A thread for sharing what we're currently reading: Fiction, nonfiction, novels, short stories, historical fiction, biographies, romance, fanfic, comic books, graphic novels, longform journalism, research papers, stuff for pleasure, stuff for work, whatever.
I'm between books at the moment. (And any longform journalism I'm reading, you already know about it, because I link it here!) I haven't had the energy to read for pleasure the last couple of weeks. But I'm excited to get some recommendations!
What are you reading now?
What I'm Reading Now
OMGGGGGGG WHAT DID I JUST READ
Y'all. Y'ALL.
Sometimes I read something so terrible that all I can do is post it here for you to read and then head to comments to give it the thorough mocking it richly deserves.
To wit: "I discovered the rest of America on my summer holiday," by Lawrence Summers.
In case you don't know who Larry Summers is, there is a helpful mini-bio at the end of the article: "The writer is Charles W Eliot university professor at Harvard and a former U.S. Treasury secretary."
I had a few thoughts on Twitter, including this one: I feel like a U.S. economist should know how farms and seasons work.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You know me and my unreasonable expectations!
OMG SHOEZ
Listen, the news is tough, and we all need moments of escape from the horror to recuperate and prepare for the next onslaught, and I can talk about shoes all the livelong day, so welcome to the OMG SHOEZ thread.
Got a favorite pair of shoes you want to share? Bought a new pair about which you're super excited? Have a recommendation to make, or want to caution us away from a purchase you regret? Want to solicit suggestions for a specific event, a foot issue, an elusive something for which you've been hunting? Having trouble finding something particular on a budget? Have at it in comments!
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I got these on clearance from I can't even remember where a few months ago. They were $17, originally more than a hundred. A great find!
Still, I can't recommend them, because they're super comfy to walk in, but the loop around the ankle is decidedly less than super comfy. It's not even tight, and it still rubs the back of my ankle in a weird way that creates enough chafing that I had a scab after wearing them for an evening with a lot of walking.
They are very sexy, and I get lots of compliments when I wear them, but I'm bummed about that awkward fit. I guess that explains the discount, lol. Ah well. I'll still wear them enough to make them worth the $17 I spent!
So, that's what up with me! What's up with you?
(As always: I am not affiliated with nor am I receiving compensation from any of the brands or shoe retailers mentioned in this thread. Any shoes and/or retailers I recommend is just because I really like 'em!)
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 628
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: The Lives of Women and Nikki Haley Has Resigned and Trump's War on Immigrants: The Latest. Also, ICYMI late yesterday: "This is going to be very contentious and no one really knows how it is all going to shake out."
Here are some more things in the news today...
[Content Note: Rape culture] Andy Towle at Towleroad: Trump Apologizes to Brett Kavanaugh for His 'Pain and Suffering', Declares Him 'Proven Innocent'. "Donald Trump apologized to alleged rapist Brett Kavanaugh before his ceremonial swearing in at the White House on Monday night... Said Trump: 'On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation, not a campaign of personal and political destruction based on lies and deception. What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency, and due process. In our country, a man or a woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. And with that, I must state that you, sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent.'"
Mick Krever and Devan Cole at CNN: Clinton Says Trump Remarks at Kavanaugh Swearing-In Undermine Supreme Court.
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that [Donald] Trump staged a "political rally" at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's ceremonial swearing-in that "further undermined the image and integrity of the court."Thank Maude for her. I'm so grateful to her for saying that.
"What was done last night in the White House was a political rally. It further undermined the image and integrity of the court," Clinton, Trump's Democratic 2016 election opponent, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview.
"And that troubles me greatly. It saddens me. Because our judicial system has been viewed as one of the main pillars of our constitutional government. So I don't know how people are going to react to it. I think, given our divides, it will pretty much fall predictably between those who are for and those who are against," Clinton said.
"But the President's been true to form," she continued. "He has insulted, attacked, demeaned women throughout the campaign — really for many years leading up to the campaign. And he's continued to do that inside the White House."
Especially when Republican men are out here saying shit like this:
This is unreal, even by Graham's usual execrable standards. https://t.co/P7Clp7QpZ5
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 9, 2018
Every time I see someone asking about Graham, "What do they have on him?" all I can think is, "Does he look like someone who's nervous or scared? The fuck he does. He looks like someone who's champagne drunk at a midday picnic." Giddy is the word that comes to mind.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 9, 2018
And this: Justin Wise at the Hill: McConnell: GOP Senators Were 'Literally Under Assault' in Days Before Kavanaugh Vote. "'I couldn’t be prouder of the Senate Republican Conference. We were standing up for the presumption of innocence in this country …And secondly, we were literally under assault,' McConnell said at a press conference in Kentucky. 'These demonstrators, I'm sure some of them were well-meaning citizens. But many of them were obviously trying to get in our faces, to go to our homes. Basically almost attack us in the halls of the capitol. There was a full-scale effort to intimidate.'" FUCKKKKKKKKK YOUUUUUUUUUU.
