, I would end up naming everyone who ever appeared onscreen, but I can't not give a mention to Noah Emmerich as Stan. He can do more with a single twitch of his face than many actors can do with a page of dialogue. That face. I love his face.
The Americans was also a beautiful period piece, evocative of the fashion and politics of my childhood in splendid and terrifying ways. I enjoyed the nostalgia of the expertly recreated clothing and interiors and technologies, and I trembled as I recalled the fear that sat in my gut as I listened to the adults around me worriedly discussing things like mutually assured destruction.
In addition to the politics, the show had a lot of interesting things to say about marriage and family and country; about religion and faith and trust; about sex and gender roles; about honesty and the destructive corrosion that blooms in its absence. It was compelling because of the character studies, as much as the telling of a remarkable story about espionage.
But of course the espionage was the center of it. And I imagine that it was quite a different experience watching the entire series now, knowing what happened during the 2016 election (and since), than having that fall right in the middle of its run, which began in 2013.
From the moment I started the series, I knew how it turned out. Not the show; the outcome of U.S. intelligence vs. the Cold War KGB.
I kept saying to Iain as we watched it: It's really something that Americans were watching this as entertainment during the entirety of the 2016 election season.
That particular bookend, unforeseen by the show's creators, might be the best argument for watching the show now. To understand that we have always been under attack in ways we didn't understand, and we are still.
Today in This Corrupt Oligarchy: Welcome Chris Christie Back to the News!
There have long been rumors that Russian oligarchs used Trump Tower (and other Trump properties) to launder their money — and one question has always been whether Russians were the only people with whom Donald Trump was engaged in this sort of shady business.
Although Trump himself is not directly implicated in this story, the international corruption is veering perilously close to him.
Bradley Hope, Tom Wright, and Rebecca Davis O'Brien at the Wall Street Journal report that the Department of Justice is investigating whether Jho Low, a fugitive Malaysian financier, "laundered tens of millions of dollars through two associates and used the funds to pay a U.S. legal team that includes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and a lawyer who represents [Donald] Trump."
Low, who is described in U.S. court filings as "playing a central role in the alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from a Malaysian fund called 1Malaysia Development Bhd," was charged by Malaysian authorities this week with money laundering in what "investigators suspect may be one of the biggest financial frauds in history."
The Justice Department, in July 2016 and last year, filed civil lawsuits in federal court in California seeking to recover assets from Mr. Low and others including mansions, artwork, and a yacht allegedly bought with 1MDB funds. It is now pursuing a criminal investigation in which Mr. Low, who has U.S. assets, is a target, these people said.That lobbyist is former deputy RNC finance chair Elliott Broidy, who has been suspected of taking the fall for Donald Trump in the second hush payment arranged by Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen to conceal an affair. Broidy was also vice chair of the Trump campaign's joint fund with the Republican Party during the 2016 presidential campaign. As a consequence: "The route of any payments to Mr. Broidy [from Low] also are part of the Justice Department probe."
Since 2016, Mr. Low's access to the global financial system has been sharply curtailed by banks wary of handling allegedly tainted funds, according to the people familiar with the matter. That has made it difficult for him to pay directly for a range of outlays, from lifestyle expenses to legal and advisory services, according to these people.
...The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Low's potential use of two intermediaries to facilitate the payments through the international financial system, people familiar with the matter say. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
...The team of lawyers and consultants working for Mr. Low includes Mr. Christie, who briefly headed Mr. Trump's presidential transition team; Mr. Trump's longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz; Bobby Burchfield, a lawyer who has served as the Trump Organization's outside ethics adviser; and Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party.
The public-integrity section of the Justice Department is separately investigating some of the lobbying work on behalf of Mr. Low, including whether Mr. Broidy attempted to sell his influence in the Trump administration to Mr. Low, who in turn was allegedly acting as an agent of the Malaysian and Chinese governments, people familiar with the investigations said.Naturally, Broidy denies all of this and Trump, if he ever addresses it at all, will say he doesn't know anything about it, and it's just a sad witch hunt etc.
...Mr. Low has been seeking to influence the administration to drop its investigations into him and 1MDB, according to people familiar with Mr. Low's dealings and the Justice Department investigations.
But the fact is that people know this U.S. president is for sale. And this might seem like a convoluted and unimportant story in the grand scheme of the Trump Regime's vast indecencies, but it's indicative of a chronic, toxic corruption that is the harbinger of a failed democracy and hallmark of an oligarchy.
Further, White House access being sold to the highest bidder means that it might get sold to spies. NB: Low "was was allegedly acting as an agent of the Malaysian and Chinese governments" while Broidy was reportedly trying to leverage his White House access on Low's behalf.
We are so far past "It can't happen here." Indeed it can. It already has.
