Miss you – Gabrielle Aplin
Lying to You – Goldroom
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 96 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
Miss you – Gabrielle Aplin
Lying to You – Goldroom
by John Cole| 33 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece
Classic https://t.co/Bi27XCnoEr
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) January 31, 2017
Also, this:
While he has posted online about excessive government spending, Phillips owes the federal government $100,961 in unpaid income taxes with his wife, according to a lien filed by the IRS in Manatee County, Florida, in 2014. An official at the county clerk’s office said the outstanding sum had not been paid. In a text message on Friday, Phillips said: “I am in a disagreement with the IRS over income taxes. The amount owed is less than $50,000.”
Phillips also had a colorful and lesser-known career in Mississippi and Texas state politics over the past few decades, in which he was accused of exploiting positions that he held in the administrations of both states for financial gain.
The former stockbroker and Republican fundraiser described those years differently in a tweet posted last November. “I’ve torn down govt in two states, eliminated 20k jobs, & saved $5 billion,” he said. “Requires enormous stones.”
Awesome.
by John Cole| 30 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece
Took him a while, and he had to be dragged to it, but he did the right thing:
“As a member of the Intelligence and former member of the Armed Services Committees, I know firsthand the threats facing our country, and my top priority is always the safety of my fellow West Virginians. This is why I supported extreme vetting in the past for anyone seeking to come to our country. Unfortunately, after taking time to review the new executive order and discuss its impacts, I believe the scope and execution of the President’s action are not a common sense approach. We should focus all of our efforts on identifying potential terrorists, but commonsense would tell you that a 5 year old trying to join their family does not present a threat to our country. I am also concerned that the order was rushed through before being properly vetted by senior security advisers and members in the Administration. I stand ready to work with Democrats and Republicans who share my concerns.”
-Senator Joe Manchin
Also, here is a job opening for an IT manager for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (.docx file).IT Manager Job Description (1)
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Don't Trip, Organize, Open Threads, Politics
Tonight was the first post-election meeting of my local Democratic organization. So many new people showed up that the building had to bring in a cop, and breakout sessions weren’t possible because the entire cavernous room was jam-packed.
During the comments portion of the meeting, one guy stood up and said he’s been a Democrat for 40+ years, but tonight was his first party meeting. A couple of people said they’d been independents until tonight but were getting off the fence to join the only party that still acts like Americans.
It was a diverse group: women and men, old and young, gay and straight, black, white and brown. They were fired up and energized by the women’s marches, the immigration support rallies and pro-ACA public meetings.
A lot of organizing happened. We worked out ways to coordinate responses to ongoing issues and expected outrages to come.
More anecdata to support the Trump radicalization effect discussed earlier here and here. Just thought I’d share. Open thread!
This post is in: Activist Judges!, An Unexamined Scandal, Hail to the Hairpiece, Republican Venality, Get Angry, Not Normal
And Sally Yates has been fired pic.twitter.com/Pbw0MxxNOt
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) January 31, 2017
not hard to tell which paragraphs of this statement, from office of the White House press secretary, were dictated directly by the president pic.twitter.com/J8smKVgCYv
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) January 31, 2017
Per the Washington Post:
… Earlier on Monday, Yates ordered Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s immigration order temporarily banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world, declaring in a memo that she is not convinced the order is lawful.
Yates wrote that, as the leader of the Justice Department, she must ensure that the department’s position is “legally defensible” and “consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right.”…
What will happen next is unclear. A Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said those who would normally defend the order under Yates’s authority can no longer do so. Yates will probably be replaced soon by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Trump’s attorney general nominee, who could be confirmed as early as Thursday or Friday. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider his nomination Tuesday, and the entire Senate must wait one day before voting…
The President-Asterisk goes full RMNixon. Now, more than ever:
Jeff Sessions has a long history of racism & sexism. Call your member of Congress and tell them to #StopSessions: 202-224-3121 pic.twitter.com/L7HeFR66e0
— NARAL (@NARAL) January 30, 2017
From the Washington Post, “Trump’s hard-line actions have an intellectual godfather: Jeff Sessions” —
… The early days of the Trump presidency have rushed a nationalist agenda long on the fringes of American life into action — and Sessions, the quiet Alabamian who long cultivated those ideas as a Senate backbencher, has become a singular power in this new Washington.