Speaking of Mitch McConnell being FUCKING TERRIBLE... [CN: Video may autoplay at link] Paul Begala at CNN: McConnell Has Done Grave Damage to All Three Branches of Government. "Richard Nixon damaged the presidency, Newt Gingrich turned the House of Representatives into a mixed martial arts arena, and Roger Taney forever stained the Supreme Court with the Dred Scott decision. But it takes someone special, someone rare, someone spectacularly Machiavellian and malevolent, to screw up all three branches of government. Ladies and gentlemen: Mitch McConnell. The soft-spoken Kentuckian has, in just a few short years, done lasting damage to the presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court: the hat trick of democracy destruction."
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Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: 'Balanced-Budget' Republicans Vote to Add a Half Trillion to the Deficit with New Tax Cut Bill. "As the nation watched the Senate Judiciary Committee meet to consider whether to rush through the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the House Republican majority was quietly passing the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018 — a bill to make the Trump tax cuts for the rich permanent. According to the GOP-controlled Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would add another $545 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next decade. This would be on top of the trillions already added to the debt by the original tax bill and the omnibus budget signed by Trump earlier this year."
Paul A. Eisenstein at NBC News: Trump's Tariffs Have Already Cost Ford $1B; Now It's Planning Layoffs. "Ford will be making cuts to its 70,000-strong white-collar workforce in a move it calls a 'redesign' of its staff to be leaner, have fewer layers, and offer more decision-making power to employees, the company announced. ...Ford has already warned that [Donald] Trump's auto tariffs have impacted the company to the tune of $1 billion, and the president's trade policies threaten to play havoc with Ford's ongoing reorganization."
Noah Smith at the Guardian: America's First Robot Farm Replaces Humans with 'Incredibly Intelligent' Machines. "America's first autonomous robot farm launched last week, in the hopes that artificial intelligence (AI) can remake an industry facing a serious labor shortage and pressure to produce more crops. Claiming an ability to 'grow 30 times more produce than traditional farms' on the strength of AI software, year-round, soilless hydroponic processes, and moving plants as they grow to efficiently use space, the San Carlos, California-based company Iron Ox aims to address some of the agricultural industry's biggest challenges. Such challenges have also caught the attention of investors, who made more than $10bn in investments last year, representing a 29% increase from 2016."
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"Donald Trump is a 'good moral person' and an example to the nation, [says Jerry Falwell, who] also described the Democrats as fascists and 'Brownshirts,' and said the U.S. would be engaged in civil war if this was the 18th century rather than the 21st." https://t.co/3QLIPx8itn
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 9, 2018
Sounds legit. (Does not sound legit.)
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Tim Johnson at McClatchy: Are Wireless Voting Machines Vulnerable? Florida, Other States Say They're Safe Enough. (Oh, that's exactly what you want to hear about voting machines. They're SAFE ENOUGH.) "Barely a month before midterm elections, voting integrity advocates and electronic voting experts want the federal government to issue an official warning to states that use voting machines with integrated cellular modems that the machines are vulnerable to hacks, potentially interfering with the ballot counting. Once seen as a useful tool to provide quick election results, voting machines with cellular modems are now subject to fierce debate over how easy it would be to break into them and change the results. Such machines are certified for use in Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin."
Julia Carrie Wong and Olivia Solon at the Guardian: Google to Shut Down Google+ After Failing to Disclose User Data Breach.
This March, as Facebook was coming under global scrutiny over the harvesting of personal data for Cambridge Analytica, Google discovered a skeleton in its own closet: A bug in the API for Google+ had been allowing third-party app developers to access the data not just of users who had granted permission, but of their friends.Welp.
If that sounds familiar, it's because it's almost exactly the scenario that got Mark Zuckerberg dragged in front of the U.S. Congress. The parallel was not lost on Google, and the company chose not to disclose the data leak, the Wall Street Journal revealed Monday, in order to avoid the public relations headache and potential regulatory enforcement.
Disclosure will likely result "in us coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal," Google policy and legal officials wrote in a memo obtained by the Journal. It "almost guarantees Sundar will testify before Congress," the memo said, referring to the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai. The disclosure would also invite "immediate regulatory interest."
Shortly after the story was published, Google announced that it will shut down consumer access to Google+ and improve privacy protections for third-party applications.
Laura Geggel at LiveScience: Huge Iceberg Poised to Break Off Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier. "A newly discovered long and craggy rift is splintering across West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, satellite images show. The nearly 19-mile-long (30 kilometers) rift started in the middle of the ice shelf, where the ice shelf touches warmer ocean waters that are melting it from underneath, said Stef Lhermitte, an assistant professor in the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The rift only has about another 6 miles (10 km) to go before one or more icebergs calf, breaking off from the glacier, Lhermitte said."
Staff at the Weather Channel: Hurricane Michael Intensifies to Category 2; May Be Florida Panhandle's Strongest Landfall in 13 Years Wednesday. "Hurricane Michael has strengthened to Category 2 intensity, and is forecast to strike the Florida Panhandle at least as strong as a Category 3 with dangerous storm surge flooding, destructive winds, and flooding rainfall. Michael will also bring heavy rain and strong winds to other parts of the southeastern United States after it moves inland. 'Michael could develop into a potentially catastrophic event for the northeastern Gulf Coast,' the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee, Florida, wrote in its area forecast discussion Monday afternoon."
