Some catchy music to end the weekend.
Chat about whatever.
by Tim F| 152 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
This post is in: Climate Change, Free Markets Solve Everything, Media, Science & Technology, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Fucked-up-edness, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
One of the signal failures of the media throughout the Trump dumpster fire of a campaign was to focus on his words — parsing, shifts in terminology, trying to distinguish between lies and hyperbole, or simply providing theater criticism on his performances, connections to audience and so on. All the while, the critical information: what the combination of his ample history, the (few) clear positions he staked, and the people he hired revealed about what Trump would actually do as President.
That basic error is still with us, nicely diagnosed in this post by Robinson Meyer over at The Atlantic:
It works like this: Donald Trump, the president-elect himself, says something that sounds like he might be moderating on the issue. Then, his staff takes a radical action in the other direction.
Last week, Trump told the staff of The New York Times that he was keeping an open mind about the existence of climate change.
This was, as Meyer notes, treated as a major shift, given Trump’s earlier claim that global warming was a Chinese hoax. As a result, many slow learners touted this story (Meyer self-indicts here.) But, of course, Trump’s almost certainly intentionally vague statement —
“I think there is some connectivity” between human activity and the warming climate, Trump said. “There is some, something. It depends on how much.”…
both grants him almost unlimited freedom of maneuver and was almost immediately belied by what his transition team is actually doing:
A day after Trump talked to the Times, The Guardian reported that the Trump administration plans could cut all of NASA’s Earth science research….
…which, as many have already noted, is vital for ongoing climate monitoring and ongoing attempts to study the implications of human – driven global warming with the resolution needed to inform action.
Then there’s this:
Politico reports that the Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Steven Groves, has been added to Trump’s State Department transition team. Just last week, Groves called for the United States to leave the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the overarching treaty that governs how the world organizes itself to address global warming. Groves also said the U.S. should move to “dismantle” domestic climate regulations.
Thus, a picture of a Trump administration policy on climate change: destroy the research infrastructure needed to study climate, and wreck both national and international prospects for action to address what a true existential crisis.
The moral, to use Meyer’s phrase, is that Trump is a master of the two-step, baffling the unwary (aka, seemingly, the entire New York Times staff) while proceeding behind that verbal smokescreen towards the worst possible choices. We need a much more vigilant press, and a brave one.
Image: Hieronymous Bosch, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (left panel detail), 1495-1515. Not an exact match to the post, but I’m kinda just looking for apocalyptic images these days, and this certainly works for that.
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Bitter Despair is the New Black, I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
Masha Gessen knows from vicious fascist dictators. Here’s what she has to say under the headline “Autocracy: Rules for Survival“:
I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:
Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says….
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.…
[See Betty’s post below]Rule #3: Institutions will not save you….
Rule #4: Be outraged…
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises…
Rule #6: Remember the future….
This is one of those read-the-whole-thing deals. Masha has lived what she’s talking about here. I have had the good fortune to spend some evenings talking with her, and she is at once one of the sharpest, most un-bull-shit-able political thinkers I know and among the most courageous people I’ve ever met.
If you don’t have time, or, like me, have only a finite tolerance for looking straight at the beast looking back at us, here’s the short form, as stated in Rule 4:
If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.
That leads to the logic of Rule 6:
Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.
I expect we will lose most battles for years to come. Perhaps all of them. ETA: Fuck that noise. The comments below decrying defeatism are right. We’re going to win a bunch. Not everything, and people will get hurt, badly. But Republicans are already over reaching. They’re fuck-ups and we’ll be able to take advantage of the openings they provide. See this from David Cole for a little hope. Which is why I keep coming back to Masha’s conclusion — say no, and keep on saying it — and see it as a pocket-guide-for-the-perplexed.
I’ve more to say, as I think towards what specific forms my resistance may take, but none of that’s really formed yet, beyond giving some money to some of the most obvious targets. More later. In the meantime, what Gessen says: Trump will not last forever, and resistance is many things — but not futile.
Image: the Ozymandias Colossus — Raames II, mistakenly identified as the mythical king Ozymandias. This ruin inspired Percy Bysshe Shelly to write this.
Listen To Someone Who Knows Something About The Shitgibbon’s MentorPost + Comments (55)
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Election 2016, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Both Sides Do It!, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, Sociopaths, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
Senator Harry Reid has just released a letter to FBI Director Comey that is utterly (and IMHO appropriately) brutal.
It contains two key elements. The first is a direct assertion that Comey has engaged in partisan political action, and may (by implication, has) broken the law by violating the Hatch Act.
The second is this:
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.
Hillary Clinton’s aide’s husband sent dick picks from a computer that may or may not contain emails that may or may not add to our nation’s stock of risotto recipes.
Donald Trump, apparantly, has consequential entanglement with the former KGB thug-led Russian government and its klepto-thug circle of supporters.
We know hair-raising innuendo about the former.
About the latter, from the same institution? Crickets.
Sauce for the goose damn well ought to be sauce for the gander. And Comey’s a hack who needs to go at the earliest politick opportunity. (And yeah, that’s not a typo. I like that old spelling.)
No BS here: if the FBI has pertinent information on Trump’s potential for conflict of interest due to his Russian encounters, we need to know this now.
Here is Reid’s letter in full:
Dear Director Comey:
Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another. I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.
The double standard established by your actions is clear.
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.
By contrast, as soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible.