Sessions’s ideology is driven by a visceral aversion to what he calls “soulless globalism,” a term used on the extreme right to convey a perceived threat to the United States from free trade, international alliances and the immigration of nonwhites.
And despite many reservations among Republicans about that worldview, Sessions — whose 1986 nomination for a federal judgeship was doomed by accusations of racism that he denied — is finding little resistance in Congress to his proposed role as Trump’s attorney general….
The author of many of Trump’s executive orders is senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a Sessions confidant who was mentored by him and who spent the weekend overseeing the government’s implementation of the refugee ban. The tactician turning Trump’s agenda into law is deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, Sessions’s longtime chief of staff in the Senate. The mastermind behind Trump’s incendiary brand of populism is chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who, as chairman of the Breitbart website, promoted Sessions for years.
Then there is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who considers Sessions a savant and forged a bond with the senator while orchestrating Trump’s trip last summer to Mexico City and during the darkest days of the campaign.
In an email in response to a request from The Washington Post, Bannon described Sessions as “the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy” in Trump’s administration, saying he and the senator are at the center of Trump’s “pro-America movement” and the global nationalist phenomenon…
Sessions helped devise the president’s first-week strategy, in which Trump signed a blizzard of executive orders that begin to fulfill his signature campaign promises — although Sessions had advocated going even faster.
The senator lobbied for a “shock-and-awe” period of executive action that would rattle Congress, impress Trump’s base and catch his critics unaware, according to two officials involved in the transition planning. Trump opted for a slightly slower pace, these officials said, because he wanted to maximize news coverage by spreading out his directives over several weeks.
Trump makes his own decisions, but Sessions was one of the rare lawmakers who shared his impulses.
“Sessions brings heft to the president’s gut instincts,” said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. He compared Sessions to John Mitchell, who was attorney general under Richard M. Nixon but served a more intimate role as a counselor to the president on just about everything. “Nixon is not a guy given to taking advice, but Mitchell was probably Nixon’s closest adviser,” Stone said…
With such a rogues’ gallery supporting him, you don’t even need to know about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’ long history defending racism and voter disenfranchisement to realize he is NOT a good man, or a trustworthy judge.
by TaMara| 19 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Your Place Is In The Resistance
The protest started in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House:
This is the statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko, Revolutionary War general, military engineer, and Polish immigrant.
In front of the Freedman’s Bank Building:
The protest broke out into an impromptu march that took us past the Treasury Building. There’s no going back now:
Then we marched to the Capitol, with a stop in front of the Old Post Office Pavilion (aka Trump’s hotel):
And then on to the Capitol:
I heard later that there was another protest against Betsy DeVos happening at the Capitol at the same time. Five minutes after I took this picture the crowd started chanting “See you next week.”Thanks for sharing these!
This post is in: America, Don't Mourn, Organize, Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Rare Sincerity
Today's Google doodle honors the 98th birthday of Fred Korematsu, the activist who took Japanese internment to the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/AEZyTbxvD7
— Peter A. Shulman (@pashulman) January 30, 2017
What was not clear until years later was that the government's case for internment as a security measure was bogus & the government knew it.
— Peter A. Shulman (@pashulman) January 30, 2017
It was done to boost morale, especially on the west coast, not deal with a legitimate risk. And that's why fear is so dangerous.
— Peter A. Shulman (@pashulman) January 30, 2017
First dem question for SCOTUS pick should be whether #Korematsu is still good law.
— Brishen Rogers (@BrishenRogers) January 30, 2017
While we’re on the topic of ugly history… CAN’T SAY YOU WEREN’T WARNED, REPUBS…
On this day in 1933, Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. "We have the power. Now our gigantic work begins." pic.twitter.com/3zcmZLEMXz
— Military History Now (@MilHistNow) January 30, 2017