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Trump's War on Immigrants: The Latest
[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse; Nazism.]
Donald Trump's war on immigrants — migrants, refugees, undocumented, documented, and naturalized citizens — continues to expand in scope with each passing day and is doing untold harm to countless immigrant families. Here is some of the latest news.
1. Staff at WABC-TV: Fliers from Neo-Nazi Texas Group Call on Residents to Report Undocumented Immigrants. "The signs urge people to report undocumented immigrants to the government, calling it 'civic duty.' The posters are turning up in Sunnyside Queens, an ethnically rich neighborhood in a city full of immigrants. 'We are the home to so many immigrants from so many different countries, speaking so many different languages,' said New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer. 'That's what makes Queens so unique and so special.' ...While out on a jog this weekend, Van Bramer says he was shocked to see a flier posted on Skillman Avenue that called on residents to report undocumented immigrants. ...The councilman says he promptly tore down the flier and tweeted the incident. ...The councilman says a white supremacy, neo-Nazi group from Texas has claimed responsibility for the flier."
2. Vivian Yee and Miriam Jordan at the New York Times: Migrant Children in Search of Justice: A 2-Year-Old's Day in Immigration Court.
Though the exact figures are not known, lawyers who work with immigrants said the large number of migrant children now being held in detention has given rise to a highly unusual situation: more and more young children coming to court.3. Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza at TPM: 'They Told Me I Would Never See Her Again': Deported Parents Lose Kids to Adoption. "The 'zero-tolerance' crackdown ended in June, but hundreds of children remain in detention, shelters, or foster care and U.S. officials say more than 200 are not eligible for reunification or release. Federal officials insist they are reuniting families and will continue to do so. But an Associated Press investigation drawing on hundreds of court documents, immigration records, and interviews in the U.S. and Central America identified holes in the system that allow state court judges to grant custody of migrant children to American families — without notifying their parents. And today, with hundreds of those mothers and fathers deported thousands of miles away, the risk has grown exponentially."
"We rarely had children under the age of 6 until the last year or so," said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. "We started seeing them as a regular presence in our docket."
These young immigrants are stranded at the junction of several forces: the Trump administration's determination to discourage immigrants from trying to cross the border; the continuing flow of children journeying by themselves from Central America; the lingering effects of last summer's family-separation crisis at the border; and a new government policy that has made it much more difficult for relatives to claim children from federal custody.
...When Ms. Ziesemer started at Catholic Charities a decade ago, the program for child immigrants appearing in court on their own was so small that it was run by a part-time coordinator, and all their clients could fit in a roughly 10-bed shelter, a small house in Queens. Now there are staff members conducting screenings of seven or eight children a day, trying to coax basic facts out of children who might be too young or too frightened to articulate what had happened to them. There are so many that they sometimes do not meet their clients until the day of their hearings.
Until a couple of months ago, most of the children never would have stayed in a shelter long enough to end up alone before a judge. But the bottleneck in the background-check process means longer stays in custody, and the possibility that some children might have to see a judge multiple times before being delivered to their mother or uncle or cousin. The shelters are now almost full — not because more children are entering the country, immigration advocates say, but because the government has tossed up another obstacle to leaving.
4. Yesenia Amaro and Barbara Anderson at the Sacramento Bee: 'We Don't Know What to Do': Proposed Trump Rule Strikes New Fear in Immigrant Communities. "A proposed Trump administration rule that would make it more difficult for immigrants to become legal residents if they get government benefits has Fresno County immigrants and advocates concerned, while gaining support from fiscal conservatives who say the U.S. should not have to support individuals coming into the country. The proposed changes are making legal immigrants reconsider applying for public benefits that they are entitled to, such as Medi-Cal and food stamps. Undocumented immigrants, who are ineligible for most government programs, are afraid that the few services they are able to receive would prevent them from gaining legal residency."
5. Garrett Epps at the Atlantic: A High-Stakes Immigration Case Hits the Supreme Court. "Nielsen v. Preap may determine whether thousands of longtime residents of the U.S. face indefinite detention without a hearing. ...Nielsen is a class action brought by a group of immigrants in the Ninth Circuit who have been or are being detained under 8 U.S.C. § 1226, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That section authorizes federal authorities to detain any alien who may be subject to 'removal' — the technical term for deportation. That term covers a lot of immigrants — border-crossers arrested after entering the U.S. illegally, tourists or students who have overstayed their visas, and lawful permanent residents who have committed certain crimes."
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed just in time to cast his vote in a ruling that will have significant consequences for immigrants. And it a virtual certainty that he will cast his vote on the side that harms immigrants.
Make noise. Make your calls. Make a plan. Please support immigrant families, in whatever way you can.
Nikki Haley Has Resigned
Nikki Haley has resigned as U.N. Ambassador. As of this writing, we don't know what her reasons are — and it's not like she's going to be honest about why she resigned, anyway.
A couple of possibilities:
1. She has decided she wants to run for president in 2020, so needs to start creating distance from Trump.
2. She has come under fire in the last few days for possible ethics violations around travel and gifts, not wholly unlike what eventually took down Scott Pruitt, so maybe she wants to dodge further scrutiny by quitting.