Moreover, in tarring Secretary Clinton with thin innuendo, you overruled longstanding tradition and the explicit guidance of your own Department. You rushed to take this step eleven days before a presidential election, despite the fact that for all you know, the information you possess could be entirely duplicative of the information you already examined which exonerated Secretary Clinton.
As you know, a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates on March 10, 2016, makes clear that all Justice Department employees, including you, are subject to the Hatch Act. The memo defines the political activity prohibited under the Hatch Act as “activity directed towards the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”
The clear double-standard established by your actions strongly suggests that your highly selective approach to publicizing information, along with your timing, was intended for the success or failure of a partisan candidate or political group.
Please keep in mind that I have been a supporter of yours in the past. When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant.
With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong.
Sincerely,
Senator Harry Reid
Image: Alphonse de Neuville, The Spy, 1880.
This post is in: Election 2016, Hail to the Hairpiece, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Flash Mob of Hate, Peak Wingnut Was a Lie!, Sociopaths, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
I can’t think of another way to describe him after this* [Politico link]:
Donald Trump suggested canceling the election Thursday and granting himself the presidency.
“What a difference. You know, what a difference this is,” Trump said during a rally in Toledo, Ohio, after comparing his tax plan with Hillary Clinton’s.
“And just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right? What are we even having it for? What are we having it for?” he asked. “Her policies are so bad. Boy, do we have a big difference.”
Because that’s how he rolls, and how the party that nominated him would, if they could.
I got nuthin’ beyond that.
Except perhaps this: the Republican party is a wholly owned Trump subsidiary now. It must be destroyed, its walls pulled down, its proud towers cast down, its fields sown with salt.
Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est
*Actually, I’ve been using that label for the Cheeto-faced Ferret-heedit Shitgibbon for some time. But that’s neither here nor there.
Image: J. W. M. Turner, The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, 1817.
This post is in: Ammosexuals, Hail to the Hairpiece, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
ETA: Once again, proof that I belong to no organized political blog; I’m Juicer. I swear Betty’s post wasn’t there when I started this, and as usual, I didn’t stop to look before I hit publish. I think I’ll leave this up as (a) an object lesson in attention-must-be-paid and (b) because you can never have too much thread to shower our opponents with disdain.
Apologies to all offended.
So, the Incompressible Jizztrumpet reboot lasted…well, I’m not saying you need femtosecond-accuracy here, but not long, brothers and sisters. Not long.
Yesterday it’s all, “Hey — his economic plan is warmed over ZEGS-gruel, seasoned with some pants on fire, but at least there was no visible froth on his grubby mien.”
Today, having struggled free of the Manafort manacles strapping him to the teleprompter, the Hamster Heedit Bampot went away and boiled his nappy:
“If she gets to pick her judges,” Trump said, “nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.”
To put that into the plainest of terms: the nominee of one of the two major parties in the United States just said that if his opponent were to win, then she could — and by context, should — face armed rebellion. (ETA: per both comments below and Betty C. before, this could as easily be read as a call for assassination.)
That, my friends, is John Calhoun’s dumber younger brother, up on his hind legs, urging his supporters to follow General Pickett’s division up the ridge, (ETA: or, perhaps, to attempt a little John Wilkes Booth action) in pursuit of the same end as the party of treason sought 150 years ago: the destruction of the American Republic.
It would make me yet more furious, except that it does appear that Trump knows, or embodies his Karl Marx: first time tragedy, second time (tragic) farce.
In any event, we now have yet further proof of the obvious: there is no “presidential” Trump. There is only the same Cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shitgibbon we’ve come to know and loathe.
Image: Anthony Palamades, An Officer Blowing a Trumpet, first half of the seventeenth century.
This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Hail to the Hairpiece, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
Josh Marshall has a tweet stream going talking about the Trump-Russia alliance. As he sees it, the Manchurian-by-way-of-Queens Candidate isn’t even trying to hide his alliance with/subservience to Putin.
I’m not sure I wholly believe it, but I can’t come close to ruling it out, and that cranks the dangers of this election up to eleven. Which is why I found this story a welcome bit of comic relief:
@IvankaTrump
Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech: http://bit.ly/29Qj7dE #RNCinCLE
- 271271 Retweets
- 748748 likes
This isn’t Ivanka Trump tweeting, technically. It’s @IvankaTrump, but that’s the Twitter handle forIvankaTrump.com. If one has one’s own clothing line, it seems natural that you’d wear pieces from it; perhaps the marketing folks saw an unplanned opportunity to plug the outfit on Twitter. It’s $138 at Macy’s; apparently her father’s boycott of the chain doesn’t apply to her. The garment is described as a “sophisticated sheath dress” that “works wonders at both social and professional occasions” — and, clearly, political ones.
Oh, also? The dress is “imported,” according to its description.
So perhaps this was a just a smart move by the site’s marketing team to capitalize on the moment. Possible. Or perhaps Ivanka Trump has been doing this for the entire convention, posting a series of photos from the event at her website with personalized captions to each — and links to where you can buy all of the things she’s wearing or carrying.
So yeah, maybe the Trump campaign is Putin’s Hail Mary attempt to reverse the outcome of the Cold War. And maybe it’s just one long grift, the true family business now being carried on by the smart child.
Of course, there’s no reason that what we’re seeing isn’t both a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Image: John Singer Sargent, Madam X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883*
*Yeah. This is one of those posts that exist at least in part so that I could post that picture. Sue me.