3. She got a look at something Trump, Pence, Pompeo, and Bolton are planning (possibly regarding China?) and said fuck no I'm getting out of here before I'm attached to this mess.
4. A combination of some or all of the above.
In any case, I dread seeing with what nightmare monster Trump replaces her. She was terrible, but one of the least terrible of all the terribles in the Trump Regime. It's only gonna get worse from here.
The Lives of Women
[Content Note: Threat of sexual violence; abuse; misogyny.]
This morning, I read this Twitter moment in which a woman recounts her experience of being tricked and creeped-on and intimidated by a man who came to her house ostensibly to purchase an appliance.
It reminded me of the time a plumber came to my house and was thoroughly menacing, which I recounted in a thread:
This thread reminded me of the time a plumber kept trying to corner me in my bathroom, while I was showing him where the problem sink was. The flash of frustrated anger in his eyes when he realized there was a back door that I could slip through (and did).I knew I'd mentioned this story at Shakesville soon after it had happened, but that I had concealed the extent of it. I went back to find it: "He also stared at my boobs a lot, and commented on my tattoos. I smiled and I said thank you, and he used the excuse of trying to guess how old they were to stare at them a little longer. I made polite conversation, with my back to a closed door. Holding his gaze, like two people just happily chatting, I reached for the doorknob behind my back and held onto it, just in case."
Men often accuse women of jumping to the worst conclusions, but I kept trying to convince myself he was just "awkward" not creepy, even as he escalated. He complimented my tattoos, while leering at me. He kept talking about my hair. And then he started trying to corner me.
I honestly don't know what would have happened if there hadn't been another door in that bathroom, around a corner, which he hadn't yet seen. I could only get to it by allowing him to think he was cornering me, and it was terrifying.
After he was done with his work, he lingered in my kitchen, leaning on my counter, "doing paperwork." He kept looking around and finding things on which to comment, like the Hillary flyer on my fridge. (This was during the election.)
He talked shit about her. He liked Trump. He licked his lips. I tried to remain as jolly as fucking possible. By this point, my dog was at my side, just looking at him. He kept glancing at her. When I knew he was intimidated by her, I told him to wrap it up. "It's time to leave."
And when he finally left, I slumped in a heap, while the adrenaline drained from my body. I just sat on the floor in the entryway, with my dog lying across my lap, for a long time.
This, friends, was not the only bad/scary experience I've had with men coming to the house in a professional capacity while I'm home alone. It was just the most recent one.
This is something about which I would love to not have anxiety. But some number of men being inappropriate while in my home on a repair/delivery/maintenance job has made that impossible. Having dogs helps.
The "just in case" actually happened, but I ended the story there. Like Hannah Gadsby in Nanette, confessing she had minimized a story of an anti-gay assault to make it a palatable joke.
Perhaps part of me was trying to make the story more palatable, but mostly I was trying to avoid precisely the response I got on Twitter today: "I hope that you reported him."
Because I didn't.
And I felt ashamed about that.
So I made it sound like something less bad had happened to me, so no one would blame me for not reporting him.
But I know that I shouldn't feel bad about that. I've tried reporting abusive men before. It has never gone well.
I reported rape to the police and to school authorities and to adults who were meant to protect me, and nothing happened, except that it made my rapist vengeful. I reported sexual harassment to an employer, only to have the only female veep side with the women and get forced out of the firm. I reported abusive repairmen to their boss, only to have him tell me that I was being a real bitch. I reported online threats to my life to federal authorities and was told to go to local police who told me to go to federal authorities. I report (only extreme) abuse on social media and get told more times than not that it doesn't violate the terms of service.
Et cetera ad infinitum.
Today, I replied: "I did not. Because: 1. He kept talking about coming back to my house, which felt menacing. 2. I have learned from experience that reporting a man for being creepy/inappropriate doesn't result in any real consequences for him. It just pisses off a man who knows where you live. I know some people will get angry at me, reading that. I will advise you to redirect your ire where it actually belongs: The institutions that repeatedly protect men when women do try to report them and expose those women to retributive harm. See: The latest SCOTUS battle."
The truth is, I did have to turn that handle and walk through that door to get away from a plumber who was scaring me. And the truth is, I did not report him, because I was scared he would come back if I did, since I have learned that reporting puts me at more risk and does not diminish the risk for other women.
What I did was tell everyone I know locally not to use that plumbing service, and tell them to pass it on. The whisper network. Because official channels don't save us. So we have to save each other.
Anyway. Here is a thread to talk about the things that have happened to you, and the stories you haven't told, or minimized when you did tell them, because you were afraid. Afraid of being hurt, and then afraid of being shamed.
If you need to.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Suzy: "Who's your favorite fictional character that would be insufferable if you had to deal with them in real life?"
Omigosh I love this question! I can think of a dozen different answers right off the top of my head, but obviously I have to answer Leslie Knope. I would love her to bits, but I would also find her insufferable, lol.
Monday Links!
This list o' links brought to you by burgundy.
Recommended Reading:
Brian Kahn at Earther: [Content Note: Moving GIF at link] Hurricane Michael Could Bring Major Flooding to Florida's Gulf Coast
Sarah Sloat at Inverse: "Catastrophic" Effect of Climate Change on Mental Health Found in New Study
Alexa Ura and Darla Cameron at Texas Tribune: [CN: Nativism] Refugee Resettlement in Texas Hits Historic Low Under Trump Administration
Lori Lakin Hutcherson at Good Black News: [CN: Misogynoir; exploitation] Henrietta Lacks, Donor of Famous HeLa Cells, to Be Honored with Building at Johns Hopkins University
Matt Giles at Longreads: [CN: Misogyny] Why Are We Still Ignoring Lee Krasner?
Andy Towle at Towleroad: Taylor Swift Gets Political, Urges Vote for Senate and House Candidates Who Support LGBTQ and Women's Rights
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
"This is going to be very contentious and no one really knows how it is all going to shake out."
In addition to the economic, diplomatic, and military provocations of China — not to mention Donald Trump accusing China of election interference — the Trump Regime is reportedly preparing a whole raft of additional regulations to undercut the Chinese economy.
Erin Banco at the Daily Beast reports:
The Department of Treasury and Commerce are knee-deep in crafting new regulations that will implement restrictions against China meant to limit its ability to access U.S. technology, data, and infrastructure, current and former officials told The Daily Beast. The regulations will also propel a plan that gives the government the jurisdiction to review Chinese investment into American companies that deal with or manufacture that technology.One of the aims of the proposal is to harm China; the other is to protect the United States — specifically around automation. But not to prevent the expansion of automation which harms U.S. workers, of course. Quite the contrary: "One of the primary motivations behind the legislation was the need to address concerns regarding the release of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, automated machines, and robotics to countries of concern, especially China, current and former officials told The Daily Beast. The U.S. government views these technologies and infrastructure as critical to the national security of the U.S., they said."
The restrictions were included in two pieces of legislation under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, a series of laws that outlines the budget and expenditures for the Department of Defense, which [Donald] Trump signed in August. The government has 18 months to fully implement the new legislation and the new regulations will move that process forward.
"This is going to be very contentious and no one really knows how it is all going to shake out," said one senior official in the department of Commerce. "We will have to wait and see what these regulations say. The new legislation will mostly likely impact many more countries but it was really crafted in order to target China."
...The new push for increased control and restriction on China accessing U.S. technology falls in line with the administration's strategy of exacting harsher measures against the country for what it says are unfair trade practices. Although China already faces complications investing in American companies and importing their goods, the new measures will make that process even more difficult. Combined with increasing tariffs, the new restrictions amount to some of the most significant steps the U.S. has taken to implement its "America first" strategy, current and former U.S. officials told The Daily Beast.
"We have the greatest technology in the world. People copy it. And they steal it, but we have the great scientists, we have the great brains, and we have to protect that and were going to protect it and that's what we're doing," [Donald] Trump said in a meeting with Republican lawmakers in June. "We have a lot of things we can do it through and were working that out."
The exact details of the proposal are not yet known, but U.S.-based businesses are concerned that it will hurt their exports. Naturally, Trump is unlikely to care any more than he has when his other economic schemes have harmed U.S. businesses, farmers, workers, consumers, etc.
Malice is the agenda. And Trump doesn't care who gets hurt as he continues to pick a fight, which we probably can't win, with China.
Discussion Thread: Self-Care
What are you doing to do to take care of yourself today, or in the near future, as soon as you can?
If you are someone who has a hard time engaging in self-care, or figuring out easy, fast, and/or inexpensive ways to treat yourself, and you would like to solicit suggestions, please feel welcome. And, as always, no one should offer advice unless it is solicited.
* * *
Well, my shoulder's fubared again, so I can't swim until it re-heals. (FUCK!) But one of my besties told me about float therapy, and it turns out there's a place within driving distance of us, so I'm going to see if I can get some floatation on the schedule in the not too distant future!
Daily Dose of Cute
Some weekend cuteness from Shakes Manor...
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 627
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: Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day and How to Not Forget and So It Turns out That Trump Server Communicating with Russia Was a Big Deal After All (No Kidding).
Here are some more things in the news today...
[Content Note: Rape culture. Covers entire section.]
While many of us are resolving to not forget the fuckery that went down during the Kavanaugh confirmation, the fuckers responsible for it aren't letting anyone forget even if we wanted to.
This is just a sitting U.S. senator making a joke about how they didn't have the alcohol most enjoyed by an alleged sexual predator on hand to celebrate the confirmation of that alleged predator to the Supreme Court. https://t.co/luswWCTCsh
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 7, 2018
Meanwhile, as these wrecks of humanity toast Kavanaugh's confirmation to the nation's highest court while simultaneously still whining that his life has been "shattered," Christine Blasey Ford still can't even go home, because she's still being threatened.
Kate Riga at TPM: Blasey Ford Lawyers: She's 'Horrified' at Trump's Mockery, Receiving 'Unending' Threats. "Lawyers for professor Christine Blasey Ford gave some insight into how their client has fared in the days since her harrowing testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying that she is 'horrified' at the jokes [Donald] Trump has made at her expense and that she and her family have not yet been able to move home due to 'unending threats.' 'Her family has been through a lot,' attorney Debra Katz told MSNBC's Kasie Hunt. 'They are not living at home. It's going to be quite some time before they're able to live at home. The threats have been unending. It's deplorable. It's been very frightening.'"
And Trump continues to pour gas on the flames, calling the allegations against Kavanaugh a Democratic hoax: "Trump once again reiterated his support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh Monday, while railing against alleged discussions about impeaching the recently confirmed nominee. 'Now they're thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist, a man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats,' Trump told reporters. He later called the alleged impeachment movement 'an insult to the American people,' and claimed that the 'dishonesty' and 'charade' from the Democrats would hurt them in the midterm elections. 'It was all made up, it was fabricated, and it's a disgrace,' Trump concluded. 'And I think it's really gonna show you something come November 6th.'"
That the Democrats overreached in trying to prevent Kavanaugh's confirmation is a major Republican talking point ahead of the midterms. McConnell and Trump have been pushing this shit constantly.
McConnell was banging on about this before the vote, and now he's banging on about it after the vote. That the confirmation supposedly fired up the GOP base is a big talking point he wants to get out there.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 6, 2018
See also:
Stephanie Griffith at Think Progress: Trump Says His Attacks on Christine Blasey Ford Helped Get Kavanaugh Confirmed.
Ed Pilkington at the Guardian: Republicans Say Bitter Kavanaugh Fight Energizing Base as Collins Defends Vote.
Chas Danner at NYMag: McConnell Says Kavanaugh Outrage Will 'Blow Over' — and GOP Takeover of Courts Will Continue.
From Danner's piece:
"Harassing members at their homes, crowding the halls with people acting horribly, the effort to humiliate us really helped me unify my conference," McConnell told the New York Times. "So I want to thank these clowns for all the help they provided."So, that's just the Senate Republican leader calling protesting survivors and our allies "clowns" in the midst of an argument that our resistance is unifying conservatives behind Trump, which sure doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that Kavanaugh is aggressively unpopular, even among Republicans.
This nonsensical talking point is, I fear, what they are planning to use to explain an otherwise unexplainable midterm win.
We know already that our elections are indubitably unfair: Gerrymandering, voter suppression, felon disenfranchisement, voter ID laws, dark money, corrupt media, unreliable voting machines, social media meddling, and so on.
The only question is whether there will be straight-up interference on election day, from foreign or domestic parties. And it seems incredibly unlikely that there wouldn't be, given that our president and his governing party have shown zero interest in holding accountable anyone who interferes to their benefit.
I am going to vote. I really hope it matters, and fear that it won't.
* * *
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is traveling with President Trump on AF1 down to Orlando for Trump’s speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police later today — this time two weeks ago things were ... different
— Laura Jarrett (@LauraAJarrett) October 8, 2018
[CN: Climate change] Coral Davenport at the New York Times: Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040. "A landmark report from the United Nations' scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has 'no documented historic precedent.' The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population."
JUST IN: Hope Hicks to become Fox chief communications officerhttps://t.co/FkmabRrbEZ pic.twitter.com/pMKvohidri
— The Hill (@thehill) October 8, 2018
Jane Perlez at the New York Times: Mike Pompeo and His Chinese Counterpart Trade Harsh Words.
In unusually blunt language to an American secretary of state, China's foreign minister accused the United States on Monday of interfering in its internal affairs and of harming his nation's interests on the question of Taiwan.[CN: Police brutality; shooting; racism; death]
In a face-to-face exchange with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the foreign minister, Wang Yi, chided the Trump administration for "ceaselessly elevating" trade tensions and "casting a shadow" over relations between the two countries.
Mr. Pompeo, who sat across the table from Mr. Wang at the start of talks in Beijing, said in a tart response that the United States had a "fundamental disagreement" on the issues that China raised.
The sharp tit-for-tat stripped away the customary veneer of diplomatic niceties during public remarks. It came days after Washington laid down a tough new China policy announced by Vice President Mike Pence, who declared in a speech that the United States would "not stand down."
"A police department in small town in Ohio has hired the officer who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice... Bellaire police Chief Richard Flanagan [said] of his decision to hire Loehmann: 'He was never charged. It’s over and done with.'" Rage seethe boil. https://t.co/vNzJvZEizf
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 8, 2018
[CN: Sexual violence; murder] Luke Barnes at ThinkProgress: Bulgarian Investigative Journalist Viktoria Marinova Found Brutally Murdered in Ruse. "A popular Bulgarian journalist, who reported on alleged corruption involving European Union funds, has been brutally raped and murdered in the town of Ruse, on the border with Romania. The body of Viktoria Marinova, 30, was discovered in a park next to the River Danube on Saturday. According to the European Federation of Journalists Marinova had been beaten and strangled, and the attack was so vicious that she wasn't able to be identified until Sunday night." My god. My condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues. Fucking hell.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
So It Turns out That Trump Server Communicating with Russia Was a Big Deal After All (No Kidding)
A lot has happened in the last couple of years, so you'll be forgiven if you don't recall the story about the unusual link between a computer server at the Trump Organization and a Russian bank during the campaign.
I first mentioned it in November of 2016, a week before the election, after Franklin Foer wrote an important piece on the subject for Slate, "Was a Trump Server Communicating with Russia?" — and then mentioned it again in March of 2017, when Pamela Brown and Jose Pagliery at CNN reported that the FBI was investigating the server connection, which Foer had described thus in his piece:
The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn't the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation — conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn't an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.As I said, if none of this is ringing a bell, you're surely not alone. Especially since the political press largely decided there was nothing to that particular story.
Whooooooooooooops.
Dexter Filkins at the New Yorker: Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?
Examining records for the Trump domain, Max's group discovered D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia. Alfa Bank's computers were looking up the address of the Trump server nearly every day. There were dozens of lookups on some days and far fewer on others, but the total number was notable: Between May and September, Alfa Bank looked up the Trump Organization's domain more than two thousand times. "We were watching this happen in real time — it was like watching an airplane fly by," Max said. "And we thought, Why the hell is a Russian bank communicating with a server that belongs to the Trump Organization, and at such a rate?"There is much more at the link.
Only one other entity seemed to be reaching out to the Trump Organization's domain with any frequency: Spectrum Health, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Spectrum Health is closely linked to the DeVos family; Richard DeVos, Jr., is the chairman of the board, and one of its hospitals is named after his mother. His wife, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Secretary of Education by Donald Trump. Her brother, Erik Prince, is a Trump associate who has attracted the scrutiny of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump's ties to Russia. Mueller has been looking into Prince's meeting, following the election, with a Russian official in the Seychelles, at which he reportedly discussed setting up a back channel between Trump and the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. (Prince maintains that the meeting was "incidental.") In the summer of 2016, Max and the others weren't aware of any of this. "We didn't know who DeVos was," Max said.
The D.N.S. records raised vexing questions. Why was the Trump Organization's domain, set up to send mass-marketing e-mails, conducting such meagre activity? And why were computers at Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health trying to reach a server that didn't seem to be doing anything? After analyzing the data, Max said, "We decided this was a covert communication channel."
...In August, 2016, Max decided to reveal the data that he and his colleagues had assembled. "If the covert communications were real, this potential threat to our country needed to be known before the election," he said. After some discussion, he and his lawyer decided to hand over the findings to Eric Lichtblau, of the New York Times. Lichtblau met with Max, and began to look at the data.
Lichtblau had done breakthrough reporting on National Security Agency surveillance, and he knew that Max's findings would require sophisticated analysis. D.N.S. lookups are metadata — records that indicate computer interactions but don't necessarily demonstrate human communication. Lichtblau shared the data with three leading computer scientists, and, like Max, they were struck by the unusual traffic on the server. As Lichtblau talked to experts, he became increasingly convinced that the data suggested a substantive connection. "Not only is there clearly something there but there's clearly something that someone has gone to great lengths to conceal," he told me. Jean Camp, of Indiana University, had also vetted some of the data. "These people who should not be communicating are clearly communicating," she said. In order to encourage discussion among analysts, Camp posted a portion of the raw data on her website.
As Lichtblau wrote a draft of an article for the Times, Max's lawyer contacted the F.B.I. to alert agents that a story about Trump would be running in a national publication, and to pass along the data. A few days later, an F.B.I. official called Lichtblau and asked him to come to the Bureau's headquarters, in Washington, D.C.
At the meeting, in late September, 2016, a roomful of officials told Lichtblau that they were looking into potential Russian interference in the election. According to a source who was briefed on the investigation, the Bureau had intelligence from informants suggesting a possible connection between the Trump Organization and Russian banks, but no data. The information from Max's group could be a significant advance. "The F.B.I. was looking for people in the United States who were helping Russia to influence the election," the source said. "It was very important to the Bureau. It was urgent."
The F.B.I. officials asked Lichtblau to delay publishing his story, saying that releasing the news could jeopardize their investigation. As the story sat, Dean Baquet, the Times' executive editor, decided that it would not suffice to report the existence of computer contacts without knowing their purpose. Lichtblau disagreed, arguing that his story contained important news: that the F.B.I. had opened a counterintelligence investigation into Russian contacts with Trump's aides. "It was a really tense debate," Baquet told me. "If I were the reporter, I would have wanted to run it, too. It felt like there was something there." But, with the election looming, Baquet thought that he could not publish the story without being more confident in its conclusions.
Foer notes on Twitter that Filkins "lands at about the same conclusion I did a few years back: This wasn't random." And further: "Dean Baquet didn't run the Times story on the subject — and he slammed my piece on Alfa to @ErikWemple. But he now says, 'It felt like there was something there.'"
In other words, the New York Times, who it should always be noted were running plenty of bullshit stories about Hillary Clinton's email server, decided not to run a critically important story linking Trump and Russia a week before the election, because editor Dean Baquet wasn't "confident in it conclusions," even though it "felt like there was something there."
Because there was.
How to Not Forget
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
Over the last weeks and months and years, survivors of sexual trauma have been telling our stories in the hopes of breaking open the silence around sexual violence and revealing the vast scope of the rape culture to those with the luxury of ignorance.
This is not the first time that survivors, predominantly women, have spoken out en masse about sexual harassment and sexual assault. To the contrary, survivors tell our stories publicly in a terrible cycle, recountings of our pain obliged by the denial and apologia around every new allegation against famous men, or a student athlete gang rape making the national news, or another conservative legislator saying something gross about rape, or a judge giving a paltry sentence to a sadist whose defense attorneys assure us he's a good boy who just made a mistake.
Over and over, we tell our stories, hoping this will be the time that sparks a seismic, lasting change.
But eventually, inevitably, we are told to "get over it," by the people who have been made uncomfortable by the sickening ubiquity of our stories and want to get back, as swiftly as possible, to the comfort of never doing a goddamn thing about the unfathomable scope of the harm that other people suffer.
Institutional forgetting is one of the rape culture's most reliable defenses.
Which is why I am heartened to have encountered this message everywhere the past few days, in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court: We won't forget.
It is filled with meaning, that phrase of only three words. Surely, we shouldn't forget any of it — we should remember with lasting gratitude the heroics shown by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the other people who came forward, at steep personal cost, to share what they knew of Kavanaugh's many abuses; and we should forever remember the courage and strength of an overwhelming number of survivors who shared their stories in the futile hope of persuading indecent people to decency.
But it is directed, in this moment, primarily at the justice, the president who nominated him, and the senators who protected and voted for him.
We won't forget what you did.
It is a battle cry. It is the solemn vow of people who want to believe their votes still matter. It is a threat and a promise.
Some of the people saying it actually mean it.
They will remember the names of the senators who cast their votes for Kavanaugh, like Arya Stark remembers the names of the people who must die at her hand. They will remember them with a burning fury that fuels their commitment to the monumental task of removing these purveyors of malice from power, and simultaneously threatens to engulf them and reduce their own selves to ashes in the process.
I know what that feels like. I'm someone who decided not to forget a very long time ago.
There is a cost to not forgetting.
I don't say that as a discouragement, but as a warning. So that anyone new to not forgetting can make the necessary preparations.
So that you never, ever, let a moment pass in which you can do self-care. So that you never let slide by an opportunity to do whatever thing makes you feel incandescent joy. So that you resolve, right now, if you haven't before, to allow other people to care for you, to help carry your burden, to love you.
You're going to need them. Because there is a cost to not forgetting.
My best friend calls me the Lint Trap, because I remember everything. (Except for all the things I don't.) My memory is legendary among my friends, who celebrate like lotto winners when they remember something I don't, which always makes me laugh, because I have no control over and did not earn my strange ability to recall 20-year-old conversations nearly verbatim.
It is a gift. And it is a curse. And it is the thing that keeps me connected to the people about whom I write.
I have, in the fourteen years since I started this space, written a lot about people who have been victimized by sexual violence. There are 1,158 entries filed under the Today in Rape Culture label, and I only started using labels in 2009. I have written about a lot of survivors.
Most of the time, I'm writing about people I don't know. Sometimes, I don't even know their names, depending on whether the nature of the crime, or their age, or their continued peril, compels the press — or just me — to protect their anonymity.
I think of them often. I carry their stories with me, right alongside my own.
Very occasionally, I am contacted by the people about whom I've written, or members of their immediate family. It has, so far, always been to thank me for amplifying their stories; for taking up space, unequivocally, in solidarity with them. Sometimes they give me updates that make me grin and sometimes they give me updates that make me weep.
I cry a lot doing this work. It would be easier to forget.
But I want to remember them. And I do.
Not forgetting is always hard, but I will tell you this: It is easier to sustain not forgetting because you fiercely love survivors than because you hate politicians and judges.
Everyone who decides to not forget comes to that decision for a different reason. For me, doing this work is the only way I can give a reason to the things that happened to me — which I have to do, because I can't bear for them to have happened for no reason at all.
That doesn't mean I don't hate politicians and judges who treat survivors with sneering contempt. I do. I hate them with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns. I just love myself and my fellow survivors even more.
That sustains me. Find something that sustains you, too; that nourishes you in way vengeance alone cannot. You're going to need it.
Not forgetting lasts a very long time.
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day
[Content Note: Racism; violence.]
Today is the U.S. federal holiday known as Columbus Day. Columbus Day, however, is terrible. A terrible day that celebrates a terrible man at the continued expense of the indigenous people he harmed.
Some locations around the country, including Los Angeles, have moved to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, which is such a good idea — and that is definitely what we are celebrating in Shakesville.
Fuck Columbus.
Kavanaugh Confirmed
Well, it's done. To desperate shouts of protestors who were dragged out of the Senate chamber, Republicans confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is empowering him to replicate the interpersonal harm he's done on a vast scale. I ache for the people he's already hurt, and for all the people he will.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 6, 2018
There isn't anything I can say that I haven't already said countless times. Malice is the agenda, and nominating a sadistic abuser to the highest court in the nation after millions of women poured out our pain in opposition is about as malicious as it gets.
I take up space in solidarity with everyone who is hurting about this travesty right now.
I'm so sad, and I am so full of bottomless rage.
